A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Early Childhood Reform in Seven Communities - October 1996

V. Cross-Site Analysis

This chapter will analyze strategies across the seven case studies in a "bottom-up" sequence, beginning with innovative approaches in serving children and families, moving to local program management strategies, and concluding with analysis of how state and federal policies influence local program organization and services:

- Strategies to Support Child Development - This section describes the context and strategies of teachers in working with children, parents, and public schools.

- Strategies to Serve and Involve Families - This section analyzes strategies of programs in supporting parents and families towards the goals of effective parenting, economic and educational advancement, obtaining health and social services, and creating connections with community and neighborhood institutions.

- Management Strategies: Fundraising and Building High Quality Services- This section synthesizes findings about how administrators lead and manage innovative local programs. We portray agency managers as crucial mediators between the world of public policy and funding sources and the daily work of staff members.

- Policy Influences in Local Agencies - This section describes how current state and federal policies influence organization and services in these seven local initiatives.

Strategies to Support Child Development

Policymakers support funding early childhood strategies because of the benefits of influencing healthy child development and contributing to early school success of children. Early childhood programs spend the majority of their resources and staff time working with infants, toddlers and preschool children. Even when early childhood agencies work with parents, a dominant underlying goal is to enhance benefits to children. For all of these reasons, we focus in this section on how these seven initiatives carry out their function of educating and caring for children. We begin by commenting on the context of early childhood classrooms and teaching practice, followed by discussion of five significant innovative strategies observed in these seven initiatives.

Context: Child-Centered Classrooms Which Bridge the Worlds of Home and School

Early childhood classrooms occupy a special place in the educational careers of students and families. They are the first place where children come to learn outside of their homes -- and the last place where children are taught before they begin kindergarten. This situation creates special opportunities and challenges for teachers to work with families and with schools as they teach and nurture the development of young children.

Early childhood programs and teachers have multiple and powerful connections with parents and families. In many child care centers, staff nurture infants as young as a few months of age -- doing what parents would do for their babies if parents were not employed. A major priority for these teachers is reassuring parents about the safety of their children, and dealing with parents' anxieties and questions, as one teacher observed:

"The majority of parents with children in the infant room are first-time parents. We take children as young as six-weeks old and you pass out a lot of tissues on that first day when parents have to separate from the baby. We tell them they can call us as often as they want to check on their child, and in the beginning that phone is ringing!"

Parents have a significant presence in early childhood classrooms and centers in a variety of other ways. In contrast to K-12 education, attendance is voluntary in early childhood programs, families often have a choice about where they send their child, and parental fees are a major source of revenue in many agencies. Teachers also look forward to family members contributing to programs as classroom volunteers on a regular basis. And the proximity of early childhood education to children's home environment creates special burdens and opportunities to respond to the language, values, routines, and expectations of families. For all these reasons, early childhood practice involves significant engagement with families and parents.

However, while teachers collaborate with parents, early childhood classrooms are very different from children's home environment. Early childhood teachers introduce children to living and learning in groups, via the guidance of a professional, rather than a family member. While at home, children learn by interchange with relatives and they are nearly always the only person of their own age, early childhood programs are social environments with very different features. Classroom life demands that students learn to share space, time, materials, and attention from adults; and to work and play with a sizeable group of other children. Indeed, this social curriculum of early childhood classrooms may be their most crucial way of promoting school readiness.

Early childhood agencies complete their work as they hand over children and families to public schools. This change is cause for celebration in many respects. Teachers and parents share pride in how far children have come in their physical growth, language and social skills, and self-confidence. Children are excited about their opportunity to attend "big school". This transition is also a value-laden and emotional event. Teachers and family service staff members who have worked hard to create powerful bonds with families need to disengage. Families who have moved from strangers to participants and leaders in a neighborhood center must adjust to participating in a public school.

Issues of school readiness and transitions are a particular dilemma for teachers, because they frequently see major conflicts between the expectations and practices of kindergarten teachers and the way things work in early childhood classrooms. For example, early childhood classrooms reflect the premise that each child has his or her own pace and style of learning. However, as children move to kindergarten, they are often exposed to more rigid conceptions of what constitutes learning, and what standards of behavior are appropriate in a classroom setting. Children who are used to the flexibility of preschool now run the risk of becoming labeled "behavior problems", as noted by several teachers:

"We try to stir up the love of learning in children and hopefully it transfers. But I've seen some kids who are turned off to learning by their kindergarten teacher. Many kindergartens have the same kind of interest centers we do, but in other schools, it's 'sit in your assigned seats and do your work!'"

"I hear a lot of frustration from our teachers. They say schools are still using sticker reward systems and putting kids in a corner. A former teacher with us is now working in kindergarten and she says all they do is dittos -- there's nothing which is hands-on."

Along with concern about children's transition to school, both staff members and parents expressed a mixture of sadness and frustration about the radical changes in parent involvement as families move from early childhood centers into public schools. In early childhood programs, parents are regarded as key partners, their participation is eagerly sought, and programs offer a range of health, family support, and social services. However, whereas parents and staff used the language of "bonding" to describe each other, this was replaced with formality and distance when it comes to school-family relations. A common sentiment among parents and staff was that public schools fail to sustain a positive connection with parents. One parent described the stance of public schools in these terms:

"There are a lot of schools that don't want you to be involved. You cannot just walk into a class to see what's going on. You have to make an appointment."

A child care center administrator added the following comments on this issue:

"Many of our families move from coming to meetings to taking on leadership roles, to becoming advocates. After they leave us, there's often a total dropoff, because schools are not viewed as welcoming parent involvement. There aren't many evening or weekend activities where you connect with other parents. Teachers leave at 3:30 whereas in PSP you're involved in activities together, and you know a teacher will call you because she needs a ride to a session. So parents become very frustrated."

Relationships with families and with schools can create conflicts for early childhood practitioners. Both parents and elementary schools may take exception to the beliefs and practices of early childhood educators -- and teachers of young children can be critics of some parents and some public school programs. These tensions at the boundaries of early childhood programs impinges on the thinking and practice of teachers as they manage classroom life. Finding ways to address these connections is a difficult practical issue for programs.

Early childhood teachers then craft programs which focus on the attributes of children from birth to age 4, but with an eye towards where children are coming from and where they are moving to. In relating to families and to elementary schools, teachers work out a difficult balance between respect for the strengths of these adjacent environments, a positive partnership, active endeavors to address both transitions, and selective efforts to alter attitudes and practices in the home and elementary school.

We now turn to analysis of five strategies observed across these seven agencies to address these core challenges of working with children, families, and public schools:

A ubiquitous commitment to developmentally appropriate practice as a core strategy for classroom environments and instruction.
Strategies to respond to the diverse needs of individual children, within a framework of developmentally appropriate practice.
Strategies to incorporate parents and family members in the daily life of classrooms.
Efforts to prepare children and parents for the transition to elementary schools.
Strategies to create greater continuity between early childhood programs and elementary schools.

Strategies with Children, Parents & Public Schools

1. Programs implement a developmentally appropriate approach to classroom environments and instructional practice.

A striking paradox exists between the structural diversity of early childhood agencies and the uniformity of practice in early childhood classrooms. While we deliberately selected agencies with different structural attributes, our visits revealed a highly uniform approach to teaching and classroom environments, characterized by adherence to the tenets of "developmentally appropriate practice" as promulgated by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (Bredekamp, 1987). Across visits to classrooms in a small trailer on an Indian reservation, a child care center on the ground floor of a modern federal office building in Atlanta, and busy urban elementary schools in New Jersey, we found a striking homogeneity in physical environments, schedules, modes of teaching and activities, and the way teachers talk about their work.

Key elements of this approach include active learning via the direct exploration of a variety of materials, as explained by a teacher in one program as follows:

"When we were children, we did a lot of one-dimensional, rote learning, like coloring a picture of an apple and tracing the letter 'A'. Now if we do a unit on apples, we bring in apples and let children taste them, count them, cut them up, cook them, whatever, so they will not just remember that apple starts with 'A,' but also the tastes, colors, sizes and shapes of different varieties."

A dominant mode of activity is opportunity for children to choose from a variety of interest centers, equipped with blocks, books, materials involving numbers and mathematics, puzzles, games, natural science, and housekeeping, as illustrated in the following vignette:

The children are occupied at the interest centers while the teacher and a male assistant circulate through the room. Small groups of children are building with Legos; matching number shapes in a set of blank squares, working with Cuisenaire rods, washing dolls and dishes at a water table, painting heart shapes at an easel, stapling and taping together pieces of colored paper, working with puzzles, and playing with heaps of cornmeal at a sand table. Though it is a busy scene, the atmosphere is calm and relaxed with children shifting from one location to another on their own initiative. The teacher and her assistant scan the room looking for signals of difficulties, such as children wandering or disputes within a group. They stop to work with or question individual children and respond to requests from them.

Materials are designed for children to explore concepts in a variety of ways. In an area devoted to mathematics, children may find more than 20 different activities, including jars of pennies and other materials for counting, segmented hand shapes, caterpillars, animal shapes, and other puzzles and games which reenforce numberical concepts.

Teaching strategies often include an overarching theme for a week or a longer period of time, to tie together materials, discussion, and activities. For example, a typical day in a preschool during "Frog Week" might be as follows:

"Circle time" reflects the week's theme: the routine includes reciting frog poems, using a frog puppet in a finger-play, and holding a "frog" conversation. After a lusty rendition of a song about five frogs, children move to the activity areas. In addition to the normal offerings of painting, blocks, reading, and housekeeping areas, there is a beanbag game involving a large frog cutout, books about frogs to look at, a table where students can trace frog shapes with magic markers or lace the edges of frog shapes with yarn, and a large laminated chart tracing the stages in the growth of a frog.

Along with orchestrating this range of activities, teachers' discourse with children is a crucial aspect of early childhood instruction. Teachers talk with children to promote speaking and listening skills and to probe and extend their thinking about ideas, concepts and relations.

A teacher reads The Real Story of the Three Little Pigs to a small group of four-year- olds, sprawled comfortably in a carpeted area of the classroom. (This book, which depicts the wolf's side of the story, assumes prior knowledge of the standard version of the tale). When a tussle breaks out between two boys, the teacher interrupts her reading and deftly connects the story to the children's immediate experience: "What's wrong?... See, just like in this book there are two sides to the story." Later she asks if the children realize that people eat pigs in the form of pork or ham and inquires, "If a wolf knocked on your door, would you answer? If anyone you don't know knocks on your door will you open it?" She interjects questions to keep the children's attention and see how they interpret the narrative: "Now the second pig built his house a little bit smarter. What material did he use? Ooh, you're smart!" She concludes this activity asking, "Who's telling the truth do you think?" prompting several responses and a vote among the group. The majority sides with the pigs' version of events, rather than this account's stance which argues that the wolf was "framed."

This basic environment of set of instructional strategies offers tremendous opportunities for teachers to observe children's interests, language, behavior, and skills. Yet it also creates a highly complex and dynamic setting to manage. Teachers must devise ways to keep track of patterns of children's work and ascertain when and how to intervene into conflicts or activities. Assessment activities are knit into the ongoing fabric of teachers' observations and interactions with children. Teachers use observational checklists, anecdotal records, samples of work, and tape recorders to record data on children's choices, language, and interactions. Staff members then analyze how each child is progressing in social, language, physical, emotional, and cognitive development.

It is also clear from our observations that these central principles and strategies can be interpreted and implemented with varying degrees of skill and judgment, and in varying shades and spirits. For example, we observed several strategies in implementing activity-based learning centers. In the Covington, KY early childhood center, we observed up to 14 different clusters of children working on different activities, with the freedom to move around the classroom and choose new partners and projects on their own initiative. By contrast, in an Oakland, California child care center, teachers divided the class into three specific groups and then assigned each cluster of children a place to be for each time period.

The spread of this set of ideals and practices is remarkable, given the variety of organizational settings, policies, and resources which characterize early childhood services. This can be credited to the steady advocacy of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, emerging research on the effectiveness of this approach, and the availability of large- scale training and implementation materials from organizations such as the High/Scope Research Foundation.

2. Teachers work to respond to the individual needs of students within a framework of developmentally appropriate practice.

Within a general framework of age-appropriate practices, teachers work to meet the individual needs of children. One theme we heard frequently from teachers was increasing concern about the effects of stress and violence on children, noted by one staff member as follows:

"Parents are so stressed that they can't give children the time and attention they need and children are acting out in school and in child care. Perhaps the only way that children get attention at home is through negative behavior, or children are picking up aggression from their older siblings or television. We're seeing more acting out of Ninja Turtles and Power Ranger characters in the centers -- kids who whack, whack, and knock somebody down or tackle everybody. It's very challenging for teachers."

In similar example, teachers at Inn Circle's program for homeless families find that they must adjust their routines and expectations to children who are aggressive, use obscenities, have difficulty expressing themselves and problems in following rules. Children may be afraid to nap because the mats remind them of homeless shelters they have stayed in. They have difficulty adjusting to transitions between activities or minor changes in schedule or staffing. Teachers find that it can take as much as six months for homeless children to settle into group routines, compared to a month for other populations traditionally served by Head Start.

Programs are developing a variety of strategies for dealing with these problems, such as these observations by a supervisor of teachers in one agency:

"We work hard to help children work problems out using words -- to say why they're angry or unhappy -- which is difficult at this age. We try to use a lot of touch therapy and building a solid relationship with that child. When they're upset, we often just hold them and rock them to help them calm down. We tell teachers that the most difficult and frustrating child is the one that you've got to encourage by finding little things they do well that you can praise. We work with parents to find effective ways to guide their children without using physical aggression."

A strategy used across Sheltering Arms child care centers is "primary bonding groups," which match each classroom staff member with a small group of students throughout the year. A child's "primary" staff person carries out any ongoing assessment and leads the child's parent conference. This idea was originally developed by teachers in the infant class and then extended to older children.

When teachers notice a child with a more specific or serious behavioral problem, they employ a variety of strategies to help understand the causes of the difficulty and work to invent different approaches to help the child and eliminate the problem:

"For example, if a child is hitting or biting in the classroom, the staff will document when and where it happens over a period of three days and look for patterns in the circumstances. Perhaps it happens frequently around nap time and then the teacher can try a different approach with that routine. When we run out of answers we call in central office staff and experts from a program for special needs children and we ask parents if there is something going on at home. For example, we had a five-year-old who had a terrible problem of biting children. We did our three-day observation and asked the North Metro special education staff to observe him. Then I met with his mother and grandfather to establish some consistency with how they worked with him at home. It turned out that he was very angry about some things that were going on at home. One thing we did was to involve him in cleaning the room and having some special responsibilities within the group. And it got better gradually."

Teachers also adjust classroom routines based on the characteristics of their children involves issues of culture and language. Some strategies for responding in this domain are generic: home visits, bringing families and community residents into the classroom, taking children out to observe and participate in community events, and hiring neighborhood residents as staff members. In addition, programs are reexamining more basic assumptions and routines of teachers. As one of the FACE Program Coordinators observed:

"A lot of Navajo children's learning traditionally involves sitting back and watching until a child feels comfortable enough to try out something and not fail. It's a demonstration type of learning, different from the White way of 'get out there and do it and if you make mistakes, you learn from them.'"

FACE classrooms and activities build from the backgrounds of children in a number of ways. For example, given the importance and complexity of family and clan relationships, one classroom includes a large chart displaying children's names, clans and familial connections, and teachers review this information in discussions and activities. Teachers use Navajo songs and chants as part of daily activities; children and teachers address each other as "sister" and "brother", as is common in the community; and displays and labels in the room are written in both English and Navajo.

Teachers also adapt classroom practices to the characteristics of children due to disabilities. Every program profiled in this study enrolls children with special needs and serves them through a variety of staffing arrangements and collaborative agreements with other community agencies. For example, the Biggs Center in Covington, Kentucky mainstreams fifteen disabled children in their regular classrooms, with a team of one special education teacher and seven classroom assistants. The teacher oversees diagnostic testing, developing individual education plans, coordinating other specialists, such as speech and physical therapists, supervising the work of assistants and troubleshooting when staff members raise questions and problems.

3. Making parents a part of the daily life in early childhood classrooms.

Early childhood agencies provide a variety of direct services to parents and work to involve them in planning and decisionmaking. However, early childhood teachers also orient their daily work towards families in several ways, including their design of the physical environment of classrooms, their regular use of parents as volunteers, their efforts to communicate with parents around the progress of their children, their work to collaborate with other program staff, and their efforts to deal on occasion with conflicts with parents. In all these ways, a commitment to a partnership with parents is reflected in the core of classroom life and the daily work of teachers.

To begin with, the physical environment of early childhood centers is organized to welcome and include parents as visitors, observers, and participants. For the most part, parents encounter small-scale, accessible facilities and find it easy to visit without negotiating long, confusing hallways or formidable security systems. Centers invariably feature a bulletin board for parents, including a materials such as announcements of parent training sessions, employment opportunities, medical emergency forms, a list of recommended children's books, a handout on disciplining young children, a list of overall program goals, a chart showing the parents assigned to do laundry on a rotating basis, and posters about community events.

The physical environment of classrooms also offers clear signals to parents, guests and volunteers. Guests find a wealth of labels, charts and displays explaining the workings and purposes of various activities and materials. One center posts laminated pictures of all staff members, including their educational background and experience. Parents find charts outlining the daily schedule and classroom rules, and the academic objectives associated with interest center. So, in the reading corner, parents are informed that children are learning to recognize left-to-right and top-to-bottom sequences; retell a story in chronological order; and recognize that symbols have meaning. Other displays are resources for both children and visitors, such as "experience charts", listing 22 items that students remember seeing on a recent trip to the circus. Programs post information on the major thematic emphasis for the week, the new activities and objectives for the day, and enrichment activities which parents can do with their children at home. Thus, without asking the teacher any questions, parents can learn about the schedule, rules, activities and the objectives of the program. By these indicators, early childhood programs are open to family members -- and even lean forward with an air of hospitality and a desire to explain their inner workings to outsiders.

Parents and family members have regular presence as volunteers in these classrooms. For example, FACE programs include daily Parent And Child Time in their family literacy strategy, where parents read, work, play and observe their children as a core component of its program. Covington, Kentucky sponsors a highly successful training program to prepare mothers to work in classrooms. Programs accommodate the schedules and readiness of parents by offering a range of options for involvement. For example, Dad's Nights in Covington draw over 100 fathers who come with their children to spend time experiencing the activities and materials. An important by-product of developmentally appropriate modes of instruction is that small group activities allow parents easy opportunities to edge into the learning process and to genuinely contribute to the classroom community. When work goes on in a half-dozen or more small groups, there is no way for staff members to be engaged with every cluster of children. So a parent or community volunteer can pick a comfortable group or activity, be it playing with blocks or reading a story, and participate in a low pressure, unobtrusive fashion.

Teachers also reach out to communicate with parents, for a variety of reasons. Parents want to know what their children are doing and how they are doing. Staff want to ensure that parents' interactions with children at home complement the goals and strategies in use in classrooms. Parents often seek help from their child's teacher in understanding a child's behavior or in responding to problems with the child at home. Teachers seek information from parents to help understand the child's responses in the classroom setting. Conferences are held to update parents on the progress of their children and to respond to parental questions and concerns. However, teachers also visit homes and talk with parents to learn more about children so that they can understand them and teach them more effectively, as two teachers explained:

"You can relate to the kids better when you get to know the parents. For example, we had a seven-month-old infant who was having crying spells and throwing up, acting nervous and fearful of noises. We asked the parents what was going on at home. The mom told us that she had been in a serious accident while carrying the child and that she was fearful that the child had been hurt. This information helped us show more patience towards the child and a more nurturing attitude towards the family as well."

"Often important things don't come out when people fill out the entrance form. We've heard stories from one family from El Salvador where their dad was tortured by soldiers. We've learned that Vietnamese families have a tradition of placing hot coins on children' bodies when they are ill. They believe healing won't work unless the coin leaves a black and blue mark -- so this raises issues for teachers trained to look for evidence of child abuse."

These programs develop regular mechanisms for staff collaboration, particularly to ensure that classroom staff can draw on information and insights gained by other staff who work with parents:

"Trying to meet the needs of children and parents simultaneously is hard, especially when those needs may be in conflict. It's difficult for staff to make appropriate judgements, particularly when they see the child every day, but may not be hearing the parent's side of the story. Our Parent Coordinator contributes information about parents' situations in our staff conferences on individual children. It helped us to become more understanding and less adversarial in working with families. Now we are more likely to appreciate that if Johnny has a hard day it may be because Mom didn't get home until 2:00 in the morning, or because he's staying with an older sister and isn't seeing mom as much as he would like. Or, if this mother had a crisis in her family over the weekend and there was violence, you'd better understand the effects on the behavior of the child and the mother."

Finally, early childhood teachers also learn how to deal with conflicts with parents. When parents are active in programs, and genuine efforts are made to learn their views, harmony and consensus are not the only possible outcomes. Parent involvement can give rise to differences of opinion and dilemmas, as noted by two staff members:

"I want the children to get a good base of Navajo -- at three and four the children are still developing their language -- but many parents want them exposed to English...We struggle with it. It's a dilemma."

"I'm concerned that in professionalizing early childhood we may have professionalized some parents out of the process. We assumed that the best thing was to make every classroom 100% developmentally appropriate to the point of becoming rigid. We're now beginning to view our classroom as not just being a space for children but also for parents. You can't hand parents a sheet of paper telling them what they can't do in the classroom and then expect them to feel invested in the center. There are certain things the parents are going to gain an understanding of during the year. Let's say a parent is eager to help her child with reading skills by using flashcards. Let the parent use flashcards but as relationships grow, teachers can share about other ways we prepare the child to read and developmentally appropriate approaches that engage children more effectively."

A base of positive relationships is particularly helpful when difficult problems come up regarding a child's interaction in the classroom, as illustrated by the following story from a parent:

"I may have the only child who was in danger of being kicked out of a preschool! Steven was having a lot of problems to the point that his teacher was going to quit because she felt she had failed him. The director called us in and told us she was going to have to ask us to take him out because he was trying to push children off the top of outdoor play structures. However, first they referred us to a clinic at Emory University to have him assessed and once he was diagnosed as hyperactive and put on medication, we saw an immediate change. I don't think another center would have taken the time and been as careful with an individual child or with us as parents."

4. Programs collaborate with public schools to ease the transition of children and families as they enter kindergarten.

Programs have progressed from informal networking with school administrators to formal arrangements to ease children and parents from preschool to kindergarten. On the informal end, program directors or family coordinators convey to their school contacts issues and questions that come from parents. They also try to help the school in a variety of ways in order to build a climate of cooperation, as when a Parent Services Project site provided a volunteer placement for a middle school student who was at risk of being expelled. While the programs work with schools, staff members also prepare parents and children to deal with the realities of the school environment. Classes of four-year-olds may visit nearby elementary schools, to become familiar with the cafeteria, classrooms, library, and playground. Program staff members coach parents to ask questions of school personnel and give them the skills and confidence to handle future issues on their own.

"I do a workshop for parents each year on preparing for kindergarten. I don't tell them who we're really preparing, which is parents more than children. They need to know what they're looking for, how to ask appropriate questions, and not to just accept the school's approach."

Programs and schools also develop more formal "transition agreements" for sharing information. Child Development, Inc. has worked out such agreements to encourage meetings of CDI and district teachers; the transfer of assessment data and other records on children and families to the public schools; visits by teachers to observe classroom activities across program lines; the involvement of Head Start parents in the kindergarten program; and joint staff training.

Other agencies have formed transition advisory committees in conjunction with local school personnel. For example, through a committee of Head Start and school teachers and counselors, the Inn Circle program has given the school district a better understanding of the needs of homeless children, and has worked to develop consensus about the school's responsibility to initiate outreach to parents. It has a staff member who acts as liaison to assist parents in enrolling their children in school. In turn, the district has clarified its expectations about how parents can help prepare their children for school. The district's parent involvement programs are linked to the homeless facility through an Inn Circle staff person who works with the school to identify potential participants. An after-school program for older children is also located at Inn Circle and partly staffed by parent volunteers.

Many agencies continue informal contact with parents after their children leave the program. On occasion they are able to serve as resources and advisors to parents in dealing with school issues:

"One of our children left here and the school immediately wanted to put him through testing for special education. I talked with the mother and said, 'You need to find out exactly what they're testing him for and what the process is,' and she and her husband went in and talked with the school. They were able to select his teacher and the school put him in a really good kindergarten classroom and he has done very well."

5. Working to promote greater continuity between early childhood and public school settings.

Developing continuity of practice can be built into the design of an early childhood program. Two programs under school auspices have adopted this strategy -- the Jersey City initiative and FACE, both of which train K-3 teachers in the High/Scope curriculum. In Jersey City, other important steps have been taken to implement a child-centered curriculum for the primary grades, such as appointing the early childhood program coordinator, Pat Noonan, as the evaluator for kindergarten and primary grade teachers system-wide. These strategies have led to observable changes in classroom practice. For example, kindergarten classrooms have a new report card (providing narrative information on developmental benchmarks rather than letter grades), and they have discarded the use of workbooks and standardized tests.

The expertise of preschool programs in working with parents can be shared with elementary schools. Principals and teachers from the Covington district have been invited by the assistant superintendent to observe the Biggs Center activities. The superintendent encouraged an elementary school to pair with the Biggs Center which serves as a mentor on parent involvement activities. The Biggs Center's family advocates have provided technical assistance to elementary schools setting up Family Resource Centers.

Services for special needs children have a longer history of efforts to address continuity issues. There is a policy framework and an administrative structure in schools to handle services from preschool through the school years. Parents are involved in the design of individual educational plans from the beginning. Coordinating councils composed of different service agencies, including schools and Head Start, help ensure the smooth flow of communication, screening and evaluation, and therapeutic services. Unfortunately, these structures are not legally mandated for supporting continuity for non-disabled young children entering school from a variety of early childhood programs.

The extent to which comprehensive services continue in elementary schools may depend on priorities in overall school reform. Education reform at the state level provides the framework for the range of family support and parent involvement activities, as in the case of Kentucky's Family Resource Centers; but local school improvement projects are also open to strengthening community connections. The Inn Circle program and the school district are part of a case management team that includes several community agencies to help Inn Circle families with counseling, social work, and psychological services. The Parent Services Project is working closely with the Ross Valley School District to apply the PSP principles to families with older children, particularly parents of early adolescents with serious problems. The district has formed a task force on family support; as a result, several former PSP parents initiated a Family Forum Project to improve communication and support resources through monthly meetings, training sessions, and networking. In another instance, the principal of a school has involved parents with teachers in redesigning the primary grade program. Yet in these efforts, both early childhood and public school leaders are discovering how difficult it is to change established practices in schools:

"You've got a whole culture that you're trying to reshape. We need to get a grip on things as simple as a parent being called into a conference with seven school people, where the balance of power is totally ominous, or how to plan an open school night so that all parents feel comfortable about coming."

"Parents don't want plans handed to them. But there are practical limitations on how much teachers can do and how much time working parents have to be more intensively involved in collaborative planning. It's a very practical problem-- it's not always a matter of lack of good will."

Thus, early childhood programs engage with public schools in two ways: working to prepare children and families for a smooth transition as they move into elementary schools and working to enhance continuity of educational philosophy and practice with kindergarten and primary grade programs. In the first instance, they accept the reality of differences between schools and early childhood centers and prepare children and parents to adjust. In the second instance, they collaborate to help change school practices, to make them more congruent with principles and routines common to early childhood agencies and classrooms.
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[Case Study Summaries] [Cross-Site Analysis - Strategies to Serve and Involve Families]