• One-hundred percent of parents reported being satisfied with the program.
• Nearly 82 percent of parents reported that after enrolling in the program they increased the frequency with which they read to their children. When looking at families with low income households only, this number increased to 98 percent.
• 92 percent of parents indicated their child’s level of excitement and enthusiasm about books increased after they started receiving Imagination Library volumes in the mail. This increased to 95 percent for low-income children.
• Nearly 97 percent of children were more interested in books after registering for the program than they were before. This figure was 100 percent for children living in low income households.
• Ninety percent of children ask their parents to read to them more now than they did before the books began arriving. It increased to 97 percent when looking at low income households only.
• New students in the Middletown City School District who had participated in the program for between one and nine months scored on average 4.2 percent higher on their kindergarten entrance literacy assessments than those who had not received any books from the project.
Middletown Community Foundation Executive Director T. Duane Gordon, the report’s author, said “these positive changes in parental behavior as major indicators of the tremendous success this program is having in our community.”
The parent of any child under the age of 5 residing in the Middletown City School District may register for the program at mcfoundation.org/library. The Middletown chapter is expected to expand in 2011 to the Monroe, Madison and Edgewood school districts.
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