Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning: Supporting Community-Driven Initiatives
Overview
In 2014, Pennsylvania’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) was awarded the FederalRace to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant (RTT-ELC). Among other key efforts, this was recognized as an important opportunity to create“learning laboratories” where local strategies could be developed, tested, and replicated. OCDEL offered grants and targeted support to 50 communities to become Community Innovation Zones (CIZ). These grants made it possible for communities to implement local strategies focused on three key areas-P-3 alignment, family engagement, and community coordination-to improve outcomes for young children and their families. To elevate best and promising practices, OCDEL contracted with SRC to support CIZ grantees in telling the story of their community-developed initiatives through the use of implementation research, equity-focused capacity building, and storytelling resources and strategies.
Our Process
Measuring Family Engagement Efforts through Implementation Research
To measure and communicate impact of efforts, SRC identified practical, successful, and replicable family engagement strategies implemented by the CIZ grantees. The study reviewed the impact of technical assistance efforts by the state, such as dedicated support staff, sharing of resources, and professional development opportunities. SRC also researched how locally-developed efforts impacted more effective and longer-lasting family engagement. Through an iterative two-year process of document analysis, interviews, and focus groups, SRC produced a technical report to support OCDEL in making policy, programmatic, and resource allocation decisions.
Helping Grantees Grow through Equity-Focused Capacity Building
Informed by the findings of the study, grantees identified the need to incorporate a strengths-based approach to relationship building, with families as partners. SRC’s ongoing Equity in Early Learning Initiative, EELI—an initiative addressing institutional, organizational, and individual policies and practices perpetuating disparities in early educational settings—uniquely positioned SRC to support OCDEL initiatives for improvements in the cultural responsiveness of grantees when serving children and families. A two-day session created and facilitated by SRC was designed to provide multiple entry points to move individuals and teams along a continuum of initial exposure to equity topics and toward mobilization as advocates.
Storytelling: Sharing Best and Promising Practices
The SRC team also supported grantees in identifying and shaping the story of their work. CIZ grantees were provided with tiered technical assistance to use a variety of storytelling strategies to share how efforts impacted young children, families and their wider communities. Additionally, a Storytelling Toolkit and a Family Narrative Toolkit were developed to aid teams in continuing their storytelling efforts after the grant period ended.
The Outcome
With the goal of sustaining the impact of this initiative and wanting to ensure other communities were able to benefit from the successes of the CIZs, SRC worked with OCDEL to create innovative ways of communicating the overall outcomes of this work. SRC created an ADA compliant storytelling website, a paper report with an interactive online equivalent, and a Family Engagement Zone.
Related Work
