Minnesota Department of Education (Lead Agency), Preschool Expansion Plan Abstract

Minnesota seeks to work strategically with partners to create a statewide High-Quality 

Preschool system that promotes and sustains student access, achievement, and family 

engagement over a continuum from birth through 3rd grade (i.e., birth-3). In doing so, we seek to 

create a firm foundation for children and communities with the highest needs: low-income 4-

year-olds and children of color whose outcomes persistently lag behind that of their more 

affluent peers and make Minnesota's achievement gap among the worst in the nation. 

Toward this end, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) will build on our Race 

to the Top-Early Learning Challenge grant work, which has accelerated efforts to align 

standards, expand our Parent Aware Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement System, enhance 

parent engagement, broaden culturally competent practice, and strengthen comprehensive 

assessments, data-informed practices, evidence-based curriculum, cross-sector B-3 coordination, 

preschool through 3rd grade alignment (P-3), and professional development (PD), coaching, and 

technical assistance. Partner Human Capital Research Collaborative will provide PD based on 

the Child-Parent Center's strong evidence of large and enduring effects on student achievement, 

high school graduation, and child well-being. World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment 

(WIDA) will provide training to support effective classroom strategies to support English 

Learning Language and skills acquisition. Minnesota Reading Corps will provide a literacy 

innovation that extends the capacity of preschools to laser in on literacy as a key domain, and 

for which there is strong evidence of accelerating literacy acquisition among struggling readers.

Other supporters include the Minnesota Early Learning Council, Minnesota Head Start 

Association, Child Care Aware of Minnesota, Greater Twin Cities United Way, Start Early 

Funders Coalition, and the Chicano Latino Affairs Council, McKnight Foundation, and others.

Our RTTT-ELC work has proven that better outcomes are achieved within 

Transformation Zones that focus on innovations and infrastructure development across a vertical 

slice of the educational system. These Transformation Zones unite administrators, teachers, 

parents and partners from High-Need Communities to ensure collaboration and effective 

implementation of a mixed-delivery system and comprehensive supports. In implementing our 

High-Quality Preschool program, MDE seeks to achieve four goals:

1. Increase Access for Eligible Children. Over four years, MDE will increase the number 

of Eligible Children served in High-Quality Preschool programs by 5,634, including more than 

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3,438 (more than 60%) new slots. These slots will be created in High-Need Communities that 

include a cross-section of Minnesota's greatest challenges: urban, suburban and rural areas, high

rates of poverty, low rates of school readiness, low rates of academic performance, high rates of 

English Learners (ELs), and high rates of children with special needs.

2. Implement High-Quality Preschools. MDE has preliminary agreements subgrantees 

that are the LEAs in each High-Need Community: Albert Lea, Austin, Columbia Heights, 

Fridley, Itasca County, Rochester, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and White Earth Reservation. MDE 

will provide these subgrantees with the management, training, and tools (i.e., Program Criteria, 

assessments, data systems, standards, policies, coaches, and funding) to create or improve 

preschool spaces for Eligible Children. MDE will oversee a structured implementation that will 

extend our state's successful Transformation Zone model to coordinate cross-sector planning, 

build capacity, implement, improve, and embed a mixed-delivery system of early education 

enhanced with family engagement, comprehensive services, and school-community partnerships. 

Each Transformation Zone will have at least one Parent Liaison who is culturally competent and 

bilingual (if possible) to ensure family engagement, and at least one Community Coordinator to 

mobilize and ensure the connection of preschool programs to community services.

3. Build Infrastructure for a Birth-3 System. MDE, our subgrantees, the Early Learning 

Council, and community partners are working to create a continuum of B-3 services and 

supports. This includes community partners that bring comprehensive services to preschool sites

and refer families, home visits and parent education that train parents to support educational 

transitions, professional learning communities and Building Implementation Teams that align 

curriculum and practice from preschool to kindergarten, and a P-3 Institute that promotes dialog, 

alignment, and coordination across the early learning continuum. This will be supported with our 

longitudinal data system, which will link key data across agencies by 2015.

And 4, Improve Student Outcomes. MDE's Preschool Expansion Plan seeks to increase 

the number of Eligible Children served in High Quality Preschool programs and in state 

preschool programs overall; increase the number and percentage who become school-ready and 

maintain those skills; improve teachers' competencies to implement evidence based-practices; 

help ELs accelerate math and reading proficiency; and reduce the number of Eligible Children 

needing special education assignment K-3. Ultimately, MDE seeks to close Minnesota's 

achievement gap for the children served in the proposed High-Quality Preschool program.

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