Success with Mixed Delivery: What We Can Learn from New Jersey

Making State Pre-K Effective in a Mix of Public and Private Settings Presents Special Challenges. This New Study Looks at What it Takes to Succeed.

When the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered that high-quality preschool education be provided to all 3- and 4-year-olds in the state's poorest school districts, it was a task that loomed large. Other states had developed public pre-K, but none had tackled programs of the quality and intensity the justices required--and none had done it on the rapid timetable they demanded.

Nine years after the Abbott Preschool Program doors opened, it delivers preschool education that research shows is making a difference in children's lives. It's educating more than 40,000 children per year and, perhaps most impressive, it's doing so equally well whether the kids go to public schools or private child care centers. That's no small achievement. (See APPLES Findings.)

The success of the Abbott program has not gone unnoticed by researchers interested in identifying ingredients of success others can use in developing programs with mixed delivery systems. A newly released study titled Partnering for Preschool provides just that. Funded by NIEER, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and the Schumann Fund of New Jersey and released by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, the study focuses on child care center directors. Marcy Whitebook, director of the center, NIEER Research Fellow Sharon Ryan, Rutgers University, and Fran Kipnis and Laura Sakai at the University of California, Berkeley, interviewed 98 directors of Abbott centers by telephone to compile a profile of their motivations, opinions, challenges, and insights.

The interviews covered 10 areas including: reasons for becoming Abbott sites; contributions of the program; teacher education, preparation and relationships; director's challenges; and their suggestions for improving the program. The responses were analyzed to identify lessons that could be gleaned and goals developed. (See 8 Policy Goals for Mixed Delivery Systems.)

Because Partnering for Preschool draws on narratives from center directors, it resonates with first-hand experience and reflects in their words what it took to move from a patchwork of independent providers to a system of high-quality pre-K in a short time. One sees through their eyes how Abbott's launch set the wheels of change in motion. "Now we were considered a valuable part of the educational community," says one independent director whose feelings capture the psychology of becoming part of something bigger.

Of course, being part of something bigger has its trade-offs. There are standards to be met. Directors' comments in the report underscore the stakes involved in changing over to the new way--how teachers decided whether or not to go to school to get required teaching credentials, how centers lost teachers who didn't pursue that opportunity despite the availability of state scholarships, and how the state and school districts scrambled to help them find replacements.

Helping Children, Families
Whitebook says on balance, the report reflects the positive views directors have toward the program. Many described how, once the Abbott program was established, they witnessed transformations of children's lives in their centers. "It's wonderful to be able to take children who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford preschool and give them a positive first experience with school and see them really ready to go on and succeed once they get into elementary school," said one.

They praised the Abbott program's ability to identify and address special developmental needs. This comment is representative: "Once upon a time, we really didn't know who to contact when we had children who had, or may have had a learning disability. But now that particular aspect is handled so well in our district--we have a liaison from the Board (of Education) along with a master teacher, and they come based on a referral. They interact with my team, with the parents and we create a meeting ground to see how we can collaborate together to help the child. I don't feel like I'm just out there by myself."

That feeling of security extends to funding as well. Directors pointed to multiple benefits of stable, adequate funding including well-equipped classrooms, the ability to pay teachers competitively enough to retain them, and sufficient freedom from worrying about costs to be able to maintain staffing levels throughout the year.

As the Abbott program matured, family support services became integral to the program, forging what the directors consider an important link between home and school. Centers offer help ranging from employment services to housing assistance to health services. Directors said that while many offered family services prior to the Abbott programs, having the family worker position at their centers brought a new dimension to their capabilities. Directors also voiced some frustrations with the program. As might be expected, administrative issues were most frequently cited.

Seeing the Abbott experience through the eyes of child care directors reminds us of the hurdles program designers face when they seek to accomplish more than just expand the existing early care and education system. In order to address the access and quality issues that the program has, it takes vision and those "C" words--collaboration, communication and commitment. Whitebook concludes that, "This study shows the capacity of programs to improve the experience of children and the workforce that educates them, but only if there are adequate resources and infrastructure support provided." The report is available at: http://www.iir.berkeley.edu/cscce/pdf/partnering_preschool_highlights08.pdf.

Sidebars

8 Policy Goals for Mixed Delivery Systems
The following eight goals are based on the collective experience and wisdom of child care directors whose experience in the Abbott trenches led to the program's success. States striving for mixed delivery systems should:

1. Enhance collaboration among state agencies,

2. Enhance collaboration between state agencies and school districts,

3. Enhance collaboration between school districts and private centers,

4. Develop policies to minimize the difficulties of blending preschool and wrap-around services,

5. Minimize inequalities among teaching staff within and across preschool centers,

6. Provide ongoing mentoring and support for center directors regarding staff development and equity issues within centers,

7. Provide training and professional development that is accessible to teaching staff in private child care programs, and

8. Provide ongoing leadership development for publicly funded, mixed delivery preschool services.

APPLES Findings
The Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study (APPLES) sought to determine if the learning gains from the program found in earlier research at kindergarten entry continued throughout the kindergarten year. It also sought to assess the quality of Abbott classrooms. Findings included these:

• Regardless of setting, children who attended the program improved in language, literacy and math skills through the end of their kindergarten year.

• Children who attended for two years at ages 3 and 4 significantly outperformed those who attended for only one year at age 4.

• The gains in language and math from two years of Abbott attendance were quite large--nearly double for language and 70 percent larger for math.

• Adequate funding, high quality standards and intensive professional development have resulted in good classroom quality across all Abbott classrooms whether in private provider or school district settings.

• Almost 90 percent of Abbott classrooms evaluated in 2006 scored above the average score found in 2000.

• Areas of classroom improvement were those most directly related to child learning such as language and reasoning activities, interactions and program structure.

Download the APPLES study at http://nieer.org/docs/index.php?DocID=173.