[NIFL-FAMILY:1891] RE: FW: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:605] Low-Level assessments for Family Literacy

From: Sylvan Rainwater (sylvan@cccchs.org)
Date: Tue Jul 27 2004 - 12:06:56 EDT


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From: "Sylvan Rainwater" <sylvan@cccchs.org>
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Subject: [NIFL-FAMILY:1891] RE: FW: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:605] Low-Level assessments for Family Literacy
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No, there is no instrument to assess a whole family, at least not to my
knowledge. And of course a family is not a "whole" at all, but a collection
of various people in various configurations. There are certainly ways to
characterize a family -- single-parent, blended, dysfunctional, etc. -- or
given axes of a family -- the parent-child, the spouse-spouse, the
sibling-sibling, the grandparents, extended family, etc. -- but the nature
of the beast is huge variety.

So, yes, we assess individual children (and these can be strikingly similar
within a family and also strikingly different) and individual parents in
areas of literacy. We have a few tools for evaluating parenting skills, but
these are rudimentary, and generally nonstandard, as far as I know.

The point of family literacy is to improve the literacy levels of both
parents and children, and to help them become not only lifelong learners but
to support each other in that learning, to become part of a learning
community that just spreads the wealth and multiplies it enormously. Some of
that you can measure, and a lot of it you can't.

-------
Sylvan Rainwater  mailto:sylvan@cccchs.org
Program Manager Family Literacy
Clackamas Co. Children's Commission /  Head Start
Oregon City, OR  USA
 

-----Original Message-----
From: nifl-family@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-family@nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Dianna
Baycich
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 11:01 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [NIFL-FAMILY:1890] FW: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:605] Low-Level assessments
for Family Literacy

Hi,
This was posted on the assessment discussion list. What comments do you
have? Does anyone know of an instrument that assesses the whole family? In
Ohio we use the Parent Education Profile to assess the parents' progress.
Dianna B.
OLRC

-----Original Message-----
From: nifl-assessment@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-assessment@nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Marie Cora
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 12:21 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:605] Low-Level assessments for Family Literacy

Hi everyone,

I wanted to throw this question out to you as well - what about
assessments in the Family Literacy area?  

I was chatting with a colleague this past weekend about this question,
and of course I wanted to find out from the collective wisdom what you
might do or use in terms of assessing family literacy.

This seems, on the face of it, to be an even more complex issue (you
need to assess on quite a variety of dimensions), and there seems to be
even fewer resources in this regard.  But!  I'm not a Fam Lit worker, so
I'm unsure.

Can anyone shed some light on this for us?

Thanks!

marie cora
Moderator, NIFL Assessment Discussion List, and 
Coordinator/Developer LINCS Assessment Special Collection at 
http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/assessment/


marie.cora@hotspurpartners.com



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