ELOA Grant Evaluation Report

ELOA Grant Evaluation Report 1

ELOA Grant Evaluation Report

Executive Summary

Kenneth Maurice Tyler, Ph.D.

External Evaluator, ELOA Grant

The Early Learning Opportunities grant was developed by Community Action Council for Lexington-Fayette, Bourbon, Harrison, and Nicholas counties on behalf of a community collaborative led by Success by Six, a United Way initiative. The primary collaborators on the project were Community Action Council for Lexington-Fayette, Bourbon, Harrison, and Nicholas counties, United Way of the Bluegrass/Success by Six, Child Care Council of Kentucky along with Fayette County Public Schools and other early childhood entities. Community Action Council was awarded $921,494.00 to carry out initiatives stated in the grant proposal. The ELOA project was located in and served Lexington- Fayette County, Kentucky.

This report highlights the findings of the ELOA grant initiatives and activities designed to meet five objectives pertaining to the enhancement of literacy outcomes for early childhood students and the overall literacy context of 31 early child care centers in Fayette County, Lexington, Kentucky. To meet these objectives, which are stated in the introduction of the report, several institutions and entities, including the Community Action Council for Lexington-Fayette, Bourbon, Harrison, and Nicholas Counties, United Way of the Bluegrass/Success by Six and the Child Care Council of Kentucky met and collaborated over the twenty-three months of the grant period.

Primary ELOA staff included Monica Hall, Project Coordinator, Stacy Keys, Debbie Link, Lori Bone, Ginger Perkins, Olivia Thompson and Mae Smalley. Each provided or assisted in the provision of technical and financial assistance, curriculum module training, parent training and community resource awareness and training to parents and early childcare providers across the thirty sites. Their purpose and hence, the purpose of the ELOA initiatives were to investigate whether the provision of several literature and research-based strategies, activities, and resources would improve literacy outcomes for both students and the early child care centers they attend. These outcomes included statistical examination of participating students’ scores on the DIAL-3 pre and post-intervention assessments and pre and post-intervention assessment of multiple early childhood literacy observation forms. Also, descriptive information (e.g., percentages) was used to assess any increase in the number of sites meeting minimal standardized early childcare center requirements, including overall childcare atmosphere and physical infrastructure.

The collaborative efforts of the above councils resulted in the recruitment of thirty-two early childcare centers for participation in grant initiatives. Each participating early childhood center required licensure from the state of Kentucky. Also, each center was required to have children eligible for preschool (e.g., preschool aged children). With these requirements, one center was not allowed to participate because it no longer operated as a licensed child care center and another was eliminated from the sample of participating centers as it did not have preschool eligible children. The thirty participating early childcare centers had each received funding and ELOA intervention, both of which were used to enhance the literacy environment of the centers and ultimately, increase literacy outcomes for participating students.

Over sixty early childcare providers had been trained on several ELOA interventions designed to enhance literacy outcomes and environments of students at the different childcare sites. Many of the intervention components designed to assess and enhance literacy outcomes are also used by Fayette County Public Schools in their early childhood curriculum. These interventions included the “creative curriculum”, LEAP programming, and several early language and literacy observation tools. These same materials were used in the ELOA interventions to provide a smooth transition for participating students into kindergarten. Early childcare providers at the participating sites also received training on enhancing the literacy environment. In particular, specific room arrangements, structures and modules along with appropriate developmental practices were part of the training early childcare providers received.

In addition, toolkits containing books, literacy activities, hands-on materials were provided to the early childcare centers for parental usage. Specifically, parents were encouraged by early childcare center staff and providers to “check-out” various materials designed to reinforce the literacy activities their children were exposed to at the center and thus, promote literacy development at home. Also, a monthly resource calendar was provided to each early childcare center and was complete with specific dates highlighting specific literacy-based activities, community resources to facilitate literacy development at home and opportunities for parents to become more directly involved with some literacy-promoting activities at their children’s respective sites. While participation in pre and post-intervention testing was limited to a smaller number of pre-school age children, well over 1,000 children were present across the 30 early child care sites and thus, were exposed to ELOA intervention initiatives, particularly early childcare providers receiving additional training on literacy promotion.

To evaluate the success of ELOA interventions in increasing the number of early childcare sites achieving minimal standard requirements, all early childhood centers, were asked to participate in the STAR for KIDS NOW childcare rating system. STAR for KIDS NOW is a voluntary quality rating system for licensed Type I and Type II child care centers and also certified family child care homes in the state of Kentucky. This system uses a scale of one through four STAR to identify levels of quality. All STAR levels surpass the minimum licensing requirements that all programs must meet. However, many early childcare centers operate without STAR ratings. Various areas assessed in each early childcare center included curriculum, parent involvement, training/education of staff, regulatory compliance, and personnel practices* Prior to the grant, thirteen of the 31(42%) centers had achieved and participated in the STAR Program. Within the duration of the grant, twenty-seven of the 31 (87%) achieved a STAR rating.

Three major research questions were developed to guide the evaluation of ELOA activities created to enhance the literacy environments and outcomes of preschool age children. To begin, several instruments and measures were created or retrieved from the literature on literacy development in order to assess the utility of ELOA program modules and activities on literacy outcomes at both the student and classroom level. Also, ELOA staff provided center directors and parents with monthly training in an effort to improve their current literacy-fostering practices.

Data collection took place in the Fall of 2006 and again in the Spring of 2007. In particular, data on preschool students’ pre and post-intervention performance using standard literacy assessment tools were collected and analyzed for statistically significant differences. Also, data on the classroom climate and the presence of activities and structures that foster literacy development were assessed at two points in time (pre and post-intervention) and were examined for statistical significance. Thirty sites participated in the initiative, however, only 130 student pairs of pre and post-intervention standardized literacy outcomes scores were available for analysis. Similarly, only 66 parent pairs and 21 site pairs of pre and post-intervention were retrieved and subsequently, statistically analyzed.

Over the course of one year, ELOA staff researched and implemented several parent and director-centered strategies to promote literacy development across 30 early child care centers in Fayette County, Kentucky. The findings of the effects of ELOA programming on student and site-based literacy outcomes were positive. Paired t-test statistical examinations revealed that on average, DIAL-3 motor, concept, language and total scores for literacy improved significantly since the implementation of ELOA programming. Also, the scores on the ELLCO literacy environment observation tool were significantly improved at posttest. Only one set of pre/posttest averaged scores of the three additional classroom observational tools proved statistically significant scores (FDCRS). Also, since the implementation of ELOA programming and the provision and monitoring of various materials by ELOA staff, parents across the different sites reported statistically significant increases in the amount of time they spent helping their children write letters and also meeting with their child’s teacher.

Statistical findings, along with descriptive information are provided in the Results section of this report. Discussion of the findings and future research directions are also presented in the section following presentation of the study results.

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to present the results of an initiative designed to improve urban child care centers located in Fayette County, Kentucky. Specifically, federal Early Learning Opportunities Act funds were provided to the Community Action Council-Lexington-Fayette and other counties to support ELOA-based literacy interventions implemented in 30 early child care centers in Lexington- Fayette County, Kentucky. Under this initiative were five major objectives to be reached throughout the 23-month duration of federal funding. While this report presents statistical findings on three major objectives, other ELOA grant objectives and their outcomes are listed below.

Objective 1: To improve communication, collaboration and unified planning and vision between governance groups providing oversight to a broad spectrum of early childhood development in the community.

Outcome: The Child Care Council of Kentucky, United Way/Success by Six, and the Community Action Council representing six different counties in Kentucky had collaboratively partnered throughout the duration of the grant. Members of each of these councils met monthly to make available to licensed early childcare centers and home-based childcare providers in Fayette County information and resources designed to promote literacy development and overall positive childcare interactions between parent and childcare provider, children and childcare provider and parent and child.

In particular, the Child Care Council of Kentucky has added a one-stop shop website containing various resources and links of other community agencies housing information about early childhood development, literacy, parenting and related topics. While access to the site, along with its construction and content were the results of the collaboration among the different councils, website information was also available to parents, early childhood professionals, and others interested in the latest information, resources about early childhood issues, school readiness, and quality childcare. In addition, part of the ELOA intervention including significant outreach to parents concerning literacy development, community resources, and parent involvement strategies. Each of these intervention strategies were sanctioned by the collaborative efforts of the aforementioned councils.

The collaboration also resulted in the recruitment of thirty-one early childcare centers with directors that volunteered to participate in ELOA intervention over the 23 months. Child Care Council of Kentucky, in agreement with United Way/Success by Six and Community Action Council allowed early childcare center directors to become members of the Child Care Council throughout the grant duration. This strategy was designed to enable childcare center directors with the ability to co-construct new strategies for effective childcare and literacy development, while simultaneously empowering them by allowing their voices on early childcare provision to be communicated to the various councils.

Objective 2: To achieve an agreed upon definition and supports for pre-school-to-school transition between the Fayette County Public Schools and early childhood development providers and improve the systems to measure school readiness and child education success.

Outcome: The Fayette County Early Childhood Interagency Community Agreement for all children prenatal to six was completed. This was developed by the Fayette County Early Childhood Interagency Transition Team and the Kentucky Early Childhood Transition Project. Some participants in the ELOA grant were members of and thus, worked on the goals. The transition plan resulted in the following goals below for all families prenatal to six.

Goal 1: Increase awareness of social emotional development and transition skills

Goal 2: Explore providing a learning opportunity for families and professionals to include conflict resolution strategies, effective home visiting techniques, and time management.

Goal 3: Support parent child interaction for families (English and Spanish) by

providing an alternative to reading for families using Parent Guide topic/information.

Goal 4: Parents report at entry of preschool and kindergarten using activities

from Parent Guides

Goal 5: Agencies will identify critical transition skill/information to be

transferred to receiving agencies

Goal 6: Agencies will provide support to families using current resources.

The remaining objectives for the ELOA grant initiative were assessed using statistical analyses to determine significant differences in outcomes prior to and after ELOA intervention strategies. Those objectives are as follows:

·  Objective 3: To facilitate communication with parents through outreach and education that help parents engage and build interest in getting more involved with their child’s education and assists them to identify and access further parent involvement opportunities.

·  Objective 4: To improve the quality of early learning opportunities for children attending independent child care facilities.

·  Objective 5: To improve the quality of and promote pre-literacy activities in early childcare centers and achieve greater school readiness in the area of literacy.

The early child care centers presented in this report are located in areas where feeder elementary schools are classified as Title I schools (e.g., a school with at least 75% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch). Each Title I school receives federal dollars to augment remedial education and learning enhancement activities. Students in these schools, particularly in Fayette County, average 15 points below other county elementary schools in reading and other literacy activities (Fayette County Public Schools, 2003). In addition, young children attending these early child care centers and eventually transition into one of the 13 Title I schools have, for decades, experienced significant disciplinary and behavioral problems at school, have performed significantly worse on Kentucky’s standardized school performance indices (i.e., CATS testing), and have been reported to leave school before graduation significantly more and earlier than their more advantaged counterparts.

To address these gaps in achievement and school completion rates, several have argued for the need to improve the quality of child care centers and early childhood development systems. According to the literature (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997), it is anticipated that greater exposure to enhanced literacy instruction, an enhanced environment and enhanced literacy activities—both at home and at the center—will improve low-income preschool students’ preparedness for kindergarten and thus, facilitate their academic progress and achievement throughout elementary and secondary education. Along with this, in 2006, several small and independent child care center directors were interviewed to determine what the specific needs of their center were and how meeting these needs could help prepare preschool children for literacy activities in kindergarten. Several issues were reported and included 1) increasing access to quality improvement expertise and financial resources, particularly for literacy and 2) increasing parent involvement in center and literacy activities. Literacy has been defined as "an individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual, and in society." (www.kentuckyliteracy.org).