MISSOURI'S PARENTS AS TEACHERS COULD BECOME NATIONAL MODEL

Parents as Teachers, Missouri's program to help parents give their children a good start towards education, works, says a study released last week.

Armed with statistical data to back him up, Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond now wants to expand the program nationwide.

The Missouri senator has introduced legislation providing federal seed money for school districts across the country to begin early childhood development and parenting programs based on the Missouri model.

Bond expanded the program statewide in 1984 when he was Missouri governor.

In the first study of the program since Parents as Teachers was expanded statewide in 1984, children and parents involved in PAT scored markedly higher than their peers in several areas, said Robert Bartman, Missouri's commissioner of education.

Earlier studies on PAT pilot projects showed similar results. The results announced last week demonstrate convincingly that the PAT program is a success on a statewide basis, Bartman said.

He said: "The Parents as Teachers program `grew up' quickly during the 1980s, moving from a carefully controlled pilot project to a statewide initiative involving all school districts.

"We didn't know if the program's quality and impact could be sustained on a wide scale. This study shows that the benefits of the PAT program have not been diluted. Perhaps more importantly, the findings confirm that PAT helps all kinds of families do a better job of promoting their children's growth and development."

By documenting PAT's impact in 543 Missouri school districts, the study boosts Bond's effort to expand the program nationwide.

Bond's senate legislation would set up a $100 million competitive grant program over five years for states who wish to begin or expand Parents as Teachers programs similar to the Missouri program.

Average operating costs for a PAT program in a school district are $20,000 a year. Initially, 1,000 school districts nationwide could participate in the program annually with federal assistance.

Bond said: "This study shows that this Missouri program is a national model for ensuring that all our children reach school healthy and ready to learn.

"Parents are their child's first and most influential teachers," said Bond. "Involving parents in their children's education is the key to long-term academic success for youngsters. Parents as Teachers brings parents into the process of educating their children."

Programs based on the PAT model are already operating at more than 200 sites in 35 states. The program was also exported to Australia earlier this year.

Parents as Teachers includes home visits by parent educators to create individualized programs for each child and family; information and guidance at each stage of a child's development, including pre-natal services; periodic health screening and testing of children to check language and motor development; and group visits with other participating parents to share experiences and gain insight into child behavior and development.

Parent educators often identify and intervene in "at-risk" situations, where a child's background makes him vulnerable to poor development.

By encouraging families to seek medical assistance or other specialized services, the program has corrected or reduced problems that affect families during the critical preschool years, the study shows.

In Cape Girardeau, for example, parent educators observed that a 16-month-old child was not walking. The child was referred to occupational therapy and began walking at 18 months.

In another case, a 2-year-old girl was unable to follow simple commands and did not respond to auditory testing. Parent educators suggested where the parents could obtain help. As a result, the girl's tonsils and adenoids were removed and tubes were placed in her ears.

Among the key findings of the study, released by Missouri's education department:

At age 3, children in this study scored significantly above national norms on measures of school-related achievement, confirming the original PAT pilot project.

This finding is especially significant because the study's sample group including above-average numbers of families with traditional "risk" factors such as poverty, single-parent status, and mothers with less than a high school education.

Parents in nearly all types of families showed significant gains in knowledge about child development and child-rearing practices.

Approximately half of the families with no "traditional" risk indicators had other problems that could adversely affect children's development. The most common problems involved parent-child communication and difficulties in coping with the stress of parenting.

More than half of the children observed to have delays in development, including language development, overcame these delays by age 2. Problems of developmental delay and parent-child communication were found to be highly related.

83 percent of all participants rated their home visits as "very helpful."

The study included about 400 families from 37 school districts who enrolled in the PAT program during 1986-87, and who participated in the program until their children reached age 3.