Study: Low-Income Children Can be Well Prepared for School if Families are Equipped to Help

Parents matter.

This is one of our strongest and most deeply held convictions at The Institute for Educational and Social Justice.

And those convictions were reinforced once again this past week, with the release of a study that shows that a rich home environment can close the readiness gap that has dogged low-income children for years.

The study seems to show that children from low-income families can enter school well prepared if certain factors are found in the home.

These factors included frequent literacy activities in the home, including telling stories and nursery rhymes. Maternal engagement, including how well mothers respond to their child’s needs and cues and tried to stimulate language development and thinking, also was critical. The availability of certain educational resources, including books, toys, musical instruments and art supplies, also seems to play a role.

Our hope is that this valuable research can be used to help make the case for more classes for low-income parents. These classes could help build understanding about how to read to children effectively, ways to ask questions about reading, and to build on storytelling and other verbal communication skills that parents have.

At the same time, it seems that providing low-income families with learning materials also could be valuable in increasing school readiness.

One interesting finding in the research is that many low-income children who start their lives with supportive families find that support flagging by the time they are about three years old – a critical time in literacy and language development.

This is a reminder to us that parents need to be encouraged not just when their children are born, but throughout the parenting process.

Are you familiar with effective parenting classes? How do you think we can best support low-income families? How might this research be used to help make that case?