Educare Learning Network Implementation Study

Closing the achievement gap by creating a national model for early childhood education

The Ounce partners with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina to collect information about children, classroom quality, staff, and parents at twelve Educare Centers in the Educare Learning Network. The evaluation results help us determine how we can better use the components of the Educare model to maximize the school readiness of the children we serve and how we can strengthen those components, if needed, to achieve better results.

Initial results of this ongoing study show promising returns. Kindergarten-bound Educare children - particularly those who enter the program at birth - approach national averages on measures of language and conceptual skills, particularly when compared to most low-income children. And children who began the Educare program between birth and two years old transition into kindergarten with vocabularies and school-readiness scores that meet or exceed national averages for all American children.

Private funding is essential to evaluating our Educare model and implementing improvements. To learn more about or to support this project, please contact Barbara Hoffman, Director of Development, at 312.453.1930.

This project is generously supported by the Buffett Early Childhood Fund and the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Related publications:

• Promising Early Returns: Educare Implementation Study Data



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