2016 ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REPORT

PRESCHOOL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

Massachusetts

Preschool Development Grants AUGUST 2017
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State: Massachusetts Zip: 02210

U.S. Department of Education

PDG Grant Performance Report Cover Sheet

Based on ED 524B OMB No. 1894-0003 Exp. 06/30/2017

Check only one box per Program Office instructions. ✔ Annual Performance Report Final Performance Report

General Information

1. PR/Award #: S419B150023 2. Grantee Federal Information Processing Code:

3. Project Title: Massachusetts Preschool Expansion Grant

4. Grantee Name: MA Department of Early Education and Care

5. Grantee Address:51 Sleeper St.

City: Boston

6. Project Director Name: Jocelyn Bowne

Title: Director of Research and Preschool Expansion Administration

Phone #: (617) 988-2431 Ext.: Fax #:(617) 988-2451

Email Address: jocelyn.bowne@state.ma.us

Reporting Period Information

7. Reporting Period: From: 01/01/2016 To: 12/31/2016

8. Budget Expenditures (To be completed by your Business Office. See instructions.)

Budget Period Federal Grant Funds Non-Federal Funds (Match/Cost Share)

a. Previous Budget Period $14,788,757.50 $5,990,076.00

b. Current Budget Period $5,990,076.00

c. Entire Project Period

(For Final Performance Reports only)

9. Indirect Cost Information (To be completed by your Business Office. See Instructions.)

a. Are you claiming indirect costs under this grant? Yes No

b. If yes, do you have an Indirect Cost Rate Agreement approved by the Federal Government? Yes No

c. If yes, provide the following information:

Period Covered by the Indirect Cost Rate Agreement: From: To:

Approving Federal agency: ✔ ED Other Specify other:

Type of Rate: (Final Performance Reports only) Provisional ✔ Final Other Specify other:

d. For Restricted Rate Programs (check one) -- Are you using a restricted indirect cost rate that:

Is included in your approved Indirect Cost Rate Agreement

Complies with 34 CFR 76.564(c)(2)?

10. Performance Measures Status

a. Are complete data on performance measures for the current budget period included in the

Project Status Chart?

b. If no, when will the data be available and submitted to the Department?

Yes No
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U.S. Department of Education

PDG Annual Performance Report

Executive Summary

Based on ED 524B OMB No. 1894-0003 Exp. 06/30/2017

Grantee State: MA PR/Award #: S419B150023

You are required to submit an Executive Summary of up to 3000 words with your Annual Performance

Report. This summary should relate to your approved application and summarize the goals and

objectives that have been achieved under your grant, what you learned, and any evaluation results.

Describe any unanticipated outcomes or benefits from your project and any barriers that you may have

encountered. If there have been any changes to the project from the approved application, those

should be explained as well.

“Teachers really love them like they are their own. My kid is ready to go back to school at the end of

the day when we get home because she wants to see her friends and teachers. It's really great to see

relationships between teachers and kids, and between kids.” PEG Parent

“I wish this was not just a grant. It should be offered to everyone. It shouldn't just be a few sites. We

are not just a day care; we are not glorified babysitters. We are making sure these children are

prepared to enter kindergarten in just a few months.” PEG Teacher

Overview of Progress:

During the first year and a half that programs funded by the Preschool Expansion Grant (PEG) have

been in operation, approximately 1600 children have been served. Of these children, about 1000 would

have entered kindergarten without any early education experience, putting them at risk of starting

school behind their peers. At the heart of Massachusetts' plan for the PEG was an effort to leverage

local resources through public-private partnerships to develop high quality full-day full-year preschool

programs with four primary agendas:

• Expand access to preschool for low income children who never before received any early

education

• Create more integrated and aligned local systems of early education, birth to grade 3

• Develop the professionalism and skill of the early education workforce

• Build programs that are responsive to the needs of children and families

In each of these areas, Massachusetts has taken important strides and identified additional goals for

improvement.

Expanded Access

Of primary importance, 800 children participated in the PEG program during the first three months of

year two. Sixty six percent of these children had had no prior early education experiences; children

who, without the support this grant provides, would have entered kindergarten this September without

any preschool experience. Eighty four percent of the first cohort of PEG children showed good levels

of kindergarten readiness in literacy and math skills at the end of the program year, and eighty five

percent and above were rated as meeting age expectations in key social emotional skills, suggesting

that the PEG experience has provided these children an important opportunity to enter school on solid
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footing in comparison to their peers. For teachers, it has been particularly motivating to work with

large numbers of students new to school as the growth they saw was particularly salient. Finally,

parents who have never before had an opportunity to send their child to school have been pleased with

the opportunities the PEG program has provided for not only their child, but also for their own skill

building. During focus groups, many parents commented on valuing the outreach around home reading

and other home supports for learning the programs have provided. At the same time, some communities

have found it difficult to fill all the available openings, suggesting that the program's goals need to be

broader than just serving families without any prior preschool experience. Moving forward, programs

will enroll a mix of children with and without prior experience allowing them more freedom to recruit

families with a variety of needs.

Public-Private Partnerships in Service of Birth to Grade 3 Alignment

PEG funds have been invested in public-private partnerships to create new high quality full day, full

year classrooms in the PEG communities. The grant now funds 48 classrooms across the five

communities, all of which are led by a teacher with at least a Bachelor's degree, paid a salary

commensurate with the public school and with class sizes between 10 and 20 and child-teacher ratios of

no more than 10:1, frequently closer to 6:1 when a three educator per classroom model is implemented

to provide staffing for a full-day program. Each community has developed a steering committee

comprised of representatives from the Local Education Agency (LEA) and each Early Learning

Provider (ELP), which have continued the collaborative planning process begun when programs were

being designed. Issues of program alignment, community outreach and resource sharing have been of

primary importance to these groups. As these groups have entered year two of the grant, the basic

operations of each program have been defined and the collaborative leadership has begun to consider

important program improvements. Each community relied on the expertise of local ELPs to get a

quality program up and running in year one. The collaborative leadership focused on identifying the

areas of alignment that would be required of all programs. These included attention to shared

enrollment procedures, joint professional development and, in some cases, a shared curriculum. Once

programs were operational, PEG communities were able to reflect on year one, considering the

evaluation data and program successes and challenges, to plan revisions for year two. In determining

how to build more aligned programming across ELPs and ensure that children's experiences best

prepared them for kindergarten, communities began to consider new ways to collaborate. The

relationship building and vision setting of year one laid a foundation for more intensive efforts to look

honestly at the strengths and weaknesses of the program and continue to plan creatively around program

improvements.

Stable and Professional Workforce

The PEG program recognizes that teachers are the cornerstone of the program; it is the teachers' skill at

organizing the classroom environment, implementing effective curriculum, engaging in responsive and

intellectually stimulating teacher-child interactions and connecting with parents that creates a high

quality program. PEG programs have all committed to paying lead teachers' salaries commensurate

with the public schools and bringing assistant and aide salaries to similar levels. Not only is this a

grant requirement, but something that programs feel strongly will help attract highly qualified teachers

and reduce turnover. In year one, classroom observations revealed moderate to high quality teacherchild interactions in most classrooms on three standardized measures. In the fall of year two only

seventeen percent of the lead teachers (eight classrooms) had changed since the program began in the

fall of 2015; the vast majority of this turnover occurred in three programs, which reported more than

two teachers changing during the first 15 months of operation. Three communities did not see any lead

teacher turnover. PEG programs are showing promising stability, although work remains to be done,

particularly in this handful of programs that continue to experience high levels of turnover.

Supports for Families
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The provision of comprehensive services and the engagement of families has been an aspect of the

PEG design that programs have embraced; all but a few small providers in Boston have used PEG

funds to hire one or more family engagement staff. These professionals organize family engagement

events, conduct home visits, sometimes with teachers, provide case management and support a strong

foundation of trust between families and the program. At the same time, PEG programs acknowledged

in year one that these efforts were not coordinated across programs, that a familiarity with local and

state resources was essential to effective case management and that the PEG programs did not have the

capacity to fully replicate a Head Start model. In response to these challenges, steering committees or

comprehensive service subcommittees have begun to coordinate the comprehensive services, sharing

the work of obtaining services for families and, in some communities, and contracting with a key set of

service providers. All communities have also identified behavioral health supports as a strong need for

families and programs and have concentrated resources to contract such services community-wide.

Nonetheless, continued efforts to coordinate and align these efforts will be necessary going forward.

Role of Data and Evaluation

The Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and each PEG community have made a substantial

financial commitment to the evaluation of these programs. Rich data on implementation, classroom

quality and child outcomes was collected in year one of the program. Abt Associates, the contracted

research firm, provided the data to programs as it was collected, allowing for data driven decisions to

take place throughout the year. A review of the final report of the year one data provided an important

point of reflection for all programs as they began planning for year two. Having concrete information

about implementation and quality has been essential to support communities in checking their

assumptions and to provide grounding for productive conversations about differences of perspective

between partners. Changes in year two have resulted from lessons learned and support careful targeting

of technical assistance provided by the state.

Key Accomplishments

The PEG funded programs have provided important benefits to the children, families, educators and

communities served. Not only was access expanded and the key drivers of quality implemented,

particular components of the program were highlighted by parents, teachers and PEG administrators as

having an important impact.

1. The PEG program has been very highly valued by parents. The high levels of program

satisfaction (over 90 percent) and strong statements of support shared during parent focus

groups have communicated the deep appreciation parents have felt for the opportunity to

participate. Relationships with program staff have been strong; 89 percent of parents reported

feeling connected or strongly connected to the PEG program and none felt strongly

disconnected. Parents also appreciated the opportunity to learn how to help their child in school

and reported seeing the growth in their child's skills over the courses of the year. Parents all

want to do the best for their children, and the removal of the economic barrier to such an

important opportunity was deeply appreciated by many.

2. The intensive investment that has been made across all PEG programs in supporting teachers has

showed strong signs of being both well received by educators as well as building the

professionalism and competence of the workforce. Over 90 percent of teachers reported feeling

satisfied with their job and endorsed statements of self-efficacy (i.e. “I feel I am making a

significant educational difference in the lives of my students.”). During focus groups, teachers

report great satisfaction with the extent to which they have been respected as professionals and

the quality of the professional supports they have received. Taken together, these signs point to
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a workforce that is satisfied with their jobs and confident in their ability yet open to ongoing

professional growth. Each community has successfully leveraged professional development

resources from the public schools, EEC grant funded Educational Provider Support (EPS) and

local agency resources to develop a rich and coordinated system of professional development.

Coaching is now provided by the public schools in every community, something that is not

typically available in such a comprehensive way. Local discussions around the impact of

coaching indicates that coaching provides educators with a unique opportunity to reflect on their

practice, establish goals to improve classroom quality, and support to effectively implement

curriculum. EEC's PEG-funded Workforce Specialist continues to work with communities to

support shared professional development planning and improved alignment of these supports

within communities. EEC has also recognized the central role that educational leaders and

coaches play in ensuring that effective supports for teachers continue. Educational leaders have

been given multiple opportunities to join in statewide professional learning communities and

trainings, focused on topics such as inclusion supports, standardized observation tools and the

integration of coaching and curriculum implementation. EEC's efforts to support leaders in PEG

programs will continue and will inform the development of upcoming grants focused on the

development of a statewide coaching infrastructure and overall workforce development.

3. A standardized inventory of collaboration factors administered in year one showed that

communities were consistently strong in the commitment of individual members, the existence

of informal relationships and “concrete, obtainable goals and objectives.” PEG communities

have successfully built a network of stakeholders locally, coordinated services across multiple

agencies, aligned community-based programming with the public school, and leveraged the

expertise across the community to provide programming effectively and consistently. Through

this work, relationships have been developed between individuals working in different systems

and a shared mission to serve all children in the local community has organized and driven this

work. These strengths have supported more collaboration at all levels, from program directors

sharing best practices, to the management of each agency considering new cost sharing efforts.

The overall high levels of collaboration and trust building in each community has created a

strong group of advocates for systemic efforts in each community to provide quality

prekindergarten universally and further build aligned supports for families and children from

birth to grade 3. These local collaborations supported PEG communities' participation in a MA

grant, the Commonwealth Preschool Partnerships Initiative, where they had the opportunity to

plan for how they might expand the PEG model and offer preschool programming for children

ages 2.9 to five years old.

4. As the state legislature debates on the extent to which the state continues to support universal

prekindergarten, the PEG programs have been an important example of what is possible with

strong community collaboration, public-private partnerships and adequate funding. Attention

has been paid to the success of the program's first year, including multiple articles across the

state highlighting the findings of the first year evaluation. The Governor, the Secretary of

Education and the Commissioner were all quoted remarking on the promising potential of the

PEG program. EEC has submitted a report to the legislature summarizing the lessons learned

from the first year of the program. The Board of Early Education and Care is regularly updated

on progress and an Advisory representing a true cross sector of the field, including the

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) and the Department of Public Health

(DPH) and Strategies for Children, a local advocacy group, is relied upon for guidance 

as well. As a result, the PEG program is being shaped by the input of leadership at all levels and

is well positioned to inform the state's future efforts to develop universal prekindergarten.

Challenges and Lessons Learned
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1. As in year one, despite strong outreach efforts, maintaining full enrollment has continued to be a

challenge in three of the five communities in year two. This process has revealed the extensive

needs assessment work that is necessary when trying to target an underserved population. For

example, Lowell had an enrollment challenge in year one, but the provision of targeted

transportation greatly improved accessibility and the program opened with full classrooms and a

waiting list in September of year two. In Boston, competition with the public school

prekindergarten classrooms have led to under-enrollment and high levels of child turnover as 

children transition to public prekindergarten classrooms in order to confirm a seat in their

highly desired Kindergarten (K2) classrooms. Efforts are underway to identify the supply and

demand for prekindergarten at the neighborhood level and coordinate services between the

public schools and the community-based programs to reduce the competition for students. Other

communities continue to consider the geography of supply demand and brainstorm new ways to

adequately meet the local needs. EEC has also recognized that children with previously

inconsistent preschool enrollment are important to serve and has changed enrollment

requirements to allow communities more flexibility in targeting their efforts to align more

closely with the demand for high quality prekindergarten in the community.

2. PEG programs consistently reported serving low numbers of children with special needs, when

compared to the state average. The reasons for these numbers are discussed extensively in this

report, but the fact remains very apparent that efforts to support inclusion across the state have

not adequately addressed the role private preschool programs might play in meeting the needs

of children with special needs. EEC is collaborating with the Department of Elementary and

Secondary Education (ESE) and providing statewide opportunities for PEG representative to

join with public school special education staff and Head Start inclusion specialists to discuss

how inclusion might be integrated more fully into the local early childhood systems. Each

community has a task force working on this topic and EEC is committed to providing ongoing

support to bring innovative ideas to fruition. As EEC reevaluates its current grant models, this

work will support planning efforts to ensure funds that have been set aside to support quality

continue to provide effective supports for inclusion.

3. Building community collaborations across local agencies can be difficult. The logistical

challenges were daunting in the first year, as systems had to be put in place to pass funds from

federal to state to municipal governments and then on to community based organizations, and to

monitor fund use. However, these systems are now largely in place and functioning smoothly.

At the same time, trust had to develop or, in some cases, be re-established among local partners.

The long-standing fear among early educators that public schools are destined to put them out

of the business of educating four year olds had to have a place to be aired. The resultant feelings

of disappointment that public school staff were not always considered equal partners at the table

also needed its place to be addressed. Budget decisions had to be made that reflected the

inherent strengths of LEAS and ELPs, with a commitment to common priorities despite

differing initial approaches to teaching and learning. These relationships are developing well,

but have taken time to build, and are still tenuous in some cases. EEC continues to pay attention

to the local relationships and provides support, guidance, and, on occasion, mediation, as

necessary to continue the building of trust, shared goal setting and effective collaboration.

Conclusion

As this report will detail, the second year of PEG implementation has built on the successes of year

one, achieving the majority of the goals of the program in a short period of time. Areas of continued

challenge have been identified and resources are being deployed to address issues that have arisen. The

ongoing longitudinal evaluation of the program is playing a critical role in supporting EEC and

subgrantees in systematically documenting the current state of program implementation and providing

data that has informed programmatic adjustments. The summary of year one findings has also been an

important communication tool for EEC, and the evaluation work, as well as the first hand experiences

of PEG stakeholders and agency staff, will continue to inform EEC and the state in its ongoing efforts

to better support the early education workforce and move towards high quality universal
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prekindergarten.

Note: throughout this report, quotes from focus group participants have been included in italics.

This data was gathered by Abt Associates as part of their evaluation efforts.
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U.S. Department of Education

PDG Annual Performance Report

Grant Status Form 

Explanation of Progress (524B Section A)

Based on ED 524B OMB No. 1894-0003 Exp. 06/30/2017

Grantee State: MA PR/Award #: S419B150023

Section A: Performance Objectives Information and Related Performance Measures Data

(narrative)

1. Project Objective

1(a) GPRA Performance Measure: The number and percentage of Eligible Children served in

High-Quality Preschool Programs funded by the grant. Describe the State's progress in meeting

this Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) measure based on enrollment of Eligible

Children in High-Quality Preschool Programs funded by the grant as of December 1, 2016.

“It's easy to teach my child with the programs help and because of this I can carry over skills from

school to home. It also helped with time not worrying about daycare as a fulltime mom. I can also work

more hours.” PEG Parent

PEG funding has allowed EEC to work with five communities, Boston, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell

and Springfield, to build new partnerships and create new state funded prekindergarten openings in

these communities. In year two of this grant, as of December 1st, EEC increased the number of eligible

children enrolled in state supported prekindergarten to 752 (we reported serving 702 children last year

at this time). The state is very close to our target enrollment of 755 and expects that enrollment will

continue to increase over the course of the school year, due to continued outreach efforts by the

subgrantees. Additionally, all programs have reported some turnover of students over the course of the

year; the total number of children served so far in year two is 788.

In each PEG community, the school department (LEA) and community-based early learning providers

(ELPs) began planning and conducting enrollment and outreach in the spring of 2016, adjusting their

approach to reflect the successes and challenges experienced in year one. Communities decided they

needed to begin outreach earlier, include prekindergarten outreach in kindergarten enrollment family

engagement events and encourage enrolled families to spread the word about the high quality program

their children were attending. In four of the five communities, Boston being the exception, the PEGfunded openings have been slated solely for children who have never received any formal early

education, including family childcare, prior to enrolling in the PEG-funded classrooms. This decision

followed from an analyses that identified large numbers of underserved children entering kindergarten

in these communities. This has created some unexpected challenges in communities, the most salient

one being the intensity of outreach efforts needed to recruit enough children to fill all the seats. All

four of these communities continued to engage in extensive local outreach efforts. Local efforts

included:

• Extensive door-to-door outreach - although time consuming, programs have consistently

reported that person to person contacts are the most effective in recruiting families.

• The LEAs and ELPs collaborated in sending PEG staff to various community events to meet

families face to face.
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• Identification of local community organizations that were willing to collaborate in getting the

message out to families.

• Surveying community leaders to develop a better understanding of where and how to locate

particular groups of families that may have a history of disengagement from public

education systems prior to kindergarten, such as particular immigrant communities. EEC's

Coordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) staff and local grantees

provided, support to communities during the outreach process by consulting with the LEA

and ELP leadership around outreach opportunities in the communities and using EEC

activities, such as facilitated parent-child play groups, to get the word out to families about

the program.

• Programs in Lowell determined that because they had one central site in the city, there were

children who could not reach the program due to limited access to transportation. Targeted

transportation was put in place to expand access to the program. One of the ELPs integrated

the PEG children into transportation services they provided to their other programs, making

the delivery cost effective. This agency also had a well-developed needs assessment

process that was adopted by the PEG programs. This effort has been so successful that the

program in Lowell opened with all seats full in the fall of 2016 and has maintained

enrollment over 98 percent despite high levels of turnover.

Despite these efforts, seats remained unfilled in Holyoke and Springfield in the fall of 2016. In both

these cities, needs assessments conducted in the spring of 2016 using state funds for sustainability and

expansion planning, were consulted, to identify potential barriers for underserved families. The

physical location of programs in both communities is being discussed as a potential issue, and Lowell's

success in providing targeted transportation is being reviewed. In Springfield, the needs assessment

identified a potentially underserved neighborhood, which could be provided with a shuttle, however,

parent interest in accessing such services is currently unclear and under investigation. In Holyoke, one

school has been identified as difficult for families to access, so transportation is being considered for

that site. There are agencies in each community with the capacity to provide cost-effective

transportation, as was done in Lowell, but both agencies want to be sure there are enough interested

families before committing the resources. The larger strategic question that has been raised is whether

families would prefer to send their children to a program close to home, or are willing to use

transportation to access free prekindergarten. The needs assessment work being conducted to address

enrollment issues in year two will also inform planning for year three, when programs will have the

ability to relocate classrooms, if necessary.

Holyoke and Springfield have identified many children with inconsistent histories of early education

that do not currently have access to a program and would be eligible for PEG if not for their prior

preschool experience. Many of these children are homeless or involved with the Department of

Children and Families (DCF), vulnerable populations that the state is committed to prioritizing. In

response, EEC has changed PEG eligibility requirements to allow programs to fill 20 percent of their

slots with children who have had some prior preschool experience but are not currently in a program

and who are eligible for PEG in all other ways. In this way, the state continues to prioritize children

who have not received formal early education services but allows programs flexibility to include other

high needs groups. This change was made in November 2016 and will remain in place in year three and

four. Increases in enrollment in Springfield and Holyoke followed. Programs continue to strive towards

full enrollment and EEC will work closely to support and encourage their efforts.
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At the same time, these programs are effectively reaching a very high need and often transient

population. The mean reported income was just over $19,000 a year and 90 percent of families had

incomes below $40,000. As a result, EEC recognizes that some instability in enrollment may be the

norm in these programs. Enrollment data submitted to EEC in January, verified these patterns; across

the state seven percent of the children enrolled have left the program during the first three months, the

vast majority as a result of a move. This transience was particularly pronounced in Springfield and

Lowell with eight and nine percent, respectively, of enrolled children having left. Lawrence, Lowell

and Holyoke reported three percent or fewer children leaving.

In Boston, the extensive availability of early education programs for four year-olds led to the decision

to integrate the grant funding with other funding sources, in an effort to expand the quality over the

quantity of publicly funded openings available to children in the current programs. This decision

allowed programs in Boston more flexibility to braid funding sources and, in some programs, serve

children in mixed-income and mixed-age classrooms. Rather than building a program from scratch, as

in the other four communities, with new classrooms and new program sites, Boston has focused on

working with already existing classrooms and programs. Enrollment in both year one and year two has

been a challenge across programs in Boston, although different programs have struggled in year one

and year two. In year two, Boston has served 262 children while programs have committed to 280

PEG-funded slots. Recently, Boston Mayor Walsh and Boston Public Schools (BPS) have made a

commitment to provide universal prekindergarten to four year olds in Boston, and, although committed

to using a mixed delivery system for this effort, BPS has increased the number of slots available for

four year olds in BPS schools. Programs suspect that the increased availability of city funded seats may

be partially responsible for reductions in enrollment seen this year. These programs have experienced

high levels of turnover in the fall, as children who receive a seat in a BPS school of choice leave the

PEG program. In year one, 14 percent of children enrolled had left as of December 1, while in year two

the number has been halved but remains high at seven percent, with most leaving for BPS. Because,

BPS has a highly competitive lottery system in place to manage school choice, families feel that if they

are offered a seat at a school of choice, they must take it or lose the opportunity to attend that school.

The project manager at BPS has been supporting programs in a marketing effort and in coordinating

enrollment efforts with BPS waitlist information, both to identify children interested in prekindergarten

programs who are unlikely to receive a seat at a BPS run classroom and alert programs to children

already enrolled are likely to receive a seat in the near future, and potentially leave the PEG program.

Continued coordination between BPS and ELPs will be necessary to address the ongoing challenges in

Boston. As BPS works with the mayor's office to develop a plan to provide universal prekindergarten

in Boston through a mixed delivery system, PEG programs are in conversation with BPS to consider

how these classrooms might be used to sustain PEG investments and pilot efforts to build greater

coordination, such as defining the program's role as feeder schools into the BPS system.

Central to the success of each community in increasing enrollment and addressing enrollment

challenges has been the collaboration between the public schools and EEC-licensed programs in

planning and problem solving together. Collaborative decision making was a central expectation of

EEC for the five communities that were granted PEG funds. Each agency brings experience serving a

group of families in the community, while the public school comes with a sense of obligation to all

children in the municipality. Collectively, the management teams in each community, which are

comprised of members from all partnering organizations, have been able to think creatively, pool

resources and consider the needs of children and families systemically, informed by but not limited by

each program's commitment to and experience with particular populations and regions in the city. EEC

staff continue to be active participants in these meetings, bringing an understanding of state grants and

policies, as well as the ability to help communities negotiate differences, encourage creative thinking

and provide guidance on state regulations and policies. Enrollment challenges have served to force

communities to reexamine their initial assumptions about the needs of families, and to develop more
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responsive efforts to serve the community as a whole.

Please describe, as required in Program Requirement (k)(2) in the Notice Inviting Applicants (NIA),

how the State established policies and procedures that ensure that the percentage of Eligible Children

with disabilities served by the High-Quality Preschool Programs is not less than either the percentage

of four-year-old children served statewide through part B, section 619 of IDEA (20 U.S.C. 1400 et

seq.), or the current national average, whichever is greater.

Note: The current national percentage of four year-old-children receiving services through part B, section 619 of

IDEA is 6.4%. Source: 2012 IDEA Part B Child Count (www.ideadata.org). States should include detailed

information on ALL structural elements.

EEC recognizes that the inclusion of children with disabilities is a priority and will require additional

infrastructure development at the state and local level to ensure that LEA and ELP partners identify the

methods for inclusion that best meet the needs of children and families. Specific efforts to support full

inclusion of Eligible Children with Disabilities in the High-Quality Preschool Program (HQPP) are

underway. Due to challenges in year one and year two of PEG in meeting the target for the number of

children with identified disabilities (defined as a child with an Individual Education Plan or IEP with

the local public school; Massachusetts has a slightly higher percentage than the national average at

6.9%), we are still working toward meeting the requirement (currently 2.7% have been identified).

Potential barriers being addressed in year two include the eligibility criteria of no prior preschool, the

typical location for special education services in Massachusetts (most often provided in public school

classrooms), and building the capacity of local preschool administrators and educators to support

inclusion. Informed by lessons learned from year one and planning for implementation in year two, 

EEC continues to address this priority through a multi-pronged approach.

Eligibility Policy for Children with Disabilities

As described in the previous narrative section, EEC continues to prioritize the enrollment of children

with little to no prior preschool experience in its PEG programs. The decision to prioritize children with

no prior preschool experience, in part, contributed to the lower number of children with identified

disabilities due to the fact that many children with identified special needs have been potentially

supported through an inclusion classroom when they were three, making them ineligible for PEG 

during their prekindergarten year. Grantee communities report strong collaboration and coordination

between early intervention service providers and the public school, allowing them to successfully meet

the needs of many children well before their prekindergarten year. Due to challenges in meeting the

target for the number of children with identified disabilities enrolled in year one of PEG, eligibility

criteria for children in this population is less rigid in year two, allowing for children with identified

special needs to enter the PEG program regardless of their prior preschool experience. In some cases,

this has resulted in grantee communities beginning to conduct specific outreach to children who are

enrolled in a half-day special education program in the local public school to arrange for participation in

a PEG classroom so they have access to a full-day program. As morning and afternoon classes are

offered by the public schools, one available PEG opening can be used by two public school children to

supplement their day; PEG funding covers the costs of the additional half day. For children who are

dually enrolled in a public school classrooms and PEG classroom, grantee communities are thoughtfully

planning around the appropriateness of the placement, and the role of supplemental 

comprehensive services in meeting the needs of the child with an Individualized Education Program

(IEP) in the PEG classroom. LEAs and ELPs continue to work together to identify children on IEPs 

who receive their services at a public school setting who may need extended hours and days of services

beyond the public school calendar and who can be served in PEG classrooms.
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Screening and Evaluation

At the beginning of the PEG program year, much time is spent getting to know the children as they

transition into a formal preschool program for the first time, while working closely with families

through home visits and family engagement activities at the program level. In the first months of PEG

programming, programs are conducting developmental screening, identifying individual needs of

children, while making determinations about the need to refer them for a formal special education

evaluation by the local school district. In Lawrence, ELPs are also conducting English Language

screenings during the first few months of the program year, therefore identifying children who may

need additional language support as they enter kindergarten. As children are being screened in the first

few months of the program year, educators, program administrators and public school staff, including

directors of special education, along with other PEG funded comprehensive service providers/teams

(e.g., speech pathologists, occupational therapists, mental health consultants, and physical therapists)

are working collaboratively to determine the appropriate next steps for the child. The time it takes to

screen children, refer a child for an evaluation by the public schools, and potentially be identified with

a special need can be months from the beginning of the program year. Not surprising, therefore, is the

fact that Massachusetts has not yet met the PEG-required target of 6.9 percent children with identified

disabilities as of December 1 as the processes of observation, screening and, if needed, special

education evaluations take time. As of December 1, 2.7% of children (20 of 752 children) enrolled in

PEG have identified disabilities.

Targeted Family Engagement and Comprehensive Services

As outreach and enrollment efforts continue, LEAs and ELPs are expected to work with IEP teams,

including families, to talk about the benefits of enrolling in PEG classrooms when determining the least

restrictive environment for the child. Conversations continue about how to serve children receiving IEP

services in PEG classrooms at the ELP sites; however, in many cases talking with families about the

benefits of the PEG classrooms has been a critical component of the outreach conducted by all five

communities.

Comprehensive services in PEG classrooms are very beneficial for all children, including those with

identified disabilities. Many communities plan for comprehensive services based on the needs in their

community, and ensure that children and families, including children with disabilities, have access to

the many important supports that can strengthen a child's development and learning, including health,

mental health, speech therapy, occupational therapy (OT), and physical therapy (PT). These services

are increasingly being offered as full enrollment is attained and the needs of children are being

identified. Comprehensive services such as OT, PT and speech have the potential to proactively

respond to children who may be behind developmentally and may serve to avoid referral to special

education. Whether a child currently has an IEP, has been referred to special education for an

evaluation, or is being observed to determine whether a referral is necessary, these comprehensive

services are critical to better understand where a child is in his/her development and to ensure that time

to support development and learning is not lost during the referral and eligibility determination

processes.

In year two, all PEG communities have planned for more intensive and targeted comprehensive

services, and are more consistently providing access to services such as mental health consultation,

occupational therapy, speech therapy and physical therapy. The communities' extensive outreach to

hard-to-reach families has been successful in identifying children who are in need of supports, 

including children who are experiencing homelessness, trauma and other toxic stressors. Communities

feel strongly that, in many cases, provision of these comprehensive services will support the children to

make progress and ultimately, result in fewer referrals to special education. Mental health services and

services that support a child's social and emotional well-being are a high priority for the PEG

classrooms. For example, Springfield, Lowell, and one ELP in Lawrence hired a mental and behavioral
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health specialist in order to be able to provide mental health services onsite; other communities are

planning and/or referring children and families to community-based organizations to meet their needs.

Feedback from local stakeholders to inform immediate priorities to support inclusion

Over the course of year one, PEG communities reported common challenges around processes that

support inclusion. These challenges will be described in this section, in addition to a discussion of plans

to address them. A more comprehensive description of the state and local strategies to overcome these

barriers will be addressed in the following sections.

Coordination Between LEAs and ELPs

As inclusion continues to be a priority focus in year two, planning for strategies to support inclusion

have prompted local PEG administrators at the LEA and ELP level to engage educators and other PEG

staff to gain a better understanding of where there might be opportunities to enhance coordination

between LEAs and ELPs. Additionally, these conversations have also addressed the capacity and needs

of PEG educators and other PEG staff that play a role in supporting inclusive practices and policies.

There has been much progress toward the goal of enhancing coordination between LEAs and ELPs. In 

Lowell and Holyoke, PEG communities reported the complex referral and IEP process is not clear to

some staff. In response, ELPs have invited LEA special education staff to provide training and

orientations around the referral process, and continue to plan for the provision of administrative support

in this process. In Lawrence, the LEA is implementing a standardized form that will outline established

process guidelines for referrals. One ELP in Lawrence is funding an inclusion specialist position to

coordinate all special education related services, from the screening and referral process to providing

support to families. Lowell plans to develop guidance to providers to support consistent messaging

around the importance of inclusion. Holyoke has student support team meetings at each school in the

district to better coordinate special education services for all children, and invites local PEG ELP

partners to participate. Generally, LEAs are working with their ELP partners to participate in the IEP

process and provide some consultation to educators around accommodations to meet the needs of

individual children.

Educator Preparedness

PEG communities report variation in the capacity of educators to support children with diverse learning

needs, including those with IEPs. The complex nature of supporting all children, especially those with

IEPs, is often a challenge, especially considering curriculum/instruction, supporting dual language

acquisition, and social-emotional support for children. Adapting and modifying curriculum and

implementing effective instructional strategies to support all children, while providing appropriate

accommodations for children with disabilities, requires that educators and instructional leaders have a

strong foundational knowledge in child development, curriculum and instruction, and can successfully

implement their knowledge through effective inclusive practices. Across the state, grantees report the

need to design and offer professional learning opportunities for PEG educators and administrators to

build their competencies around supporting inclusive practices. In response to this, PEG communities

are planning for joint professional development and thinking about the role of coaching to support these

efforts. EEC is intentionally providing local flexibility to address this need in a way that meets the needs

in the local context, while also encouraging collaboration with the public schools and leveraging existing

resources. EEC is engaging in planning for statewide professional development to support 

inclusive practices that will be informed by PEG grantees and feedback from other EEC grantees

through various workforce initiatives.

Examination of Service Delivery Models and Planning for Implementation

PEG communities continue to work toward creating more inclusive PEG classrooms and are working at
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the local level to identify ways in which PEG classrooms are included in the options of least restrictive

settings for children with IEPs as placement for next year's IEP services are determined. In PEG

communities, special education services are typically provided in an inclusive, public school setting.

For PEG funded children who have IEPS, they are typically dually enrolled in an inclusive preschool

classroom at the public school for part of the day and in the PEG classroom for the remaining part of 

the day/week. For example, in Lowell and Lawrence, children attend an inclusion public

prekindergarten classroom in the morning and are then transported to the PEG program for the

remainder of the day. The role of comprehensive services is particularly important for these children, as

these services often provide additional support throughout the entire day.

Enhanced coordination between LEAs and ELPs is proving to create movement toward the goal of 

improved inclusive preschool opportunities in PEG classrooms. Springfield has PEG classrooms colocated with public school classrooms with onsite speech, OT and PT service providers, and offer PEG

children with these IEP related services in the PEG classroom. Given that the public school special

education staff work with the public preschool classrooms, this model of co-locating classroom has

provided an opportunity to optimize expenses related to serving children with disabilities as the staff

can work together across public and community-based programs to directly deliver early childhood

special education services, provide consultation services with ELP staff and/or to work together to

proactively address the healthy growth and development of all children, including children with

disabilities.

Looking forward to year three of PEG, Springfield is considering how they might place a child who has

an IEP directly into the PEG program where they will provide all IEP services, including academic

supports. They have highlighted the importance of building relationships with special education

department staff so they know that PEG classrooms can be considered an appropriate, least restrictive

environment. Building on the critical alignment between early intervention, preschool providers and

public school programs, Springfield is beginning to capitalize on this strong coordination by working

more intentionally to place children with IEPs in PEG classrooms and providing all IEP services in the

PEG classroom instead of a public school classroom. This pilot is in the early stages of development and

will require additional thinking around how to logistically plan for a public school staff providing

services in the PEG classrooms. EEC looks forward to continuing to support Springfield and will 

gather lessons learned for this model so it can be considered in other communities.

Building State and Local Capacity to Support Effective Models of Inclusion and Professional

Development

At the state level, the 619 coordinator, Head Start State Collaboration Office, PEG staff, staff from

EEC's Workforce and Family and Community Supports Unit and staff from Head Start's regional

training and technical assistance network are working together to develop joint professional

development on inclusion to ensure that children with disabilities can have their needs met in

community-based programs. PEG grantee communities (including LEA PEG coordinators, ELPs, Head

Start disability coordinators and public school early childhood special education staff), as well as other

communities with Head Start grantees, are participating in a professional development and networking

opportunity called Building Inclusive Communities in Early Childhood. This collaborative effort to coconstruct a professional development plan with PEG communities came about as challenges related to

inclusion of children with disabilities were being discussed in communities. Through this initiative,

PEG communities are provided a platform to network, plan joint professional development, and discuss

models for service delivery along with other communities across the Commonwealth working towards

the same goal of strengthening inclusive practices.

Building on a statewide meeting of PEG grantees in April 2016 to discuss inclusion, members of the

state team facilitated conversations at the local level in three PEG communities in the fall of 2016. The

purpose of these meetings was to identify strengths, challenges and potential solutions for models of
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inclusion and professional development. Local meetings included PEG LEA and ELP partners, special

education directors, Head Start disability coordinators, and other relevant community partners. The

initial meeting for the Building Inclusive Communities series was offered in October 2016, where

communities were provided information from the joint policy statement around inclusion from The US

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Department of Education (DOE), as well

as resources from the Preschool Inclusion Toolbox resource. Action plans were developed and the

Workforce Development Specialist conducted follow up and continues to provide technical assistance

related to their plans. A webinar opportunity to discuss statewide progress occurred in January 2017,

and another in-person meeting is scheduled for March 2017 to continue these efforts.

Massachusetts PEG staff have been invited to discuss this work both at a session at the 2016 PDG

Grantee meeting in Arlington, Virginia, as well as a recent webinar on recruitment and enrollment of

children with disabilities for PDG grantees through the technical assistance network.
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Describe the State's progress in increasing the number and percentage of Eligible Children served in

High-Quality Preschool Programs funded by the grant.

Central to the design of the PEG program was attention to capacity building at the local level. The

intent of the PEG expectations has been to leverage local experience and organizational capacity to

build on and integrate current systems, public and private, moving towards a more coordinated

prekindergarten system at the community level. The following design factors have been critical to PEG

success in expanding access to high quality programs:

• The grant funding was distributed to collaborations rather than individual providers, allowing

each community to create a new system that built on the strengths of existing programs.

Head Start grantees are represented in each community and bring their experience providing

high quality services to family and children. Programs licensed by EEC and who have a

long history of serving children receiving EEC subsidies have also played a central role.

These programs are familiar with EEC requirements, have experience meeting the needs of

low income families and providing early education services in each of these communities.

Finally, the public school district serves as the LEA in each community and brings an

understanding of the elementary and secondary educational system that children receiving

PEG-funded programming will enter. The public schools are well situated to support

community-wide alignment and alignment between the PEG model and public school

programs.

• As the PEG-funded programs have been developed, EEC has relied on existing policies, while

prioritizing a family-friendly approach that focuses on ensuring children's needs are met. At

the foundation of the PEG model are the private, licensed programs providing services. 

EEC licensing regulations are some of the most stringent in the nation and ensure that

children are in safe and developmentally appropriate environments. PEG programs are all

required to participate in the Commonwealth's Quality Rating and Improvement System

(QRIS), to ensure continuing quality improvement. Attendance is also being tracked, as it is

in the subsidy system. However, in PEG programs the expectation is that programs will

work with the families in ways that support positive child and family outcomes. For

example, if children demonstrate chronic absenteeism, the program is expected to identify

the barriers for families and support change, rather than expel families for poor attendance,

as required by the subsidy system. In year two, PEG programs have built strong messages

about the importance of attendance into recruitment materials, parent handbooks and

ongoing parent communications. Programs report fewer chronic attendance issues and better

overall enrollment. In year one, the average attendance rate was 86 percent while in year

two it is 89 percent.

• Efforts have been made to consider the alignment of EEC policies through the implementation

process, both by ensuring that PEG requirements were aligned with current policies and

identifying challenges at the program level in implementing policies. For example, PEG

requirements are well aligned with the Commonwealth's licensing requirements; class size

and child-teacher ratio requirements are already required by licensing, for example. EEC

staff are also working closely with PEG programs to integrate the various requirements these

programs face. EEC's Workforce Specialist is working with programs to identify the

professional development requirements of the QRIS system, discuss each communities'

vision for professional development and determine a coherent plan to meet all these needs

with the time available. As the communities have collaborated more extensively on creating

aligned professional development plans, EEC has noticed that their professional

development expectations have in some cases exceeded those incorporated in the QRIS
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system.

• The monitoring process developed for PEG programs has also played an important role in

ensuring that access is available to high quality programs in the five PEG communities and

communities are working flexibly to build a strong program. Monitoring protocols have

been developed to assess both programmatic and fiscal compliance and technical assistance

was provided by EEC to the LEAs in the fall of year one. EEC now monitors the LEAs,

who monitor the ELPs and processes are well established.

• Meetings of regional monitoring teams, including all EEC staff with contacts with these

programs, have also begun and will meet twice a year to discuss PEG programs. Issues are

shared with the PEG director as they arise. This group includes EEC staff at the local level

including licensors, QRIS quality specialists, and the Regional Directors. Again, this model

builds upon EEC's infrastructure while focusing it in a new way.

The management of the PEG program has also focused on ensuring that existing resources are

leveraged and necessary capacity building is available. EEC PEG-funded staff regularly attend local

planning and implementation committee meetings. Through such frequent attendance, EEC staff have

built a deep understanding of each community, while being available to respond quickly to questions

about the design of the program as they have arisen. In some cases, issues can be quickly addressed at

the meetings, while others require EEC staff to bring questions back for consideration. In these

instances, due to the placement of the PEG director as a direct report to the Deputy Commissioner of

Program Administration, EEC is able to provide a quick responses to questions as they arise, ensuring

that communities' planning and implementation are not impeded.

To support ongoing attention to quality at the local level, EEC provides multiple opportunities for PEG

grantees to share information and receive technical assistance on different components of the grant.

State-wide meetings took place three times in 2016 and focused on a variety of topics including the

provision of comprehensive services, inclusion supports, and interpreting the PEG evaluation data.

Opportunities for cross-state planning and community level planning are included in all meetings.

The evaluation of the PEG programs being conducted in collaboration with Abt Associates and the

University of Massachusetts Boston has also provided important feedback to support quality

improvement efforts. During data collection, Abt provided data on classroom quality, program

implementation, teacher and parent experiences and child assessment results to programs, as it was

collected. This feedback loop allowed programs to make mid course adjustments and respond quickly to

issues being raised by the data collected. The programs also provided important feedback to EEC and

Abt about the usefulness of different measures for informing program decisions, feedback which 

has shaped the evaluation design in year two. A full report on the year one findings was provided to

EEC in the fall of 2016, a presentation of these findings was made to the EEC Board and they have been

reported to the state legislature. Overall, Abt's report concluded that collaborations between public

school districts and EEC-licensed private early education providers can be effective at designing and

implementing high-quality prekindergarten programs in a relatively short period of time. Classroom

observations revealed moderate to high levels of quality, on average, across different dimensions of 

quality. The children's scores on assessments of math, letter-word recognition, self-regulation and 

social skills conducted at the end of the program year, fell within an expected range of scores for

children of this age.

At the same time, some quality components remained only partially implemented or at levels lower

than desired, suggesting areas of focus for the second year of implementation. Measures of particular

interactions between teachers and children known to support language, literacy and conceptual

understandings identified very few classrooms demonstrating very high quality interactions and some
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demonstrating low quality. The children enrolled demonstrated vocabulary skills at the end of the

program year that were lower than expected based on a national sample, although the biggest

differences were observed among dual language learners. Implementation of some elements of the

design, particular family engagement supports, comprehensive services and inclusion, showed great

variability across programs. In year two, EEC's capacity building efforts will be responsive to these

results and target alignment of professional development supports, continued attention to improving

classroom quality particularly around children's language development, improved collaboration for 

inclusion, and more consistent provision of comprehensive services.

Finally, in support of preschool expansion efforts, the state legislature has made grants available in year

one and two of the PEG program for communities to plan for continued expansion of publicly funded

preschool. These grants were available to all communities in the Commonwealth, including the PEG

subgrantees, and supported needs assessment work, strategic planning and the identification of local

resources. Grantees were required to build collaborations between public schools and local EEClicensed programs and address all of the high quality elements required by PEG in their plans. Strategic

plans from the first year of planning grants were submitted to EEC in June and a report detailing the

common themes across communities was submitted to the legislature by EEC. Not only have these

planning grants laid the groundwork for expansion beyond the PEG subgrantees if funds are available,

they also supported continued strategic planning and needs assessment in the PEG communities.

1(b) GPRA Performance Measure: The number and percentage of children served overall in the

State Preschool Program. Please describe any increases or decreases in this GPRA measure

based on fall enrollment in the State Preschool Program for the 2016-17 school year.

A full 100 percent of PEG funding at EEC is dedicated to increasing the quantity of state-funded

preschool through private, EEC-licensed providers, due to the fact that there is currently no statefunded prekindergarten in EEC's budget. Funds for public preschool administered by ESE are

described below. All state funds disbursed by EEC are focused on improving the quality of the licensed

programs already in the system, i.e. Universal prekindergarten (UPK), Inclusive Preschool Learning

Environments (IPLE) grants, QRIS improvement grants, Educator Provider Support (EPS) grants,

Coordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) grants, Head Start Supplemental and Early

Childhood Mental Health (ECMH) grants all increase the availability of resources to support quality in

EEC licensed programs. The only public funding that is targeted at financing the full costs of 

providing early education services in private providers in Massachusetts comes from federal funds

through the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG).

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) provides Chapter 70 funding to public

school districts to ensure parity in education spending across districts. The numbers of four year olds

served in public school prekindergarten programming is accounted for in the formula that allocates

funding across districts, primarily directed at services to children with identified special needs in

inclusive classrooms. The PEG funds support private, EEC-licensed providers in expanding access to

programs outside of those run directly by public schools. The PEG design then includes public school

districts as key players in local design supporting better integration of these two systems. As a result,

there is a great deal of interest in learning from the implementation of the PEG model about how best to

develop a more integrated and more robustly funded system through the combination of local, state and

federally funded resources.

Through PEG funding, the number of eligible children enrolled in state supported prekindergarten

increased to 752 (we reported serving 702 children last year at this time). An additional 25 percent of

eligible children in the five communities served by PEG have had access to prekindergarten as a result
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of the grant. Of these children, 66 percent had never before attended any formal early education

program, suggesting that the extensive outreach conducted has engaged children who would have

otherwise gone to kindergarten without any formal early education. The state is very close to our

target enrollment of 755 and expects that enrollment will continue to increase over the course of the

school year, due to continued outreach efforts by the subgrantees.

Because of the expectation that PEG communities will integrate systems and programs across public

schools and community-based providers, communities are thinking carefully about how resources and

funding streams could be best knit together into a coherent and effective system for providing free

public prekindergarten to all eligible children in PEG communities. In particular, as we reach the

halfway point in the PEG funding, local sustainability conversations are beginning in earnest. Four of

the five communities took advantage of the state's preschool planning funds to support these efforts,

while Boston has been engaged in a planning process with the Mayor's office. As the PEG communities

consider how they might blend funding streams, the following issues are being considered:

• Exploring ways to use Chapter 70 funding can be used to support prekindergarten programs in

a public-private delivery system.

• Using Head Start funding to provide Head Start's comprehensive services to all PEG children

who would be eligible but are not being served in a Head Start program.

• Developing more centralized enrollment procedures that support eligible families in

identifying the best program for their family and child from the full set of possibilities

available in the community. Two communities currently have centralized the enrollment

processes at the public school kindergarten registration offices and provide referrals to all

free, publically funded programs in the community, including support in understanding

eligibility requirements. At the same time, public schools do not typically have relationships

with the Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agencies that manage subsidy

enrollment, so full information is not yet available. In three other communities, there is

recognition that programs have strong connections to the community, and therefore the first

point of contact is the program, as families are often familiar with the agencies and seek out

information there. In these communities, careful attention has been paid to information

sharing about all PEG programs.

• A subtext throughout all these discussions is a question of who "owns" the responsibility for

children served through a collaboration like PEG. The programs directly serving the

children are licensed by EEC. Ultimately, each program is therefore legally responsible for

the services they provide and EEC is the authority deeming them competent to provide such

services. Yet there are many opportunities for the collaborative provision of services which

raise questions about how responsibility is delegated when multiple organizations are

together serving one child. EEC has worked closely with programs to identify how staff

working directly with children might be shared across multiple programs. Additionally, the

needs assessments conducted in all communities and the efforts to think strategically about

enrollment have built a stronger sense of community responsibility in these collaborations.

The state legislature and public discourse in Massachusetts have also remained focused on how access

to high quality prekindergarten might be expanded. The legislature continued funding of the preschool

planning grants in year two of PEG, which will be focused on planning for sustainability of preschool

programming. A recent press release announcing the report to the legislature about the year one

evaluation findings has received some good coverage in news outlets across the state. The PEG

programs continue to serve the important role of demonstrating how high quality preschool can be

provided through public-private partnerships, and the successes and lessons learned from year one are

receiving broad attention.
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1(c) GPRA Performance Measure: The number and percentage of children in the High-Need

Communities served by the grant that are ready for kindergarten as determined by the State's

Kindergarten Entry Assessment or, if the State does not yet have a Kindergarten Entry Assessment,

other valid and reliable means of determining school readiness.

In the Year 2 APR, grantees will provide disaggregated data on the school readiness of the children served

by the grant. This may include information collected about the children served by the grant at the end of their

2015-16 preschool year or in their 2016-17 kindergarten year. States may provide data from a sample of

children (e.g., a sample being used for any evaluation).

In the Year 2 APR, grantees must describe their progress towards identifying the measures, methods,

and data on the school readiness of children served by the Preschool Development Grant. In the

narrative below provide the following information:

• The name of the assessment tool(s) and the Essential Domains of School Readiness

measured;

• When the assessment tool(s) is/are given (e.g., in preschool and/or kindergarten);

• Whether the assessment is mandated by the State, and for which children;

• How long the State has been using the assessment tool(s);

• Whether the assessment tool(s) is/are implemented throughout the High-Need Community

and/or Statewide;

• Whether the State provides or will provide training for local staff administering the assessment.

If so, describe the requirements including processes to ensure continued reliability in the

administration of the measure;

• If school readiness data is reported to the State, describe when and how data are reported.

Also, please describe, if applicable:

• The State's definition of "school readiness;"

• Disaggregated information about children's school readiness on individual domains or

subsets of the measure;

• School readiness data for children disaggregated by subgroup (e.g., students who are

American Indian or Alaskan Native; Asian, not Pacific Islander; Native Hawaiian/other

Pacific Islander; Black or African American; Hispanic/Latino; White, not Hispanic; two or

more races; with disabilities; English learners; and from any other subgroups the state

determines appropriate; and

• How the State will continue to make progress in meeting this GPRA measure.

Overview

MA Curriculum Frameworks provide our state's standards that guide not only the curriculum and

instruction provided for children at any grade, but also provide a framework, from preschool through

grade 12, of the skills and competencies that will support their ability to be successful in school. These

standards also provide our state with a guide for screening and assessment practices.

In determining the tools to use in identifying the school readiness of children served by PEG funded

programs, EEC has taken a two pronged approach. We have drawn on the experience with the

Massachusetts Kindergarten Entry Assessment (MKEA) initiative and are also leveraging the data that

we are receiving from the evaluation of the PEG programs.

GOLD by Teaching Strategies©

Massachusetts KEA utilized the GOLD tool, published by Teaching Strategies (TS GOLD). With the
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exception of a few districts that used the Work Sampling System, TS GOLD has been used in

kindergarten in districts that received the state's Quality Full-Day Kindergarten grant. PEG programs

were aligned with this effort and required to use the same tool. Unfortunately, the legislature's

elimination of the Full-Day Kindergarten grant from the FY17 budget has led to a reduced use of TS

GOLD in kindergarten classrooms. The checkpoints reported by programs at the end of the PEG

program now provide the only opportunity to use this tool to assess kindergarten readiness. This

checkpoint information is available to the state and could be analyzed to understand the Kindergarten

readiness of PEG children.

As the state continues to consider the use of the TS GOLD tool, a commitment to supporting formative

assessment remains. ESE is developing a statement about the key features of formative assessment with

recommendations for its use. One challenge reported with the MKEA was that the acronym led to an

erroneous expectation that the initiative was focused on identifying a student's competencies at entry to

kindergarten only, instead of reflecting a formative assessment framework that was designed to measure

a child's progress and inform instruction over time. The provision of professional development 

on formative assessment as well as reframing and evolving the initiative in this space (e.g., Formative

Assessment of Young Children: Improving Teaching and Learning in the Early Grades through

Observation) to more accurately reflect the goals that we are proposing through the state's joint position

statement on assessment in the early grades (in progress) would help to strengthen assessment practices.

In PEG programs, extensive professional development in the use of formative assessment is required as

part of QRIS participation and is ongoing in all communities. Statewide meetings of grantees have

included technical assistance on using data, including assessment data, to improve program quality.

The spring/summer TS GOLD checkpoint data provides a broad overview of children's development at

the end of the prekindergarten year across all domains of development. At the same, consultation with

the developers of the tool raised questions about its utility in providing a final determination on 

children's kindergarten readiness. Although benchmarks against age expectations could be identified 

for each of the domains measured, the tool was not developed to provide an overall assessment of

kindergarten readiness using data from all domains. Additionally, EEC wants to be sure that programs

remain committed to using this tool for formative assessment and focus attention on how the

information gathered over time can inform instruction. The lesson learned from MKEA about the ease

with which the focus on formative assessment can be lost have been taken to heart. EEC does not

require teachers establish reliability in using the tool, leading to concerns about the consistency of the

data quality. Finally, EEC has access to scores in each TS GOLD domain, but does not have the ability

to link individual level data to the database of PEG children, limiting our ability to disaggregate data by

child characteristics. As result, TS GOLD remains an important tool for the purposes of ensuring

teachers are attending to the kindergarten readiness of the children they teach, but may not be the most

effective tool for the purposes of state reporting.

PEG Evaluation Assessment Tools

The Abt evaluation provides a different type of data that could be used to assess kindergarten readiness,

the results of standardized assessments administered by trained assessors with a representative sample

of children for the purpose of identifying children's skills at a particular point in time. These results are

far more likely to be reliable and valid indicators of children's kindergarten readiness, although

challenges remain in integrating the results across measures and determining clear cut points. EEC also

owns the data that Abt gathers and can therefore link the evaluation assessment data to child specific

information in state data systems, using the State Assigned Student Identification (SASID) assigned to

each child when they enter the PEG program. This SASID also will facilitate efforts to gather data on

the child's progress in elementary school. As the data is held at the child level and can be linked to other

data sources, data can be disaggregated by program or other child characteristics as necessary.

However, this data is only drawn from the sample of children attending PEG programs and is a
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temporary data source. While the best tool currently available for state reporting on school readiness of

children generally in the PEG programs, it will be important for EEC to consider the implications for

sustainability of such reporting when the PEG program is finished.

Data and Usage

EEC will consider the lessons learned from the data derived from the assessment tools used as part of

the evaluation, and the process of using an external evaluator to collect data on a sample of children, as

a way to identify the overall performance of children in a state funded program.

For the purposes of reporting on school readiness in year two of the PEG program, EEC has decided to

use the results of one of the assessments used by Abt Associates, the Woodcock-Johnson, which

included the scale evaluating mathematical understandings (applied problems) and letter identification

(letter-word). This tool has the advantage of focusing on two key academic domains that are known to

correlate with later school success and was also administered in Spanish (the Woodcock-Muñoz) for

children whose home language was Spanish and who were not proficient in English. The sample of

children assessed was identified by randomly selecting children (six or more) in each PEG classroom to

test and therefore, provides a reasonable representation of the PEG program as a whole. Because this

tool is normed, the standardized scores can be used to identify a range of performance that is within the

range expected of children of the same age, thereby identify the number of children whose skills lag far

enough behind their age mates to put them at risk. Children had to have a score of 85 or higher on both

scales to be considered ready for kindergarten (reflecting the achievement of 84 percent of children in

the normed sample); 82 percent of children in PEG evaluated fell in this range, suggesting the skills of

PEG children are roughly comparable to the normed sample. Given the large percentages of English

language learners, recent immigrants and very low income children serve by PEG programs, groups

who often lag behind their peers, these results are promising.

PEG teachers will continue to use TS GOLD and attend to the real time opportunity it provides them to

understand the progress of children they teach towards kindergarten readiness. The TS GOLD tool

includes coverage of the five essential domains; in this particular tool, the indicators of development and

learning are grouped into six categories and include: social-emotional, physical, cognitive, language,

literacy and mathematics. The information about children's development reported in bi- annual

"checkpoints" is organized by the tool into "bands" that identify the typical ages at which 

particular skills and abilities emerge. These "bands" make it easy for programs to identify at a glance

which children are in normative ranges and for whom and for what domains additional support may be

required. When we review the data available from TS GOLD on PEG children to include an assessment

of social-emotional skills in our understanding of kindergarten readiness, we find the readiness rates in

this domain to be similar to those reported above on math and literacy skills, with 85-90 percent of the

children rated within or exceeding the widely held expectations for their age group. As we consider 

our efforts to understand kindergarten readiness in year two of PEG, we will request a report from each

program on the readiness of the PEG children as part of our summer audit process. We will then be able

to use this information to understand readiness patterns, as determined by programs, across the 

state. The report will also be available for programs to share with elementary schools and kindergarten

teachers. EEC will consider using these reports as a basis for further conversations about the strengths

and challenges they see facing the children they serve, and how they are responding to these issues.

Conversations about how the elementary schools feel these children compare to others entering

kindergarten and the areas of strengths and challenges they note could also follow.

Plans for Year 3 Reporting

Given the expectation that disaggregated data will be reported in year three, EEC will retain the same

processes for the report of school readiness, but will continue to provide updates on the state's long
lterm plans for formative assessment, screening and evaluation of school readiness.

I

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For Preschool Development Grants - Development Grants States ONLY:

1(d) GPRA Performance Measure: The number of States that collect and analyze data on State

Preschool Program quality, including the structural elements of quality specified in the

definition of High-Quality Preschool Programs.
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Section A: Part B - Selection Criteria

In this section of the APR, States will report on their progress addressing the Preschool Development Grant's

selection criteria. The State should read the questions carefully and report in the narrative fields directly below the

questions. Please include any data, data notes or formulas to help the readers understand the State's narrative

responses.

1. Ensuring Quality in Preschool Programs (Selection Criteria “C” of the application)

Describe the State's use of funds received over the grant period for State Preschool Program

infrastructure and quality improvements, including the State's efforts to implement a system of

monitoring and support at the State level toward activities such as those described in Section (C)(1)(ak) of the NIA.

Note: States will report amounts and percentage of funds for State Preschool Program infrastructure

and High-Quality Preschool Programs in the Competitive Preference Priority 3 Chart.

In Massachusetts, the PEG model is being looked to as an example of how support for high quality

prekindergarten implementation can be built into an aligned public-private system of early education.

In many ways, the first year of this federally-funded program has become a high profile testing ground

for how universal prekindergarten might be implemented - when ambitiously designed, carefully

supported, more fully funded and collaboratively implemented at the local, state and federal levels.

The manner in which EEC, LEAs and ELP agencies both monitor and support high quality program

implementation and the successes and challenges experienced in this program are informing

discussions about EEC's broader efforts to build a strong professional workforce and to support quality

across the early education system. In the context of PEG, supporting, monitoring and enhancing quality

is integrated throughout structural partnerships, both between EEC and LEAs, and the collaboration of

LEAs and ELPs at the local level.

Examples of areas where the PEG model is informing the development of infrastructure necessary to

sustain quality over time and across the system of early education state-wide are outlined below.

Structures for Collaboration and Coordination

The PEG design and coordination of funding and oversight includes an emphasis on direct service,

joint decision making, and overall concentration of efforts. It requires that funding and program design

decisions be made collaboratively by the local LEA and ELP partners. As we approach the second half

of year two, communities will begin to plan for year three with the support of state PEG staff.

EEC has maintained the staff dedicated to the PEG grant, although specific roles of staff have changed.

EEC hired the individuals charged with implementation of the PEG program carefully:

· Anita Moeller serves as the Deputy Commissioner for Program Administration. She has nearly

30 years' experience in early education. She spent 15 years as the founding executive director

of the Acre Family Child Care System and as served the Commonwealth since 

2001 in several roles including Head Start State Collaboration Director, EEC Regional

Director, EEC Director of Interagency Partnerships, and most recently as the Director of 

the Preschool Expansion Grant. Anita holds a Master's in Public Administration from the

Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

· Jocelyn Bowne now serves at the Director of Research and Preschool Expansion Grant
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Administration. Jocelyn came to EEC from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child.

Not only does she hold an Ed.D. from Harvard's Graduate School of Education with a focus

on early childhood research but she has prior personal experience as a preschool teacher in

New York City.

· Sarah Volkenant is the Workforce Development and Preschool Expansion Grant Specialist for

the PEG program. Sarah has worked directly with preschool teachers as a coach, has 

directly supervised coaches and has managed a coaching program in Arizona that was

closely tied with supporting programs' advancement through their QRIS. Sarah holds a

Master's degree in Educational Psychology. She also has experience as a preschool teacher.

As in the first year of PEG, an Interagency Service Agreement with ESE allows for the time of their

Early Childhood Team Lead, Donna Traynham. Donna brings years of experience and tremendous

expertise in early education policy - her close partnership in the PEG program exemplifies the

collaboration expected at all levels of program implementation. Donna serves as a consultant to the

PEG team, especially related to alignment of priorities and policies of ESE and EEC, including the

initiative to support inclusion, an ongoing statewide effort. She participates in team meetings, advises

on policy decisions, reviews documents and attends meetings with grantees as needed.

EEC uses the balance of PEG dollars to support the longitudinal study, joint professional development,

and is planning the development of information technology infrastructure that will support PEG and

enhance the system overall.

Professional Development

While coaching was not a required element of PEG, coaching models continue to emerge from PEG

grantees and as EEC considers an enhanced technical assistance and coaching model, and the integrated

delivery of professional development opportunities more generally, we will look to PEG to inform its

design. In three communities, PEG coaches also support public prekindergarten classrooms, and often

serve as the direct connection between partners to solidify alignment of practice. EEC's Workforce

Specialist is working across the system and providing opportunities for cross-community networking

and professional development for coaches and other instructional leaders. PEG coaches are engaged in

professional learning opportunities with other EEC funded coaches to enhance coaching practices,

building collaboration among PEG coaches and with other EEC funded coaches in their regions.

Inclusion

As described earlier in this report, EEC is looking to PEG for innovative collaborations between LEA

and ELP partners that better meet the needs of child with disabilities. Whether this results in fewer

transitions for children, new ways of funding services collaboratively, joint professional development

for teachers, or interventions that ultimately reduce the referrals to special education, EEC looks

forward to innovations to follow. Tremendous progress has been made as PEG grantee communities are

engaged in a statewide initiative that was described extensively in previous sections. EEC continues to

work closely with ESE and is in the early stages of considering ways in which PEG communities might

participate in professional development around particular models.

Tracking of Data

SASIDs continue to be assigned and EEC has developed methods for gathering data from each grantee,

including TS GOLD data that is entered on each child. As the program develops, EEC will consider

ways to tie elements such as these into developing systems such as the Child Care Financial Assistance

(CCFA) system and the Early Childhood Information System (ECIS) database.

Grant Monitoring
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The process for monitoring via a simultaneous fiscal and program approach, the use of Regional

Monitoring Teams, and the monitoring of ELPS by LEAs are all new methods of monitoring for EEC.

Standard procedures for monitoring remain consistent, and inform thinking around how EEC might

replicate these procedures with other programs and grants.

Research

With the longitudinal study, EEC continues to garner tremendous lessons from the PEG experience and

also determine other research resources to support EECs work more broadly. The year one evaluation

results were made available to programs in an on-going manner during Year 1 and have been useful to

PEG programs in determining mid-course corrections and have also received the attention of the EEC

Board and EEC staff developing the agency's workforce agenda. EEC continues to build its

collaborations with ESE and with the Regional Education Lab and consider opportunities to learn more

about the long term success of children in the PEG program, while also looking for opportunities to

inform the broader workforce efforts.

Roll-out of New Standards

While EEC has strong licensing requirements and has had Early Childhood Program Standards since

2003, new standards have been developed including; WIDA's Early English Language Development

Standards (E-ELD), Standards for Preschool and Kindergarten in the Domains of Social and Emotional

Learning (SEL) and Approaches to Play and Learning (APL). PEG communities have trained trainers in

the SEL/APL Standards and trainings have been offered to the community. As attention to 

supporting children who are dual language learners comes into focus in year two, PEG programs in

Lawrence and Springfield, who are planning for how they will offer training to teachers to learn about

strategies to support dual language learners, are using the standards as a guide.

Alignment of EEC-funded Supports

The PEG program challenges state and local partners to examine methods by which existing grant

funds can be aligned to support quality programming. For example, PEG programs are regularly

making use of the EEC funded supports of QRIS specialists, CFCE grantees, ECMH grantees and EPS

grantees. As PEG staff work closely with local grantees, EEC is able to gain new insight into the

challenges and possibilities that occur when programs with common goals align.

Funding

Simultaneous to PEG roll out is the state's development of plans for the implementation of newly

reauthorized CCDBG funding. Lessons learned from PEG will be available to inform EEC's design.

For example, PEG's focus on hard to reach families, with limited transportation, no parent fees,

streamlined eligibility determination, high expectations of quality, higher teacher qualifications and

compensation, combined with the results of the longitudinal evaluation, provides EEC with unique

insight into what these elements yield in terms of impacts on children, families, programs and the field

as a whole.

With its eyes on the PEG program, the MA legislature included $500K in EEC's fiscal year 2016

budget for the Commonwealth Preschool Partnership grant. This funding supported the development of

local strategic plans, based on the PEG model, for increased high quality preschool programming in

high-need communities. The resulting local strategic plans have informed EEC on the ability of the 13

communities selected for the grant to serve children in high quality preschool programs, much like the

current PEG model. Of these grantees, four are current PEG grantees who had the opportunity to

examine their ability to expand PEG-like preschool services to children starting at age three. In

reviewing the strategic plans, it is clear that expansion of high quality preschool is a need across the

Commonwealth. The plans confirmed that the PEG model is one that could be expanded in other

communities if funds were to become available, noting in many places that up to 50% of children are
ED 524B Page 28 of 56

entering Kindergarten with no prior preschool experience.

2. Expanding High-Quality Preschool Programs in Each High-Need Community (Selection

Criteria D of application)

Describe the progress the State has made during the reporting year to implement and sustain

voluntary high quality preschool programs for eligible children in two or more High-Need Communities

(Selection Criteria D(4) of the application) that include ALL structural elements listed below that are

included in the definition of High-Quality Preschool Programs. States should include detailed

information on ALL structural elements.

High staff qualifications, including a teacher with a bachelor's degree in early childhood

education or a bachelor's degree in any field with a State-approved alternative pathway, ✔ which may include coursework, clinical practice, and evidence of knowledge of content and

pedagogy relating to early childhood, and teaching assistants with appropriate credentials;

✔ High-quality professional development for all staff;

✔ A child-to-instructional staff ratio of no more than 10 to 1;

✔ A class size of no more than 20 with, at a minimum, one teacher with high staff qualifications;

✔ A Full-Day program;

Inclusion of children with disabilities to ensure access to and full participation in all

✔

opportunities;

Developmentally appropriate, culturally and linguistically responsive instruction and evidence-

✔ based curricula, and learning environments that are aligned with the State Early Learning and

Development Standards, for at least the year prior to kindergarten entry;

Individualized accommodations and supports so that all children can access and participate

✔

fully in learning activities;

✔ Instructional staff salaries that are comparable to the salaries of local K-12 instructional staff;

✔ Program evaluation to ensure continuous improvement;

On-site or accessible Comprehensive Services for children and community partnerships that

✔ promote families access to services that support their children's learning and development;

and
[Z] Evidence-based health and safety standards.

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ED 524B Page 30 of 56

Please describe the progress the State has made in establishing High-Quality Preschool Programs

that include ALL structural elements listed above that are evidence-based and nationally recognized

as important for ensuring program quality.

PEG has provided the Commonwealth with the opportunity to continue to advance high quality

preschool programs for children, aligned with federal High-Quality Preschool Program (HQPP)

standards, by building on our strong foundation of licensing regulations, expanding provider enrollment

and upward movement in the MA QRIS, with continued supports for workforce development. Ten of

the twelve structural elements of a HQPP as defined in the federal application package are included

across the MA quality standards. The two standards on which progress needed to be made to meet the

structural elements of HQPP for PEG were the requirement for a Bachelor degree educator in each

classroom and salary comparability with similar LEA positions. MA continues to be in compliance 

with these two remaining standards for programs funded through this grant.

Five high-need communities in Massachusetts -- Boston, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, and Springfield

-- are being funded to implement full-day, full-year preschool for four-year-olds through public-private

partnerships between the local public school district (the LEA) and two or three local licensed early

learning providers (the ELPs). The LEAs have been granted the funds and are subcontracting with the

ELPs for the direct services they provide to eligible children and families in the community. While the

ELPs provide direct services to the four-year-old children, the LEAs have worked with the ELPs to

create and sustain implementation plans that include all structural elements that are included in the

definition of HQPP. Minor adjustments in community plans for implementation have occurred across

the state, including the addition of coaching for year two and targeted, coordinated comprehensive

services.

Description of Progress and Accomplishments: Structural Elements of High-Quality Preschool

Programs

EEC requires that all PEG-funded LEA and ELP partners in each community complete a Direct Service

Summary (DSS) to outline an implementation plan for HQPPs for eligible children. All quality criteria

are used to guide collaborative local system-building efforts for preschool expansion services that will

support four year-old children in developing critical development and learning competencies needed 

for successful learning. These quality criteria encompass many of the elements measured through 

EEC's QRIS and through the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

Accreditation. The DSS tool was revised slightly to include more detailed information about direct

services funded through the PEG grant, and the addition of a professional development plan was

included in required documents for year two planning. Proposed quality enhancement activities

outlined in the plan are included in the narrative sections below.

Explicit guidance on quality expectations from EEC is outlined in the DSS and is intended to guide

implementation plan development that is driven by collaboration between the LEA and ELPs in each

partnership, allowing for local level flexibility. This local control ensures the plan addresses the unique

needs of the specific community. All PEG grantee plans and budgets are submitted by LEAs, and then

reviewed and approved by EEC staff on an annual basis. Mid-year program adjustments based on

findings from a system of continuous quality improvement and monitoring are required to be

documented and submitted to EEC for approval.

Ongoing monitoring of quality components occurs through regular EEC staff attendance at local grantee

meetings and through a fiscal and programmatic monitoring/audit process that occurs on an annual

basis. EEC fiscal and programmatic staff conducted a monitoring visit to every PEG community 

by mid-February 2016 to serve as a technical assistance fiscal and program compliance review for the
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PEG grant recipients. The purpose of the review was to analyze documented activities and observations

of the LEAs and their oversight of the ELPs to ensure that federal awards are used for the authorized

purpose in compliance with federal and state laws, regulations, and the provisions of contracts or grant

agreements and associated performance goals are achieved. This review serves as a precursor to a

formal audit that took place during the summer months of 2016, modeling the monitoring that is

expected at the local level. The formal audit provided the LEAs with a clear understanding of the

expectations of the grant requirements that will be monitored in their formal audits of their ELPs in the

winter months of 2016-2017. The formal audit provided an opportunity for EEC to assess all LEA's

compliance with the terms and conditions of the PEG grant, as well as, providing support if findings or

issues of non-compliance were identified. The review afforded EEC the opportunity to highlight sound

and innovative administration and management practices that may already be in place.

To date, the first round of LEA audits of ELPs have been completed, although Boston ELP audits are

still underway due to the high number of ELP partners in that particular community. An additional

round of ELP audits will occur in the summer months of 2017, in advance of the formal audits of LEAs

by EEC that are planned for July 2017.

High Staff Qualifications

“This is the most rewarding and satisfying job I've had in my teaching experience. I feel valued and

appreciated and I feel my education and experience was not only worth it but was looked at when I was

selected for this job. The master teachers were hand-picked which made me feel really good that it was

getting into the program that had values and goals and that my educational philosophies were

considered important” - PEG educator

Consistent with year one, all PEG-funded classrooms continue to be staffed by at least one highly

qualified educator. ELPs report that all lead educators have at least a Bachelor's degree in early

childhood or closely related field, and all classroom instructional staff meet the appropriate

credentialing requirements as outlined in the licensing regulations and policies established by EEC. In 

order to monitor this quality component, EEC requires that all LEAs submit all PEG classroom staff

information so the level of education and certification can be verified by internal EEC teacher

qualification systems. To date, there has been consistent compliance of this requirement, although

grantees still report the challenge of identifying and hiring highly qualified staff.

The majority of PEG-funded classrooms, approximately 86 percent, are staffed with lead educators

who are continuing in the PEG classroom for the second year. In discussions with one ELP, EEC

learned that teacher retention in their non-PEG programs was much less than this, anecdotally reporting

over 20 percent turnover of teachers. New staff continue to require additional training and orientation

on quality components of PEG to ensure fidelity to the model.

High-quality professional development for all staff

EEC-funded Professional Development Supports

In early education, the role and capabilities of the teacher/educator are pivotal to students' success. EEC

offers educator professional development and financial supports aimed at advancing the continued

development of educator skills and credentials. We partner in this work with the Department of Higher

Education (DHE) as well as two- and four-year institutions of higher education in the state.

The EPS grant funds a network of five regional grantees for professional development opportunities.

These grantees are EEC's primary vehicle through which early educators gain access to foundational

professional development opportunities, including providing credit-bearing coursework, and support

services including technical assistance, coaching and mentoring.

All PEG-funded programs have access to professional development through these existing structures
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offered regionally by EEC funded EPS grantees, are participating in the QRIS system and will attend

high quality trainings as required by existing QRIS standards over the course of the grant period. The

QRIS standards include requirements for professional development aligned with core competencies as

outlined by EEC and cover content related to curriculum, screening tools, assessment, supporting

positive relationships, the MA Guidelines for Infants and Toddlers and/or Preschool Learning

Standards, observation and documentation, working with children from diverse cultures, second

language acquisition, and improving the quality of health and safety practice: managing early education

and care settings that include children with allergies, special diets, and specialized feeding issues.

Local Plans for Professional Development

Local teams of LEA and ELP educational leadership continue to plan for intentional, integrated

professional development of PEG teachers, including training, coaching, and professional learning

communities.

PEG programs and classrooms are allowed five program closure days for professional development,

three additional closure days outside what is typically approved by EEC for programs receiving

childcare subsidies. Additionally, PEG programs in three communities were allowed up to five

additional closure days in between year one and year two, after submitting a proposal that was

reviewed and approved by EEC Senior Leadership. During this time, educators received additional

professional development, conducted home visits, and prepared classrooms for a new cohort of 

students.

In many communities, QRIS required professional development content serves as a foundation to

community-driven and developed content that is specific to the needs of the at the local level. With the

support of an EEC Workforce Specialist, EEC encourages that PEG programs to offer joint professional

development for all PEG programs in a community, with a focus on content that builds the capacity 

of educators around best-practices in early childhood classrooms. Some report that it is challenging 

to plan community-wide professional development with competing priorities and requirements 

of existing systems, but we continue to address this need for support and content development 

through facilitation of local meetings. In looking forward to year three, communities are considering

how they might offer professional development opportunities that build on foundational knowledge 

and extend educators' capacity to bring theory to practice. Each year, programs submit a professional

development plan to outline planned training and content to be covered, and often incorporate

opportunities for ELPs to participate in joint professional development. The professional development 

plans also include the approach to integrated workforce supports, including the role of 

coaching, strategies to coordinate various technical assistance and consultants, the role of classroom

quality data, and plans for professional learning communities. The design of these plans varies greatly

and is intentionally created to meet the needs of the grantee community, although similar content related

to the QRIS professional development requirements is included. As noted previously, one priority 

of joint professional development in year two and three is supporting inclusive practices.

PEG communities continue to report that the PEG model has allowed for more individualized, high

quality professional development than is typical for their other programs. Some partners attribute this

success to PEG, as it is an opportunity for partners to establish a community-wide vision for

professional development, by leveraging the expertise, strengths and resources of all early learning

partners. For example, in three PEG communities, Boston, Lowell, and Springfield, where the PEG

classroom curriculum aligns with the curriculum of the public schools, the LEA offers professional

learning opportunities through training and Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) on a regular

basis for public school Pre-K and PEG educators on curriculum modules, with a focus on effective

instructional practices. Professional development opportunities leveraged by PEG have promoted

public-private partnerships across the Commonwealth. Professional learning around curriculum as
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noted above is on example of cross-sector coordination that is occurring throughout the state.

In addition, grantee communities are building on system improvements at the community level for

professional development of PEG and non-PEG educators. Lawrence offered a professional

development opportunity for Pre-K educators in PEG, Pre-K educators at the public school, as well as

public school leadership, with a focus on the Social Emotional Approaches to Play and Learning (SEL/

APL). Coordination and alignment between public and private sectors has also leveraged more

informal professional learning opportunities. Lowell convenes a PLC for PEG prekindergarten and

public school prekindergarten educators to support implementation of curriculum modules that are

being piloted, while considering the adoption of these modules in year three of PEG more broadly.

Springfield PEG coaches are facilitating a PLC of PEG and non-PEG educators, including both

community based and public school prekindergarten educators, who are all implementing the same

curriculum.

Coaching and Educational Leadership

“I feel good about my job teaching in the classroom because I feel absolutely supported and

convinced that my job is important.” - PEG educator

In all five PEG communities, the LEA provides ongoing, individualized coaching support to ELP

educators as part of the PEG-funded model. In Boston, an existing coaching model is providing

intensive, monthly coaching to all PEG classrooms, in coordination with coaches and mentors from

some ELPs. Over the course of the grant period, the LEA hopes to build the capacity of ELP coaches

so an internal structure for coaching can be established. Other communities did not have existing

coaching staff available to support classrooms, so PEG funds are being used to fund at least one coach,

employed by the LEA, to provide classroom support to PEG educators on a monthly basis. Boston,

Holyoke and Springfield feature coaches that support both PEG and public prekindergarten classrooms.

Although there is variation in coaching throughout the state, there is a considerable amount of

consistency in coaching models, approaches and strategies. The introduction of coaching in PEG

communities has elicited conversations about the significance of reflective practice, supporting

effective instructional practices, and an increased focus on using curriculum content to differentiate

instruction to meet every child's learning needs.

“In the (coaching) feedback we were given, whether it was positive or negative, it was very valuable. I

never felt at any point in time that she was criticizing my teaching styles. It was just something that I

can personally reflect on. She recorded me teaching. We would be able to look back at the video and

say oh okay we could do that differently. I feel more confident as a teacher having her with me this

year.” - PEG educator

“That (coaching) perspective is really helpful. At the beginning, we felt like we were good and that we

were checking things off the list and we were doing well. But our coach gave us a new set of eyes and I

felt like it made us better. Every time we moved on to a new unit, it was a new perspective and it made

us better." - PEG educator

PEG coaches are also engaged in professional development and networking opportunities in year two

of PEG. In some communities, they participate and support the work of the Building Inclusive

Communities work at the local level. They also participate in a training and technical assistance series

with other EEC funded coaches across the state to build capacity around effective coaching practices.

EEC is also in the process of awarding a contract with a vendor to offer PEG instructional leaders,

including PEG coaches and program directors, to build their capacity to determine how curriculum is

selected, and how leadership can support teachers in using the curriculum, with particular attention to

integrating curriculum implementation with quality child-teacher interactions and differentiation of
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instruction. This series of seminars/panels and specific PLC strands for directors/coaches and other

administration should begin in March 2016 and continue throughout the remainder of year two.

Additionally, the majority of PEG coaches attended a Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS)

certified observer training offered by a Teachstone certified trainer in early winter 2016. By

participating in this training, coaches have a framework and a common language by which they can help

support effective classroom practices with educators. The approach and stage of implementation related

to this is in early development. A follow-up meeting after the CLASS training occurred in 

February 2016 and plans for continuing to support coaches with using the CLASS tool, with a specific

focus on the instructional support domain, are underway.

As a result of coaching and additional staffing, structures have been put in place for PEG classrooms to

offer more non-instructional time for educators, allowing for additional time to meet with coaches to

discuss ongoing progress in goals, joint lesson planning with other educators, and professional learning

communities for lead educators.

Additionally, all PEG-funded classrooms have an opportunity to participate in the longitudinal study of

the PEG model that will provide communities with access to classroom quality and child-level data at

least once per year. PEG communities have received community and program level data and have

thought carefully about how this information should inform professional development planning for 

their communities. Common trends were identified and integrated into local professional development

planning meetings.

Statewide PEG Grantee Meetings

The PEG EEC staff continue to facilitate statewide grantee meetings to promote cross-community

learning, respond to emerging challenges related to implementation, and build local leadership capacity.

For example, in response to challenge of fully implementing comprehensive services, EEC invited

panelists from the Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Children's Behavioral Health 

Initiative, a part of the MA Executive Office of Health and Human Services, to offer resources around

supporting children and families behavioral and mental health both statewide and regionally. After the

panel, grantees participated in facilitated, cross-community discussions and planning for 

comprehensive services in year two. In November 2017, EEC facilitated another statewide grantee

meeting to review the year one PEG evaluation data from a statewide level and brainstorm implications

for implementation. Additionally, reflections and planning for summer programming in PEG was also

discussed. As a result, grantee communities were connected to additional resources, a platform for

ongoing planning and implementation, and learned successful practices from other communities across

the state.

The PEG EEC team is in the process of planning another statewide meeting to discuss trends in specific

statewide progress in the high quality preschool components as outlined in PEG and an opportunity to

reflect and plan for implementation adjustments for year three. Topics will include planning for

inclusion, summer programming, and transition to K activities.

A child-to-instructional staff ratio of no more than 10:1

Year two PEG classrooms were open by September 2016. From the beginning of implementation, all

PEG classrooms have maintained at least a child-to-instructional staff ratio of no more than 10:1,

consistent with the expectations outlined in the EEC licensing regulations. ELPs have budgeted for

additional teaching staff or substitute teaching staff to be scheduled during PEG program hours to cover

classrooms, allowing for more non-instructional time for teaching staff. The protected time outside of

classrooms has provided lead teaching staff more curriculum planning time within classrooms and

across classrooms. Non-instructional time has also allowed for time for lead instructional staff to meet

with coaches to reflect on progress of established classroom goals. A three teacher per classroom model

is implemented in some PEG classrooms as a strategy to maintain appropriate ratios in consideration
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for break times and staffing schedules for a full-day program. In some classrooms, the third teacher is

present for most of the day to support the classroom lowering ratios below the required 10:1, while in

other classrooms the third teacher is scheduled at specific times in order to alleviate other staff for

breaks and planning time.

A class size of no more than 20 with, at a minimum, one teacher with high staff qualifications

PEG classrooms across the Commonwealth have all been designed and staffed to maintain a class size

of no more than 20, with at a minimum, one teacher with high staff qualifications since the beginning

of the program year. In Lawrence, there are classrooms with smaller group sizes (of no more than 10

children) due to limitations in physical space and the need to maintain EEC licensing requirements.

Additionally, a number of PEG-funded lead educators have a Master's degree in early childhood or a

related field, and some programs report that some classrooms are staffed with more than one teacher

with a Bachelor's degree. EEC has also required that lead educators be EEC teacher certified in PEGfunded classrooms. Through the monitoring process, EEC continues to support the LEA in verifying the

staff qualifications in PEG-funded classrooms. In the formal audit visits to each PEG community, EEC

encouraged LEA's to conduct onsite monitoring visits to PEG-funded programs and classrooms to

ensure appropriate class sizes and staff qualifications.

A Full-Day Program

In response to the federal requirement of a full-day program, EEC required that all PEG funded

classrooms offer eligible children access to full-day (at least eight hours), full-year (52 weeks) highquality preschool programming. An expanded program, with up to 10 hours a day (in some programs)

for a full calendar year provides more access for high-risk families and their children. All PEG-funded

classrooms operate on an extended full-day, full-year schedule.

PEG programs work with families who request less hours of preschool programming on an individual

basis, and per EEC requirements, children in PEG funded slots must receive no fewer than six hours of

PEG programming.

As mentioned in previous narrative sections, there are some PEG children who attend a public

inclusion classroom in the morning and a PEG classroom in the afternoon to provide access to a fullday program. In all situations, the best interest of the child and family must be considered. Preschool

services can be offered during non-traditional hours if deemed needed by the grantee community. This

wrap-around model has been particularly successful in Springfield and Lowell. The Springfield PEG

classrooms are co-located with public school inclusion classrooms, so the transition to a PEG

classroom in the afternoon is as simple as walking the child down the hall. Lowell Public Schools and

Lawrence Public Schools have worked closely with the PEG ELPs to provide transportation for

children with IEPs that attend PEG classrooms in the afternoon.

Inclusion of children with disabilities to ensure access to and full participation in all opportunities

As part of the DSS, EEC requires that all PEG grantees create and implement plans for services

provided for four year old children to be reflective of services and supports that include all children,

including children with disabilities, children who are English language learners, children who are

experiencing homelessness, children from refugee and immigrant families, children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and children from military families. Programs are required to plan for

curriculum, instruction and assessment practices that are designed to include appropriate

accommodations, modifications and individualized supports so the needs of all children are met.

Historically, while many children with IEPs attend community-based programs, the majority of 

children receive their special education services in public school settings. As a result, the infrastructure

didn't always exist to serve children in community-based settings. However, as the PEG sites remain in
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a unique position to collaborate to better serve children with disabilities in community-based settings,

although this remains a challenge. Many communities continue to build collaborative models where

ELP staff and public school early childhood staff work side by side to support all children, including

eligible children with disabilities. The communities also continue to streamline the process for referring

children for whom there may be concerns about development. These conversations also provide

opportunities for LEAs and ELPs to work together to determine how to best respond to a child's needs,

with or without an IEP, and the most appropriate placement for the delivery of IEP services, should the

child be identified as eligible.

In Springfield, many PEG classrooms are located in a public school-owned building alongside public

school preschool classrooms; in Holyoke, the ELP classrooms are co-located in elementary school

buildings that also house public school preschool classrooms as well as K-8 classrooms. Given that the

public school special education staff work with the public preschool classrooms, this model of colocating classrooms has provided an opportunity to align services for children with disabilities as the

staff can work together across public and community-based programs to directly deliver early childhood

special education services, provide consultation services with ELP staff and/or to work 

together to proactively address the healthy growth and development of all children, including children

with disabilities.

At each subgrantee, the expectation is that 6.9 percent of children served will be children with

disabilities (this target is derived from the statewide percentage of children with disabilities, as this is

larger than the federal percentage). There are two primary challenges that Massachusetts has faced in

serving children with disabilities in PEG classrooms. These challenges, and EEC's response to these

challenges, is described in great detail in previous narrative sections. To summarize, the majority of

children with disabilities in Massachusetts receive their IEP services from the public schools in public

school settings. As can be gleaned from Indicator 6 data, while over 70 percent of children with

disabilities receive their IEP services in partial or full inclusion settings, the majority of those services

are delivered in inclusive public school settings. As a result, we expect that a large percentage of

children with IEPs in these communities are already enrolled in public school inclusion classrooms. We

also recognize that children are enrolled in multiple settings and, as such, EEC and PEG grantee

communities continue to plan for how they might implement IEP services in PEG classrooms when

appropriate. Also, because Massachusetts prioritized children who are not currently enrolled in any

formal early childhood classroom, children already enrolled in public school settings, including children

with disabilities, were not eligible. In response to this challenge, children with IEPs who have previous

or current formal education experience are eligible for PEG in year two.

Communities feel strongly that, in many cases, provision of comprehensive services will support the

children to make process and ultimately, result in fewer referrals to special education. Due to these

factors, we expect that the 6.9 percent threshold is more likely to be met toward the end of the program

year (August 2017).

As PEG programs are being considered when decisions are made about the least restrictive

environment, EEC and ESE are also working to ensure that educators in PEG classrooms have the

appropriate training and supports to serve children with disabilities. EEC, in collaboration with ESE

and the Head Start Collaboration Office, is offering a professional development series on inclusion. At

the local level, communities like Holyoke, Lowell and Springfield have offered, or plan to offer joint

professional development opportunities to educators around the referral and IEP process and how to

adjust instructional practices to meet accommodations outlined in the IEP.

Developmentally appropriate, culturally and linguistically responsive instruction and evidencebased curricula, and learning environments that are aligned with the State Early Learning and

Development Standards, for at least the year prior to kindergarten entry
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EEC requires that efforts focused on this quality indicator should ensure that preschool curricula are

age appropriate, aligned to the MA Curriculum Frameworks and integrated across content areas.

Additionally, PEG requires that implementation of curricula should be reflective of instructional

approaches that are appropriate and supportive of the ways in which four year-old children learn.

In an effort to be responsive to the variation across communities, EEC has encouraged PEG grantees to

select a curriculum that meets the needs of the specific community and aligns with a community-wide

vision to support Kindergarten readiness.

In response to this requirement, two PEG communities have adopted curriculum for PEG classrooms

that aligns with the public school early childhood programs (prekindergarten and kindergarten) and one

is piloting aligned modules. Springfield and Boston implement curriculum in the PEG classrooms that is

also being utilized by public prekindergarten classrooms. These communities offered professional

development to all educators and continue to support curriculum implementation through onsite

coaching provided by the LEA. In year two, Lowell is piloting curriculum modules that are being

implemented in the public school classrooms, and considering how they might expand this curriculum

more broadly in PEG classrooms in year three. In year two, Lawrence ELPs adopted the same

curriculum and have put onsite coaching supports in place to ensure effective implementation.

Alternatively, other grantee communities have selected to remain with or expand upon curricula

already being used by their non-PEG funded classrooms and have been historically used by their

organizations. Regardless of the curriculum selected, it is a statewide requirement that all curriculum

are aligned with State Early Learning and Development Standards and Curriculum frameworks as set

out by EEC and ESE.

Throughout the grant period, all PEG programs continue to meet all EEC licensing requirements for

health and safety standards. Additionally, each PEG partner will seek and maintain NAEYC

accreditation and QRIS level 3 or seek and maintain QRIS level 4 by the end of the grant period. QRIS

program participation provides a structure to monitor and support appropriate learning environments

and quality improvement efforts as measured by the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale

(ECERS), and either the CLASS or the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale. The nature, context and

content of interactions between the educators and children will be measured in the evaluation/

longitudinal study and participation in the QRIS by tools such as the CLASS and ECERs. To date, the

majority of PEG programs are making steady progress in NAEYC accreditation and/or the QRIS 

system and are on target to meet the requirements no later than the end of the grant period. Data

collection for the evaluation of the PEG program began in year one, and this will continue into year

two. EEC plans to work with individual communities to ensure the classroom quality data is being used

to support classrooms and programs in continuous quality improvement and to inform program

implementation as it relates to curriculum and classroom learning environments.

Individualized accommodations and supports so that all children can access and participate fully

in learning activities

As part of a cross-agency collaboration, Massachusetts adopted the Center on the Social Emotional

Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) Pyramid model, providing a policy-level structure to

support all programs in the mixed-delivery system an opportunity to understand and implement

practices that support the individual needs of children, specifically around social and emotional

development. Intensive professional development around the CSEFEL model is offered to the mixeddelivery system, and is accessible to members of the PEG programs. As a result, many PEG programs

across the state consider the practices as outlined in the model as a guide and integrate components in

professional development opportunities for educators, family engagement staff and comprehensive

service providers.

To ensure that all PEG programs are providing individualized accommodations and supports so that all
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children can access and participate fully in learning activities, EEC requires PEG programs to create

and submit a plan for assessing the progress of children across developmental domains as a critical

component of the standards-curriculum-instruction-assessment continuum. Systems in place to use data

gathered from the comprehensive assessment system to inform continuous program improvement and

instructional supports for children is key and is a requirement of PEG in each community.

As part of a comprehensive assessment system, PEG communities use a developmental screening tool

to determine individual needs and developmental milestones of children and use this data to inform

instruction and refer children to additional screening if needed. EEC has allowed flexibility at the local

level to determine the most appropriate tool. Some communities are also in the process of identifying

and implementing a home language screening tool for children.

TS GOLD is the required formative assessment tool statewide for PEG. Communities are working

toward using the data collected to inform instruction and professional development for PEG educators

at a local level, taking into account the needs of diverse learners, and this process is supporting

identification of professional development topics related to assessment at a statewide level. PEG

communities continue to discuss strategies to share data with kindergarten teachers or other elementary

school administrators at the community level, in preparation for a child entering kindergarten, although

attention will be paid to this as the transition of the current cohort of children occurs in the late summer

of 2017.

Initial PEG community planning included discussions around what information about children's

development would be helpful to share to support the kindergarten transition, the appropriate platform to

share the data, and what professional development is needed to support teachers in the use of the data.

In year one, the challenge of sharing assessment data for children transitioning into kindergarten became

apparent, as children are often going to many different elementary schools across a community, making

it challenging to identify and connect with the kindergarten teacher before the child transitions.

Lawrence has made some progress in sharing some developmental information about children, in part

due to relationships with the principals in local elementary schools. The Lawrence PEG partners

identified places where they want to enhance their transition efforts, and are working alongside the

Family Resource Center at Lawrence Public Schools and the Lawrence Learns Kindergarten Readiness

initiative, to streamline processes. Other transition activities to date have largely focused on supporting

the family in the transition to kindergarten, including family information sessions, visits to local

elementary schools, and family events to support kindergarten registration. The EEC PEG team plans to

include this topic on the agenda of the upcoming statewide grantee meeting in March so grantees can

work with each other to consider other transition activities they may want to plan for this summer.

Instructional staff salaries that are comparable to the salaries of local K-12 instructional staff

All PEG funded lead educator salaries are commensurate to the public school prekindergarten educators.

In most cases, this is a significant increase in salary, with the exception of some full-day 

Head Start programs where the salary increase is only slightly higher in PEG. ELPs in PEG

communities report that identifying and hiring highly-qualified staff for PEG classrooms proved to be a

challenge, as there is a shortage of highly qualified staff available in the general early childhood

community in Massachusetts. Partners report that in their non-PEG funded programs, they encounter

similar staffing challenges. We believe that by providing PEG educators a salary commensurate with

the public school, we can anticipate increased staff retention in PEG-funded classrooms, allowing

consistency and increased continuity of care for eligible children, a structure to implement a process of

continuous quality improvement in PEG classrooms, and additional opportunities to build competency

and overall capacity of classroom educators through ongoing professional development. In year one,

lead teacher retention reached approximately 86 percent (when considered at the classroom level across 

PEG), and retention of assistant teacher is reported at approximately 50 percent. With this in mind,

anecdotal reports from PEG grantees describe how higher compensation for lead teachers is likely a
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contributing factor to increased retention in PEG. Salaries of instructional staff in PEG classrooms

continues to be monitored throughout the grant period.

Although the base salary of PEG educators is comparable to the salaries of local K-12 instructional

staff, the actual relative compensation of the full-time, full-year PEG educators is less than the public

school staff when broken down to an hourly rate. Local K-12 instructional staff work fewer hours per

day and only nine months per year, compared to the PEG educators who work longer hours per day for

the entire calendar year. It is difficult to ascertain how many PEG educators have left PEG programs

for a public school position, as ELPs do not have information from all staff that may have been

collected during an exit interview. In year two of PEG, grantees have not reported this as a consistent

challenge, although the question of how they might retain and compensate staff after the grant funding

is gone is beginning to surface.

Program evaluation to ensure continuous improvement

EEC awarded a contract with a vendor to perform a multi-component longitudinal evaluation of the use

of PEG funds in Massachusetts, to learn from the communities implementing the PEG grant, support

quality improvement at the local level, and inform decisions about sustaining and expanding programs

and policies developed through this grant.

Abt Associates, a research firm located in Cambridge, MA, in partnership with the University of

Massachusetts Boston, was awarded a contract to implement the evaluation beginning in January 2016.

Abt is working closely with the EEC PEG team to plan and inform the implementation of the

evaluation.

Over the years of PEG funding, the multi-component evaluation plan includes: 1) a formative

evaluation of PEG implementation and PEG-participating children's development completed in year

one, 2) an evaluation of the impacts (short-term and longitudinal) of PEG programs on children and

families, and 3) an analysis of the costs of the quality improvements with preliminary estimates of costeffectiveness.

In the first year, EEC was particularly interested in understanding: how each grantee is implementing

their PEG programs; how implementation of PEG requirements distinguishes PEG classrooms and

teachers from non-PEG classrooms in similar programs in the community; how PEG participation has

shaped programs; what PEG implementation and associated inter-agency collaborations require of 

ELPs and LEAs; what approaches to collaboration and leadership are most effective; and the needs and

skills of the population PEG programs serve.

The first year of the PEG program has shown that collaborations between public school districts and

licensed early education providers can be effective at designing and implementing high-quality

prekindergarten programs in a relatively short period of time. Major findings from the evaluation

included:

• At the end of their year in the PEG program, the children demonstrated age-appropriate skills in

math, letter-word recognition, self-regulation and the ability to develop positive relationships;

• Teachers were well compensated, well-educated and generally satisfied with their positions;

• The classroom observations conducted six months after opening found moderate to high levels of

quality across three different measures of important dimensions of classroom quality; and

• The majority of families surveyed reported feeling well informed and connected to the program

and confident in their ability to communicate with their child's teacher

EEC provided PEG grantees with opportunities to work across and within communities to review the
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evaluation data to inform implementation plans and budgets for year two. Statewide aggregated data of

classroom quality from measurement tools such as the CLASS, Early Language and Literacy

Classroom Observation (ELLCO), (Classroom Observation of Early Mathematics and Teaching

(COEMET), and the Observation of Language and Literacy Instruction: Snapshot of Classroom

Activities (OMLIT-Snapshot) was shared with grantees in a statewide grantee meeting, and at

stakeholder meetings in grantee communities. Reflections and implications for program implementation

and planning for professional development were discussed. From an EEC perspective, the 

evaluation data helped to inform the plan to provide a professional learning opportunity for 

instructional leadership in PEG, including administrators, program directors, and coaches, where there

will be a specific focus on understanding key considerations for curriculum, the integration of effective

instructional strategies that lend to positive child outcomes, and the role of leaders in supporting

educators. Training has been provided to all coaches in year two in one of the classroom observation

tools that will be a consistent component of the evaluation throughout the four years of the program.

This will support coaches in understanding the data provided by the evaluation and more effectively

working with teachers to improve the quality of child-teacher interactions.

As part of the evaluation, there is also interest in understanding who is choosing to attend PEG

classrooms, the areas of strengths and challenges in these children's development and the growth that

occurs during PEG participation into elementary school. In year two and beyond, EEC is also

interested in evaluating impacts and understanding the cost of quality improvements, in addition to

continued monitoring of implementation.

On-site or accessible Comprehensive Services for children and community partnerships that

promote families' access to services that support their children's learning and development

“For the families, the program is great for them. My relationship with parents is so much richer

than other centers I've worked in, and that has to do with us building a bridge - making them

feel comfortable in classroom, inviting them to monthly events, even just taking the time to talk to

parents at these events, and having events specifically for parents. In the beginning of the year,

tough, but now they like coming into classroom and they're comfortable.”- PEG educator

“Each teacher is very attentive to the child and they notice anything happening or differences in

the child's day and they communicate this to the parents. I feel like they (the teachers) are 

parents as well.” - PEG parent

Plans to deliver high-quality comprehensive services and community and family engagement strategies

have been required of all PEG grantee communities from the beginning stages of the implementation

year. Like other PEG-required high quality preschool program indicators, EEC provided guidance in the

DSS tool to every grant community with the expectation that each community develop and submit a

plan and budget that meet expected programmatic enhancements.

All PEG communities include a Head Start partner and many communities have adopted components

of family engagement and comprehensive service strategies based on the Head Start model.

Additionally, as part of the QRIS, programs are required to be trained in and adopt the Strengthening

Families framework. In most non-Head Start community based organizations, offering a menu of

comprehensive services at this level is a new practice, but has been refined in year two based on

challenges and lessons learned from year one of implementation.

There remains a significant amount of variation in community level plans to offer comprehensive

services, as some services are being offered directly by the LEA partner, some via PEG funds, some

accessed via other EEC-grant funded initiatives and others are contracting services to existing

community vendors. Grantees continue to report that these additional services allow for greater access
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to specialized support staff, including but not limited to literacy specialists, mental health consultants,

nurses, occupational therapists, vision and screening services, and speech therapists.

In year one, all communities discussed the ongoing challenges in providing these services to children,

highlighting the challenge of creating a streamlined process for creating access to services for children

who are in various ELPs in one grantee community. In places where the provision of services varies

across all ELPs, LEAs report the challenge of monitoring the provision of these services, and in

response, have put clear expectations in place around what documentation will be collected during the

audits to verify implementation of comprehensive services paid for by the grant. EEC staff continue to

support communities through ongoing technical assistance and attendance at monthly grantee meetings

to ensure comprehensive services are being adequately funded and accessible moving forward.

Additionally, reflecting on and planning for comprehensive services in year two of PEG was a topic at

a statewide grantee meeting in June 2016.

In response to the lessons learned in year one, grantee communities have made progress in the effective

implementation of these services. Overall, grantees have refined the approach to comprehensive

services, and, in most cases, have a more targeted approach to what services they provide and at an

increased intensity. Furthermore, grantees across the state have highlighted the need to increase and

streamline access to mental and behavioral health services for children in PEG. In year two, Boston

ELPs are all contracting with a community organization that provides mental and behavioral health

consultation for children, onsite technical assistance for educators, and training. In Lowell, a

comprehensive service and family engagement coordinator was a newly funded position in PEG and

provides oversight and coordination of all comprehensive services and general resource referrals for

families. Lawrence also increased the intensity of mental and behavioral health supports for children in

year two. One ELP in particular funded a new mental health consultant position that provides support 

to children and families. In planning for year two, Springfield LEAs and ELPs created a comprehensive

service menu to provide programs guidance on what specific services would be available to all children,

regardless of the program they are enrolled in. ELPs in Springfield and Holyoke included onsite 

mental health consultation in their plans for year two.

In Springfield, Lowell, and Lawrence, plans for year two comprehensive services also include onsite

speech/language, occupational and physical therapy, in some cases contracted directly by the public

school but also through contracts with local community organizations. Various technical assistance

providers working with children and families in PEG programs has led to local level efforts to

coordinate the team of technical assistance providers available to staff in the early care and education

programs. The procedures and guidance for the coordination of services is in development across

grantee communities.

Every PEG community continues to engage with local EEC-funded CFCE grantee coordinators and

other community partners to conduct outreach and provide support to educators working with families

enrolled in the community partner programs, with a particular focus on outreach strategies for hard-toreach children and families, including those not currently served by early education and care programs.

Toward these efforts, all PEG grantee communities have hired at least one family engagement

specialist to work directly with families of PEG-funded children. In most communities, the family

engagement staff are bilingual and support families with translated materials and resources. Family

engagement staff in each community work collaboratively with educators and leadership of public

schools and community based providers to define and implement a community-level strategy to

integrate family engagement strategies throughout the preschool programs.

“English is my 4th language, not a native speaker. I am more than satisfied. My kid really improved.

The program helps us where we cannot reach as parents, as we have some limits. We would like

[him] to also become independent. The way of figuring that out really came from this program. I

want to say thank-you.” - PEG parent
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Although there is a significant amount of variation in the intensity and frequency of family engagement

activities in PEG communities, PEG communities strive to meet families' individual needs as much as

possible. The following activities are common practices across the PEG grantees.

Community Events and Resources

- "Parent/Family Night" - Families are invited to the program to engage in curriculum related

activities with their children in the classroom/program setting. Families are also provided

resources related to the curriculum to extend children's learning to the home environment, as 

well as cultural events that reflect the diversity of the children in the program, such as a family

cooking night.

- Supporting literacy through resources and community events- Family engagement staff offer

events to educate parents and families on the importance of language and literacy development

through events at local libraries and parent groups to support early reading.

- Newsletters and Parent message boards - Programs create documents that include program

highlights and tips for parents.

- Open House - Families are invited to the child's program at the beginning of the school year in an

effort to support the transition into the program.

Information Sessions and Program Orientation

- Parent/Family information sessions - Program staff invite families to sessions on topics of interest

based on a family needs assessment. Topics include but are not limited to financial literacy,

safety practices for the home, and developmentally appropriate expectations.

- PEG orientation for families - most PEG communities introduced an orientation for incoming

parents at the beginning of the program year to review the features of the program, provide

guidance on program expectations and policies, discuss services available for children and

families, and introduce key personnel to parents.

Transition to Kindergarten Supports

- Grantee communities work collaboratively with the public schools to support the transition to

Kindergarten. ELPs offer onsite registration and outreach events for families throughout the

spring and summer and help families' complete required enrollment paperwork.

“It's the readiness books program and I wish everyone had an opportunity. This has taught me to

enjoy reading too and it not only changed my child but changed my motivation and willingness

to read. It's changed me too.”-PEG parent

Targeted Focus and Individual Supports

- Family Support Specialists are onsite in PEG programs in four of the five grantee communities.

The family support staff often speak multiple home languages, participate in home visits before

and during the program year, and provide families with access to resources that meet their

individual needs.

- Home visits - Family engagement staff and educators develop plans to facilitate outreach to

families in the home at the beginning of the school year and throughout the year as needed. The

frequency and strategies implemented vary between programs and communities, but programs

offer families information about child development and age-appropriate expectations.

Creating a network of support

- Connecting families to each other for support - Parent support groups are delivered in one
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community as a way to promote a network of support for families.

- Community-based resources - PEG programs connect families to resources in their community

that may not be directly provided in the PEG program.

PEG evaluation focus group findings include that families feel the program has offered more social

connections for families, allowed for a parents to seek and maintain employment and go back to school.

Evidence-based health and safety standards

Quality program standards, including evidence-based health and safety standards, for all early care and

education settings have been adopted by the Commonwealth. These include EEC licensing of preschool

programs, the QRIS, Federal Head Start Performance Standards, and NAEYC accreditation standards.

The EEC licensing regulations are recognized as some of the most ambitious in the country. Ensuring

all programs are frequently monitored and well-supported is crucial to the health and safety of children,

and to align the state's monitoring performance with its robust regulations, EEC continues to develop

new differential monitoring processes that will maximize the utilization of agency staff, enable more

frequent interaction between EEC staff and programs, and acquire additional licensing staff to improve

caseload ratios.

Selection Criteria (D)(4) from NIA

Describe the number and percent of Eligible Children served and the cost per slot.

All PEG-funded HQPP slots for eligible children reported here are considered new preschool slots, as

Massachusetts focused on expanding access to preschool rather than improving quality in existing

state-funded classrooms. None of the PEG-funded classrooms were supported by any of the grant

funding that EEC has considered its key support for state preschool. As of December 1, 2016, PEG

programs were serving 25 percent of eligible children in the five PEG communities. Expenses that

contribute to the cost per slot are based on the remaining amount total funds available for grantee

communities to serve eligible children ($14,250,000), after subtracting the LEA funding contribution to

the PEG longitudinal evaluation ($648,617.00). The remaining sum after this calculation

($13,601,383), divided by the number of eligible children to be served in new preschool slots (755

children), results in the cost per slot of $18,015. PEG funds supported 752 children enrolled as of

December 1st, 2016, but programs were not fully enrolled, so we used our target enrollment in

calculating the cost per slot. The only difference seen between actuals and target spending in year two 

is a small amount of the funds subgranted to LEAs were unspent due to delayed program openings and

staff hiring in year one. These funds were rolled forward to be spent in year two. Although this change

potentially increases the cost per child in year two, EEC required that the additional funds be spent on

one time costs, and, as such, are not considered a change in the ongoing cost of running this program.
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3. Collaborating with Each Subgrantee and Ensuring Strong Partnerships (Selection Criteria E

of the application)

Describe the extent to which the State has collaborated with each Subgrantee to ensure that each

Subgrantee is effectively implementing High-Quality Preschool Programs (Selection Criteria E

(1-9) of the application) and how the State ensures strong partnerships between each Subgrantee

and LEAs or other Early Learning Providers, as appropriate.

EEC has developed a multi-pronged strategy to ensure that each subgrantee is effectively implementing

HQPP that includes strong partnerships between EEC and subgrantee communities, as well as

collaboration among partners within and across communities. These collaborative structures allow for

careful monitoring and evaluation of program implementation, continuous program improvement, and

program quality results.

Attendance at Local Grantee Meetings

Since the earliest stages of implementation, EEC's staff have supported subgrantees in the development

of their local PEG programs. EEC staff have at times served in the role of a mediator and at other times

have delivered answers to policy questions generated as programs looked for guidance on allowable

implementation practice. In addition to this local-level support, EEC successfully completed a PEG

Implementation Guide that provides general policy guidelines to answer questions that have surfaced

over the course of the first year of PEG.

Statewide Grantee Meetings

EEC facilitates statewide grantee meetings at least twice per year to discuss general program updates

and provide opportunities to discuss successes and challenges in implementation. Meetings have

featured panels, presentations of evaluation data, across-community discussions around specific quality

components, and time for community level planning. The network of learning has elicited positive

responses from grantees, and contributes to the overall effort to ensure program quality.

LongitudinalEvaluation

Over the years of PEG funding, the multi-component evaluation plan includes: 1) a formative

evaluation of PEG implementation and PEG-participating children's development, 2) an evaluation of

the impacts (short-term and longitudinal) of PEG programs on children and families, and 3) an analysis

of the costs of the quality improvements with preliminary estimates of cost-effectiveness.

In the first year of the evaluation, EEC provided PEG grantees with opportunities to improve dataliteracy and expected communities to use data to inform implementation plans for year two. This

strategy will continue in preparation for year three. The second phase of the evaluation will focus on

the impacts of the program currently underway.

Fiscal and Program Audits

EEC requires that all PEG-funded partners in each community complete a DSS document to outline an

implementation plan for HQPPs for eligible children. All quality criteria are used to guide collaborative

local system-building efforts for preschool expansion services. These quality criteria encompass many

of the elements measured through EEC's QRIS, those outlined by NAEYC Accreditation and include

the HQPP from the USDOE.

Explicit guidance on quality expectations from EEC is outlined in the DSS document and is intended to

guide implementation plan development, driven by collaboration between the LEA and ELPs in each
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partnership, allowing for local level flexibility to ensure the plan addresses the unique needs of the

community. All PEG grantee plans are submitted, and reviewed and approved by EEC staff on an

annual basis.

Ongoing monitoring of quality components occurs through a fiscal and programmatic monitoring/audit

process that is scheduled to occur on an annual basis. EEC fiscal and programmatic staff conducted a

monitoring visit to every PEG community by February 2016 to serve as a technical assistance fiscal and

program compliance review for the PEG grant recipients. The purpose of the review was to introduce

and train subgrantees on the monitoring procedures we expected them to use twice a year 

with each of their ELPs. One formal monitoring visit occurred in the first year before EECs audit of

LEAs in the summer of 2016 and the initial audit in year two is finalized (with the exception of one

LEA). The review and formal audit provided an opportunity for EEC to assess all LEA's compliance

with the terms and conditions of the PEG grant, as well as, providing technical assistance if findings or

issues of non-compliance were identified. EEC highlighted sound and innovative administration and

management practices that were already in place.

As a follow-up to the monitoring process in year one, meetings were scheduled with the Superintendent

of the LEA and the executive leadership of the community based partners to discuss the findings of the

technical assistance and monitoring visits and maintain the connection with leadership in each

community. These meetings proved to be beneficial in year one and are underway in year two.

Regional Monitoring Teams

Three Regional Monitoring Teams (RMTs), one in each participating community, consist of an EEC

Regional Director or designee, the, regional staff currently responsible for oversight of related state

grant activities and initiatives, and program licensors. The RMTs assess progress on grant milestones in

each community and discuss specific successes and challenges as needed, while informing areas of

focus in LEA audits of ELPs. RMT's discuss progress within the QRIS system, identification of

potential barriers, and identifying technical assistance that may be required. EEC licensing staff

participate to discuss any regulatory considerations, and offer a broad perspective of the organizations

that are involved in PEG. The RMT's are fully implemented and the second round of meetings was

completed in January 2017.

Local Partnerships

Local partnerships provide the cornerstone of the Commonwealth's plan. Each LEA serves as the

state's subgrantee for funding. The collaborations between the public schools and service providers

have supported organized and focused planning for the transition to kindergarten, family engagement

and comprehensive services, and professional learning for educators and leadership.

While details of coordinating sharing child assessment data between PEG and kindergarten teachers/

administrators is underway, some key components of transition to kindergarten activities are planned to

include;

- Organized kindergarten registration events held jointly between PEG programs and the public

schools

- Records review to ascertain if the PEG programs already have on file information that is needed

for kindergarten registration that can be sent directly to the school district

- Planning for sharing of information between PEG teachers and kindergarten teachers

Each community made their own decisions about the best organization of resources and services, given

the expertise and capacity of each partner.

- In Boston, for example, a strong early childhood department that has invested a great deal in its
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own internal curriculum and professional development efforts has taken a leadership role in

organizing joint professional learning activities, and supporting curriculum implementation

through coaching

- Across all communities, the LEAs and ELPs are working together to organize professional

development. Most communities are implementing subcommittees under the leadership of the

EECs Workforce Specialist to organize their planning. By collaborating they can reduce costs

of training and leverage existing resources more intentionally

- Some communities share consultants that provide comprehensive services to reduce costs and

improve coordination

- Family engagement staff work together to offer joint family events

The collaborative approach and the ability to plan locally has allowed each community to think

creatively about the best ways to build on prior collaborations in the community. The varied nature of

the programs in each community reflect the different landscape and needs in each. This flexibility has 

allowed for the braiding of PEG, subsidy and Head Start funding in Boston, which reduced the cost per

child.

Each subgrantee community was chosen in part due the high level of needs of children. As a result,

communities have experience serving children with high needs including English language learners,

homeless children and children in foster care. Programs are able to continue the high quality services

that they have always provided to these families.

· The McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness has been used to provide guidance around the

resident requirements for these programs. As of December, 19 of the children being served are

known to be homeless, and instable housing and associated attendance problems have also been

reported anecdotally across the communities.

- Grantees anecdotally report the increased number of children that are involved in the child welfare

system as participating in PEG in comparison to year one. As of December, 64 children enrolled

are involved in the child welfare system.

As the programs mature, the integration of services and opportunities to reduce costs through more

efficient collaboration continue. Comprehensive services is one area that has proven more expensive

for programs than originally planned. Some programs planned to use contractors with whom they

already had relationships to provide services, but planning for jointly services continue. Programs are

considering whether they can pool funds to hire staff collectively, or to fund the use of Head Start staff

or public school staff, such as a nurse, behavioral specialist, and specialized therapists. Programs that

share the same location have had greater success in sharing these services.

Additionally, the fact that the public schools, who provide services for children with IEPs, are part of

the collaboration has supported conversations about the best ways to ensure children in community

programs receive services. Due to the complexity of this, communities are considering solutions such

as finding ways to provide services in community programs, wrapping attendance in a PEG classroom

around the inclusion classes in the public school and providing training for educators.
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4. Alignment Within a Birth Through Third Grade Continuum (Section F of the application)

Describe progress the State has made for alignment within a birth through third grade continuum in

activities for birth through age five programs ((F)(1)(a-b) in the NIA) and kindergarten through third

grade ((F)(2)(a-d) in the NIA).

In the summer of 2013, Massachusetts applied for a grant through the National Governor's Association

(NGA), Policy Academy-State Strategies to Improve Early Learning Outcomes. This provided

Massachusetts an opportunity to draft a comprehensive Birth to Grade 3 Policy Framework, and

formalize structures for collaboration and coordination of early learning policies and programs through

the creation of a cross-sector NGA Policy state team, representative of all three state agencies under the

Education Secretariat (EEC, ESE and DHE), as well as early childhood partners.

In the spring of 2015, the team expanded to include additional representation from our state's education

agencies, including our state's family engagement policy specialist, Head Start State Collaboration

Director, and various education specialists. The team also included partners within health and human

service agencies, including early intervention, home visiting and early childhood mental health. Under

a new Governor and Secretary of Education, our state's Birth to Grade 3 Advisory Group is now under

the leadership of Undersecretary Ann Reale.

The work of the advisory has resulted in valuable partnerships, and an unequivocal commitment to

expanding our work and to ensure alignment with our vision for Birth to Grade 3 systems as outlined in

Building the Foundation of Future Success for Children from Birth through Grade 3. The Advisory

Group continues to serve as the state advisory for PEG and ensures that we coordinating to strengthen

services in the infant, toddler and early elementary space and opens the opportunity to engage critical

partners in the PEG planning.

1. Transitions for Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age Five

(a) Our LEAs and ELPs have worked diligently to engage hard-to-reach families in PEG.

While each community varied in its outreach strategies, there was an intentional and agreed

upon goal of ensuring that education agencies worked to educate families about the benefits

of preschool. Communities targeted outreach efforts to underserved and high need

populations, including immigrant communities and homeless shelters.

PEG programs in four communities are located in various locations and provide access to

services for families across the community. This has been largely successful, although

looking forward, communities are evaluating the location of PEG programs to determine

whether they might relocate certain PEG classroom locations to areas with a higher demand

for services.

As mentioned in previous sections, EEC and ESE are working together to provide support to

PEG grantees to consider ways in which they might adjust referral and placement processes

at the local level to include more children with disabilities in PEG classrooms.

(b) The PEG team regularly attends local PEG meetings to monitor PEG implementation

and to strategize when challenges arise. While no major concerns have arisen regarding

increased costs for other programs serving young children, the PEG team is cognizant of the

possible challenges and will work proactively to address them. Concerns about attention to

infant/toddler services, workforce development, as well as ensuring that identification of

Bachelor degree teachers for PEG doesn't destabilize other early childhood classrooms,

remain of utmost importance.
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2. Transitions for Programs Serving Children from Kindergarten to Grade 3

(a) The PEG plan includes the use of TS GOLD as well as other standardized assessments of

child outcomes outlined in our evaluation plan. The data from these assessments will 

inform professional development and family engagement practices, and will also provide

EEC with information on where children are developmentally when they enter kindergarten.

With representation from ESE, there are opportunities for coordination of transition practices 

as children move from preschool into kindergarten, including how to share data between

prekindergarten and kindergarten educators, a priority in year two.

Grantees report that to overcome the challenges of sharing specific developmental

information about children as they transition to kindergarten, time must be spent making

connections and building relationships with principals and other local elementary school

administrators. Grantee communities are at various stages of connecting with these

administrators, but there has been progress in smaller communities where it might be more

likely the PEG program will know exactly what school a child will attend in kindergarten.

For example, in Lawrence, ELPs have been paired with specific elementary schools that the

current PEG children are likely to attend next year and they are engaging in a planning

process to share administrative and developmental information to support the transition to

kindergarten.

Given the requirement for joint professional development, the PEG program provides early

childhood administrators and educators in the five PEG communities with the opportunity to

think about the alignment of learning environments, curriculum, instruction, assessment and

family engagement opportunities across preschool and kindergarten

(b) One of the goals for the state's Birth to Grade 3 Advisory Group include the

development of a comprehensive policy agenda that increases access to high quality early

childhood programs and ensuring that children move through their early learning years with

continued high quality experiences that ultimately lead to proficiency across developmental

domains. Many of our PEG communities envision increased access to high quality

preschool programs as a critical lever to improving child outcomes in the early years and

beyond.

As discussed above in the overview, we see this work as only being possible when local

governance structures exist that allow for public and community-based preschool and

kindergarten partners to collaborate together. Although this is complex issue, PEG

programs are beginning to make more intentional connections with specific elementary

schools and public school administrators.

(c) Plans for engaging parents and families in transitions between preschool and

kindergarten are included as part of the grant's family engagement strategies. Each PEG

community either has existing systems for engaging families in moving from preschool into

kindergarten or they are collaboratively developing them as part of their PEG plans. Boston

has a comprehensive approach to support all children in the city as they enter kindergarten;

this initiative is called Countdown to Kindergarten. Other PEG communities have similar

types of transition initiatives underway. Additionally, EEC in partnership with ESE,

facilitated regional grantee meetings to enhance the coordination of grantee services,

including local efforts to support families with the transition to kindergarten. Although some

progress has been made to support these activities, this will remain an area of focus in year

two and will be featured on the agenda of an upcoming statewide meeting.

(d) Steps you have taken to build upon or align:
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(1) Child learning standards and expectations;

As a state, we work very closely with our state education partners to ensure that our

standards and expectations are attainable and aligned across systems. As mentioned in

previous sections, the Birth to Grade 3 Advisory Group developed a statement that

outlines these aligned expectations and we see our state standards (found in our

Curriculum Frameworks) as one way that we ensure children have access to high quality

early learning experiences.

(2) Teacher preparation, credentials, and workforce competencies;

Massachusetts participated in a learning table sponsored by the Center for Enhancing

Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) and BUILD to focus on teacher preparation,

credentials and workforce competencies in the B-3 space. The state team focused on

moving forward a draft Birth to Grade 3 certification framework. The work of this state

team will be linked to our state B-3 Advisory Group and PEG will benefit from the work

of this group. As part of a broad workforce agenda, EEC is also evaluating and revising

educator core competencies and categories of study that will inform credentialing moving

forward.

(3) Comprehensive Early Learning Assessment Systems

As mentioned in section 1(c), Massachusetts is currently using TS GOLD in many of its

preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Conversation about our state's Comprehensive

Early Learning Assessment System, including how to strengthen and align screening

and assessment practices across the Birth to Grade 3 continuum, are underway with our

state Birth to Grade 3 Advisory Group.

(4) Data systems; and

EEC is in the process of strengthening its data infrastructure for subsidized early

education services. Discussions about how to incorporate data needs of the PEG

program are underway. Children enrolled in PEG have been assigned a SASID. As the

state continues to build its longitudinal data systems, having SASIDs for PEG enrolled

children will allow us to understand the impact that PEG has on children as they move

into the K-12 system.

(5) Family engagementstrategies

All of our PEG programs are required to use the Strengthening Families framework to

guide its work around family engagement. PEG communities look to Head Start's family

engagement framework to guide community and program level practices. As the state

rolls out its PEG evaluation, plans for how to better understand family engagement

practices and the impact of those practices on child and families has been reviewed and

shared with grantees. Attention continues to be paid to identifying new ways that the

resources of each program, the public schools and EEC can be leveraged to increase the

connections with families of children three years old and younger and conveying to them

information about the PEG programs and the importance of prekindergarten.
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Section A: Part C - Competitive Preference Priorities

Competitive Preference Priority 1: Contributing Matching Funds (if included in the State's

approved application.

Describe the progress the State has made on its credible plan for obtaining and using non-Federal

matching funds to support the implementation of its ambitious and achievable plan during the grant

period. For progress not made in this area, please describe the State's strategies to ensure that

measurable progress will be made by the end of the grant period. Please describe any changes made

to the data reported in Table 7(a); explain if your Year 2 Target differs from the Year 2 Actual.

Competitive Preference Priority 2: Supporting the Continuum of Early Learning and

Development (if included in the State's approved application).

Describe progress made in creating a more seamless progression of supports and interventions from

birth through third grade, such as high-quality infant and toddler care, home visitation, full-day

kindergarten, and before and after care services for, at a minimum, a defined cohort of eligible children

and their families within each high need community served by each Subgrantee. For progress not

made in these areas, please describe the State's strategies to ensure that measurable progress will be

made by the end of the grant period.

Massachusetts continues to build on the existing system framework for birth to grade three alignment

efforts. Massachusetts has made intentional efforts to support the initial roll out PEG, and continues to

work extensively with each grantee to plan and implement local birth through grade three efforts,

monitoring their progress, and making recommendations for enhancing the work in year two of

implementation.

The establishment of cross sector partnerships, at the state level and the local level, is a success to report

in year two, as considerable efforts have been made towards this goal. Although we are confident 

to report our success in accomplishing the foundation of this work at the state and local level, 

we recognize the need to continuously support this work in year two as a priority. In addition to the

Birth to Grade 3 Advisory Group, there are other state level partnerships that indicate our progress

toward creating a more seamless progression of supports.

· As described in earlier sections of this report our LEAs and ELPs worked diligently throughout

Massachusetts has met its target for obtaining non-Federal matching funds via allocation of Chapter 70

dollars.

Chapter 70 education aid is the Commonwealth's primary program for distributing its portion of

PreK-12 public education funding to the state's 328 local and regional school districts. The Chapter 70

formula is written to ensure that each school district has the resources to provide an adequate education

for all of its students. The formula accomplishes this by taking into account the ability of each district to

contribute to the education costs of its students. The formula's broad goal is to ensure that less 

wealthy districts receive more state aid than wealthier ones, which have more of an ability to contribute.

In state fiscal year 2017, the Commonwealth is spending $43.2M in state dollars through Chapter 70

funding to support prekindergarten students. Of this, $12.6M are allocated to the five communities

where the PEG program is in place. This amount exceeds that $5.9M required of PEG for the state

match. EEC is able to claim these funds for our matching requirement for PEG Grant because no other

agency, including ESE (the agency that administers Chapter 70), count these funds as a matching

requirement towards any other programs.
ED 524B Page 51 of 56

the spring, summer and fall to actively reach out to hard-to-reach families to engage them in

learning about PEG opportunities. In local meetings, communities continue to discuss strategies

for improving their outreach to hard-to-reach families. These efforts include collaboration with

CFCE grantees, as well as other community organizations that support early intervention

services. Outreach to engage families who have children in early intervention programs was

challenging in year one, partly due to the eligibility criteria of no prior formal education

experience in PEG and the fact these children were frequently referred to inclusive preschool

settings when they were three years old. In recognition of this challenge, and to support the

enrollment of children coming from other education programs during the birth to grade three

years, EEC provided flexibility to this requirement, allowing up to 20 percent of enrolled

children to have had prior formal education experience. This flexibility was offered in

December 2016, so we expect this will have a greater impact in year three when outreach efforts

to these children can begin earlier.

· In year one, the PEG team began work with our state 619 coordinator, Head Start State

Collaboration Office, ESE Early Learning team, and EEC inclusion specialist to develop joint

professional development on inclusion to ensure that children with disabilities can have their

needs met in community-based programs. This collaborative effort to co-construct a professional 

development plan with PEG communities (including ELPs, Head Start Disability 

Coordinators and public school early childhood special education staff) came about as 

challenges related to inclusion of children with disabilities were being discussed in communities.

This joint professional development will serve as an opportunity to strengthen the 

work of the early childhood field to successfully include children with disabilities in all settings,

including community-based programs. This effort also features planning around placement of 

children with IEPs in PEG classrooms, and the provision of service delivery models for these

children.

In addition to effective state level efforts toward this goal, there has been considerable efforts at the

local level in each grantee community.

Children with IEPs

While many children with IEPs attend community-based programs, the majority of them have

received their special education services in public school settings. As the PEG sites were identified

and in many cases designed, communities were in a unique position to collaborate to better serve

children with disabilities in community-based settings and many proposed collaborative models

where ELP staff and public school early childhood staff support children with disabilities. The

partnership between district and ELPs has allowed them to build an infrastructure to properly refer

children. LEA and ELP staff meet regularly and as part of these meetings, the communities have

been building the process for referring children. These conversations also allow for community

partners to work together to determine how to best respond to a child's needs, and the most

appropriate placement for the delivery of IEP services, if the child is identified as eligible.

Cross-sector Partnerships to Support Kindergarten Transitions

Through PEG, the Commonwealth has an opportunity to strengthen formative assessment practices

in the preschool and kindergarten space and to create better alignment in assessment practices and

the transition of data between preschool and kindergarten. Towards this efforts, PEG communities

are creating plans to share prekindergarten data in PEG classrooms with kindergarten teachers in

the local public schools. This practice was challenging to implement in year one, and this remains

an area of focus for year two and beyond. As stated previously, this will be featured on the agenda

of the upcoming statewide grantee meeting. During this time, communities will be presented with

information about state-level efforts to support transitions to kindergarten through existing grants
ED 524B Page 52 of 56

and initiatives. Communities will have an opportunity to share practices across communities to

inform planning for the transition of the current PEG cohort.

In year two, some PEG communities are investing time in establishing relationships with local

elementary school principals as a strategy to enhance the coordination of Kindergarten transition

activities for families and collaboration between PEG programs and Kindergarten educators.

Additionally, All PEG communities are planning events to support families in the Kindergarten

registration process. In many cases, PEG communities are offering these events to families at

various times and locations to provide increased access to support. Additionally, PEG programs are

offering families' information about required documentation for the application process and

resources about what to expect in Kindergarten classrooms.

Competitive Preference Priority 3: Creating New High Quality State Preschool Slots (if included

in the State's approved application).

Describe progress made in using at least 50% of the State's federal grant award to create new State

Preschool Program slots that will increase the overall number of new slots in State Preschool

Programs that meet the definition of High-Quality Preschool Programs. For progress not made in this

area, please describe the State's strategies to ensure that measurable progress will be made by the

end of the grant period.

As stated in prior sections of this report, the only state funding provided to preschool programs comes in

the form the grants to programs. All of EEC's state dollars at this time are allocated to quality 

supports and all funds to increase access to early education are sourced from CCDBG funds. Therefore,

PEG funding represents an innovative approach to preschool financing that EEC hopes is replicated and

replaced with state dollars by the end of the grant period.

All funds received through PEG have been allocated as required in the support of the creation of new

preschoolslots. Specifically:

Only 5 percent of funds have been retained by EEC for program administration and 95 percent of funds

have been granted to LEAs to support expansion of new slots in licensed ELP programs.

Each LEA has retained no more than 5 percent for program administration, thereby passing 95 percent

of local funds on to fund direct service.

ELP programs have been designed specifically to meet the PEG requirement of high quality (as

described in detail above.)

All program implementation has taken place in the five high needs communities outlined in EEC's

application for PEG funds: Boston, Lowell, Lawrence, Holyoke and Springfield.

As of December 1, 2016, programs were serving 752 of the original target of 755 children. Continued

enrollment since that has increased the number of children served. The braiding of funding streams in

Boston has also allowed that community to serve more children than originally planned and MA has

identified 840 potential slots in PEG-funded programs each year.
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Section B: Budget Information

Budget and Sustainability (Section G in the application)

1. Please provide a brief explanation of any discrepancies between the State's approved budget and

its total expenditures for the reporting year. Explain carry-over funds that have not been expended or

obligated from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2016.

Expenditures are defined as money that has been liquidated, not money obligated or encumbered.

Expenditures are funds that have been liquidated for services rendered between January 1 and

December 31, 2016. Funds are considered obligated under two circumstances. The first is when year

two funds have been encumbered in the state accounting system prior to December 31, 2016. For

example, funds that have been encumbered in the state accounting system for year two include funds for

the longitudinal system as well as funds in the contracts for the LEAs for year two of programming that

began in September of 2016 and will end in August 2017. The other circumstance fund obligation

includes personnel costs (payroll, associated fringe and indirect) are considered obligated because staff

are hired and we anticipate funding their positions throughout the entire grant period. It should be noted

that personnel costs are not encumbered in the state accounting system.

The vast majority of the funds are encumbered through contracts, in particular contracts with LEAs for

95 percent of the funds. These contracts were put in place in August of year two for services that the

LEAs and ELPs (through subcontracts with the LEAs) would render between September 1, 2016 and

August 31, 2017. All year 2 PEG funds subgranted to the LEAs were to be used for services during this

time period, so that PEG funds could be used to fund a full program year. In year two, EEC made a

decision to move to a cost reimbursement process with LEAs and funds will not be paid to the LEA

until invoices are submitted. As a result, EEC has only expended funds from the year 2 budget to cover

EEC staff and fringe costs, travel costs, a small portion of the longitudinal evaluation and payment for

the first three months of programming to LEAs. The bulk of the evaluation costs and the amounts

subcontracted to the LEAs and budgeted for year two will not be spent until later in year three, as

planned. Continuing with this practice, EEC anticipates obligating year three funds starting September

1, 2017. These funds will be liquidated by August 31, 2018 in order to fund the program year that starts

in year three of the grant.

When we review our expenditures and encumbered funds for year two, we find that there is a

discrepancy of $595,568.80 based on the approved budget from February 2016 (this is currently in

Grads360). However, a budget amendment was submitted September 2016 and approved in January

2017. The recent budget amendment more accurately reflects actual year two obligations and

expenditures, leaving a discrepancy of only $25,959.55. This discrepancy resulted largely from

carryover of year one LEA funds to year two. Additionally, the discrepancy resulted from an adjustment

to the contract for the longitudinal evaluation, adding additional funds to the scope of work 

in year three. There were some marginal changes in staffing that occurred in year one of the grant that

contributed to the remainder of the discrepancy. Anita Moeller, who was the Director of PEG, was

promoted to Deputy Commissioner for Program Administration, and her time on the grant was reduced,

while Jocelyn Bowne and Sarah Volkenant were both promoted and received salary increases. Travel

and state technical assistance costs were also lower than expected leaving funds in these lines unspent.

2. Please describe any substantive changes that you anticipate to the State's Preschool Development

Grant budget in the upcoming fiscal year (January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017).

EEC submitted a budget amendment in September 2016 that was approved by the USDOE in January

2017. Based on this amendment EEC is not planning on any major adjustments to its budget or
ED 524B Page 54 of 56

implementation of PEG in year two. A following changes that will allow for adaptation to lessons

learned in year one are planned and were detailed in this amendment.

Maintaining the funding for the Inter-agency Service Agreement (ISA) with the Department of

Elementary and Secondary Education to maintain Donna Traynham as a member of the PEG team.

These funds will allow Donna to continue to contribute one day per week of her time to supporting

PEG activities. Her involvement not only builds the team's capacity to move initiatives across the two

state agencies but also serves as an important model to the field of the partnership between early

education and elementary education expected of the grant.

Increasing the funds for the Longitudinal Study in year two and three to support an impact evaluation

of the PEG programs and decreasing the funds for this study in year four.

Decreasing funding for information technology.

Increasing funding for joint professional development. As the implementation of PEG is in full swing

and the Workforce Development Specialist has been working with communities for a year to develop

their integrated professional development plans, money will now be allocated for a contractor to

develop a professional learning community, supporting coaches and programmatic educational

leadership in considering best practice in supporting teachers' use of a curriculum, implementation of

high quality teacher-child interactions and differentiation of instruction.

3. Describe the State's progress on its plan for sustainability at the end of the grant period to ensure

that the number and percentage of Eligible Children with access to High-Quality Preschool Programs

in the State will be maintained or expanded, including to additional High-Need Communities.

Central to EEC's planning for sustainability has been the review of strategic plans submitted by the

communities who received planning grant funding in year one of the PEG programs. The purpose of

the planning grant was to support communities in identifying the local infrastructure, funding and

supports that would be needed to increase access to high quality preschool programs, addressing all the

high quality components of PEG, to children ages 2.9 through kindergarten entry. Thirteen

communities were awarded the Planning Grant in 2016, Athol, Brockton, Cape Cod, Fall River,

Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, North Adams, Pittsfield, Somerville, Springfield and

Worcester. The themes identified in these strategic plans were communicated to the MA legislature in

the fall of 2016. The strategic plans documented strong need for both expanded access and quality

improvements to early education opportunities for three and four year old children in the thirteen

communities.

• Many communities noted the need to provide greater access to children not currently attending

any formal early education program.

• All communities noted a strong need for affordable early education among families just over 200

percent of the poverty line and ineligible for any childcare subsidies, yet unable to bear the full

cost.

• Transportation was noted as a need for families in all communities but only some included the

provision of transportation in their plans; others looked at how programs might be distributed

geographically to address this need.

All plans also noted the need for on-going professional development supports for educators, in addition

to efforts to ensure a competent and well-educated workforce through degree requirements and other

measures of competency for educators.

• On-going professional supports such as trainings, coaching and professional learning communities

were considered in all plans.
ED 524B Page 55 of 56

• Efforts to develop pathways to degree attainment were included in many plans through

collaboration with local institutions of higher education.

• Ways to increase educator compensation were considered as important to recruitment and

retention, although not all plans committed to salaries commensurate with those in public

schools.

The importance of collaboration between public schools, early education providers and other local

stakeholders was acknowledged in all plans, both through the appreciation expressed for the value of

the collaborative planning process and the integration of such collaborations in the leadership and

decision making structures.

• The public school was identified as the lead agent in all but one plan.

• All plans outlined collaborative management structures that included local early education

providers.

• Many plans included an advisory group or steering committee to provide guidance to the

community management, which included a broader group of stakeholders in the community,

such as institutions of higher education and business leaders.

• The planning process provided the opportunity to develop a local system-wide vision for early

education and effectively identify and deploy resources.

One consistent message conveyed by all planning grant communities was that the planning process was

an essential step in building the relationships and shared vision that is needed to implement publicly

funded preschool through a public-private mixed delivery system. In response, the legislature including

funding for planning grants in year two. These grants may be used to provide new communities and

opportunity to start the planning process or to support continued development of local plans to build in

the specificity needed to transition to implementation and systematic feedback on the planning process

to EEC.

EEC is also supporting continued conversations about sustainability in each of the PEG communities.

Each year, the Commissioner of EEC meets with each school district Superintendent and the executive

leadership of the ELPs to discuss the PEG program and local plans for preschool expansion. A primary

topic of conversation at this year's meetings, which are scheduled to occur in February and March will

be the lessons learned from PEG so far and how these lessons are shaping the communities' plans for

preschool expansion when PEG funding ends. Each community has engaged in its own planning for

sustainability locally, and EEC is encouraging communities to think about how to blend local, state and

federal funds to support a mixed delivery model. Four of the five communities engaged in the grant

funded planning process in year one. These efforts provided important needs assessment information to

identify the gaps between current supply (including PEG programs) and demand. Each community also

used this as an opportunity to engage other community partners, such as private foundations and

institutions of higher education and further develop the community vision for universal prekindergarten. 

In Boston, the Mayor's Office and BPS have been working for the past few years on 

their own needs assessment and planning process. Mayor Walsh recently announced a commitment to

universal prekindergarten and proposed a change in the use of Convention Center funds that would

provide the city the necessary funds. Acknowledging that Boston does not have a problem of access,

but one of quality, the planning team is developing a system for both expanding seats in the highquality BPS program and continuing to build community-based programs' quality capacity.

EEC also continues to work closely with the state legislature as they discuss the feasibility of state

funding for universal prekindergarten. EEC has reported to the legislature on both the findings of the

year one evaluation of the PEG programs and the results of the strategic plans submitted as a result of

the preschool planning grants. The continued planning grant funding in year two reflects the
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legislature's commitment to this issue.

4. Please provide a brief explanation of any discrepancies, if any, between the Subrecipients'

approved budgets and their total expenditures for the reporting year. Explain carry-over funds that

have not been expended or obligated from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2016.

In order to devote a maximum amount of funding on the implementation of PEG services, all subrecipients in MA chose not to charge the first six months of their time to the grant. This time was spent

in countless hours of planning meetings as each LEA and partnering ELPS met to decide on the design

of PEG programming, leadership, governance, etc. Programs spent the summer and early fall outfitting

space, hiring teachers, providing orientation to new staff and recruiting eligible families to enroll their

children. Classrooms began opening in September 2015 and all were in operation by the end of

October 2015. Not all were fully enrolled, however, by the end of the year. Comprehensive services

were scheduled to start in December. Due to this roll out of in-kind planning, start up and

implementation, each LEA had a significant portion of their grant funding carryover into year two.

These carryover dollars supported continued implementation of the first year of programming through

August of 2016 (MA PEG grantees provide a 12-month program cycle). As described in previous

narrative sections, we anticipate the same liquidation method for future years of PEG. All year two

funds have been allocated to support programming from September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2017.

Slight changes in budgets were developed to roll small percentages of year one funds into the funding

for this time period.

As of December 2016, all year two funds have been obligated. However, due to the program design and

length of the program year, we do not expect liquidation until later in 2017 to cover all costs of

implementation of year two of the program.
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