Early Learning Quality Improvement Initiatives in Los Angeles County

1
Early Learning Quality Improvement Initiatives in
Los Angeles County

• An analysis of local programs and initiatives
• Prepared by Laura Escobedo
• Los Angeles County Child Care Planning Committee
• March 2009

2
Scope of ECE in Los Angeles County

• 3,357 licensed centers
• 11,572 licensed family child care homes
• 150 CDE-funded agencies/school-districts
• Largest Head Start grantee in the nation
• 450,000 children (0-5 yrs) with parents in the
  workforce.
• 40,000 children on LACEL
• 10 Resource Referral Agencies

3
Efforts to Improve and Evaluate Quality in Los
Angeles County

• Programs/Initiatives
• LACOE Head Start
• Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP)
• Steps to Excellence (STEP)
• First 5LA School Readiness Initiative (SRI)
• LACOE Family Literacy Support Network (FLSN)
• LACOE California Preschool Instructional Network
  (CPIN)

4
Outcomes for Children

• Quality of the program or provider
• High quality child care and development programs
  will be available for all
• Providers operate at a 3 star level of quality
  and improve over time
• Parents as consumers, advocates
• Will be effective champions for their children
• More informed consumers in regards to selecting
  high quality child care
• Children will be ready for kindergarten
• In all areas of development and approach toward
  learning
• Parents will be ready to support the transition
  to kindergarten

5
Structure/Context

• Primary purpose
• Child service quality is integrated into
  program
• (Head Start, LAUP)
• Improving quality (STEP, LAUP, LACOE FLSN)
• Primary drivers
• Funding type and mandated regulations (Head
  Start)
• Local stakeholders/funders policy as opposed
  to
• regulations. (LAUP, STEP, First 5LA SRI,
  FLSN)
• Contract requirements (LAUP, SRI, FLSN)
• Secondary driver Public Policy Issues

6
Professional Qualifications and Development

• Stated minimum education qualifications for
  direct service staff (Head Start, LAUP, STEP)
• Expectations or requirements that staff increase
  their educational attainment (degrees,
  certificates, etc. (Head Start, LAUP, STEP)
• Integration of ongoing staff development to
  attain competencies required for effective
  provision of service and to achieve goals.
• (Head Start, LAUP, STEP, SRI/FLSN, CPIN)

7
Collaborations

• Provide or expand health, mental health, and
  social services required by regulation or policy
  (Head Start, SRI)
• Obtain specialized training for staff (SRI/FLSN,
  LAUP, Head Start)
• Facilitate educational attainment (IHE) and build
  potential workforce (LAUP, Head Start)
• Advise on outcomes, evaluation, and program
  improvement strategies (STEP, LAUP, FLSN)

8
Data and Evaluations

• Direct child assessment data
• Parent surveys (pre-post)
• Scores from environmental rating scales
• Data on staff educational qualifications, group
  sizes, ratios, work environment and policies
• Number of participants, activities
• Number of training hours, units, etc.
• Staff retention rates

9
Data and Evaluations

• Program evaluations
• Internal evaluations and data collection related
  to program activities (Framework for Continuous
  Quality Improvement- FLSN)
• Process evaluations related to quality activities
• External Evaluations
• Outcome Evaluations conducted by research groups
• External implementation/process evaluations

10
Issues

• Funding .to implement countywide, to allow for
  full data collection and evaluation, continuous
  improvement practices.
• Existing measures dont assess all areas of
  importance yet
• Diversity in implementation makes it difficult to
  measure impact, relate it to specific practice.
• Inconsistent data collection of key indicators
• Promotion of quality standards to parents/public