Family & Community Adult Education Family Literacy
Massachusetts Family Literacy Consortium

Our vision is successful families. Our mission is successful partnershps.

Even Start Comprehensive Family Literacy Program

Programs:

Many family literacy models exist, ranging from simple family literacy activities to comprehensive family literacy programs. Originally enacted through legislation in 1989, Even Start is a comprehensive, federally funded, family literacy demonstration program.

|    Massachusetts Even Start Family Literacy Programs Contact List

Purpose:

The purpose of the program is to help families overcome intergenerational cycles of illiteracy and poverty by providing integrated early childhood education, adult literacy, and parenting education in a unified family literacy program.

Even Start is a demonstration program with the continuing objective of developing new and innovative methods to illustrate the effectiveness of comprehensive integrated family literacy services for children and their families. It is expected that successful programs will be adopted and financially supported by their communities after an initial period of four to eight years of Even Start grant support.

Program Design:

There are five required program components:

• adult education;

• age appropriate education for children (0-7);

• parent and child time together (PACT);

• parenting education; and

• home visits to reinforce learning at home.

Funding Priorities:

Federal funds are channeled to state Departments of Education which, in turn, make awards to communities based on a competitive process. Priorities for this process are to:

• provide family educational programs that involve parents and children in a cooperative effort that builds on existing community resources to provide family literacy;

• provide high quality instructional programs that:

  • promote adult literacy and empower parents to support the educational growth of their children;

  • provide developmentally appropriate early childhood educational services; and prepare children for success in regular school programs;

  • empower parents and children to develop a strong educational foundation in order to reach their full personal, social and economic potential;

• target family literacy and family support services primarily to families most in need as indicated by high levels of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, limited-English proficiency, or other need-related indicators;

• demonstrate cooperation and coordination among a variety of relevant service providers in all phases of the program;

• promote achievement of the national education goals by assisting participating children and adults to achieve challenging state learning and student performance standards; and

• develop and implement models that may be adopted by other communities.

Partnerships:

A minimum of two agencies must establish a partnership that has joint responsibility for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the project. An Even Start partnership is required between a school district and, at a minimum, one of the following: a nonprofit community based organization, a public agency other than a school district, an institution of higher education, or a public or private nonprofit organization other than a school district.

Funding:

Even Start programs are required to contribute local, state, or federal matching funds that total at least 10% of the total program cost in the first year and increase by 10% each year over for the first four years of the program. The match is calculated on the total cost of the program including the grant share and the match. The grant share for the program may not be more than:

• 90% in the first year;

• 80% in the second year;

• 70% in the third year; and

• 60% in the fourth year

After four years of funding, Even Start legislation permits a community to compete for additional funding. At this time, the ratio of matching funds to Even Start funds changes to:

• 50% for the fifth through the eighth years; and

• 35% for the ninth and subsequent years.

Massachusetts Even Start programs represent urban, rural, and suburban areas across the state serving a diverse multicultural population that represents many different ethnic backgrounds and language groups. The Community Assets Profiles capture the extent of Even Start and other federal and state funded comprehensive family literacy funding in individual Massachusetts towns and cities.

For additional information, please contact:

• Arlene R. Dale, Even Start State Coordinator, adale@doe.mass.edu

• National Even Start Association, http://www.evenstart.org

• National Center for Family Literacy, http://www.famlit.org