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The Child Care Partnership Project Early Education Quality Improvement Project (EQUIP) |
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Description It takes a village… Believing that engaging community partners was the key to success, the Early Childhood Quality Improvement Project (EQUIP) helped two states and two metropolitan areas to create innovative strategies for improving their systems of early childhood care and education. Building on best practices from the worlds of business and community development, four communities (Oregon, West Virginia, Boston, MA and Kansas City, MO) developed plans and implemented policies to promote children’s healthy development. EQUIP officially ran from 1993 through 1998, but replications of this work continue today. The general template for the work involved these five essential components:
Partners EQUIP Partners included:
History and Development In 1992, the Families and Work Institute (FWI) received a grant from the AT&T Foundation to explore how data could be used to improve the quality of early care and education in four diverse sites. The ultimate purpose of EQUIP was to promote children’s healthy development, school readiness and family well-being, using a community mobilization process as the change agent. The objectives of the initiative were to:
Initially, the focus was on developing a single audit tool for use by all four sites. However, it was soon apparent that each state and community’s individual assets, conditions, political considerations, and limitations formed the foundation for what can be included in such an audit and how it can be used. West Virginia, Kansas City and Boston all completed annual quality audits using the resulting data to develop and implement strategic quality improvement plans. Oregon had been implementing multi-faceted data collection for several years, so its EQUIP project provided coordination for the state’s numerous initiatives and added early childhood benchmarks to the state’s existing public survey of quality of life indicators. Of course, the four sites also shared common strategies. All sites engaged consumers and business leaders both substantively and systematically in the many faceted system- improvement process. This individualized, yet collaborative work across four unique sites, enabled partners to establish a framework for change that now serves as a model for other states and communities. This project received national attention via a number of forums. Co-sponsored by several other early childhood organizations, including the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the EQUIP sites continued to inform other early childhood leaders about the project with presentations at the annual meetings of NAEYC from 1996 through 1998. Current Activities The community mobilization objectives of EQUIP involved convening diverse stakeholders, creating a vision, goals and strategies, and establishing an ongoing process to measure progress and results over time. All four sites continue to use these elements to measure ongoing change. Each community continues initiatives begun during the EQUIP years and, as the landscape evolves, generates new ones based on effective change strategies. The following accounts briefly describe the focus of each site’s activity. Boston’s process consisted of setting goals and benchmarks and awarding small grants to reach goals, measuring progress every two years. This approach resulted in documented child care quality improvements throughout the city. In addition, Boston’s use of collecting and geo-mapping child care supply, demand and quality data has been adapted by many states and communities, including Massachusetts and Omaha, Nebraska. Oregon created a research consortium of state, university and non-profit data gatherers and users. This group continues to collect and share data about Oregon’s child care system at the state and local levels. The increased access to shared data and continued collaboration among EQUIP partners resulted in documented early childhood system expansion and improvements throughout the state. In Kansas City, EQUIP established child care quality as a major item on an annual report card issued by the Kansas City Partnership for Children. This community’s focus was on changing the infrastructure, rather than directly changing service delivery. For example, Kansas City’s EQUIP used a business-led Summit on Child Care Financing to create strategies for new early care and education system financing. West Virginia’s EQUIP project led to the adoption of statewide quality standards for early childhood programs. This site also expanded and improved the state’s early childhood system, and increased business investment in child care. Resources In 1993, the AT&T Foundation granted FWI $625,000 for planning and development. These resources supported development of the project’s design and funded a competitive site selection process and initial planning with the sites. The AT&T Foundation provided another $815,000 to FWI for project implementation, which included $150,000 implementation grants to each site over three years. Each of the sites matched its grant with funds and in-kind support from a variety of public and private partners, such as the Kauffman Foundation, the Oregon Community Foundation, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the West Virginia Children's Cabinet. Results At each site, results varied widely, but there are common results across sites, as the evaluations document. One of the greatest accomplishments of all four EQUIP sites is that their innovations have been sustained over time and the sites continue to play critical leadership roles in early childhood system development, both locally and nationally. Other project-wide results from EQUIP include:
Sustaining and Replicating EQUIP developed in a wide range of effective strategies for early childhood system improvements that are being used in states and communities throughout the country. From coast to coast, states and communities are mobilizing, adapting the EQUIP model as an essential ingredient for their own early childhood system development. All four EQUIP sites continue to play a national leadership role in early childhood system development. Many states and communities are eager to replicate the successful strategies they pioneered, from collecting and geo-mapping data, to facilitation of broad collaboration and public-private partnerships to benefit young children and their families. This work will continue to inform early childhood system development for many years to come. Lessons Learned Build on Local Assets. There is no "one size fits all" solution for improving early care and education. Each location is different and requires an approach tailored to individual needs. Share best practices. With foundation grants EQUIP was able to document and share. FWI found a way to disseminate knowledge even when "official project was over." Data, Data, Data! Accurate, reliable, current, credible data are the friends of any partnership effort. Amass and publicize data on current status, comparing that status to the ideal for the community’s children and families, employers and citizens. Contact Information Nina Sazer O’Donnell |
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