Using Early Childhood Data in Project LAUNCH Evaluation & Implementation Efforts Tom Schultz, Ed.D

1. Using Early Childhood Data inProject LAUNCH Evaluation & Implementation Efforts Tom Schultz, Ed.D Council of Chief State School Officers August 19, 2011 thomass@ccsso.org

2. Road Map • Using national data sets to frame priorities & expectations • How states are building early care and education data systems • Moving from data for accountability to continuous program improvement

3. National Data: How Are Young Children Doing? • Growing diversity and disadvantage • Substantial achievement disparities in the Birth-Age 5 years • Early disparities linked to long-term costs/limited futures

4. How Are Young Children Doing? • Growing numbers of young immigrant children • 8.7 million children 0-8 in 2000 vs. 4.3 million in ‘90. • Immigrant kids provided 100% of U.S.’s growth • 51% live in poverty; 37% are ELLs. • CO: Immigrant children ↑ from 38,136 in ‘90 to 139,078 in 2000 & 9% to 23% of all children.

6. Disparities in Early Vocabulary Growth 1200 College Educated Parents Working Class Parents 600 Welfare Parents Cumulative Vocabulary (Words) 200 16 mos. 24 mos. 36 mos. Child’s Age (Months) Source: Hart & Risley (1995)

7. ECLS-B: Performance among 2-year-olds

8. More Evidence of Disparities • Low-income 4-5-yr-old children are 12-14 months below national norms in language development. (Layzer) • 40% of low-income children did not know all the letters of the alphabet at the end of kindergarten (Head Start Impact Study).

9. More Evidence of Disparities • Too many children fail to read on grade level at 3rd grade: • 83% of all low-income children • 91% of African-American boys • 74% will not catch up in later grades • Predicts high school performance, graduation & college attendance

10. What Do You Think? • Are programs/staff sufficiently informed, alarmed and focused on disparities? • Are parents receiving accurate, honest feedback on how well their children are progressing? • Does it make sense to delay reporting on gaps until the end of 3rd grade? • How do we highlight the problem and not strengthen negative stereotypes? • Is there hope? Can we overcome?

11. Major Impact of Early Learning Opportunities PPVT PPVT 36m Total Literacy Environment Score Pre-K Total Literacy Environment Score

12. The State of State Early Ed. Data • Making the case for improving early childhood data, linkages & use • Early Childhood Data Collaborative’s strategy to enhance state data systems • PA’s Early Learning Network

13. Early Childhood Data Collaborative • The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley • Council of Chief State School Officers • Data Quality Campaign • National Center for Children in Poverty • National Conference of State Legislatures • National Governors Association Center for Best Practices • Pre-K Now, a campaign of the Pew Center on the States Visit www.ECEdata.orgfor more information.

14. Why focus on data/Why now? A key component in building early childhood systems New federal funding and leadership State budget crisis increases pressure to document program effectiveness Growing movement to use data for continuous improvement

15. Current Early Education Data

16. What Hinders Us? For State Policy Leaders: Hard to answer basic questions about children, programs & workforce. For Programs: Costs, burdens, confusion of multiple data systems & reporting requirements. For K-12 education: Hard to obtain and use data on children’s early childhood years. For Early Childhood Educators: Rarely have the time, training & support needed to use data to help children.

17. Theory of Action • Based on the DQC model with K-12 data • Define “killer” policy questions to drive data system design • Identify essential system elements necessary to answer the questions • Track state progress on the essential elements

18. Key Policy Questions • Are children, birth to age 5, on track to succeed when they enter school and beyond? • Which children have access to high-quality early care and education programs? • Is the quality of programs improving? • What are the characteristics of effective programs? • How prepared is the early care and education workforce to provide effective education and care for all children? • What policies and investments lead to a skilled and stable early care and education workforce?

19. 10 ECE Fundamentals

20. ECDC 50-State Survey-At-A-Glance • Fall, 2010 baseline data on state implementation of 10 Fundamentals • Respondents: • State administrator of child care subsidy • State child care licensing administrator • State Pre-k administrator • Head Start State Collaboration Coordinator • State Early Intervention Director (Part C of IDEA) • State Preschool Special Ed Coordinator (Part B Section 619)

21. 1. States Collect Substantial Amounts of Early Childhood Data Every State Collects ECE Data in at Least Some ECE Programs

22. States Link E.C. Data with Other Data in the Same Agency # of States *Not every state administers state pre-k or state-funded Head Start/Early Head Start programs.

23. State Innovations • CO: $17.4 M SLDS grant will link data from Dept. of Human Services ece programs to the state's education data system, including matching child identifiers to K-12 student identifiers. • CT legislation mandated a cross-agency unique program identifier for ece programs, to enable a nonduplicated count of programs, & to assess outcomes for each individual site. • MO’s Professional Achievement & Recognition System (PARS) collects staff education and training, employment in different programs over time and compensation. • IL’s Student Information System assigns unique identifiers for children in publicly funded (ECE) programs. It tracks ECE participation and risk factors. K-12 teachers can access data on children their classrooms.

24. State Innovations: PA One reporting system for authentic assessment used across programs, aligning with Pennsylvania’s early learning standards A standard system to be used by and coordinated among all programs (e.g., Pre-K Counts, Early Intervention, Head Start, Keystone STARs) A comprehensive data system designed to integrate financial, program, teacher, family and child information

25. PA Early Learning Network • All program: PA Pre-K Counts, Head Start, child care, Nurse Family partnership, Early Intervention, (B-5).. • Child outcomes (Work Sampling System online or Ounce online), 3 times per year • Child and family demographics • Teacher qualifications and experience • Program quality via Environmental Rating Scales • Program demographics, salaries and benefits for staff • Links with K-12 longitudinal data system • Unique secure IDS protect confidentiality of child & teacher data

26. Research to Improve Outcomes • Links between the learning environment, teacher characteristics & child outcomes. • How children’s peers impact development. • Effects of mobility on the continuity of service and outcomes. • Access to high quality ECE via geo-coded child and provider information.

27. “Risk & Reach” Study • Data for each County & 27 largest cities • % of children affected by 7 risk factors • % of children served in 8 publicly-funded early education programs.

28. Road Map Revisited • Implications of National Data Sets: Build public awareness on demographic trends; Focus programs on prevention/ amelioration of disparities. • Implications of State E.C. Data Efforts: More usable data on ece program experiences; potential to link with health, mental health, child welfare, K-12 data

29. From Accountability to Continuous Improvement A vision for state early childhood data: “States should adopt a system to help early childhood professionals make informed decisions about how individual children demonstrate success and to understand the characteristics of programs that do the best work in preparing children for success. We need a profession-wide system to identify programs that really work, share that learning and incorporate it into technical assistance to struggling programs.”

30. Continuous Improvement System Ongoing study of data from standards-based assessments of children & classroom quality  Informs, guides/motivate e.c. programs, families & schools as they  Provide enriched, extended, intensive & intentional learning opportunities.

31. Continuous Improvement in Head Start • Tulsa County, OK program collects ongoing child assessments by teachers and administers standardized tools to samples of children. • Track progress of children in school • Document multiple family outcomes/engagement • Study attendance, family involvement, classroom quality data to see characteristics associated with higher outcomes • Data presented to Management Team, Policy Council, Board & funders & used in professional development & program redesign.

32. Bracken Performance in 2010-11Performance of Preschoolers By Time at CAP • Children at CAP in 2009-10 have significantly higher scores than children new to the program this year; this differential does not decrease from Fall to Spring suggesting new children cannot catch up • Children who attended at least 160 days this program year have higher scores in Fall and Spring yet they do not have more growth; this finding does not meet expectations For Internal Use Only

33. CLASSResults by Site • Scores across sites are extremely similar for Emotional Support and Classroom Organization with narrow ranges of 5.2 to 6.8 and 4.3 to 6.0 • Scores across sites vary most for Instructional Support from 2.9 to 5.1 • The range scores across classrooms within sites is large making it clear which classrooms need targeting

34. Implications for LAUNCH Leaders/Evaluators • Use national data sets & studies to frame program priorities & expectations & provide context for evaluation findings • Engage with leaders of state early childhood data efforts to contribute lessons from LAUNCH program & evaluation efforts • Build local program capacity to understand and use data for continuous improvement

35. In Closing… “The hardest question for anyone who takes responsibility for what he or she does is, ‘What if I turn out to be average?’ Most doctors are going to be average. There is no shame in being one of them, right? Except, of course, there is. What is troubling is not just being average but settling for it. Everyone knows that ‘averageness’ is, for most of us, our fate. And in certain matters - looks, money, tennis - we would do well to accept this. But in your surgeon, your children’ pediatrician, your police department, your local high school? When the stakes are our lives and the lives of our children, we want no one to settle for average.” • AtulGawande. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance