This story was reported and written by VPM News.
The Virginia Department of Education recently launched a website to help parents learn more about the quality of their child’s daycare or preschool classroom.
Classroom observations in all of the participating programs found that 98% of providers are meeting or exceeding expectations.
In a statement, Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons said families will be able to use the tool “to make informed decisions when exploring and choosing an early childhood program for their children.”
All providers of care for kids ages birth through 5 must participate if they take any public dollars. The initiative has been years in the making and is the result of 2020 legislation that mandated a new quality measurement system.
“We're especially excited that 60% of those sites are in private settings,” said Jenna Conway, Virginia’s deputy superintendent of early childhood education, in an interview with VPM News.
Conway said while “the law was really clear that this is only required for programs that choose to take public dollars,” private providers that don’t receive public funding can still choose to participate in the quality measurement program, known as VQB5.
Conway said a “historic number” of private businesses have signed on to participate in the Childcare Subsidy Program — a program that is experiencing an unprecedented waitlist.
In a statement, Kathy Glazer, president of the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, said that “Virginia is making strides toward an early education system that prioritizes quality, access, and affordability for families so that they can work, attend job training, and pursue greater self-sufficiency while putting their children on track for success in school.”
“Maximizing every learning opportunity”
As part of the new program, each classroom is observed twice a year by trained observers who look for signs of high-quality interactions between adults and children and use a tool called The Classroom Assessment Scoring System to record qualitative and quantitative details about these interactions.
The observers attend a two-day training, have to pass an exam and get recertified annually to perform the observations, according to Conway. VDOE has also hired a third-party evaluator to do a third observation, to control for bias and inconsistencies in the classroom observations statewide.
“There's more than 200 research studies that show that in classrooms that have higher-quality interactions — regardless of the credential of the educator — that children learn more, they thrive more, they’re more likely to demonstrate growth both in terms of academic and social emotional outcomes,” Conway said.
At the preschool level, observations are about three main areas of focus: emotional support, classroom organization and instruction.
For the first area, evaluators are looking for how responsive educators are to all of the feelings and actions of the kids in the classroom, as well as how good they are at providing emotional support.
When it comes to the second issue, Conway said observers are looking into how educators organize a day’s activities — including how they create teachable moments while kids transition from one activity to another, whether it’s getting 4-year-olds to line up to wash their hands before lunch or line up to put their jackets on.
“How do you really be intentional about maximizing every learning opportunity with young learners?” Conway said.
Lastly, they look at age-appropriate instruction. Conway said while that looks different depending on the age of the child, she said it’s important for educators to talk more to infants to help promote oral language acquisition.
“Which is a little bit of a habit you have to build,” Conway said, adding that kids learn in the context of relationships. “As you're putting out the food, talk about the food, where the food came from. That's an example of ‘how do you instruct babies’?”
Providers receive up to 700 points for interactions — and can score 100 additional points if at least one classroom uses a high-quality curriculum.
Conway said when VDOE started the pilot program a few years ago, less than half of child care and family child care programs were using any curriculum. Now, 85% of the sites have chosen one of the state’s approved curricular resources.
“That really represents a shift in how we think about what's happening,” Conway said. “This is not babysitting. This is intentional education. Using curriculum and being very intentional about how you want to promote kids' learning development is a hallmark of this system.”
What about sites that need support?
About 80 sites statewide have been identified as “exceeding expectations,” which Conway said means these providers are “truly national exemplars.”
There are also around 50 sites that have been identified as “needs support,” the only category below meets expectations. The majority of these sites are family day homes — and according to Conway, many are not using any curriculum.
Conway said the programs identified as in need of help are “already part of an intensive site improvement planning process ,” with an expert checking in on them monthly to ensure they’re making improvements.
According to VDOE, these sites will also be prioritized for state-provided coaching through the University of Virginia as well as other resources.
“The goal of this system is to ensure that no matter where you go in the state, if you need to rely on a public dollar … you can trust that you'll get a quality experience,” Conway said.
She said it’s important to mention that all providers in the VQB5 classroom observation program are provided individualized feedback, and she hopes they see the program as much more than just points in a rating.
“If you're already good at being warm and responsive, let's pivot and focus more on how do you engage that child more,” Conway said. “Oftentimes we often ask children rote questions, like ‘What color is this? What shape is this?’ But they actually will respond to how and why questions, like ‘Why do you think the sky is blue? What do you think is happening here?’”
She said another important shift in classrooms that can happen is less of a focus on rote memorization, and a greater emphasis on critical thinking skills.
“It's that type of instructional practices that we're trying to introduce, and not just in schools, but in child care and family child care,” Conway said. “Which is why we think this is such a watershed moment for the early childhood sector in Virginia.”
Copyright 2024 VPM
