ABSTRACTS OF 2001

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

[**Name of Project** **Grantee Contact/ Principal Investigator
**]{.underline}

Connecticut State DOE Camille Jackson Alleyne (860) 807-2053

25 Industrial Park Road Camille.Alleyne@po.state.ct.us

Middletown, CT 06457

**Goal:** To develop a professional development model for various types
of early childhood educators based on early language and literacy
research.

**Need:** Serves six low-income Connecticut communities: Bridgeport, New
Haven, New Britain, Meriden, Hartford and Waterbury. These communities
have an average of 38% children with non-English home language, and 67%
of the families live below the poverty level. On average, only 17% of
the early childhood teachers have a Bachelor's degree.

**Impact :** Provides credit-bearing professional development to 280
preschool teachers and their supervisors; offers a CDA preparation
program to 300 candidates; and delivers research institutes to 80 higher
education faculty.

**Project Design:** Three components constitute "Project Stars"(Striving
To Achieve Reading Success).

*The first component* introduces preschool teachers and supervisors to a
research-based program, Literacy Environment Enrichment Program (LEEP).

*The second component,* led by the Connecticut Charts-A-Course (CCAC)
team, provides adapted CDA modules to entry-level early childhood
practitioners.

*The third component* is the Faculty Institute, which includes faculty
from more than twenty higher education institutions in Connecticut. The
institute seeks to ensure that faculty shares a common knowledge of
scientific-based research in the area of children's literacy
development, and encourages them to incorporate it into their curricula.

### Name of Project Grantee Contact/ PI 

Houston Independent School District Ada Cooper (713) 892-6818

3830 Richmond Ave. Acooper1@houstonisd.org

Houston, TX 77027

**Goal:** To ensure that all students are reading on grade level at the
end of first grade via the \"Start to Read-Build a Future\" project for
ongoing Early Childhood Educator Professional Development.

**Need:** Serves HISD students, of whom 58% qualify for Title I. The
program also fills the lack of coherent, sustained training
opportunities for Houston early childhood educators.

**Impact:** Will benefit 200 early childhood teachers, 87 for-profit and
non-profit community early childhood educators, 60 paraprofessionals, 49
mentors, and a minimum of 6,000 children.

**Project Design:** The Start to Read - Build a Future project is
composed of three strands:

*Strand One* establishes a collaborative advisory group of various HISD
Reading, Multilingual, Professional Development and other departmental
personnel, as well as CBO leaders, and higher learning institutions.

*Strand Two* is the creation of a continuing professional development
program for early childhood educators focused on research-based literacy
practices. This program includes small group instruction, mentor
relationships and a focus on diagnostic assessment.

*Strand Three* is focused on continuing education for early childhood
educators and paraprofessionals, providing a CDA (Child Development
Associate) Certificate, an Associate Degree, or an Early Childhood
Endorsement.

[**Name of Project** **Grantee Contact/ PI**]{.underline}

Nebraska DOE Marcia Corr (402) 471-0951

301 Centennial Mall South Mcorr@nde.state.ne.us

PO Box 94987

Lincoln, NE 68509

**Goal:** To engage partners from higher education, early childhood
services, the community, and families in order to improve early
childhood education.

**Need:** Serves rural and urban Nebraska communities with Even Start
Family Literacy Programs and Title I school-wide projects.

**Impact:** Statewide, will provide professional development to 300
teachers/caregivers.

**Project Design:** This multi-dimensional project is based upon three
existing Nebraska literacy initiatives and will impact early childhood
educators at two levels.

*At the first level*, *HeadsUp!* *Reading*, *Read for Joy*, and *First
Connections*, three early literacy programs, will be available to an
additional 300 teachers/caregivers statewide.

*At the second level,* Nebraska's Early Language and Literacy Learning
Connection (NELLLC) will work with targeted communities to provide
collaborative activities among faculty, early childhood teachers, family
and community members. These activities include: the redesign of college
coursework and clinical supervision; the provision of coaching in the
target communities; training in early literacy practices; and the
creation of Literacy Learning Networks and web-based resources.

## **Name of Project Grantee Contact/ PI** 

Purdue University Douglas Powell (765) 494-2941

1267 CDFS Building Powelld@purdue.edu

West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-1267

**Goal:** To create a professional development model for early childhood
educators in urban and rural Indiana communities via collaboration with
two early childhood programs.

**Need**: Serves two early childhood centers with a total of 1,539 Head
Start children (80% urban, 20% rural) in Northwest Indiana, including
Gary and East Chicago. More than 75% of the children attend schools
ranked in the bottom quarter of all Indiana elementary schools in terms
of performance and socioeconomic status. Four hundred children are LEP
students and 230 children have learning disabilities.

**Impact:** Provides professional development for 100 early childhood
educators (75 urban, 25 rural) representing 45 classrooms.

**Project Design**: Training for participants includes an initial
five-day summer institute and a five-month module at Purdue campuses
that combines coursework and coaching for academic credit. Also, support
is offered via an interactive project website. The curriculum is focused
upon key research-based principles of literacy, largely adapted from the
Rural Early Intervention Project at the University of Oregon.

[**Name of Project** **Grantee Contact/ PI**]{.underline}

University of Georgia Claire Hamilton, Ph.D. (706) 542-4244

427 Aderhold Hall chamilt@coe.uga.edu

Athens, GA 30602

**Goal:** To increase teachers' knowledge of early childhood literacy
development and to enable them to provide improved literacy classroom
environments.

**Need:** Serves two high poverty Georgia counties: one is urban Clarke
County (68% Title I students) and the other is rural Barrow County (in
five schools with Title I programs). A control site is located in the
high-poverty community of Walton County, Georgia.

**Impact:** The intervention program serves 18 elementary schools for a
total of 32 classroom-based interventions. The control is composed of 6
classrooms. Close to 450 children are enrolled in intervention
classrooms and their 32 teachers and paraprofessionals have been trained
in the intervention. In addition, we are testing children whose first
language is not English in both English and Spanish. A total of 60
children are enrolled in the control group. The family based
intervention will target all children enrolled in the intervention.

**Project Design: "**PAVEd for Success" involves a multi-dimensional
training program that is testing five experimental conditions in
comparison to a control group. All participants were trained in an
intensive summer institute with follow-up training sessions and on-going
classroom-based support from a Literacy Specialist. The teachers also
receive on-line support. Training was based on the participants'
experimental condition. The five conditions provide training in: a)
Universal Quality Literacy Practices; b) Universal Quality Literacy
Practices + Phonological Awareness activities; c) Universal Quality
Literacy Practices + Vocabulary enhancement; d) b and c combined, called
"PAVE"; and e) PAVE + Biliteracy Instruction. Thirty children are
receiving the intensive PAVE + Biliteracy Intervention.

### Name of Project Grantee Contact/ PI 

# University of Minnesota Angele Passe (612) 379-0729

Sponsored Projects Administration Aspasse@earthlink.net

200 Oak Street, SE Suite 450

Minneapolis, MN 55455

**Goal:** To improve the existing early education curriculum and train
early childhood educators and providers using the TEACH model.

**Need:** Serves three inner-city Minneapolis neighborhoods. In
Minneapolis, 30% of school children are LEP and 65% of students receive
Title I services. The project will also serve rural Minnesota on the
White Earth Indian Reservation, where 100% of children qualify for Title
I assistance. This project fills a tremendous gap as currently there is
no systematic training program in Minnesota for teaching early
literacy/language at institutions of higher education.

**Impact:** Will serve 1,079 educators who work directly with over 6,743
children at the pilot sites. Also, faculty at Minnesota higher education
institutions will receive research-based information on literacy, and
incorporate it in Methods classes currently offered at their
institutions.

**Project Design:** First, this program will revise an early childhood
literacy curriculum, which will then be evaluated by experts from
relevant sectors of education. Then, the curriculum will be implemented
via a two-tier professional development model.

*In Tier One,* all participants across the state will be part of a
6-hour workshop, have access to web materials and evaluation via the
web, phone, and mail.

*In Tier Two,* at the four pilot sites there will be on-site technical
assistance (TA) and on-site evaluation. The TA will help programs
implement a data-based instructional decision-making model and help with
the early education to kindergarten transition. Last, participants at
the pilot sites will be eligible for credit toward certification (either
a CDA or BA) through the TEACH program operated by the Minnesota Child
Care and Resource and Referral Network.

[**Name of Project** **Grantee Contact/ PI**]{.underline}

University of Oklahoma Ruth Ann Ball (405) 799-6383

1901 N. Moore Avenue Raball@ou.edu

Moore, OK 73160

**Goal:** To provide research-based literacy training to educators and
program administrators working in high-poverty communities, and improve
educators' use of early literacy assessment tools.

**Need:** Serves fourteen counties of Oklahoma with the highest levels
of poverty and illiteracy, which contain 75% of the low-performing
schools in Oklahoma.

**Impact:** Will target 168 educators in approximately seventy sites in
five regions around the state. These educators will be trained to
facilitate peer-coaching sessions at their site. These sessions will
impact approximately 560 *additional* early childhood educators. This
amounts to a total of 740 educators, representing about 25% of teachers
working in the highest poverty early childhood settings in Oklahoma.

**Project Design:** The "Early Steps to Literacy Project" is comprised
of three components.

*In the first component*, the 168 educators will be engaged in a sixty
hour course on early childhood literacy (for 3 credits); directors
attend 42 hours of literacy courses with teachers and 18 hours on
leadership for literacy.

*The second component* provides literacy mentors for ongoing coaching to
participants between classes, in the form of observation and feedback.
Also, a communication network will be created to share best practices
between practitioners.

*The third component* supports the creation of a coalition between child
care providers, Head Start agencies and public schools in order to
support children's transition to kindergarten.

[**Name of Project** **Grantee Contact/ PI**]{.underline}

University of Rochester Lucia French (716) 275-3235

River Campus, Dewey Hall 1-312 Lucia.French@rochester.edu

P.O. Box 270425

Rochester, NY 14627

**Goal:** To provide long-term professional development and parent
outreach in order to improve early childhood education via a science
curriculum.

**Need:** Serves 2,020 children attending preschools in low-income
neighborhoods in Rochester.

**Impact:** Will train 80 administrators, 210 teachers/daycare
providers, 210 paraprofessionals and 40 family day care providers in
urban and rural impoverished areas.

**Project Design:** The design is comprised of four components: 1)
Twelve cohort based workshops on literacy and the ScienceStart!
curriculum; 2) Provision of the ScienceStart! curriculum and 40
children's books per classroom; 3) In-center/ in-home support on eight
occasions; and 4) Support/materials (Science ZipKits) for the parent
outreach program.