The ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ College of Education’s work to expand access to high-quality early learning opportunities across the country is being strengthened with a $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Over the next four years, the grant will support the College in generating tools and methods needed to launch sustainable high-quality practices in pre-kindergarten programs, particularly among low-income communities.

Principal Investigator , associate professor of early childhood and family studies and director of Cultivate Learning (formerly the ), said the work will help more children enter kindergarten ready to learn and prepared to thrive in elementary school and beyond.

“Research demonstrates that pre-K programs can have tremendous positive outcomes for children,” Joseph said. “Yet there’s still too much we don’t know about early learning programs that create long-lasting impact and are cost-effective. Our work will provide much-needed evidence to education leaders and policy makers about how we can create and sustain exemplary early learning programs.”

The UW’s multi-disciplinary team of early learning experts will deliver five principal results:

1) An assessment and protocol to measure progress in three target states (Washington, Oregon and Tennessee) toward implementation of the essential elements that—when present in high-quality, publicly funded and scaled pre-k programs—foster lasting benefits for children.

2) User-centered, state-based learning plans and data support for continuous quality improvement in the three target states.

3) Comprehensive, extended case studies of each targeted state to indicate the key conditions that facilitate or impede progress over time on the 15 essential elements.

4) A responsive, cross-state case study to monitor early learning strategy progress and to inform and refine the strategy over time.

5) Resources for program implementation technical assistance and training.

UW researchers will collaborate with anchor partners Ounce of Prevention Fund and the Alliance for Early Success, state policy makers, and local evaluation partners in Washington, Oregon and Tennessee throughout the project, with state implementation teams responsible for co-designing data-driven decision making at the state and local level to build program infrastructure and support continuous quality improvement.

“We are committed to working with partners and the community to give more children high-quality pre-K learning experiences,” said Marquita Davis, deputy director of early learning at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We are constantly finding out more about how to support our youngest learners and it’s because of the work of leaders like the ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ. This investment will lead to better results for children.”

The essential elements of successful early learning programs are grouped into three categories: strong enabling environments, supportive program policies and robust program practices. UW researchers will explore how the presence and reliable implementation of these elements contribute to high-quality teaching practices in the classroom that lead to improved kindergarten readiness and durable outcomes.

“With our partners, we’ll develop a comprehensive state systems toolkit to build and sustain quality pre-K programs at scale that consistently implement the elements of high-quality practice,” Joseph said. “This is a huge opportunity to spread our best knowledge about what works in creating the positive early learning opportunities that set up our children for success.”

Co-Principal Investigator , an assistant professor of learning sciences and human development who will lead the case study data collection process, said the project will build much-needed understanding of the conditions and processes that sustain and strengthen pre-K systems, particularly for children in non-dominant communities.

“We are excited to learn how these focus states are building infrastructure at multiple levels of the early learning system to strengthen program quality,” said Park. “Our goal is to make knowledge relevant—we hope our work can further inform efforts in other states to provide high-quality early learning opportunities for all children.”

The new grant builds on a $6.5 million grant received from the Gates Foundation in November 2016 to expand the UW College of Education’s . Launched in 2015, EarlyEdU was created to strengthen the nation’s early education workforce by extending high-quality coursework for early learning teachers and leaders.

Also this year, the UW received a renewed $7.2 million contract from the Washington State Department of Early Learning to support Cultivate Learning’s continued work implementing the quality rating and improvement system——it developed to assess and support Washington’s early learning and care providers.

, co-principal investigator and director of research to practice at Cultivate Learning, will serve as project director. Other participating College of Education faculty and staff are: , senior lecturer and director of the UW Master’s in Education Policy program; , professor of educational psychology and director of the Robinson Center for Young Scholars; , research assistant professor of P-3 policy and leadership and director of the UW’s National P-3 Center;, director of research and evaluation at Cultivate Learning; , professor of early childhood special education; and , executive director of the EarlyEdU Alliance.

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For more information, contact Joseph at 206-685-7469 or gjoseph@uw.edu, Branson-Thayer at mbthayer@uw.edu or Dustin Wunderlich at 206-543-1035 or dwunder@uw.edu.

That new research finding by of ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ College of Education has important implications for national efforts to ensure poverty-impacted and minority children aren’t taught by a greater proportion of less experienced teachers.

The positive spillover effect of effective teachers was quantified by Sun and her colleagues in a recent paper presented to the , “Building Teacher Teams: Evidence of positive spillovers from more effective colleagues.”

“Student learning is not a function of just one teacher but of the combined effort of many teachers,” Sun said, and introducing more effective peers into a teacher group helps drive improvement for all students.

Sun and her colleagues looked at more than a decade of data covering math teachers in grades 3 to 8 who can be linked to their students’ standardized test scores in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. They found that if a student has a new peer teacher at the same grade level who is approximately one standard deviation more effective than his or her own teacher, that student would have a 1.9 to 2.8 percent of a standard deviation increase in math test scores. This spillover effect is 23 to 29 percent of the student’s own teacher’s effect on his or her achievement gains.

Borrowing estimates from other recent research about the long-term impacts of teachers, Sun said having a peer teacher one standard deviation more effective than a student’s own teacher for just one year would increase this student’s likelihood of going to college by approximately .25 percentage points. Put another way, the financial value to this student would be approximately $10,000 in additional lifetime earnings.

Moreover, the research team found that spillover effects are asymmetrical.

“Although teachers benefit from a relatively effective peer, their students are not meaningfully disadvantaged by the presence of relatively ineffective peer,” Sun said.

Sun believes the study’s findings could help states and local school districts respond to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2014 call for them to develop strategies to increase the equitable distribution of teacher quality across schools.

“There is a broad consensus about the need of high-quality teachers for all students, especially underserved learners,” Sun said. “We believe this work sheds light on some promises of the 50-state Teacher Equity Strategies that policymakers can better design teacher incentives or assignment programs to magnify effective teachers’ contribution to the whole teacher team’s performance.”

Sun said the new study suggests that one promising strategy for building teaching teams in a way that maximizing all students’ learning would be to pair ineffective teachers with more effective colleagues.

Sun and her colleagues are continuing their research on spillover effects, with a goal of further estimating the long-term effects of having effective peer teachers beyond the first year of the new teachers entering a team. She also plans to examine how school collaborative practices and culture impact spillover effects.

For more information, contact Dustin Wunderlich at 206-543-1035 or dwunder@uw.edu.