Improving the School Experiences of Underserved Pre-Kindergarten to Third-Grade Children

• In Event: Program Evaluation in Schools: Looking Across the Early Childhood Continuum

Abstract

A State Agency of Education, the author’s project and five selected school communities participated in this 30-month initiative. The school community partners were comprised of elementary school and affiliated early childhood programs and their building and district leaders. These pilot sites served as incubators for innovative PreK-3 approaches in the state.
This project was based on the belief that what develops and sustains change in schools is (a) a collaborative and mutual concern for quality instruction and learning environments, (b) the use of multiple sources of data to guide and inform policy and practice, (c) school- and district-based ownership of the process, and (d) state supported policies.
The author supported educators in the pilot sites through summer institutes, onsite coaching, data feedback and site specific professional development. The State Education Agency provided professional development and training to pilot school communities on their new early learning standards for infants through grade three, the expanded PreK-3 Teaching Strategies GOLD, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, LaParo & Hamre, 2008), and EduSnap (Ritchie, Weiser, Mason, & Holland, 2015).
The goal was for schools to be able to sustain their work without support from the authors and to play a substantial role in disseminating their ideas across the state. To achieve this goal, the following actions occurred:

1. All staff at all pilot sites were trained in Conscious Discipline as a project-wide effort to move towards effective trauma informed practice.
2. All schools made gains in the amount of time children were exposed to instructional practices linked to positive third grade outcomes.
3. School presentations of contributions to PreK-3 practices provide anecdotal evidence of a commitment to collaborative inquiry and a growth mindset, as well as evidence of capacity building efforts.
4. The State Agency of Education and school personnel are exploring avenues for establishing a process for on-going data collection.
5. School communities will identify specific individual(s) to learn how to interpret and present EduSnap and CLASS data to teachers in a supportive, productive manner.
6. The State Agency of Education will develop a team of schools who have participated in reform efforts such as PBIS, MTSS and this project to ensure consistency across projects.
7. The States’ Principal’s Association will develop a survey to spur a commitment to common assessments across PreK-3.

Table 1 summarizes school-level changes on seven of the 25 variables of the EduSnap, a time sampling measure of children’s experiences. Each classroom had a full day observation and feedback on data was done at the individual teacher, grade, school and project level in order to determine focus, and professional development direction.
In this time of quick fixes and esoteric and often unreachable goals, it is essential that long term work with educators is focused on instructional practices that are linked developmental research and positive outcomes for children, and that professionals are reinvigorated in their profession through the process.

Author

• Sharon Ritchie, University of North Carolina