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The Child Care Partnership Project Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance |
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Description In Tennessee, higher education and the state Department of Human Services (DHS) have teamed up to provide child care providers a clear path for professional development. The Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance (TECTA) is a statewide, systematic training and professional recognition system designed to support and enhance the quality of early childhood education personnel in Tennessee. The Tennessee Board of Regents, Tennessee State University (TSU), and DHS jointly developed TECTA as a means to ensure professional recognition and efficient articulation between certificate, diploma, and degree programs in early childhood education. The TECTA system is available to professionals in the early childhood workforce, including child care directors, teachers in centers, and family home providers. TSU is part of the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) system, which includes technical schools, community colleges, and 4-year universities. TSU administers the training at nine sites statewide. Partners
History The idea for TECTA formed in 1991, when the Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS) and the state legislature began to recognize the need to improve the quality of child care in Tennessee. Talking over sandwiches in a DHS lunch room, Janet Camp of DHS Child Care Services and Dr. Barbara Nye at TSU agreed that the state needed to create a professional development system so that child care providers could have equal access to consistent education and achieve higher training standards. When federal funds from the Child Care and Development Block Grant became available for training, Dr. Nye authored a plan that would systematically lead caregivers from a professional credential, to an associates degree, to a bachelors degree, and ultimately to a graduate degree. The new system was based on the state's training model for the nursing profession, which combines classroom and clinical experience. In 1992, TBR, TSU, and DHS appointed a statewide advisory committee of roughly 20 leaders from local communities, business, higher education, Head Start, professional organizations, and the provider community to help develop articulation agreements between institutions of higher education for the training program. The articulation agreements are critical to TECTA's success, because they allow students to take classes at multiple institutions and accumulate their coursework into a degree. The first TECTA site opened in 1992 and, by 1999, nine higher education institutions were participating in TECTA. A degree program for early childhood education is now offered at all 2-year institutions. Activities The TECTA system requires 30 hours of basic entry-level training, or orientation, for all individuals without formal early childhood training. This orientation training is offered within 50 miles of every caregiver's work location in all 95 Tennessee counties at no cost to the participants. The orientation does not convey college credit, but upon completion, providers are eligible to enroll in the next level of the professional development system, advanced basic training, for which they will earn 15 academic credit hours. Clinical site practicum experiences, mentoring programs, specialized training programs, and advanced training programs are also available. Orientation specialists introduce applicants to TECTA and place them on one of five training tracks: center-based care, family care, school-age care, infant/toddler care, or administration. The system serves an estimated 13,000 to 18,000 providers in Tennessee. TECTA provides incentives and financial assistance for child care professionals to encourage their participation in the training program. The 30-hour orientation course is free. Partial scholarships are available to help cover 50 to 75 percent of tuition costs for college credit courses. Stipends ranging from $100 to $150 are awarded for course completion and achievement of an associates degree. Up to $325 in financial assistance is also available for obtaining or renewing a Child Development Associate (CDA) degree. In addition, TECTA pays for a substitute when a provider works within other settings for clinical experience, and pays for supervision in the clinical setting. Tennessee State University, under contract with DHS, provides management, training, and technical assistance for the development and maintenance of the TECTA system. The TECTA training curricula incorporates knowledge and skills based on national professional early childhood education standards, and college credit is earned for all training levels of the TECTA system after the orientation. Individuals must meet the admission standards of the Tennessee Board of Regents and work in a regulated child care facility or home to enroll in TECTA's college credit courses. Each training site is located on a TBR-system campus and has its own site coordinator. The site coordinator maintains the database, facilitates articulation agreements, and manages contracts with educational providers. DHS Child Care Services contracts with TSU, and TECTA staff are employees of the TBR campus at which they work. Many teach other university classes in addition to their TECTA workload. TECTA sites must form local advisory councils with representatives from the business community, local DHS staff, and center-based and family providers. The council's role is to provide local decisions on issues such as student admission once the enrollment cap is reached, and make recommendations on the use of accreditation and quality improvement funds. The local councils are also TECTA's strongest advocates at the local level, and help to ensure that statewide policies meet local needs. Resources Tennessee allocated $2.3 million from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) quality set-aside for TECTA in fiscal 2000. DHS delivers TECTA funding to TSU, which distributes the funds to the nine sites. Each site coordinator is responsible for administering funds for their individual operations. DHS has designated $190,000 of the $2.3 million CCDF quality funds for grants to support both accreditation and quality improvement efforts. A unique source of revenue in Tennessee is the provider license renewal fee, which generated $55,000 for TECTA scholarships in 1999. Prior to 1998, these fee revenues went into the state general fund, but a key legislator successfully pushed for legislation reallocating these funds for provider training efforts. New legislation signed in 2000 increases licensing fees significantly, providing substantially more training funds for programs such as TECTA. The private sector has also contributed resources to TECTA. In 1996, the Levi Strauss Child Care Fund contributed a one-time 2-year grant to help establish a TECTA site. The grant fully funded the administrative costs, faculty salaries, and clinical practice costs for one site in the first year, at a cost of $50,000. In the second year, Levi Strauss and DHS split the costs 75 percent/25 percent, respectively. Results The TECTA program maintains careful records to track student progress and report results. Each site has access to a central statewide database that profiles each student's salary history, coursework, and scholarships/stipends received. The database will help track TECTA's long-term impact on salary increases, retention, and quality of teaching, and analysis of the data will begin next year. An immediate result of TECTA is the creation of a new degree, an Applied Associate of Science (AAS) in Early Care and Education. Traditionally, an AAS is a terminal degree, but TECTA partners are working to make this a stepping-stone for a 4-year degree in early care and education. Sustaining and Replicating The TECTA partnership successfully replicated TECTA in nine sites across the state over a 7-year period. Governor Sundquist's task force on child care in 1996 helped generate momentum for TECTA's expansion by connecting professional development to quality child care. In response to the task force recommendations, DHS and TSU launched a joint "Jump Start" community education campaign in 1998 to help parents identify quality child care. The campaign underscored the connection between quality, accreditation, and caregiver training for parents. Legislation in Tennessee in 2000 continues to bolster quality improvement in the state's child care system through stricter regulatory enforcement, increased training requirements, a report card rating system for centers, and other measures. TECTA will benefit from this renewed attention and will play an important role in improving quality of child care throughout Tennessee. TECTA partners at TSU and DHS continue to seek sustainable funding streams for the program. The partnership successfully secured the revenue from the provider license renewal fees, and is in the process of applying for an apprenticeship grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Lessons Learned Seek stable environments. Staff involved at DHS, TSU, and the steering committee have had little turnover. TSU provided a degree of independence from state government that helped protect the effort from changes in political will. Build a common vision. Site coordinators have quarterly meetings to make sure that TECTA has the same clear identity and mission across all sites. Engage higher education. TECTA gains credibility through its location on university campuses, by employing university faculty, and by awarding college credit. Be strategic. Higher education and government are process-oriented institutions. It takes a long time to create articulation agreements, especially between 2- and 4-year institutions. The TECTA partners selected the pilot site because there was a pre-existing willingness among the faculty at the site. This early success then built momentum for the replication in other sites. Institutionalize the system. TECTA contracts with universities to operate the nine sites, creating ownership at the site level. Most site coordinators also have other teaching responsibilities, which increase their credibility within the campus community. Collect the data. A common database with relevant detailed information allows accurate reporting of results, which will help to build support in the legislature for more funding. Contacts Brenda Ramsey Barbara Wall |
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