The Educare Learning Network, a growing coast-to-coast consortium of state-of-the-art, full-day, year-round schools funded mostly by existing public dollars, serves children from birth to 5 years who are at risk for school failure. Each Educare school provides its community’s most vulnerable children and families, particularly families living in poverty, with instructional and family supports that develop early skills and nurture strong parent-child relationships to create the foundation for successful learning. The focus of this evaluation is to assist the Educare Learning Network in the following: (a) determining the success of the network as a whole and individual Educare programs in developing and implementing core features of the Educare model, (b) determining the impact of Educare schools on children and families, (c) examining how implementation of core features relates to changes in children and families over time, and (d) maintaining databases to support local evaluators' research. The national evaluation partner team at FPG leads and coordinates the local site evaluators as they collect and share data with their own schools in the work of continuous program improvement. The cross-site data are also used to inform the wider early childhood field about the implementation and effects of Educare and contribute to the literature on the benefits of high-quality early childhood programs. The FPG team is responsible for protocol development and refinement; local evaluator training to assure the reliability of data collection; designing mamnagement information systems to integrate multi-site data; analysis and dissemination of results; and communication within the network.
National Evaluation Partner for the Educare Learning Network Implementation Study
George Kaiser Family Foundation
04/01/2011 to 08/31/2025
$2,273,483
Buffett Early Childhood Fund
04/01/2011 to 06/30/2024
$9,275,668
Ounce of Prevention Fund
07/01/2013 to 06/30/2016
$12,000
Noreen M. Yazejian, Principal Investigator
Donna M. Bryant, Co-Principal Investigator
Iheoma U. Iruka, Co-Principal Investigator
Sandra L. Soliday Hong, Senior Research Scientist
Laura J. Kuhn, Advanced Research Scientist
Gisele M. Crawford, Social Research Specialist
Kalen Donahue, Research Assistant
Linda Soto, Social Research Assistant
Keil D. Jones, Applications Specialist Programmer
Nupur Mishra, Applications Analyst
James W. Peak, Applications Specialist