Governor Nathan Deal - Georgia’s 82nd Governor (2011-2019)

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Early childhood education committee meeting 1 minutes - Feb. 27, 2015

Welcome from Subcommittee Chair Amy Jacobs, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning

  • Commission Chair Chuck Knapp unfortunately could not attend as planned.
  • Structure
    • Four commission members were appointed to the subcommittee
      • DECAL also invited key stakeholders to hear views, opinions, perspectives from across the state
    • Should have received email from Mark with travel reimbursement forms
  • Governor’s charge for the Subcommittee
    • Make recommendations on expanding early education programs with Pre-K and Quality Rated
    • Recommendations due by August 1, 2015
    • To be considered for FY2017 budget
  • Next meeting will focus on Pre-K funding formula
  • Georgia is in good shape for early education; national leader in Pre-K and positive momentum in Quality Rated, but we are about continuous improvement and want to continually raise the bar for ourselves and early learning

Introduction Activity: Subcommittee members introduced themselves by identifying a rose (positive aspect), bud (promising aspect), or thorn (challenge or threat) about Georgia's early childhood education system.These were then grouped into themes.

  • Rose (Positive Aspects) Main Themes
    • Strong Pre-K system as a national leader
    • Access to Pre-K
    • Commitment to and investment in early education from state level
  • Bud (Promising Aspects) Main Themes
    • Quality Rated
    • Early Education Empowerment Zones
    • Governor’s Education Reform Commission
    • Summer Transition Program
    • Birth to five awareness
    • Support for all learners and families; dual language learners and families in poverty
    • Technology
    • Teacher preparedness
  • Thorn (Challenge or Threat to the System) Main Themes
    • Funding
      • Teacher compensation
      • Child care subsidy (Childcare and Parent Services [CAPS] Program)
    • Awareness to recognize that early childhood education is a real school environment
    • Maintaining enthusiasm around this work
    • Access

State Data and System Overview from Dr. Bentley Ponder and Kristin Bernhard

  • The “Why” Behind Early Education
    • There are 2,000 days between when a child is born and when they enter kindergarten; a huge opportunity to make an impact on young children to make them ready for school
    • Nomenclature of “preschool;” refers to broader context of early learning from birth to five
    • DECAL has contracted with Georgia State University and the University of Georgia who are in the midst of completing an economic impact study about the impact of the early education field on Georgia’s economy
    • When families are at or under the poverty level, we can do many things with early education to boost the achievement of some young children
    • Birth to five is prime time for supporting and encouraging child development because of major brain development period
  • Who: Key Demographics of Georgia’s Children
    • Over 800,000 children age birth through five in Georgia
    • About 30% of children birth to age three in Georgia are in child care programs
    • 80% of four year olds are in child care programs (includes Pre-K, but also non-Pre-K child care settings)
  • Who: Georgia Child Care Programs
    • From study of the quality of child care in Georgia in year 2009-2010
    • 77% of family child care homes are low quality
    • 67% of infant and toddler classrooms are low quality
    • 35% of preschool classrooms are low quality (does not include Pre-K)
    • 13% of Georgia’s Pre-K classrooms are low quality
  • How: System-Level Approach
    • Alignment of agency programs
    • Are we looking at the impact of children in special populations?
    • Are we connecting early childhood education programs to the larger pipeline?
  • What: System-Level Aspirations
    • Primary focus is on how do we increase access so all families can benefit from a high quality learning environment
    • It doesn’t matter if you can afford it, if it is not available  
  • Where: “Access to High Quality” Focus of Subcommittee
    • Georgia’s Pre-K
      • Access Related to Finance
      • Access Related to Capacity
        • Capacity looks different in rural areas compared to urban and suburban areas
    • Quality Rated
      • Access Related to Finance
      • Access Related to Capacity

Georgia’s Pre-K Overview

  • Pre-K Summer Transition Program
    • Children who are Spanish speaking make greater gains compared to their peers, but they still enter and leave more behind than their peers
  • Access: Georgia’s Pre-K Program
    • 84,000 slots appropriated through budget process
    • 885 grantees; grantee is a legal entity that has applied to offer Pre-K       
      • Could range from a large school system with multiple Pre-K programs to a small child care program
    • Definitions:
      • Sites: where the Pre-K classroom is offered
      • Classes: how many Pre-K classrooms
      • Category One: receiving  needs based services
      • Universal:  any child in GA that is four is eligible to participate in Pre-K Program
    • 5,000 on waitlist; waitlist formed when family makes application to a Pre-K site but there is not a slot for child
      • Includes families who want their child enrolled only in a certain location
      • Waitlist has been as high as 10,000; waitlists are cleansed of “duplicates;” child’s name can show-up only one time
    • About 96% of available slots (80,000 slots) are filled
    • Pre-K serves about 60% of eligible four year olds
    • Waitlists tend to be longer in counties serving metro areas; DeKalb has highest waitlist
  • Quality
    • We can prove what we do in Pre-K has a positive impact on children
      • Ongoing longitudinal study to  examine the outcomes of children in Pre-K
      • This lifts the floor for the industry
    • In a six-week program, we can document that  children make significant gains
    • Teacher-Child Interactions
      • Study funded by RT3 to  examined different Pre-K teacher professional development models and is informing future DECAL professional development going forward
  • Quality: Georgia’s Pre-K Program
    • National benchmarks from National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER)
      • Georgia’s Pre-K meets 8 out of the 10 quality standards
      • Class size and ratios are the two standards Georgia’s Pre-K Program does not  meet
  • Funding
    • Programs are paid per child, not per classroom

Quality Rated Overview

  • Purpose of a Quality Rating and Improvement System: A National Perspective
    • The national movement for tiered quality rating and improvement systems (TQRIS); increased dramatically in the past 10 years
      • Currently 38 states, including Georgia, have a TQRIS
    • The Quality Rated standards are Georgia developed and Georgia driven and are not national standards. TQRIS systems look different in each state.
  • Goals of Quality Rated
    • Improving child care practices and what teachers do in their classrooms; this goal is huge and difficult to accomplish
    • Assess programs using the Environment Rating Scales and a portfolio of the structural quality of a program
    • Communicate to create awareness for parents and families and to create market demand for high quality child care programs
  • Access to Quality Rated Programs
    • Over 50% of child care programs are participating in Quality Rated voluntarily
    • Family child care makes up about 50% of programs in the state; we cannot forget this critical group of providers.
  • Quality Rated Targets
    • Participating means that you have filled out an application or have submitted a portfolio, but you have not been rated.
  • Quality Rated Supports
    • Free technical assistance on site provided by Georgia’s child care resource and referral agencies to help teachers
    • Raised $10M of private philanthropic funds thus far in a partnership with GEEARS and Georgia Family Connection Partnership to support Quality Rated
  • Looking ahead…
    • Have to find ways to keep providers engaged and stay in Quality Rated to maintain and raise their quality
    • We have to create the market demand to keep providers

Closing – Commissioner Jacobs

  • Should not be P-20; should be birth – 20; we will have to change the language being used
  • Today was about providing background information; next time subcommittee will have more opportunities for discussion and to ask questions
  • Will make subcommittee resources available by “dropbox”