Life After Funding: A Descriptive Study of Even Start Family Literacy Programs
That Have Completed the Initial Funding Cycle: Summary Report
(Doctoral Research Study)
February 2001

Author
Anna L. Martinez, Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Training and Evaluation
Center for Distance Learning
Texas A&M University
(979) 862-8027 amartinez@cdlr.tamu.edu

Edited by: 
Don F. Seaman and Kori Whitener 
Texas Center for Adult Literacy and Learning
Educational Administration and Human Resource Development
College of Education
Texas A&M University
4226 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4226
1-800-441-7323

Even Start programs are intended to provide educational opportunities to the Nation's low-income families in order to help affect and hopefully break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy. The program integrates early childhood education, adult basic education, and parenting education into a unified family education program. Even Start has three goals: to help parents become full partners in the education of their children, to assist children in reaching their full potential as learners, and to provide literacy training for the parents. The program is based on the idea that for families to acquire lasting change and for their children to be successful, all three of the components must be present and must be part of an integrated curriculum.

Even Start is funded in part by federal grants. At the time this research was conducted, these funds were allocated for a finite period of time (two four-year cycles for a period of eight years.) At the conclusion of the federally awarded funding cycle from the National Even Start family literacy program, some local programs were able to continue while others were not. The purpose of this study was to identify common practices of the programs that were able to continue and to identify barriers faced by the programs that were unable to continue.

Representative William Goodling (Sr. Representative from Pennsylvania) attended the presentation of these data at a conference of the National Center for Family Literacy. Subsequently, he conducted a session with some local even start administrators. Based on what he heard from both groups, he led the successful attempt to change the law and enable to programs continue beyond eight years of funding.

Without a doubt, the Even Start family literacy program is a valuable institution to families and to communities. It is critical that programs achieve the level of self-sufficiency they need to continue once federal funding has ended. One of the goals of this study was to provide data and information to assist in this process.

• Methodology
• Study Findings
• Demographics
• Research Question One
• Research Question Two
• Research Question Three
• Research Question Four
• Summary of Findings
• Conclusions
• Recommendations
• Refrences

The study, conducted by Anna Martinez, Ph.D. (her doctoral research study), surveyed 120 Even Start programs that terminated the funding cycle at the end of the school year 1995-96 and 1996-97. Forty programs completed the funding cycle at the end of 1995-96 and 80 programs completed at the end of 1996-97. The U.S. Department of Education and FU Associates, Ltd. provided the population database.

A survey instrument was designed and field-tested for clarity and function. Survey questions addressed program demographics, prior experience with literacy organizations before Even Start funding, evaluation of the common program elements, and the importance of related data as they pertained to program continuance or non-continuance of the program.

The survey instrument, an Informed Consent Form, a cover letter explaining the research study and a postage-paid return envelope were mailed to the 120 former federally funded Even Start programs in the database in May 1998. Three months later, a second mailing of the survey packet was sent to the 100 non-respondents to the original survey.

One month after the second mailing, the process began to contact a representative from the programs that did not respond to the mailed instrument. There were several challenges in this process. One of the major challenges was that many of the telephone numbers on the database supplied by Fu Associates were no longer active or correct numbers. The research team used the Internet to try to locate the fiscal organization for the program while funded in order to try and reach the individual who was listed as the program director. If this was unsuccessful, then an attempt was made to contact someone who was still in the organization or in the community that had knowledge of the program and could answer the survey questions. As soon as an individual was located the survey packet was sent by fax with instructions to either return by fax or mail. Completed surveys were received from 100 of the 120 programs for a return rate of 83%.

• Fifty-two percent of the responding programs reported that services to eligible families continued after National Even Start funding had expired.
• Sixty-two percent of the continuing programs reported that they were able to continue to provide services to eligible families with a combination of host institution support and other external grants.
• There was virtually no difference in the rate of continuance between programs that had been funded for four years and programs that had been funded for eight years.
• Program staff had prior experience in single model literacy programs, i.e. early childhood or adult education, but low levels of experience in integrated component models.
• Status of the Even Start project director in the host institution and in the community was an important factor for program continuance.
• Expertise of the project staff was an important factor toward program continuance.
• Continuing programs increased the number of collaborative partners after the external funding was completed. This was a necessary component for continuance.
• The continuing programs in the study indicated that serving those families most in need and providing literacy instruction for adults and children were the most important activities leading to program continuance.
• Programs that continued had staff members that were more active in pursuing additional sources of external funding.

The study had a response rate of 83.3%, with 100 out of 120 programs returning the survey after intensive follow-up. The returned surveys represented programs in 33 of the 36 states and Puerto Rico that had Even Start Family Literacy programs during this period of time. Of the returned surveys 45 of the respondents were from individuals other than the program directors identified in the original database. The survey requested the job title of the respondent during the period that the program was funded by Even Start. A total of 64 of the respondents reported job responsibility changes after Even Start funding had expired. With a total of 36% of the respondents moving up to an administrative position and 21% moving to positions in other special population programs, the data suggest that employment experiences in the Even Start program opened the door to other career opportunities for staff members

The respondents reported a range in the number of years funded from four to eight years. The majority of programs in the study were funded for four years (66%) and 30% were funded for eight years. The programs that reported funding for other than four or eight years experienced unusual circumstances specific to their programs. One of the responses from a non-continuing program was that the program leaders felt that four years of funding was not sufficient to stabilize a new program. The data from this study do not reflect this opinion since the numbers were very close for the continuing and non-continuing programs in the four-year and eight-year funded categories.

The study found that the original proposals for the grants were written by a variety of personnel (Table One.) The initiator of the grant, the agenda of the proposal writer and the involvement of the other partners in the project can have an impact on the stability of the program. The proposal writers listed in the other category-included consultants, professional proposal writers, community college personnel, Title 1 Supervisors, adult education specialists and staff in the fiscal office of the school district. The percentage of project directors involved in the proposal writing process is encouraging. It is not uncommon for the project director to become involved in the project only after the grant is awarded.

Table 1

Author of Grant Proposals for the Even Start Programs Represented in the Study

Some respondents checked more than one category

Research question one: How many programs from the funding cycle in 1995-96 and 1996-97 have continued to provide family literacy services for their community?

Fifty-two percent of respondents reported that they were able to continue to provide family literacy services to the community after the Even Start funding was completed as seen in Table 2, the percent of continuing programs increased in the second year.

Table 2

Number of Continuing and Non-continuing Programs

Ninety percent of the continuing programs continued to provide service to the community after funding and reported that they still provided adult education and early childhood education. The other components of the programs were provided by a fewer number of programs, although the four basic components usually found in Even Start were provided by at least 79 % of the continuing programs as reported in Table Three.

Table 3

Services Provided by Continuing Programs

It is apparent that almost all continuing programs provided the four major components of Even Start adult education, early childhood education, parent education and parent/child activities. The continuing programs also offered other services including tutorials for multiple age groups of children, Reading is Fundamental programs, meals, home visits, job evaluations, employability skill training, referrals to other services, book distributions and English as a Second Language classes.

The programs that continued to provide services did so through a variety of funding sources, as illustrated in Table Four.

Table 4

Funding Sources for Those Programs That Continue to Provide Services Beyond the Even Start Grant

External funding sources included State Pre-School Initiatives, State-funded Challenge Grants, 21^st Century Grants, Goals 2000 Grants, The First Lady's Family Literacy Initiative for Texas, The Barbara Bush Family Literacy Foundation, the Children's Trust Fund, and United Way.

Research Question Two: What are the key influences in the Even Start programs that contributed to program continuation?

The data suggest that organization staff in continuing programs had somewhat more experience in all four types of literacy-related programs than non-continuing programs, but both groups had the most experience in the early childhood component.

Table 5

Prior Experience of Even Start Organization Staff in Literacy-Related Programs

1=no experience   2=limited experience   3=extensive experience

Respondents were asked to rank the status (leadership abilities) of the director of the program within the host organization and within the community. The respondents were also asked to rate the effect the program director's abilities had on program continuance.

The director had a higher status within the host organization and in the community in programs that continued than those that did not continue.

Table 6

Status of Even Start Project Director in Relation to Program Continuance

1=low 5=high

Respondents also rated the importance of the project director's process orientation (ability to get the job done), subject-matter orientation (knowledge of family literacy), and the expertise of the project staff. These data are shown in Table 7. They were all rated somewhat more important by those programs that continued beyond the federal funding.

Table 7

Expertise of the Even Start Project Director

1=low 5=high

The atmosphere of the Even Start program has a great bearing on the morale of both staff and the participants. In an effort to measure the relationship between this element and continuation of the program, respondents were asked to rate the attitude of the administration, teaching faculty and staff of the host organization toward the program. The data suggest that administrative support was not an issue to the continuance for the majority of these programs. A few programs reported a change of leadership within the host institution resulting in a change in focus, goals and agendas that sometimes did not match the focus of the Even Start Family literacy program as originally funded.

Table 8

Attitudes Toward the Even Start Family Literacy Program by Administration, Teaching Faculty and Staff of the Host Organization

1=low 5=high

The attitude of the support staff of the host organization; i.e. secretarial staff, custodial staff, food service staff, etc., is crucial for smooth operation of a program. This is evidenced by the study data that show that the mean score of the attitude of the support staff was higher in continuing programs. This is illustrated in Table 9.

Respondents to the survey were asked to rate the ability of the program staff to enhance the ability of the participation families to solve problems and their ability to link the families to other community services. This is a key factor in family retention. As illustrated in Table 10, the continuing programs recorded a higher mean score for both abilities than the non-continuing programs.

Table 9

Ability of Even Start Family Literacy Programs to Enable Families to Solve Problems and Access Community Services

1=low 5=high

Critical to the success of an Even Start program is institutional support. Although not reflected in the data in this paper, a lack of space was identified as a barrier by several programs. Two of the non-continuing programs identified the lack of classroom space as a major barrier to being able to continue, one non-continuing program indicated that providing space for the program was a continuous challenge.

Research question Three: Assuming that collaboration with other agency and organization partners is a key influence, are there certain combinations of organizations in a collaborative that have more strength than others?

Even Start programs strive to develop a strong partnership of service providers who jointly take responsibility for providing family literacy services and develop new relationships and systems to improve services for families. In Table 10, the continuing programs identified the types of collaborative programs that were maintained after the funding cycle was complete and how many partners they had in each category.

Table 10

Numbers and Types of Collaborative Partnerships Maintained by Even Start Programs That Continued Beyond Federal Funding

n=52

1=low 5=high

Education agencies and social services were cited by respondents as their strongest partners. 83% of programs reported that they had a total of 87 education agency partners and 71 % of the programs reported a total of 122 social service partners. Although not illustrated in the above table, more programs reported an increase in the number of partnerships instead of a decrease after the funding was completed. This was needed in order for the programs to continue.

Respondents were asked to rate the level of involvement of the collaboration in the planning and decision making process. Table 11 illustrates that the mean scores of the continuing programs were higher than the non-continuing programs. “Providing Clientele” received the second highest rating, which supports the idea that Even Start family literacy programs depend on their collaborative partners to help recruit and refer participants for the program.

Table 11

Level of Involvement of Program Collaborators in Planning and Decision-Making

1=low 5=high

Research question four: Are there certain procedures that are essential for staff to initiate to ensure program continuation?

Respondents were asked to rate selected activities associated with the Even Start family literacy program as they perceived them to contribute to the continuance of the program. The data in Table 12 indicate that the respondents perceived “interest of the community” as being the strongest element that contributes to program continuance. Publicity was perceived as having the lowest impact on program continuance. This is surprising considering that publicity plays an important role in communication to all stakeholders, i.e. administration, community partners, etc.

Table 12

Extent to Which Selected Program Activities as Perceived by Respondents Contribute to Program Continuance

1=low 5=high

The goals, objectives, program activities and measurable outcomes of the Even Start Family literacy programs are designed around ten program elements. Respondents to the survey rated each program element as they perceived them to contribute to program continuance. The continuing programs exceeded the non-continuing programs in sample mean scores in all elements except staff development. Table 13 illustrates that serving the most in need received the highest response and also notably high was involving instruction that promoted literacy.

Table 13

Extent to which the Ten Program Elements Contribute to Program Continuance as Perceived by Respondents

1=low 5=high

Respondents were asked to describe what they did to secure additional funding after the Even Start funding was completed. These activities are described in Table 14. The data illustrate that continuing programs reported a higher percentage of proposals funded, but they also showed more activity in applying for additional resources. The data suggest that continuing programs were very successful in tapping into external resources.

Table 14

Success of Programs in Obtaining Resources after Even Start funding

• Conducting follow-up research is difficult, especially when programs have not continued.

Preparing the mail-out survey was expensive and time-and-labor-intensive for the initial return rate. The initial return rate can be contributed to several factors including: incorrect contact and address information, respondents not taking the survey seriously, the perception that because the program was no longer receiving funding the survey did not apply to their program. Telephone follow-up was laborious and it took a great amount of persuasion on the part of the researcher to get responses from several programs.

• Regardless of program continuance, many Even Start staff acquire other employment positions.

There was a great amount of personnel movement within the host organizations. Only 35% of the total group maintained the position they held during the Even Start funding period. Consistent leadership within the program is a valuable asset. However, the mobility of personnel is a reality and must be dealt with accordingly.

• Change of Leadership within the host organization often has an impact on whether a program continues beyond federal funding.

As leadership changed, goals, objectives and focus of the host organization often changed, creating an additional challenge to accomplish the goals of the Even Start family literacy program as originally funded.

• Projects that have strong collaborative links within the community are more likely to continue after federal funding has ended.

The data support the importance of the collaborative relationships in continuing programs. The programs that continued reported that they developed additional partnerships in education and social service organizations and 67% of the continuing programs reported an increase in the number of partnerships formed after funding was completed.

• Staff in many programs do not seem to understand or accept the federal statutes that indicate that the funding cycle is finite for their original program.

Many respondents expressed feelings that they expected to be supported by the funding program beyond the traditional funding cycle because they had developed exemplary programs and because the population needed the service.

• Projects that are active in proposal writing during the funding cycle are more likely to continue after federal funding has ended.

As a whole, both sub-groups of the sample were not particularly active in proposal writing as indicated in Table 14. The continuing programs submitted more proposals, and experienced greater success in getting proposals funded than non-continuing groups in all four areas of funding sources.

• Local Even Start program staff perceive that they are receiving inadequate technical assistance and training from the state Even Start staff.

Respondents expressed frustration at not being able to receive technical support and guidance from the state education agency, especially as the programs prepared to transition off of the federal funding.

• When conducting research of this type, always validate the mailing list before sending out the survey.

This would have saved much time, effort, and expense.

• Replicate the same research study with the second two-year cohort (97-98 and 98-99).

There is a need to determine if the trends found in the first study continue to emerge.

• Acquire more detailed information about the collaborative partners in the next study.

Determine names, when acquired, some estimate of its effectiveness, etc.

• Try to acquire a support letter from the U.S. Department of Education, Division of Compensatory Programs.

Although support for the study was expressed orally by officials at the USDE, a letter would enhance the likelihood of program directors responding to the survey when received.

• Explore ways to encourage leaders in Even Start programs at the state level to provide more technical assistance for local programs.

This need was expressed not only in the responses to the surveys, but also in oral conversations with some of the respondents. This should become a high priority for state officials who have the responsibility for the success of Even Start programs.

• Initiate some kind of training program to help prepare Even Start staff to become more involved in the development of proposals for external funding.

  The data in this study show that programs that engage in this activity are more likely to succeed and continue after federal funds have expired.

  Without a doubt, the Even Start family literacy program is a valuable institution to families and to communities. It is critical that programs achieve the level of self-sufficiency they need to continue once federal funding has ended. Only then can they begin to meet the needs of the families they have been designed to serve. (Dr. Ann Martinez, Texas A&M University)

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