Through Educare Arizona, we are bringing a proven national program model to our state, one which has demonstrated great success. Educare engages in ongoing assessment and tracking of child outcomes in the areas of social emotional development and early language and literacy skills. The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina is overseeing the national evaluation of the Educare Centers in the Bounce Learning Network. In addition, each Educare site hires a local evaluation partner, documenting Educare’s outcomes by measuring progress towards full implementation of Educare’s core features and assessing the program’s impact on young children and families.
Early data from Educare programs in five cities –Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Omaha and Tulsa – reveal promising results in preparing low-income young children for later academic achievement. The data show that the more time children spend in Educare, the better prepared they are for kindergarten. By the time they entered Kindergarten, children who began the program between birth and two years old exceeded the national average for school readiness by 9 points, averaged vocabulary scores of 96.9 (approaching the national mean for all children), and 88% had social skills rated as meeting or exceeding national averages.
