Parental involvement focus of $600,000 literacy grants

Educators spend most of their money on students, but three King County elementary schools in Washington state recently won $600,000 to spend on teaching parents as well as their children. On February 13, 2008, White Center Heights, Beverly Park, and Mount View elementary schools—all in the Highline School District—were the latest U.S. schools to formally win money and support from the Toyota Family Literacy Program, a nationally led initiative designed to develop an entire family’s English-language skills.

As part of the effort, the program brings parents into elementary classrooms with their children and into separate classes to work on their own. The program’s obvious goal is improving literacy for parents and students, but it also focuses on arguably the most important factor in a student’s success: parental involvement. Read more in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.