Could Text Messages to Parents Help Close the ‘Word Gap’?

[Commentary] It works with diabetes patients, smokers trying to quit, and others: a text message reminding you to take your medication or resist the urge to light up. There’s even a Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University devoted to the idea. So what if we could put that same idea to work boosting literacy in very young children in low-income families?

That’s the premise of Parent University, a six-week program originally designed by Chris Drew, now Director of Educator Initiatives at Digital Promise. The program gives parents a digital tap on the shoulder via text messages reminding them to interact with their kids to boost literacy -- and close that ever-widening word gap. And it’s working, according to a recent, not-yet-published study that compared parents who received the program to those who didn’t.

Ample research shows that low-income kids enter school already behind their more affluent peers. As the now famous “word gap” study by Hart and Risley in the mid-1990s showed, by the age of 3, children born into low-income families have heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers.

Parent University aims to help parents create that rich literacy environment. The program, which is being studied by researchers at Northwestern University, is designed to help families promote literacy at home with ideas and prompts.

[Ray is a writer and editor living in Chicago, and owner of Hiredpen]