Program Evaluation and Improvement

School Readiness Consulting has extensive expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of early childhood programming. If your district has adopted a new curriculum or piloted an intervention, we can help you evaluate the effectiveness and make informed decisions. We employ a trained team of multilingual field observers who use classroom observational measures, program quality measures, and child outcomes measures to understand the “big picture” of the early childhood program. Our consultants have evaluated early childhood quality and programming for the U.S. Department of Education, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Institute, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Examples of the tools, measures and structures that we use:

  • Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS),
  • Environmental Rating Scales (ECERS-R, ITERS-R, FCCERS-R)
  • Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO),
  • Center for Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT) and The Pyramid Infant Toddler Observation Scale (TPITOS),
  • Program Administration Scale (PAS), and
  • National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Accreditation Standards and Criteria.

Past and current program evaluation projects include:

 

  • District of Columbia Public Schools- Office of Early Childhood Child Trends, in partnership with School Readiness Consulting, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education ,  were awarded a contract to conduct an evaluation of the pre-kindergarten program in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) for the 2011-2012 school year. The evaluation of quality of the DCPS Early Childhood  Programs includes classroom observations in all classrooms and direct child assessments on a sub-sample of children. The goals of the study include a comparison of schools that are participating in the Tools of the Mind pilot expansion and those using other curricula, validation of data from Teaching Strategies GOLD child assessment system and provision of comparison data with the IMPACT evaluation system data, and an implementation evaluation of the Tools of the Mind curriculum pilot expansion.

 

  • District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE) Pre-K Audit: SRC is working with Child Trends to conduct an audit of all public schools, public charter schools, and selected community-based organizations serving preschool and pre-k aged children. SRC's fielding team has visited nearly 600 classrooms and counted more than 9,000 children in this effort to determine how OSSE's early childhood programming can best meet the needs of DC children and parents. 

 

  • U.S. Department of Education Early Childhood Educator Professional Development (ECEPD) Program: In partnership with Child Trends, Inc., our consultants trained and monitored more than 30 data collectors for a 3-year, randomized-control trial study of professional development to increase language and literacy outcomes in the District of Columbia. When challenged with understanding and describing how professional development was delivered in the classroom, we developed a time-sampling measure to better quantify how early childhood coaches spend their on-site time with teachers.

 

For more information on program evaluation and improvement please contact info@schoolreadinessconsulting.com.