Parents As Reading Partners

Parents As Reading Partners is a collaborative effort among parents, staff, and community to build a reading partnership between the home and the school. PARP programs encourage parents to read with their children for at least fifteen minutes per day.

In 1987 the New York State PTA assumed the helm of the Parents As Reading Partners (PARP) program begun by the late State Senator James Donovan, Chairman of the State Senate Education Committee. PARP is a program designed to foster the love of reading in children by asking parents to set aside fifteen minutes daily to read with their children.

Learning to read is the single most important activity in a child’s education. Studies show that children who read at home are better prepared to succeed in formal education. The Parents As Reading Partners program is aimed at involving parents in the essential task of helping their children become lifelong readers.

The primary objective of the program is to encourage reading at home. Children turn to their parents as role models and are more likely to follow the example of a reading parent. Reading at home further provides a supplement to the excellent reading programs currently used in our nation’s schools. PARP asks parents to encourage their children to read, impressing upon them the fact that reading can be fun as well as informative. In addition, the daily communication shared through PARP will serve to strengthen the family.

PARP is a reading program where parents and teachers work in a joint effort to encourage children to become better readers. The program can be run at little or no cost. In many cases volunteers from local businesses will donate funds for printing materials and awards/prizes for the children. The voluntary approach and the subsequent success that the PARP program has achieved are proof that it is truly a worthwhile project.

PARP is a successful volunteer effort that fortifies our children’s reading habits. It is important because it has helped to cement the necessary bond between the home and the school to foster the education process. Together, this effort will make our children more successful and their education more fruitful.

A Parents As Reading Partners Resource Book and supplements are available from the NYS PTA office. Each supplement is an award-winning program that has been sponsored by a school in New York with great success. It can be a guide for PTAs that wish to start a program or are looking for new ideas.

New York State PTA sponsors region PARP awards annually, from which a statewide winning PARP program is selected.