Toyota Family Literacy Program
The Toyota Family Literacy Program (TFLP) provides high-quality family literacy services for ESL students and demonstrates replicable models of a four-component family literacy program.

According to the 2000 Census, Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. Many Hispanic immigrants speak little or no English and may even have low literacy levels in their native language. This can cause significant barriers to supporting their children’s education, making it difficult to navigate the American school system. This population has unique educational and social needs that must be addressed to be able to secure a life of success for parents and children alike.

In 2003, the Toyota Family Literacy Program (TFLP) was established to help adults improve their English language skills and increase their involvement in their children's education. The program recently expaned in the fall of 2007, and now serves families in 60 elementary schools in 20 communities.

These sites have established four-component family literacy programs, which focus on improving the academic achievement of children as well as adults. NCFL provides training and technical assistance visits, and develops supporting resource materials.

High-quality support materials are being developed based on the conclusions of the program to fulfill the needs of ESL programs nationwide. The model also will influence local, state and national policymakers in their support for family literacy with an emphasis on the Hispanic population.

White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans
NCFL is a collaborating partner with the President’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. The initiative is charged with strengthening the nation’s capacity to provide high-quality education for Hispanic Americans while increasing opportunities for their participation in federal education programs. NCFL is playing a critical role in helping the initiative identify successful methods employed throughout the nation for increasing parental involvement among Hispanic Americans, as well as strategies to foster state, local, private and community involvement.

The Mexican Consulate in Indianapolis
NCFL works closely with the Mexican Consulate in Indianapolis to gain knowledge about the Mexican culture and education system, with the aim of expanding practicioners’ knowledge and understanding. As a result, the Mexican Consulate provided NCFL with adult education and children’s education books produced by the Mexican government to use in family literacy programs across Kentucky. At the invitation of the Mexican Ministry of Public Education, NCFL participated in an international forum on education in Mexico City.

UPS Volunteer Academy
Supported by UPS, this initiative offers programs the necessary tools to recruit and assess potential volunteers and incorporate them successfully into the family literacy environment, increasing the capacity of programs to use volunteers effectively and improve parents’ English language skills and the quality of parent-child interaction in literacy activities. A culturally sensitive instructional strategy was designed for tutors and piloted in 4 states. The strategy provides guided activities that use specific language learning strategies to help ELL parents build and practice English conversation skills. Following the tutoring sessions, parents are encouraged to use these strategies with their children at home.

Families Reading Together
La Lectura en Familia (Families Reading Together) is a pilot program funded by the Pitney Bowes Literacy and Education Fund to encourage reading and literacy activities in the homes of Hispanic families with preschool children. This pilot will be introduced in Head Start centers in three cities in the U.S. The program intends to increase parent knowledge of strategies for building literacy skills in their preschool children, support intergenerational literacy practices of families at home, increase the number of print materials in the homes of Hispanic families, and create a nationally replicable model for Head Start and early childhood programs.

Reading Companion
NCFL is now IBM’s domestic literacy partner for the release of the new Reading Companion tool, using innovative voice-recognition technology to help ELL adults and children gain literacy skills. Reading Companion is a Web-based literacy initiative that uses innovative voice-recognition technology to help adults and children gain literacy skills and is meant only as a supplementary tool for programs. At present, 10 family literacy sites with predominantly Hispanic immigrant populations have been selected to pilot Reading Companion. NCFL will use pilot data to provide content suggestions for future Reading Companion books.

No Child Left Behind in Support of ARCC States
NCFL is a key partner of the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center (ARCC) at Edvantia, which provides state education agencies with intensive technical assistance to address No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements and meet student achievement goals. The ARCC is one of 21 technical assistance centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The ARCC serves education departments in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. All these states are facing the impact of rising ELL populations in their public schools. HFLI at NCFL provides expertise to help the ARRC partnership address ELL and immigrant parent involvement issues through scientifically based research practices.

Culturally Enhanced Translation
With Dollar General funding, NCFL seeks to provide literacy programs nationwide with recent research-based program development and support materials in the Spanish language. Existing materials developed by NCFL in English will be converted into Spanish with culturally enhanced translations, in order to better serve Hispanic families and the programs they attend.