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Welcome to the CEELO E-News!
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We are pleased to send you the inaugural edition of CEELO E-News! We've been delighted to work with many of you over the past 18 months to build the capacity of state leaders to improve outcomes for children, from birth through third grade. We'll send this newsletter periodically to keep you up to date on our technical assistance and information resources.
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Technical Assistance Highlights
Delaware sought a quick turnaround review from CEELO of a draft assessment appraisal rubric that could be used by state and local stakeholders to evaluate early childhood assessment instruments, with the expected outcome of a recommended list of assessments for Delaware. CEELO reviewed the matrix, providing feedback on elements that should be added, eliminated, or expanded, and how the tool could be clarified to provide programs a better framework for assessment review. The center provided additional resources on assessment practices and pointed Delaware staff to the ongoing formative assessment CEELO Peer Learning Community.
Maine requested technical assistance to embed program quality standards into regulation and develop pre-K accountability measures in a local-control state. CEELO convened early childhood specialists from Kentucky, New Jersey, Vermont, and West Virginia to share lessons and suggestions. The state will engage a stakeholder group to establish program quality standards and approaches for collecting and reporting information for accountability.
Minnesota is developing an evaluation framework for their Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge projects, aligned with the mission of the MN Office of Early Learning. CEELO collaborated with a technical assistance (TA) team that included the Early Learning Challenge Technical Assistance Lead, the Build Initiative, and the Child Care State System Technical Assistance Network to develop a draft logic model. The TA team interviewed project staff and met with cross-agency leaders. The group prepared a report with recommendations for the state’s leadership team. The TA team will continue to support the state in carrying out the recommendations.
North Dakota requested technical assistance to develop a comprehensive assessment system, aligned to the Pre-Kindergarten standards, for all three- to five-year-old children in special education, Title I, Head Start, and child care programs. CEELO is collaborating with the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center in developing a state plan to use assessments effectively with all children. As a first step, the state team used a comprehensive assessment mapping tool developed by CEELO to identify the policies and priorities of each agency.
Oklahoma is revising academic standards in English language arts and mathematics for prekindergarten. CEELO collaborated with the South Central Comprehensive Center to facilitate a cross-sector committee of stakeholders. They worked on assuring the standards reflect developmentally appropriate practice and were aligned with the Oklahoma Kindergarten Academic Standards. CEELO also provided two national content experts to review the standards before they were released for public comment.
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CEELO Launches State Pages
Today will be your first public look at information CEELO has collected on each state, pertaining to their early learning guidelines for infants and toddlers, prekindergarten, and K-3. You will also find links to state program standards for early childhood education, along with teacher and family guidance documents that relate to the standards. Each state page is headed up by links to the state's office/s of early learning. Start with our state map to access this online information for each state, or type in the state name in lowercase following the CEELO link and slash (Example: http://ceelo.org/california or http://ceelo.org/rhode-island). As CEELO collects other pertinent information state by state, we will let you know how you can find it in the tabs on each page. Coming up next? Information on the states included in our recent policy paper on teacher evaluation noted below.
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CEELO Policy Presentations
April 2014
CEELO Principal Investigator Steve Barnett testified for the Senate HELP Committee on Thursday, April 10 at 10 am, on Expanding Access to Quality Early Learning: the Strong Start for America’s Children Act.
May 2014
Jim Squires will facilitate a session, “Issues and Actions: Achieving Full Inclusion from Birth–Third Grade” at the National Early Childhood Inclusion Institute May 20-22, 2014, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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