Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Initiative

In the fall of 2006, Ready to Learn Providence (R2LP) received a three-year, $3.2 million Early Childhood Educator Professional Development (ECEPD) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This project builds on four years of demonstrated success in delivering high-quality professional development opportunities to early childhood center-based and family-care providers who serve children from low-income families in high-need communities.

The ECEPD grant, one of just three awarded in 2006, represents a partnership between R2LP, the Community College of Rhode Island, the Providence Public Library and Wheelock College.

The project has three primary objectives:
1. To provide a research-based professional development intervention to early childhood educators with a level of depth, dosage and duration needed to transform teaching practice with a focus on early-literacy development.
2. To change the school readiness status and developmental trajectory of young children as evidenced by their performance on formal school readiness assessments.
3. To close ethnic and racial gaps in school readiness by increasing the capacity of culturally and linguistically isolated early childhood educators who serve children from high-need neighborhoods in the city.

More than 250 early childhood educators from Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls will participate in the professional development offered during the three-year grant period. Participating early childhood educators work in a wide array of settings – center-based child care, Head Start, and family child-care homes.

While participants will receive the primary components of the ECEPD model over the course of one year, R2LP will offer many other professional development opportunities, such as Mind in the Making, to cultivate meaningful professional associations between and among participating educators over the long term.

Primary components

HeadsUp! Reading is the first of the two courses designed to provide early childhood educators with research-based content specifically designed to promote school readiness.

Early Literacy Curriculum is the companion course that follows HeadsUp! Reading. This course provides hands-on experience for early childhood educators in implementing a structured early-literacy curriculum.

Evaluation

R2LP has contracted with Dr. David Robinson of DSRobinson and Associates and the Simmons College School of Social Work to conduct a rigorous external evaluation to measure the effects of the intervention over time.