Scaling While Continuously Improving Quality and Building a Coherent Workforce

• In Event: 66.045 - The Road to High-Quality Early Care and Education: Lessons Learned in Going to Scale

Abstract

This presentation will describe lessons learned in the expansion resulting from New Jersey’s historic school finance case, Abbott v. Burke. As part of the landmark case, the Court found that children in the lowest income districts were entering kindergarten so far behind their peers that without intervention, later reforms were unlikely to be effective. Beginning in 1999-2000, all 3- and 4-year-old children residing in these districts were entitled to receive a preschool education that would prepare them to enter school ready to succeed. The implementation effort that followed, especially the state’s efforts to rapidly build a highly qualified workforce for the program, made New Jersey a national model for large-scale, public pre-k. Informed by a significant history of rigorous program evaluation and firsthand oversight of the program’s implementation, Abbott pre-k expanded to more than 150 school districts, serving 50,000 children and their families. The presenter, who was engaged in this effort from the outset, will focus on the experience of growing a program from minimal quality and with few certified teachers to a program with positive outcomes into fifth grade and with a coherent and effective personnel system.

The Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study (APPLES) assesses the impact of this pre-k program on children’s learning and development based on a cohort of children who completed their 4-year-old year in 2004-05. APPLES has estimated the impacts of Abbott pre-k at kindergarten entry and second grade follow-up, finding substantial impacts on individually-administered assessments of language, literacy, and mathematics at both times as well as reduced grade retention (Frede et al., 2007). A follow-up APPLES study found that participation meaningfully increased children’s achievement at fifth grade and substantially reduced special education placement and grade retention, even after accounting for individual differences in factors such as family income (Barnett et al., 2013).

In addition, annual classroom observations show average quality ratings of well above “good” on the Early Childhood Environmental Ratings Scale- Revised (ECERS-R), a widely-used tool measuring classroom quality. Through a cycle of continuous improvement, the program defines objectives for early learning outcomes, classroom quality expectations, and program level policies and standards, and continues with an iterative process of collecting data on children and classrooms, measuring progress, analyzing evidence, and designing and implementing improvements.

When faced with scaling up, programs often have to balance increasing access with maintaining quality. The Abbott expansion shows how adequate funding, high quality standards, and intensive professional development can result in good classroom quality across classrooms whether in private provider or school district settings.

Author

• Ellen Frede, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation