Miami-Dade County Partnership for School Readiness and Early School Success

• In Event: Research-Practice Partnerships for Quality Improvement in Early Education: Best Practices and Creative Solutions

Abstract

Funded in 2014 by the Institute for Education Sciences, under the researcher-practitioner program, the Miami-Dade Partnership for School Readiness and Early School Success, is based on a history of collaboration and coordination among early childhood care and education agencies in Miami-Dade County. Partner agencies include a local university, local education agency, and the primary agencies providing subsidized childcare, public prekindergarten, Head Start/Early Head Start, and early intervention services: Miami-Dade County Public Schools2, The Children’s Trust4, Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe3, Miami-Dade County Head Start/Early Head Start, IDEA Part B/C Early Intervention programs1, and the University of Miami1.
The goal is to support the school readiness needs of children birth to five from low-income communities. A critical need is that while almost 80% of all young children participate in early care and education programs, too many enter kindergarten classrooms “not ready to learn” academically or behaviorally, or both. One of the primary activities of the partnership is to link data from all the partners on preschoolers’ participation in early childhood programs, screenings, assessments, and interventions, and then follow into the public school system. The goal is to create a long-term partnership among early care and education agencies with researchers, in order to increase the proportion of young children who enter kindergarten ready to learn. Closing this kindergarten readiness gap, identifying community resources and needs, and sharing administrative data that will effectively target limited funds to the highest need communities.

Major Objectives:
(1) Link data from all the partners on preschoolers’ participation in early childhood programs, screenings, assessments, and interventions.
(2) Conduct a joint assessment of community resources and needs that will be shared with all partners and community stakeholders.
(3) Conduct analyses of school readiness data, including preschool participation, early childhood assessment data, and kindergarten outcomes.
(4) Disseminate findings and expand partnership as deemed appropriate to include other major early childhood stakeholders in future research; develop a mechanism for long-term data sharing, integration, and use of data for research and policy purposes.
(5) Identify ways that research findings and data can feed back to agencies and be used to inform on-going program improvement, and alignment in assessment and curricula to promote early school success.

The presentation will include brief summary of research activities accomplished to date and findings from the longitudinal school readiness analyses of two cohorts of children entering Miami-Dade County Public School kindergarten in 2013-14 and 2014-15. In addition, the benefits and challenges of conducting research in partnership with practitioners within early childhood programs will be discussed.

Authors

• Rebecca Jane Shearer, University of Miami

• Lisa Pittman

• Marisol Diaz, Department of Early Childhood Programs Miami-Dade County

• Anabel Espinosa, University of Miami

• Emily Arcia, Department of Early Childhood Programs Miami-Dade County

• Christine Delgado

• Daryl B. Greenfield, University of Miami