Four years ago, staff at SPARK Georgia (an initiative of Smart Start Georgia, the early learning arm of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta) was interested in increasing parent involvement and success outcomes for 100 of their most vulnerable incoming families. The SPARK Georgia coordinators chose to use the PAT Born to Learn model as the foundation for this plan, training all of their parent educators to be nationally certified PAT parent educators.
Consistent with PATs belief that screening and outcome measures help programs provide evidence of their quality and effectiveness, all of the SPARK Georgia parent educators were trained to use the GRTR! screening tool and resources with PAT families. While PAT programs are not mandated to use one screening tool over another, the GRTR! screening tool was a natural fit with their programming because it provides easy-to-understand information, can be used by center staff and family members, and is a non-threatening way to open up the conversation regarding early literacy skill development.
Successful Outcomes
Once the PAT/GRTR! program was in place, the SPARK Georgia coordinators saw a marked difference in the way the PAT families were interacting with the initiative. They found that PAT families became more involved in center activities, had an increased desire to meet with the staff to discuss their child's progress and reported seeing an increase in student performance. Because all of the SPARK Georgia parent educators were trained in the PAT/GRTR! model, they started to also notice that many of the ways they were trained to enhance parent involvement with PAT families also worked to keep the rest of the SPARK Georgia families connected to the program.
SPARK Georgia coordinators were able to take the results from the GRTR! screening tool and make immediate adjustments in how they approached skill-building activities with individual children and small groups. These results were also used to help increase and target activities parents could do at home to increase skill-development before kindergarten increasing school readiness and successful transitions to kindergarten.
In order to quantify the observations the coordinators were making, SPARK Georgia conducted a two-year study comparing early literacy skill development gains the year before kindergarten and gains made in similar non-SPARK settings in the area (primarily Georgia Public Pre-K settings) using the GRTR! screening tool and other tools to measure progress. The report shows that the SPARK sample's gains on the screening tool exceed those of the Georgia pre-kindergarten programs with SPARK children scoring on average 16.8 on the screening tool at the end of the year compared to 15.9 by children in non-SPARK settings. These gains are particularly powerful when you consider that children recruited for SPARK Georgia came from diverse settings (55 percent in the care of family, friends, and neighbors; 27 percent in Early Head Start and Head Start; and 18 percent in early care and education settings). They had few economic resources (83 percent of families make less than $25,000 per year) and 64 percent did not speak English.
Conclusion
We know that using the GRTR! screening tool in early childhood settings is a good way to gauge a childs development of early literacy skills crucial for future success in learning to read. However, it is clear that introducing GRTR! into early childhood settings that are committed to building strong family connections make the results of the screening tool and follow-up skill-building activities even more powerful for the child, the family and the setting.
Due to the successful outcomes SPARK Georgia has experienced using the PAT/GRTR! model, SPARK Georgia recently helped to create and secure funding for the creation of a Georgia PAT Network and State Office that will support the more than 50 PAT programs in Georgia by planning and coordinating PAT and other training, expanding PAT to new communities, and providing consultation to ensure high quality PAT programs.
Background Program Information
Parent as Teachers
The Parents as Teachers (PAT) program provides parents with child development knowledge and parenting support through:
Home and/or individual visits,
Health and development screenings,
Referrals,
Group support sessions from pregnancy until a child enters kindergarten.
PAT program goals are to:
Increase parent knowledge of early childhood development and improve parenting practices,
Provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues,
Prevent child abuse and neglect,
Increase children's school readiness and school success.
The PAT programming is implemented into the structure of an existing organization or program such as Title I, school districts, Even Start, Head Start or Early Head Start, Healthy Families America, Family Resource Centers and other state and nonprofit agencies. There are over 3,000 PAT programs nationwide, at least one in each state, with several programs implemented internationally.
Get Ready to Read!
Get Ready to Read! (GRTR!) is a national program of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Inc.(NCLD) designed around an early literacy screening tool and additional resources in order to build the early literacy skills of children the year before kindergarten.
GRTR! brings research-based strategies to parents, early education professionals, and child care providers to help prepare children to learn to read and write. Our goal is to ensure that all children have opportunities to become successful readers. To date over 350,000 children have been screened and benefited from Get Ready to Read!
