In Focus: Early Learning Challenge
May 06, 2013 | Permalink »
Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge 2013 Competition: Continued Investment on the State and District Levels
The Department of Education has released the details of its third round of Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) funding. The 2013 competitive grant program is focused on expanding access to high-quality early learning opportunities.
- $370 millions of the 2013 funds will support a competition for states to develop new approaches to increase high quality early learning opportunities and close the school readiness gap.
- $120 million will be used for a second round of district level competition.
- Additional funds will support supplemental awards for California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin-states which to date have received only 50 percent of their initial requests.
The Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge was launched in 2011 to increase the quality of early childhood programs and increase the number and percentage of low-income and disadvantaged children, birth to five, in high-quality programs. The first round of RTT-ELC grants is providing states the ability to create successful state systems and provide access to more high-quality, accountable programs.
The Department of Education is currently accepting comments on the proposed details of the current round of funding. Interested parties can comment on the plan here by the May 16 deadline. Learn more about the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge on CLASP's RTT-ELC page.
Oct 01, 2012 | Permalink »
Creating Better Early Childhood Data Systems
Access to reliable and comparable young child data is scarce, yet critically important to creating quality learning environments for young children. Quality data can be an advocacy tool that has the ability to influence policy decisions. As federal initiatives, such as the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) and the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, increasingly require states to report on outcomes for infants, toddlers and young children supported by these funds, states must develop systems that are more coordinated and comprehensive. Both the RTT-ELC and the MIECHV program provide funding and guidelines for states to move state level early childhood data systems forward.
The Early Childhood Data Collaborative released Developing Coordinated Longitudinal Early Childhood Data Systems which looks at opportunities in the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge application for states to build these data systems. The report looks across the applications submitted for the grant and analyzes states' approaches to various data related questions throughout the application. What the report notes is that, regardless of whether states were granted the funds and although states plans vary, there are many commonalities among the proposals that create opportunities for states to learn from one another about creating data systems. For example, many states described ways to make data more accessible and useful by better utilizing available technology and by outlining plans for integrated data systems that are made widely available to stakeholders.
New America Foundation is also adding to the movement of developing better early childhood data systems with its release of an expansion to their education funding database to include data on funding and enrollment for publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs within school districts. The data includes information from 2007-2011 on the state and school district levels for pre-kindergarten programs funded by the state, Head Start programs and education services for 3-5 year olds through Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Of course, it is hard to find flawless data and even more difficult to find data that tells the whole story. Such is the case for the new pre-kindergarten data provided by New America, which outlines a number of these issues in a new brief. Due to the lack of available data and the organization of the data to include only funds administered through school districts, a number of children in pre-kindergarten settings, including children who may be served by public funds in community-based settings, were unable to be counted. Many states use mixed-delivery systems to bring preschool programs to children in center-based and family child care homes.
The new data provided by New America and the corresponding brief make clear what the Early Childhood Data Collaborative and many others already know-that coordinated and comprehensive data is crucial to influencing policies and creating quality learning environments for children. While states have a long way to go, they are moving forward with creating comprehensive, coordinated early childhood data systems.
May 24, 2012 | Permalink »
As School Districts Compete for Federal Race to the Top Dollars, It’s Time to Think Beyond School Walls
This post originally appeared May 24 on Huffington Post.
On May 22, the U.S. Department of Education released draft criteria for its latest competition: the Race to the Top (RTT) District competition. While early education is not prominently included in the draft criteria, it remains an option for school districts to include.
School districts concerned with improving outcomes for children would do well to look to kids' earliest years. High quality early childhood education that includes comprehensive health services and family supports improves the odds for high needs children, making them more likely to succeed in school and in life. As a competition that encourages innovation, RTT offers districts an opportunity to think beyond the school walls to address the comprehensive needs of children.
Among the selection criteria is a priority for the Department to consider whether applying districts have formed a coherent and sustainable partnership with public and private organizations, which could include community-based child care and early education in the district's area.
Such partnerships are to identify "population-level desired results," which according to the draft may span "cradle to career" and could include education, family, and community results.