Throughout its history, NCFL has designed, developed and evaluated interventions that show measurable gains for families.

Each initiative begins with a challenge, a question to be answered, an issue to be resolved. NCFL has been fortunate to engage some of the most prestigious and forward-thinking private and public supporters to find sustainable solutions. Below are just a few examples of the many successful initiatives NCFL has led.

NCFL-designed initiatives generally provide start-up funds and training to programs so that they can integrate family literacy into the services they provide for adults and children. As part of this grant period, NCFL works with each program to develop a plan for local sustainability. Many of the initiatives listed here continue to flourish in their local communities.

Helping Children Get a Strong Start

Literacy begins at home. But all parents don’t have equal resources and education that will help them support their child’s literacy development during the most formative stages of a child’s life.

To help parents and child care providers offer the most supportive learning experiences for young children, NCFL has championed initiatives that start children on a path to success.

The Chase Building Readers Project provided training and resources for child care professionals to engage low-income parents in their child’s early literacy development. The project offered teacher training and parent resources to both center-based and home-based child care programs in low economic communities. In the first year of the project, 85% of participating parents reported that they read a book from the lending library at least once a week, and one-third read a book at least once a day.

The Boeing Growing Readers Project extended this work by developing parent workshops specifically for 15 Chicago parent resource centers.

These early literacy and reading development initiatives were influenced by NCFL’s work in the Head Start Family Literacy Project, which provided training and technical assistance specifically tailored to the Head Start and Early Head Start community.

Helping Adults Gain Financial Stability

Parents who can’t pay the rent often struggle with making education a priority. Family literacy offers parents the opportunity to improve their job skills while they also learn how to support their children’s education.

NCFL’s approach to adult education is unique. While supporting the adult learner’s educational and career goals, family literacy also stresses the value of a reciprocal learning relationship between parent and child.

The Family Independence Initiative was funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to examine how family literacy could impact adults facing new regulations of welfare reform. An independent study found that parents participating in this work-focused initiative realized significant increases in household income and employment, and decreases in welfare dependency.

Building on this success, NCFL initiated the UPS Careers for Families to develop programming that would start parents on a career path and specifically connect adult learners to local employment.

NCFL continues to seek new opportunities to help adults increase their financial literacy with a focus on family stability. With funding from Louisville Metro Government through a collaboration with Women 4 Women, the Kentucky Council on Economic Education, the Center for Women and Families, and Jefferson County Public Schools, NCFL is leading the Basic Intergenerational Financial Literacy initiative to meet the financial literacy needs of underserved families with extremely low levels of income in Louisville, Kentucky.

Helping Families Achieve the American Dream

Parents who can’t speak, read or write in English face innumerable barriers to succeeding in the United States, both as employees and as advocates for their children.

Many communities today, both urban and rural, are grappling with multicultural classrooms and the influx of non-English speakers in the workplace. NCFL is currently involved in a number of initiatives to meet this challenge. NCFL recognized from its inception that education is the key to helping families from all backgrounds achieve the goals that brought them to this country.

The Cambodian Technical Assistance Project, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, devised new strategies for working with low-literate English language learners and provided technical assistance to the Cambodian Association of America. A study by an independent evaluator showed measurable gains for the 25 refugee families that participated in the first year of the project. Through an intensive partnership with family literacy programs in Long Beach, California, NCFL worked with Dr. Gail Weinstein to design a training program for teachers that builds on basic family concepts to increase functional English language usage.

Parenting for Academic Success is a curriculum that increases parents’ English language proficiency, their involvement in and understanding of their child’s school, and their ability to support their child’s language and literacy development. Supported by Verizon Communications and published by Delta Systems, this resource is the first to apply English as a Second Language (ESL) instructional practices to parenting education.

Helping Schools Engage Parents as Partners

Parent involvement is proven to improve academic success. Parents who only had negative experiences at school are often intimidated by the system in which their children are enrolled. Yet schools that don’t meet requirements of No Child Left Behind struggle to enlist parents as active supporters of the system and of their children.

Years before “parent involvement” became a mandate for failing schools, NCFL and Toyota recognized the value of the family literacy model to engage disenfranchised parents in their children’s educational experience. The Toyota Families in Schools initiative set the national tone and ultimately influenced federal legislation that requires schools to engage all parents in their children’s academic environment in a meaningful and result-oriented way. More than 94% of enrolled parents reported that they are more involved in their child’s education as a result of the Toyota program.

Today, this model is influencing how schools, researchers, legislators and philanthropists view educational reform. Building on this foundation, NCFL is currently involved in a number of school-based initiatives, including Expanding the Reach, a program to improve reading instruction for elementary school teachers, and the Annenberg Family Literacy Academy, which provides support for school systems seeking ways to engage parents meaningfully in the school environment.

Helping States Design a System for Improvement

To effect sustainable change, each state’s educational system must be willing to embrace the literacy needs of both parents and children. While federal educational monies provide the financial backbone for educational reform, state agencies are responsible for distributing funding in a way that will meet the specific needs of their local populations.

The Kentucky Institute for Family Literacy, housed within NCFL, is a groundbreaking statewide initiative that provides direct training and technical assistance services to 156 state and federally funded family literacy programs in every county of Kentucky. As a member of the Professional Development Partners for Kentucky Adult Education and currently funded by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and Kentucky Even Start, the Kentucky Institute for Family Literacy also has garnered support from the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development, the Kentucky Cabinet for Workforce Development, the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children, the Kentucky Head Start Association, the Tapestry Foundation, and Verizon.

NCFL’s work in Kentucky has provided a unique model of collaborative development that serves as a benchmark for other states.