Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness
The Texas Early Learning Council released a Request for Proposals (RFP) in June 2011, seeking to support Texas communities in identifying and responding to their early childhood needs. The Council selected four deserving Texas communities to participate in the Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness. Each lead agency received a 2-year grant from the Council to assess the early childhood systems in their community and create a strategic plan for systematic change.
Congratulations to the winning organizations and communities!
The lead agency for the Wichita Falls community is North Texas Area United Way.
North Texas Area United Way partnered with two local school districts and one private school for the Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness. The following school districts and private school will assess the kindergarten children in their schools using the EDI assessment to determine their vulnerabilities. This information will be used to inform the community planning later in the grant.
School districts and schools partnered with the North Texas Area United Way for the TCCSR:
Wichita Falls Independent School District
Burkburnett Independent School District
Christ Academy
View the full 2011-2012 EDI Community Profile Report for Wichita Falls.
The following maps represent the proportion of vulnerabilities in the five domains in each neighborhood. The maps will be used by the United Way and their EDI stakeholder group to develop targeted strategies to address the vulnerabilities and prepare more children for school.
In November 2011, Council staff met with representatives from the four TCCSR communities as well as staff from the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities and United Way Worldwide. This meeting in San Antonio was the first multi-site EDI technical assistance meeting in the country. Texas has the most EDI sites in the country, thanks to the commitment of the lead agencies to improve their local communities. Council staff also met with the lead agencies of all Texas EDI communities in August 2012. The four TCCSR communities shared their experiences from the first year of their EDI work with six new Texas communities using the EDI to assess their local early childhood systems. These six new communities are part of the Texas Home Visiting Program.
Currently, the four communities are analyzing the first round of EDI data, received in August 2012. They are also preparing for the final round of EDI assessments, to begin in Spring 2013. The data is in the form of neighborhood maps, organized into a Community Profile Report for each community. The neighborhood maps indicate the vulnerabilities of children across five domains of child development in particular neighborhoods. "Vulnerabilities" refers to a less than optimal development of children in the child development domains. View the report and two maps for each community by clicking through the graphic above.
The lead agencies are currently meeting with their local stakeholder groups to analyze the EDI data, individuals from the local community who are committed to improving school readiness for local children. Each lead agency will work with their stakeholder group over the next year to develop strategies to improve school readiness in its community based on the EDI collected in 2012 and 2013. Click through the graphic below to view more information on the four TCCSR communities.
About the Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness
The Council will support these four communities to implement a cutting-edge, population-based school readiness assessment tool, the Early Development Instrument (EDI). In addition to the EDI, the Council will support each of the funded communities in developing and implementing a strategic change process based on the EDI results. EDI is a comprehensive, community-level, measure of early development and school readiness for young children.
The four Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness communities will receive critical technical assistance from the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, & Communities (CHCFC) and United Way World Wide (UWW). These communities will join a Texas Learning Network on EDI and community-based early childhood planning and action.
It is the vision of the Council that these four communities will utilize the EDI data to inform the creation of long-term, sustainable, and responsive systems to better meet the needs of young children. The Council is pleased to support United Way of Southern Cameron County, United Way of El Paso, United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County, and North Texas Area United Way, lead agencies that are committed to measuring and improving school readiness outcomes in their communities and to serving as catalysts for community change. The communities received the first year of their data in August 2012. Currently, the four communities are working with their stakeholder groups to develop their community-based response to the EDI data.
The major components of the Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness:
- Partner with the UCLA Center for Healthier Children Families and Communities (CHCFC) and United Way Worldwide (UWW) to receive technical assistance and collect and use EDI data
- Partner with local independent school districts to deliver the EDI assessment.
- Publish and disseminate EDI findings - this includes, but is not limited to, creating an open, accessible, web-based community performance dashboard to report data findings and host GIS maps that demonstrate the specific needs of the community's early childhood population.
- Organize a community-based response to the community's early childhood needs, as identified by the EDI assessment process-this includes, but is not limited to, creating an early childhood stakeholder group or designating a currently existing group to plan, guide, and influence a community-wide response.
- Develop a written strategic plan in response to the community early childhood needs assessment.
- Produce a Stakeholder Group sustainability plan for the future.
Over the next two years, the Council will be updating our website with information on the critical work to improve school readiness in the four Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness communities. Check back often!
Learn more about the Early Development Instrument (EDI):
Read more about EDI
Download a presentation about TCCSR from UCLA:
"The Power of Local Data: Using the Early Development Instrument (EDI) in the Texas Community Campaign for School Readiness"
Download a copy of EDI tool
Watch a short video on EDI
