We are excited to be celebrating October as Parent Involvement in Education Month and spreading the word that parents make a difference! This message was brought home to me when I received an email from our evaluators at RMC Research Corp. telling us that a research study we have been involved in evidences that when parents are informed about what their child is learning in preschool and are shown how to reinforce that learning at home their children do better in school. Needless to say I was ecstatic! We all know intuitively that parent involvement makes a difference but to be able to prove it was affirming and exciting..

Let me tell you a little bit about the study. NH State PIRC (a project at PIC) collaborated with the Manchester School District’s Early Reading First (ERF) program and provided the services of a parent educator for one-to two-hour parent-child home visits twice monthly to 15 families. The home visits focused on sharing the Home-Links part of the preschool Curiosity Corner curriculum, helping parents understand the curricular themes that occur in the preschool classroom and providing one or more home learning suggestions.

Parents and family members received information, materials and support from the home visitor to help them make literacy part of everyday activities. The impact of this support on student learning was assessed through preschool academic measures. While both groups of preschoolers in the study made progress, results show significantly greater growth in achievement by the four year olds in the intervention group, whose parents received the support of the parent educator. (As measured on the PALS-PreK.)

At the end of the school year students whose parents received home visits significantly outperformed comparison students on Name Writing, Beginning Sounds, and Upper Case Alphabet. While not statistically significant, these students also performed better than comparison students on Rhyme Awareness and Nursery Rhymes.

These findings encourage me to find out more about what my child will be learning in school this year. I want to know more about the curriculum and what I can do at home to support his learning. In fact I already have a parent/teacher conference scheduled!

I hope your family has an exciting school year!

Heather Thalheimer, Executive Director, Parent Information Center