ABSTRACT
The need for early childhood programs that foster literacy by supporting both the family and the child is clear and compelling, especially when we consider those families who are most at risk due to poverty, immigrant status, language spoken, or racial background. If we are to prepare children for success in Western technological societies, we must help them obtain the literacy skills required to function in such societies. If children born into families on the economic margins of our society are to find their way into the economic mainstream, we need to provide them effective added support during the preschool years for literacy development. Further, growing evidence suggests that themost potentway to provide the needed supportmust include both center-based child care and support to families that build parents’ understanding of their role in supporting their child’s long-term academic development and help them to adopt home practices that effectively foster children’s current and future literacy development. Despite evidence that child-care programs that serve at-risk populations can bolster children’s growth, it is not clear that they are able to make changes that are of the magnitude required if we are to bring about required changes in children’s developmental trajectories or in parents’ ways of supporting their children’s language and literacy development.
