Child-Parent Centers

The Child-Parent Center (CPC) education program is a school-based early childhood intervention that provides comprehensive educational and family support services from preschool to third grade to children in predominately economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The program was designed to improve children’s school readiness and achievement and strengthen parent involvement and engagement in learning.

CPC was established as a response to three major problems in Chicago’s West Side neighborhoods of North Lawndale and West Garfield Park in the mid-1960s: low rates of school attendance, family disengagement, and low student achievement. Only 8% of sixth graders in area schools were at or above the national average in reading achievement. (For more on this, see Success in Early Intervention: The Chicago Child-Parent Centers by Arthur Reynolds, published in 2000.) Based in ...