Teaching parents pays

Parents play a pivotal role in teaching their children about life, and it's also parents who are the key educators for toddlers just learning to develop their motor skills and speech.

Hearing a child utter his or her first words is a momentous occasion for parents. But the best ways for parents to prepare their child to enter school and be a proficient learner are not always clear.

The Parents as Teachers program can help.

Realizing that learning begins long before children enter their first school classroom, Missouri legislators in 1981 agreed to fund the PAT program aimed at improving early childhood education. More than 20 years later, that program is recognized as one of the best in the nation.

The PAT program expanded to a nationwide program under a 1984 law that required public schools to provide parent education and developmental screenings. Every state has a similar program now. In Missouri, the program is funded by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and local school districts.

The PAT program helps parents through early childhood with home visits, group meetings and screenings. In Cape Girardeau, 270 families are enrolled while there are 540 families in Jackson's program. Parents with children from birth to age 5 are eligible.

The curriculum emphasizes that children begin learning at birth. Parents get regular visits from a PAT educator who can share information and answer their questions. Under a proposal made March 16 by U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the program would expand to serve another 2.7 million families nationwide.

Bond was governor when Parents as Teacher began in Missouri. He knows the success the program has had and believes that another $500 million in federal funding would better serve state and local programs. His plan would create a dedicated federal funding stream for the program. There would be money to expand the program at state and local levels, money for local partnerships in communities where English is a second language for parents and funding for military families in the states and abroad.

Parents as Teachers has a proven track record -- 20 years' worth -- of success. It's a program worthy of community support.