This paper is intended to show policymakers, advocates, practitioners, philanthropists and other early childhood stakeholders why data systems represent a great opportunity to come together to improve outcomes for children and families. The authors share why state early childhood data systems matter, how to unify a state’s data systems, how to help ensure data is used in decision-making and considerations related to privacy in early childhood data.
Key Findings
State early childhood data systems can help ensure:
- Resources are allocated based on actual needs.
- Children and families receive the right combinations of services.
- Families and the public receive accurate, timely information and data about the early childhood system and providers.
- Teaching and learning in Kindergarten through second grade is improved using data.
Unifying a state data system requires stakeholder engagement, development of interagency agreements, assessment of the current data landscape, and building linkages among systems.
Ensuring that data is used for decision-making requires an assessment of state capacity to produce and analyze data, as well as research, advocacy, community and provider-level capacity.
Policy Team & Collaborators
In 2008, in partnership with the Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative, Start Early launched and began the evaluation of the Early Math Initiative at Educare Chicago, a program aimed at improving students’ early numeracy and math reasoning skills through improved teaching and family engagement. Specifically, this initiative provided teachers with intensive, hands-on training and coaching that demonstrated how to integrate early math exploration and problem-solving skills into their lessons, materials and activities. Additionally, family math nights engaged parents in everyday experiences to advance children’s math and language skills at home, including activities such as cooking, laundry, shopping and gardening.
In addition to the Early Math Initiative, we also partnered with the Erikson Institute to conceptualize and develop Math All Around Me (MAAM) — an effort to adapt and apply key math concepts and resources, previously focused for preschool to 3rd grade children, to be applicable for children’s learning and development in the first three years of life. This set the foundation for improved math methods and tools for infant-toddler practitioners. Through MAAM, we partnered with 80 birth-to-three practitioners from 14 home-based and center-based programs in the Chicago area to share and pilot test MAAM content. Math All Around Me holds great promise to transform how we teach foundational math concepts to infants and toddlers.
Key Findings
Data for the evaluation of the Early Math Initiative at the preschool level at Educare Chicago was gathered and analyzed in partnership between our research team and Erikson researchers.
- After engaging in the Early Math Initiative, Educare Chicago preschool teachers’ confidence in their math teaching practice and beliefs about the efficacy of their math instruction increased over time.
- The same teachers also demonstrated a 51% increase in their overall scores and significant gains in eight of nine dimensions of high-impact math instructional strategies.
- Examples of teacher practice improvements included greater clarity around learning objectives for students, more frequent use of small groups for instruction and a reduction in the length of lesson time (indicating more focused mathematical teaching).
- Across three years of the evaluation, Educare Chicago kindergarten-bound students had improved scores from fall to spring on three direct assessments of their math knowledge and skills.
Publications & Resources
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- CME Group Foundation
- The Boeing Group
- Louis R. Lurie Foundation
- JPMorgan Chase Foundation
Decades of research have demonstrated that effective leaders are the key drivers of improvements in educational settings, including early childhood programs. With those findings in mind, our research team helped develop The Essential Fellowship, an intensive leadership development program designed to enhance early education program quality and child outcomes by supporting and improving instructional leadership.
Our research on adult learning among early education practitioners resulted in an approach that combines training, coaching and peer learning to drive program improvement. Our focus is on strengthening key organizational supports: effective leaders, collaborative teachers, supportive environment, involved families, and ambitious instruction.
Key Findings
- In school settings, we have found that instructional leadership and embedded professional learning serve to transform not just preschool classrooms, but all grades served in the school building.
Publications & Resources
Note: Research and reports published prior to 2020 refer to The Essential Fellowship as Lead Learn Excel.
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant
- U.S. Department of Education
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Alvin H. Baum Family Fund
- James P. and Brenda S. Grusecki Family Foundation
- Pritzker Children’s Initiative
- Prince Charitable Trusts
- Harris Family Foundation
- Northern Trust
- The Oscar G. & Elsa S. Mayer Family Foundation
- The Stranahan Foundation
In 2018, Start Early partnered with PBS KIDS to design Launching Learners, an innovative high-touch, high-tech family engagement program. Launching Learners aimed to promote active parent engagement with young children’s social and emotional development, combining interactive web-based and mobile activities and in-person, relationship-based family engagement experiences.
Our research team served as an implementation partner for the program, providing research and content expertise around family engagement, social and emotional learning and relationships-based professional development. Our research team led the development of the Launching Learners logic model, which served as a foundation for project research and development. The team also led efforts to recruit and convene an advisory group of experts in social and emotional learning, behavioral economics, parenting behavior, child development and children’s media, who provided input on the program and professional development model, content and evaluation.
We designed and conducted an initial product test with approximately 100 parents and 35 staff in four Chicago-area Head Start centers. The product test was designed to explore how staff and families experienced the program and the extent to which parents and staff reported increases in confidence supporting social and emotional learning after participation.
Key Findings
The product test showed that staff and parents found Launching Learners to be fun, valuable, useful and relevant to their lives and work.
- 100% of staff said it increased their confidence in their ability to support children’s social and emotional development and to help parents do the same
- 93% of parents surveyed had a positive experience with Launching Learners and would recommend the program to others
- 62% of staff reported that Launching Learners was easy to implement
- 90% of parents surveyed said they enjoyed receiving the Launching Learners text messages
- 82% of parents surveyed noted they would like to receive more text messages
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- Anonymous Funder
- Crown Family Philanthropies
- Edelman
- The Joyce Foundation
- The Robert R. McCormick Foundation
- Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation
The Early Childhood Instructional Leadership Professional Development Initiative
A strong organizational climate and conditions that support instruction and family engagement are integral to a quality early learning environment. Research findings from adjacent fields, including K-12 grade school improvement, demonstrate that instructional improvement occurs when leaders and program staff work in collaboration, with access to data that helps enhance their practice and improve learning outcomes for children.
That is why Start Early implemented and evaluated a pioneering approach to professional development for the early childhood education system: the Early Childhood Instructional Leadership Professional Development Initiative (PDI). The program’s initial design and development focused on early learning programs in under-resourced communities, while building professional capacity for leading instructional improvement across an entire organization.
Unlike other professional development efforts that primarily focus on the classroom, our initiative engaged leaders and staff to improve strategies that support learning in school as well as at home, through parent engagement and social-emotional learning practices. This work laid the foundation for The Essential Fellowship, an intensive leadership development program for early education professionals across the country.
Key Findings
This initiative was independently evaluated by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Center for Urban Education Leadership. Their evaluation found that the PDI successfully:
- Increased leaders’ knowledge, skills and dispositions with instructional leadership
- Increased leaders’ encouraging and emotionally supportive interactions with teachers
- Established a system of job-embedded professional learning routines in which leaders and peers shaped and guided practice on a weekly and monthly basis in the context of team lesson planning and peer learning groups
- Increased teachers’ knowledge, skills and dispositions of ambitious, developmentally appropriate practice
- Achieved statistically significant improvements in children’s social and emotional learning and development compared to children enrolled in non-participating sites
Publications & Resources
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant
- The Stranahan Foundation
- Crown Family Philanthropies
Research has shown that children’s experiences and relationships during their first few years build a critical foundation for future success in school, work and life. Countless studies have reported better life outcomes for children fortunate to have access to quality early education: greater high school and college completion rates, higher earnings and better health. Unfortunately, adverse early life experiences — often stemming from generations of institutionalized racism and historical trauma — prevent children from forming secure attachments with adult caregivers that support long-term social, emotional and even physical well-being. Children who do not develop these crucial social and emotional skills fall behind as early as kindergarten, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their peers for years to come.
Fortunately, research also demonstrates that access to and engagement in early intervention and high-quality early learning experiences and family supports have the potential to buffer the negative effects of adverse early experiences and advance positive outcomes. Start Early contributes to this important body of research by consolidating and translating research evidence and studying strategies and interventions that target the social and emotional skills and well-being of young children and their families, with the goal of setting young children on a path to thrive in school and life.
Key Findings
- Consistent, predictable and responsive relationships are the “active ingredients” of environmental influence during the early childhood years.
- These relationships along with safe and secure environments, nutrition, health-promoting behaviors and enriching early learning serve as the early foundations of lifelong health.
- Home visiting and doula programs support parent well-being during and soon after pregnancy, as well as promote the nurturing attachment and relationship between parent and child that are foundational for a child’s healthy social and emotional development.
- High-quality center-based early childhood programs are shown to have a significant and long-lasting impact on the lives of children by nurturing adult-child relationships, providing safe and secure environments and promoting healthy behaviors and habits.
- Overall, early intervention and early learning and care programs can successfully support young children’s social and emotional development by:
- Supporting parents as their children’s primary nurturers, educators and advocates through intensive, relationship-based services;
- Providing consistent and continuous support through children’s first five years of life;
- Having well-trained staff who are knowledgeable about early childhood development and are able to form trusting and nurturing relationships with parents and young children; and
- Using evidence-based practices that acknowledge and support the social and emotional underpinnings of early childhood development.
- The social and emotional well-being of our youngest children must be at the forefront of public policy and financing discussions. A true commitment to equity and ensuring that all children are prepared to learn in school and go on to lead successful and fulfilling lives, involves building a systemic, coordinated approach to investing in and implementing programs and strategies that advance children’s social and emotional competencies and address early childhood mental health needs.
Publications & Resources
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school to serve the children and families rebuilding their community after the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest public housing developments in Chicago. Since then, we’ve partnered with diverse communities and early childhood champions across the country to build a national network of 25 birth-through-five Educare schools and improve access to high-quality early learning and care across the country.
Collaboration is the core ingredient powering the work of Educare schools. Each school leverages public-private partnerships as a Head Start and Early Head Start provider, bringing together local school districts, philanthropic organizations, researchers, policymakers and families. These dynamic partnerships comprise the Educare Learning Network and drive continuous improvement and positive student outcomes. Unique research-practice partnerships (RPPs) between researchers/evaluators and Educare program leaders and staff support data-driven practice and decision making and inform policy decisions across the country.
We act as the national coordinating office for the Educare Learning Network to generate resources, highlight and share Network innovations and solve practice and policy challenges.
Our research team also serves as the local evaluation partner for the first school in the Network, Educare Chicago, where it leads a Follow-Up Study to examine the progress of former Educare Chicago students and families. We also facilitate leadership and support across all components of the Network’s work, with a specific focus on sharing the research findings and data within and outside the Network.
Here we share an overview of the data, analyses and shared research findings through Networkwide evaluations we conducted in partnership with a nationwide team of researchers committed to improving outcomes for children and families in early education and care settings.
Key Findings
- Findings from a randomized study of Educare indicated that at approximately two years of age, Educare children had significantly higher language skills, fewer behavioral challenges and more positive interactions with parents compared to children from similar backgrounds who did not attend Educare.
- Another Educare study found that children who enrolled in Educare earlier and stayed in the program longer had stronger vocabulary skills compared to children who enrolled at older ages and did not stay in the program as long. This finding was even more pronounced for dual language learners.
- Descriptive data from the Networkwide evaluation showed that at kindergarten entry, the majority of Educare children were academically, socially and emotionally prepared for kindergarten and exhibited average or above average school readiness and social and emotional skills.
- Evaluation findings also demonstrated that Educare parents engaged in learning activities with their children more often than non-Educare parents from similar backgrounds with children in other early learning programs.
- According to evaluation results, Educare staff provided higher quality interactions and instruction in classrooms that were rated higher on global quality measures compared to other early childhood programs serving children living in under-resourced communities.
- A longitudinal study in one Educare school showed that at Kindergarten entry, close to half of Educare graduates were rated as average for their kindergarten readiness, and more than a quarter were rated above average or excellent. Moreover, Educare graduates maintained their vocabulary and social and emotional skills relative to their same-age peers through third grade.
Publications & Resources
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- Buffet Early Childhood Fund
Research on early childhood education has demonstrated that children, families and staff thrive when organizations invest in teams. When we shift the focus out of the individual classroom and onto high-quality organizational conditions, we can help teams become stronger in the areas most critical for child outcomes and drive lasting system change. With that in mind, Start Early collaborated with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research to create, pilot and test The Essential 0-5 Survey framework and surveys.
The Essential 0-5 Survey measurement system offers educators three powerful resources to understand the strength and quality of their organization and catalyze program improvement: teacher/staff and parent surveys, user-friendly reports and data, and a data-use and improvement toolkit.
Our research team tested and evaluated whether The Essential 0-5 Survey captures reliable and valid information about the organizational quality of early education programs. The results confirmed the reliability of the surveys across school- and center-based settings. Responses also aligned with survey scores on teacher-child interaction quality and attendance outcomes, confirming that the surveys provide valuable information for measuring organizational effectiveness.
Looking ahead to additional applications of The Essential 0-5 Survey, our team has adapted them for use in infant-toddler settings as well. To date, these birth-to-age 2 versions of the surveys have been piloted within Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership programs in Colorado, Florida and the District of Columbia. Our team is in the process of analyzing the pilot survey data for a validation study in 2020, before broader release in the field.
Key Findings
- Reliability
- All the measures on the surveys were reliable. Many measures were sensitive enough to detect differences between sites. The surveys did not have strong bias toward either school- or community-based early childhood education (ECE) sites; or English or Spanish speakers (on the parent survey).
- Validity
- Most, but not all, Essential scores were significantly related to site-level outcomes including teacher-child interactions and children’s attendance.
- Neither Ambitious Instruction nor Parent Voice scores were significantly related to either outcome measured. Researchers will continue to refine the survey tool and parent survey.
- “Practical” Validation
- Interview and observation evidence confirmed that The Essential 0-5 Survey differentiates between ECE programs. Staff and families in sites with high and low survey responses provided qualitatively different descriptions and experiences of organizational climate and conditions.
Publications & Resources
Note: Research and reports published prior to 2020 refer to The Essential 0-5 Survey as the Early Education Essentials.
Research & Evaluation Team & Collaborators
Funders
- Anonymous Funder
- Crown Family Philanthropies
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- The Joyce Foundation
- W.K. Kellogg Foundation
- Pritzker Children’s Initiative
Continuity of care — strategies designed to lengthen children’s ability to continuously participate in high-quality early learning experiences — must be a cornerstone or guiding principle for state or local early childhood policy agendas focused on improving outcomes for less-advantaged children and families. This paper provides a research summary, considerations for program and policy design, best practices, case studies and talking points that advocates can use to help policymakers and early childhood practitioners implement continuity-of-care policies and practices.
Key Findings
Whether required by regulation, defined by voluntary association standards, or inspired by concepts of best practice, programs can promote the continuity of care through structural design and professional development. This includes:
- Using group size and ratio
- Creating flexibility in classroom age ranges
- Promoting teacher retention
- Minimizing changes in teacher assignments
- Attention to how teacher scheduling might impact relationships with children and families
State policy levers that influence the capacity of a program to provide continuity of care include:
- Child care subsidy eligibility status
- Provider payment rates and payment mechanisms
- Licensing regulations on group size and ages
- Professional development network focus and investments
Policy Team & Collaborators
The Illinois State Board of Education has released its next installation of Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS) data, providing a snapshot of the skills young children had as they entered kindergarten in fall 2019. This year’s KIDS data shows the positive impact our state’s quality early childhood programs are having to increase the number of children entering kindergarten ready to learn. As we work to rebuild our state’s early childhood system, we can use this report as a tool to continue to advocate for increased investments in early learning and care that are essential for addressing and diminishing the inequities in readiness that exist for our youngest learners.
“This year’s report will be an important watermark to measure success as we work to build Illinois’ early childhood system back better and more equitable in the months and years following the pandemic,” Diana Rauner, Start Early President and CEO, said. “The inequities we see in kindergarten readiness across the state have only been magnified by the pandemic, underscoring the long-standing need to invest more in our early learning support and infrastructure, especially in under-resourced communities.”
Beginning in the 2017-2018 school year, all kindergarten teachers in Illinois began observing their students on a common set of developmental measures using the Kindergarten Individual Development Survey (KIDS). KIDS provides kindergarten teachers with information to support classroom instruction, helps parents understand expectations for their children in kindergarten and gives lawmakers and school administrators data to help determine how resources should be directed to help all young children enter kindergarten with the skills and supports they need to succeed.
