We spoke with the team at LENA in Boulder, Colo., this week about how our first year of collaboration with them has fared.

The team in Boulder have been wonderful partners as we started the process to bring their LENA Start program to Escambia County. LENA Start leads groups of between 10-20 parents through a 13-week curriculum designed to encourage them to talk and interact more with their children under 3. It uses the LENA recording device to track the number of words parents say to their children. The weekly reports generated from that data give parents direct feedback on how much they talk and interact with their children. The hourlong weekly classes provide support and strategies to boost the number words and interactions parents share with their children doing everyday things. 

Here's a look at some of the data that has come as a result of these parent groups:

— 52 families went through the program. Half have been “low-talk.” "Low talk" means that based on their first LENA recording, these families fell under the 50th percentile in terms of the number of adult words and conversation turns they had with their child.

— Low talk families increased the number of words they say by 52 percent, and increased their conversation turns by 26 percent. 

— By the end of the program families report reading an average of 25 minutes a day with their child — an increase of 1 ½ times from the beginning of the program.

— Children whose parents participate in the program gain more than 1 ½ months of developmental skill for every month they are in the program. Low-talk families increased their results by 19 percent in what’s called the “snapshot report,” a questionnaire that measures a child’s receptive and expressive language development.

— 90 percent of all parents who completed the program showed positive changes in the behaviors and perceptions that influence child language development.

The Studer Community Institute operates LENA Start in partnership with the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County, and we are grateful for their help and support as well. The Coalition has been using another aspect of LENA's program, LENA Grow, as part of their professional development program for childcare workers in our community.

They know the importance of feedback for these dedicated people so that they can improve the quality of care they offer children in their charge. 

LENA Start falls under the umbrella of Parent Outreach in SCI's projects that aim to improve kindergarten readiness in the community by giving parents the understanding of the power of language and interaction in the first three years of life to build a child’s brain. 

That early brain development is key to the foundation of a child’s readiness for school, and ultimately for putting that child on a path for success in school and life. That is crucial in Escambia County, which state education data indicates has a kindergarten readiness rate of 46 percent (as of 2017, the most recently available data). 

That means of the roughly 3,000 children who enter Escambia County School District as kindergartners, about 1,577 of those children don’t have the fundamental language and academic skills they need to be ready for school.

Our tools and content to build an Early Learning City are informed by research-backed strategies to help parents understand why it is important to talk more with their children, and how that is the key to building a brain, building a life and building a community.

And we hope all of you will walk this journey with us and support our work.