Factoid from California's grant application for the US DOE's Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge: "ln California, fewer than 13% of low-income children are in high-quality early learning programs."
Assessing the hard work ahead for California, one of nine states that will divide the $500 million in ELC grants, Lesli A. Maxwell, staff writer for Education Week, interviewed Camille Maben, director of the Child Development Div. of the California Dept of Education. (At left, Maben, on right, with Barbara Nemko, superintendent of education for Napa County.)
Maben, describing the course California has chosen in order to fulfill the its application promises (that of quality rating guideline development among 16 local consortia, most lead by First 5) indicated there was reluctance on the part of some of consortia to participate, as the state received just slightly more than half ($52.6 million) of the $100 million it had requested. (Ed Week noted that California was the only state to receive less than what it requested.)
As the CDE described the consortia when the grants were announced in December:
The California grant will primarily fund local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) being developed by Regional Leadership Consortia — voluntary groups of local First 5 commissions, county offices of education, and county governments....
As listed in the the grant application, the 16 Regional Leadership Consortia will be lead by:
First 5 County Commissions of Yolo, Ventura, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Barbara; the County Offices of Education of Fresno, Sacramento, Orange, Merced; Los Angeles Universal Preschool, California Alternative Payment Program Assn. (CAPPA), California Child Care Coordinators Assn., California County Superintendents Educational Services Assn., California Resource and Referral Network, California Child Development Administrators Assn., (CCDAA), California Head Start, and the Los Angeles County Office of Child Care.
As Ed Week reported yesterday:
...The state’s standards, or “foundations,” for infant, toddler, and preschooler development, must be incorporated into the local rating systems, including those that are specific to young English-language learners. The local systems must also use a school-readiness tool that relies on observations of new kindergartners to determine how they are doing in math, language and literacy, and social and emotional development. Those observations will also grade how well the early-childhood programs that students participated in prepared them.
The consortia will largely decide which standards must be met before providers can move from one quality tier to the next in the rating systems, Ms. Maben said.
But questions about the long-term budget stability and sustainability of the new early-childhood initiatives hang over California more than any other winning state. The state has been mired in a fiscal crisis for five years, a situation that has subjected early-childhood programs to deep spending cuts...
“Even with less money to work with, I’ll be surprised if any of them decides not to go forward,” [Maben] said. “This is the best bang for the buck when it comes to getting children ready for success in school.”
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