Migrant Education Family Biliteracy Program

General Information

The purpose of the Family Biliteracy Program (FBP) grant is to promote site-based family biliteracy education. The FBP was created by Dr. Fernando Rodriguez-Valls in 2010 to shed light on the importance of teacher-community partnerships in bridging the linguistic gap between Spanish-speaking migrant parents and their children who are entering an English-only educational system. The FBP creates opportunities for teachers to reflect on and re-evaluate their teaching practices, for parents to value literacy in the home language as well as the school language, and for students to value biliteracy as a relevant skill. The FBP aims to create linguistic equity for [im]migrant families. Research by Vasquez, 2004 and Castro, Espinosa, and Páez, 2011 shows that high quality, early biliteracy programs that focus on the academic, language, social, and cross-cultural challenges of school, will better prepare at-risk migrant children for entrance into kindergarten.

The California Needs Assessment (CNA) 2017 found school-based, formal preschool programs to be a promising approach to prepare at-risk children for the academic, language, social, and cross-cultural challenges of school. In addition, the California State Service Delivery Plan (SSDP) for the Migrant Education Program, which is developed based on the findings of the CNA, called for an increase in the percentage of eligible migrant preschool children receiving a high-qualify early education.

The SSDP is mandated by federal law for all migrant programs, and marks an important step forward in meeting the needs of migrant students in California (Title I, Part C, Sections 1304 [b] and 1306 [a]).

The grant program this year will be focused solely on site-based FBPs.

The primary goals of the FBP for preschool age-children are to:

1. Engage the migrant family into the school community by valuing the cultural and linguistic assets the family possesses
2. Integrate the family unit into the educational experience by utilizing the family’s first language to teach and model literacy strategies that families may replicate at home in the absence of the teacher
3. Incorporate an adult/parenting education component that builds awareness about the value of biliteracy and other school practices

For more information about biliteracy, please refer to the following scholarly articles:

• Partnerships & Networks in Migrant Education: Empowering Migrant Families to Support Their Children's Success ; Fernando Rodríguez-Valls and Celina Torres
• Writing Through Partnership: Fostering Translanguaging in Children Who Are Emergent Bilinguals ; Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer, Vivian Presiado, and Soria Colomer
• Conceptualizing the Use of Translanguaging in Initial Content Assessments for Newly Arrived Emergent Bilingual Students ; Alexis A. Lopez, Sultan Turkan, and Danielle Guzman-Orth

Requirements

All applicants must demonstrate the likelihood of success in meeting the purpose of the Migrant Education FBP, which is to provide high-quality and intensive family biliteracy services based on scientifically based research principles.

Requirements of prospective applicants shall address the following:

1. Provision of services for children and families with an active Certificate of Eligibility at time of enrollment.
2. Provision of services for three to five year old children.
3. Use of highly qualified instructional staff in both the early childhood education and adult education programs.
4. Cooperation and coordination between a variety of relevant agencies and service providers

In addition, both children and parents must actively participate in the program. All selected programs must promote biliteracy, in which children and their parents will be together throughout the entire instructional time. Instructors will design culturally and linguistically appropriate activities in which early childhood education and adult literacy theory come together in each other's outcomes and draw from each other's goals.

Specifically:

1. Children must take part in early childhood education and school readiness activities.
2. Parents must take part in adult biliteracy activities.
3. Parents must be involved in parenting education.
4. Parent and their children must be involved in interactive literacy activities.

2024–25 Family Biliteracy Program Subgrantees

Total : $425,000