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Tag: Early Care and Education

Afton Community Engagement Practices

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Community Engagement, Effective Governance, Resource Equity.

We believe answers exist in the communities being served–it is our job to support our public sector partners in uplifting them. There is no “one-size-fits-all” fix to many of the issues we face, so successes must be driven by local champions who know the landscape and can commit to carrying out a vision, plus continuously improving it over time to strengthen its impact. In short, we have no doubt we can arrive at better answers and make more progress together as a community.

In our community engagement work with partners, we prioritize eight key practices. All eight are summarized in the flyer below.

Download our Community Engagement Flyer

Here are some ways that we embody these practices across our work portfolio:

PRACTICE #1: Come into engagement activities curious, without assumptions or predetermined ideas.

As facilitators of the Governor’s Workforce Commission on Equity and Access in Illinois, we started by exploring the needs of users of the workforce development system to understand their challenges and pain points. With our colleagues at MDRC, we created job seeker personas and journey maps and conducted many focus groups with workforce providers and job seekers. Notably, we uncovered specific issues for undocumented workers who felt they could not access good jobs because of work authorization requirements and the feeling that the education, skills, and work experience gained in their home countries were not appreciated or valued in the U.S. This, in part, led to recommendations to expand supports for those interested in entrepreneurship and self-employment, like the undocumented job seekers we spoke with.

PRACTICE #2: Include the most impacted individuals, with particular focus on historically underrepresented voices.

Supported by Afton Partners and UPD Consulting, the ReImagine School Funding Project is a Boston Public Schools (BPS) initiative that is redesigning the school funding policy to ensure the district’s shared values are clearly communicated and upheld in the allocations to school budgets. A Community Steering Committee, made up of principals, families, students, and community members is empowered to recommend a school funding policy to the Superintendent, in alignment with the BPS Racial Equity Planning Tool. The Committee has worked collaboratively with district and school leaders throughout the project and at the culmination, the new funding priorities and policy recommendations shared with the Superintendent and School Committee will come directly from this group, helping to ensure the recommendations reflect the unique and diverse needs of all BPS students.

PRACTICE #3: Make engagement accessible for participants.

With the Colorado Early Childhood Compensation and Benefits Task Force, focus groups and surveys were offered in both English and Spanish and at afternoon and evening times in an attempt to accommodate most providers’ schedules and primary languages. Based on levels of participation, participants were offered incentives and professional development credit. Feedback from the focus groups and the survey was carefully considered in the development of the Task Force’s recommendations, alongside quantitative data gathered locally and nationally. In addition, Afton values extensive communication among partners in multiple formats, sign language, ADA accessibility of print and online materials, as well as use of plain language (or avoiding use of acronyms and technical terms).

PRACTICE #4: Set norms and expectations from the start.

Afton facilitated the Great Start for All Minnesota Task Force’s establishment of Guiding Principles that shaped its facilitation and the eventual development of recommendations. The Guiding Principles reflected the Task Force’s values and beliefs and laid a foundation for the work. The Task Force was also grounded in several supporting concepts and processes, especially prioritizing equity in decision-making.

Members co-developed and agreed to norms and expectations to guide their discussions, work towards productive conversations, and aim to have all voices heard. These were revisited at all meetings. The norms and expectations included 12 points. Here is a sampling of them:

  • Members attend meetings prepared and on time
  • Engage in respectful dialogue
  • Everyone’s input is important
  • Assume best intent
  • Listen with an open mind, and for commonalities
  • Don’t say or type anything you wouldn’t want to have shared in public
  • Don’t just disagree, offer a doable alternative idea

The Task Force, its two working groups, the co-chairs, and the members all had clearly defined roles. Together, they created and held to specific voting protocols including:

  • Formal votes included only voting members and were held regarding formal recommendations that would be included in the report. In accordance with open meeting law, votes were held with a roll call.
  • Informal voting (ex. thumbs up) was used to engage all Task Force members on items such as a matter of process, or an item necessary to get to a vision statement or recommendation.

PRACTICE #5: Demonstrate respect, transparency, honesty, and genuine appreciation for all perspectives shared.

In any community engagement activity, people want their input to be heard, valued, and impactful. In our work with the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, our engagement with early care and education professionals is doing just that. Through our facilitation of focus groups, we have clearly articulated why their input is needed, what it will be used for, who it will be shared with, and how it will influence final recommendations. We make it clear that there is “no wrong answer” and guarantee anonymity in our notetaking to encourage sharing and disclosure. Additionally, to honor participants’ time, we offer them monetary stipends and the option to receive professional development credit through Colorado’s state system. Finally, to ensure we close the feedback loop with participants, we will share the final report with our summary findings and results. This way, they can see the outcome and know their effort was worthwhile.

PRACTICE #6: Pursue broad and diverse participation when analyzing and making meaning of data.

Individual, structural, and institutional biases can emerge in community engagement work, and it’s also important to consider statistical bias. For example, in our data analysis and financial modeling work for school districts and charter school networks, Afton emphasizes the significance of looking at site-level financial, academic, and student data in work around school-level funding allocation policy and budgeting. This must accompany district-wide data analysis to make sure important details aren’t missed. For example, certain schools may have higher or changing needs of students, or student outcomes on an unwanted trajectory. Examining how funding is spent differently across all sites with distinct characteristics and forecasting future expenditures and investments at the school site level can reveal unintentional inequities and issues in the school plan. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure broad participation from education staff, community members, and students and families in interpretive/analytical activities that are meant to inform decisions, to ensure that those with lived experiences related to the data can explain what it means to them.

PRACTICE #7: Conduct iterative engagement activities at various points in the project; consider a variety of methods or approaches.

The goal of our work for the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Education in Washington DC is to develop a funding policy that provides equitable and adequate resources to serve each student well, and to make a clear case for policy change. In collaboration with our project partners, we have identified four primary groups to engage with through a variety of methods. These include district leaders, school personnel, families, students, and the community, along with citywide leadership. The strategies to engage with each of these groups vary to ensure we are providing space to meet individuals where they are while also clarifying the why of the engagement. For example, a survey may be used to capture straightforward financial data from district leaders who deal with the funding policy daily. However, a focus group is a more inclusive engagement strategy for parents and families to allow for a nuanced conversation on the resource needs of their students. Finally, key school personnel and leaders may be worth investing time to interview 1:1, based on their deep understandings of the implications of the work. Some groups will offer foundational information while others will offer reactions to proposals as they take shape. The engagement completed across all groups will be used to raise up the recurring themes we see across the district and inform our final policy recommendations.

PRACTICE #8: Ask for feedback along the way and at the end.

It’s pivotal to hear from all participants regarding whether your process is working for them. Do they feel they have adequate opportunity to share? Do they walk away from each encounter feeling informed? Empowered? Or something else? What could be improved for the next community engagement activity? In addition to gathering responses to make short-term adjustments, collecting feedback at the end of a journey offers teams a tremendous opportunity for reflection on both the outcomes of a process and how they were shaped by certain approaches.

There are many questions that could be asked in all phases of a project but everyone feels survey fatigue from time to time, so it’s important to hone in on the most important questions and use formats that make responding easy. Afton is striving to strike that balance so we can make sure our staff and client partners are having good experiences as they pursue strategic goals together. We also want to be sure that the outcomes meet or exceed everyone’s expectations. In this spirit, our client partners can expect to see more formalized surveys coming soon, to accompany all the informal ways we check in to hear your feedback. As this enhancement rolls out in late 2023, we appreciate your willingness to give a little bit of your time to help us be better at serving you and your communities.

IL Gov. Pritzker Touts Early Childhood Focus in 2024 State of the State Address

Written by Afton Group on . Posted in Noteworthy News.

Earlier today, Illinois Governor Pritzker delivered his State of the State Address, highlighting Smart Start Illinois, which is a historic investment in the state’s early care and education (ECE) system. Smart Start launched last year and is already improving access to quality child care and other critical services for young children and their families, while providing long overdue support for professionals working in the system.

This year, Governor Pritzker is seeking the legislature’s support for a $150 million increase for the second year of the initiative, bringing the total investment to $400 million. Key investments include:

  • $200 million for Smart Start workforce initiatives, including Smart Start Workforce Grants, to help child care providers meet a new, higher wage floor for their staff and stabilize the field.
  • $75 million increase in the Early Childhood Block Grant to increase quality and create new slots in preschool deserts.
  • $13 million to begin the state’s transition to a unified early childhood agency – the Department of Early Childhood.

Afton has a front row seat to Illinois’ efforts, working closely with state leaders to thoughtfully engage stakeholders in a way that centers equity and the human experience while also bringing our expertise in data analysis and cost-modeling for accurate and strategic allocation of resources. We are proud to support the design of the Smart Start Workforce Grants, ECBG allocation, Early Intervention payment reform, and the transition to a unified early childhood agency.

Smart Start Workforce Grants

Nationwide, ECE staff are drastically under-compensated for the important work they do, with an average wage of about $13/hour. Low compensation means child care programs struggle to recruit and retain qualified staff and families cannot find child care for their children. IL is one of a small number of states that has committed significant resources to address this issue. If approved by the legislature, funding for the Smart Start Workforce Grants (SSWG) would build on the previous investments.

Workforce Grants are an innovative approach to address the ECE workforce shortage, using the state’s general revenue to supplement ECE teacher salaries. Child care programs that participate in SSWG will receive funding to pay their classroom staff at least a base wage (the “wage floor”). In other words, these programs will be able to meet a higher wage floor for their staff without raising tuition for their families.

Afton’s Role

Afton supports the planning and design of the SSWG through facilitation of robust stakeholder engagement efforts that include ongoing advisory committee engagement, provider focus groups and surveys. We create opportunities for the state to meaningfully engage the providers who may benefit from these grants and ensure that the unique perspectives of Spanish-speaking providers, home-based providers, and others who have had less access to grant opportunities are considered in design and implementation.

Afton also led the development of IL’s child care cost model, a tool that helped determine the cost to meet the wage floor across different program types and regions to ensure that grant amounts are sufficient to cover the costs of raising wages. This critical support helped determine the parameters of the program so that SSWG can reach as many child care programs as possible within the budget.

Early Intervention

Early Intervention (EI) provides crucial support for young children experiencing or at risk of developmental delays. Unfortunately, payment rates have not kept up with inflation in recent years, straining the system and negatively impacting recruitment and retention among the EI workforce, which includes service coordinators, interpreters, and therapists (such as developmental, speech, occupational, and physical therapists).

Afton’s Role

Afton is supporting an innovative project to develop a cost model for Illinois’ EI system and consider options for payment reform. To date, hundreds of EI practitioners and families have participated in focus groups and surveys that Afton facilitated to give their input on changes they hope to see in the system. Using this input, Afton will work with the Bureau of Early Intervention to develop a cost model that reflects the true cost of providing EI services across the state. Afton is also supporting state leaders in considering short- and long-term improvements to its approach to payment to improve access to high-quality EI services for children and families.

Early Childhood Block Grant

As a critical component in this system, the Early Childhood Block Grant (ECBG) provides funding for early childhood and family education programs and services that help young children enter school ready to learn.  The Illinois investments are intended to increase access to programs, with a focus on preschool “deserts” – regions that lack access to ECE programming – and support quality improvement across new and existing programs.

Afton’s Role

To address inequitable access to high quality programs, Afton has partnered with ISBE to identify and prioritize preschool deserts for new ECBG allocations. Afton is also supporting ISBE to develop a “cost model” that informs equitable funding allocation decisions. Afton will leverage quantitative data and engage stakeholders to inform the cost model.

IL Governance Transition

So often, early childhood systems and structures are designed around funding streams, resulting in a patchworked system that places the burden on families to navigate a dizzying maze of programs and services. Last fall, at the recommendation of the Afton-facilitated IL Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding, Gov. Pritzker initiated the transition to a new, unified Department of Early Childhood. The transition will provide the state with a unique opportunity to thoughtfully redesign and rebuild an equitable, accessible, family-centered early childhood system. The effort will require reorganization of programs and funding streams that currently span three separate agencies under the new umbrella.

Afton’s Role

Over the next three years, Afton will collaborate with several state agencies, state and local advisory bodies, and communities – particularly those that have been historically underresourced and underserved – to inform the design of the new unified state agency with a racial equity, family-centered lens. Given the complex funding streams involved, Afton will also leverage our deep funding design expertise to identify equitable funding strategies that support the redesigned system.

Impact

In IL and across the country, Afton is excited to collaborate with those who are most impacted by challenges in the early childhood system to create solutions that will work with appropriately allocated resources. Illinois’ work has tremendous potential to serve as a model for other states. We invite you to stay tuned as these initiatives advance and we analyze the impact of these innovations. We will continue to share our learning and resources that other states may find useful as they explore policy change and investments that support the best outcomes for children and families.

Applying Charter Authorizing Principles in the Early Childhood Field

Written by Carrie Stewart on . Posted in Effective Governance.

By Abby McCartney and Carrie Stewart

Introduction: Early Care and Education at a Crossroads

Despite its importance for children’s development, the Early Care and Education (ECE) field has historically often been excluded from broader conversations about education quality and investment. This is changing: an increasing number of state and federal leaders are prioritizing public funding and support for early education. There is still much work to be done to pay and support ECE providers like the skilled educators they are.

As support and investment in ECE increase, policy makers should celebrate the diversity of options available to families and ensure that future public investments are inclusive of all types of ECE models. This goal has much in common with NACSA’s view on charter authorizers’ ongoing work to increase access to quality, expand parent choice, and implement strong accountability. The charter and ECE fields have much to learn from each other.

Background

The ECE field—like charter schooling and authorizing—is at an inflection point. Both sectors use a mixed delivery system (there is a range of charter school types, just as there is a range of ECE provider types), and both currently face labor shortages, compensation pressures, and chronic system underfunding. The ECE sector has long faced a fundamental challenge: high-quality care is too expensive for most families to afford, while the educators who provide this care are dramatically underpaid, earning less than $30,000 per year on average. In the face of an increasingly competitive labor market, providers have particularly struggled in recent years to find and retain qualified staff. Federal relief funds helped many providers supplement staff pay and keep their doors open; as these funds expire, many providers are facing a severe funding and workforce crisis.

At the same time, there is an increasing recognition of the need for more stable public investment into care and learning for our youngest children. The Build Back Better legislation that passed the House in late 2021 held the potential for a dramatically expanded and transformed ECE system, although it fell short of enactment in the Senate. Some states, including New Mexico, Illinois, Minnesota, and Vermont, are making historic investments to expand access to subsidized care and raise wages for providers. As parts of the ECE field gain access to more stable funding, there is an opportunity to invest in quality—which can mean different things to families and educators in different settings.

The policy decisions made in the next few years will set the course of the ECE system for years to come. As policymakers approach these challenges, they can learn from high-quality charter school authorizers’ work. A “one-size-fits-all” approach will not support the diverse needs of ECE providers. The lessons that NACSA has learned from its charter school authorizing experience can guide us toward an approach that better reflects the diversity of the ECE field, forming a “north star” of quality to work toward as we rebuild.

Defining Quality

One of the crucial insights of charter school authorizing is to measure outcomes rather than inputs. This is an important goal, although it looks fundamentally different in early childhood, when each child is developing at their own pace. Unlike in K-12 education, young children generally do not take standardized tests; assessments are developmental and formative rather than summative. As a result, many state Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) for early childhood providers rely heavily on inputs, such as credentials held by educators, class size ratios, and facility features. These inputs may be correlated with quality—for example, small class sizes support more high-quality adult-child interactions—but they can also disadvantage programs with fewer financial resources. For instance, an educator with decades of experience and an exceptional ability to nurture young children may not receive “credit” toward a higher quality rating if she does not also hold a formal educational credential.

The ECE field can learn from NACSA’s “multiple measures” approach to build a more flexible and outcomes-oriented approach to measuring quality. Such an approach could consider factors like classroom observations, family satisfaction, and measures of kindergarten readiness and success. Measuring these outcomes may require better coordination between ECE and K-12 systems to track children’s success over time, including a feedback loop between ECE settings and elementary education.

Like charter schools, ECE programs come in different shapes and sizes. The ECE field encompasses everything from a home-based provider caring for a few children in her own home, to large community-based child care centers, to school-based preschool. Programs have different philosophical approaches: Montessori programs embrace child-directed learning, while Head Start programs emphasize wraparound support for the entire family. Nonetheless, state evaluations of quality often apply a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, state pre-K programs often lay out requirements for facilities and staff credentials that are designed for school-based settings, which can exclude community-based and home-based providers from participating in these public programs.

High-quality charter authorizers offer a model for flexible, yet rigorous, oversight that uses metrics that can accommodate different instructional models. These accountability and performance frameworks create incentives to meet quality outcomes, while giving programs flexibility to reach those in their own way. As NACSA’s recent report puts it, “More than any one proven resource or practice, what NACSA and the authorizing field have developed is a mindset and process of continuous evolution and adjustment.”

Many states have funding streams dedicated to improving ECE program quality. The sources of these funding streams should learn from authorizers’ flexible, outcomes-oriented approach. More work is needed to develop a differentiated approach to quality to ensure that different types of providers can succeed.

Community-driven Decision Making

The ECE field has a long history of engaging families and communities in decisions. Since the 1960s, Head Start Policy Councils have made families and community members partners in important financial and governance decisions. Many ECE providers have staff specifically dedicated to engaging and supporting families’ needs.

Because ECE programs largely operate independently, outside the purview of a school district or other regional organization, many areas have a gap at the regional level when it comes to assessing community need, equitably distributing slots, and seeking community input on new or expanded program models.

Some states are investing in regional councils or networks to address these needs. For example, Birth-Five Councils in Illinois conduct regional needs assessments, build local relationships, and support the community with developing action plans to address local needs. Similarly, Ready Start Networks in Louisiana assess local demand for early care and education, develop strategic plans, and identify local funding that can be leveraged to support access.

Effective charter authorizers provide a model for these new organizations to help regions think holistically about need, demand, and diversity of options for families. To meet a community’s needs, both charter authorizers and regional early learning councils must understand where the need is and what kind of need it is. For example, an area near a hospital may need more home-based providers who can provide non-traditional-hours care to accommodate workers with overnight shifts, while an area with a large concentration of recent immigrants may need to prioritize culturally and linguistically responsive curricula and educators. Without this collaborative, centralized enrollment planning, communities may inadvertently end up investing in programs that do not match families’ real needs.

Building Capacity

For both ECE providers and charter schools, operational capacity is a prerequisite to offering a high-quality educational program. Like charter schools, ECE providers typically have disproportionately complex public funding streams to manage, relative to their size. Even a small early learning program may be blending a variety of funds with different use and reporting requirements, including state child care subsidies, private tuition, state pre-K funds, federal Head Start grants, and other grants or fundraising. In addition, many ECE providers struggle to adopt business practices that would make their programs more sustainable, such as accessing efficient back-office services and effectively tracking enrollment and tuition to ensure that fees are paid on time.

The ECE field can learn from charter authorizers’ assessments of the most important operational factors that make a program viable over the long term. The ECE field also needs to go beyond assessing viability to supporting providers to develop their operational capacity. This can mean providing training, on-call support, and easy access to shared services that take the burden off small programs. At the system level, it also means streamlining public funding and reporting requirements to reduce the burden on educators, allowing them to focus on their most important work: supporting children and families.