That this program is in place to assist Megan Wittrock at this cusp in her life is a remarkable fact. In the late 1980s Jessica Collins and members of LVA�s Board of Directors began to spin a complex web of mutually beneficial ties throughout the Chandler community and beyond.

The idea evolved from their already established traditional LVA program, which trains volunteer tutors and matches them with adult students for weekly one-to-one classes in reading and other basic skills. Since many of these adults have children, it seemed natural to invite families to enjoy an intergenerational story hour at the public library. The enthusiastic response to this series prompted Jessica Collins, an elementary teacher and reading specialist by training, to develop a comprehensive model for family literacy. From the outset, Jessica knew the job would be too big to do alone, and she immediately began building upon cooperative relationships with other leaders in the community.

�When people ask us where we got the funds in the very beginning, we tell them that we begged or borrowed from every partner we had,� Jessica says. Over a ten-year period LVA begged and got�an ABE teacher and parenting teacher from the Evergreen Valley Technical College (EVTC); volunteer literacy tutors; licensed child care workers; a certified preschool teacher through Title I federal funds which are earmarked to meet �special needs of students functioning below grade level�; Head Start funds through the public schools; classroom space and bus service from the Chandler Area School District; more classroom space at the Masonic Temple; and family scholarships for recreational activities at the YMCA. Funds and support come from private donations and also from the United Way; Pope County Human Services; the J. D. Johnson Memorial Library; an Even Start grant (federal funds for integrating early childhood and adult education); the Vocational Training Center, an employer of disabled and disadvantaged persons; and a New York Life Foundation grant.

By piecing together these many contributions, LVA covers the cost of more than $3500 to serve each family for fifteen hours a week for nine months a year. By 1990 two family literacy sites were in place: one at a public school and one at the YMCA. The yearly cost for fifty families is $175,000.

This comprehensive program�education for the adult, education for the preschooler, parenting education, and parent-child interaction�is based on the concept, as stated in an LVA bulletin, that �parents who are convinced of the usefulness of knowledge are more likely to motivate and teach their own children.�

This notion has been increasingly supported by research over the past decade. In 1990 (ERIC Digest No. 111) Sandra Kerka summarized findings from diverse fields to support �teaching literacy holistically rather than as a set of skills,� �treating the family as a unit,� and �involving as many family members as possible.� In a 1993 review of several studies (�Parents� Literacy and Their Children�s Success in School,� [OERI] Office of Educational Research and Improvement), L. Ann Benjamin concluded that �low-literate parents, particularly mothers, are more likely to exert a positive influence on their children�s academic achievement when they are able to enhance their own literacy skills.�

The values inherent in a structured, comprehensive family literacy program were verified by Douglas Powell in a 1996 commissioned paper (available on the Internet: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/FamLit/teachp.html). In reviewing outcome studies of 20 early intervention programs focused on aspects of family functioning, Powell underscored the importance of �intensity� in these programs, concluding that effects are more significant and sustained �when the intervention includes 11 or more contacts over at least a three-month period.�

In June 1997 National Center for Family Literacy consultant Pam Gersh (in Business First, a Louisville newspaper) wrote, �Long-term research shows that family literacy reduces dependence on public assistance by 50 percent and increases employment significantly.� In explaining how family literacy works to �get families off welfare,� Gersh stressed the importance of building success skills not only for adults in this generation, but also for their children, �the next generation of workers.� As Gersh wrote, �Teach the parent; reach the child. . . . Family literacy helps both generations improve their skills, starting an upward spiral of success.�

Or putting it another way, as an ABE teacher in Chandler, Wisconsin, once did, �Family literacy is a way for needy parents to break out of a suffocating rut.�