Child-Parent Center

The Child-Parent Center (CPC) program is a community-based intervention that provides comprehensive educational and family support services to economically and educationally disadvantaged children. The program provides a half-day preschool, a half-day or all-day kindergarten, and an all-day service in the primary grades. Throughout the program three central features are emphasized: 1) the provision of comprehensive services, 2) parental involvement in school to enhance parent-child interactions and attachment to school, and 3) a child-centered, basic reading and math skills concentration characterized by small class sizes and a high number of adult supervisors to promote individualized attention. Parental involvement is an underpinning of the program; each parent is required to spend at least a ½-day per week in the center during preschool and kindergarten. Parent involvement can be in the form of acting as a classroom aide, accompanying field trips, using the parent-resource room, participating in reading groups with other parents, or taking trips to the library with teachers or children. CPCs also sponsor continuing education courses for parents.

The goals of this program are to provide a stable learning environment that will promote scholastic development, to enhance parent-child relationships, and to prevent delinquency.

The evaluation used a partitioned cohort quasi-experimental design with a nonequivalent control group.The evaluation revealed mixed but promising results. It suggested that the duration of program participation (0 to 6 years) and extensive participation in the program were significantly associated with lower rates of school-reported delinquency infractions at ages 13 and 14. Extended program participation was only marginally associated with a lower rate of delinquency infractions at ages 12 to 16. Preschool participation alone had no systematic relation with delinquency but was marginally associated with delinquency reports at ages 15 and 16.