Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families

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Evaluation

Summary of Findings:  Year One

In December 2004 - coinciding with the second cycle of support for Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation - NAEYC  began a three-year collaboration with an external evaluation team:  Dr. Susan Maude from the University of Vermont and Dr. Rob Corso of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to evaluate the Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families initiative.  The ultimate goal of NAEYC and its Professional Development Division is to raise the quality of early childhood education for young children and their families.  The Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families initiative is designed to support this organizational goal by leading “early childhood educators in efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect, to promote children’s healthy social-emotional development, and to build partnerships with families.” 

The Supporting Teachers Strengthening Families initiative includes both formative and summative evaluation activities to determine its degree of success in realizing these goals. Built on a logic model which describes the flow of inputs, outputs, and immediate, intermediate, and longer term outcomes, the evaluation was designed to gather data about the program’s outcomes and to report on the overall implementation of the initiative.  During the 2004 – 2005 program year, NAEYC’s work focused on the development and implementation of the Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families National Leadership Program, a significant program component of the second funding cycle.  This summary provides information about progress made toward the initiative’s outcomes, with an emphasis on the significant work of the first National Leadership Program cohort and their work around the following key outcomes:

Leadership Cadre Skills and Knowledge

• Over 85% of participants indicated that their skills and knowledge where at least “much” improved in gaining awareness of NAEYC and other resources and increasing their knowledge about preventing child abuse and neglect through family strengthening strategies.
• Members from the leadership cadre reported a 48% increase in their knowledge from their pre-rating scores and their post-rating scores.
• Similarly, the leadership group members reported a 43% increase in skills from the pre-rating scores and the post-rating scores.

Collaboration

• Members of leadership cadre were asked to indicate the collaborative partners they worked with over the last year as a result of their participation in the Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families initiative. 
  • Nearly 80% of the group indicated reaching out to other non-profit social service agencies. 
• Over 75% of the group connected with college and university faculty, and 66% collaborated with public and private schools. 
• Additionally, just under 60% of the cadre worked with members of state government agencies. 
• Nearly half of the leadership cadre also reached out to policy makers.
• Members of the cadre indicated significant increases in their pre- and post- ratings of their work with local, state, and regional entities.  Overall, individuals noted a 33% increase around their work with other local entities, and a 36% increase around their work with state and regional entities.

Leadership Strategies

• Individuals in the Leadership Cadre utilized peer technical assistance and developed strong professional relationships with members of NAEYC and each other.
• This peer support is credited with providing a level of encouragement to each other to step out and be bold—changing both how they saw themselves, as well as how others in their community saw them.  
• The selection and participation in the Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families National Leadership Program acted as a catalyst to increase the cadre members’ leadership profile in their community.  

Impact on Workforce

• While data were not collected around all of these outcomes during the first year, the leadership cadre did provide information that allows for an initial indication of the degree to which general workforce awareness was raised around resources and evidence-based family strengthening strategies. 
• The group reported conducting 64 presentations at the local level, 56 state- and regional-level presentations, and 13 national presentations. 
  • In total, a reported 3,890 participants attended these presentations (1,425 participants at local presentations, 2,180 participants at the state/regional level, and 285 participants at the national level). 
• Specifically, when the leadership cadre was asked about whether the staff/students they work with were utilizing evidence-based family strengthening strategies, individuals reported a 40% increase from the pre-rating and their post-rating scores.
  

Conclusion

There are many positive signs indicating that the work of the Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families initiative is addressing its intended goals.  All of the leadership group members indicated an increase in communication and collaboration among organizations engaged in similar work as well as each other.  This increase in communication and collaboration helped to reach large numbers of programs and early care and education providers at the local, regional, and national level. The leadership cadre reported conducting over 100 presentations reaching nearly 4000 individuals. Additionally, this first cadre reported a significant increase in the individuals that they work with utilizing evidence-based family strengthening. 

Data gathering and analysis of the efforts of the second cohort of leaders is underway.  Check back in the coming months for a summary of our ongoing findings. 

Evaluation Tools

Evaluating the outcomes of your efforts has many benefits.  Effective program planning and evaluation can help you:

• Strengthen existing services;
• Target effective services for expansion;
• Identify training needs;
• Develop and justify budgets; and
• Prepare long-range plans.

Effective program evaluation designs: 

• Flow from an institution’s (program, agency) mission and purposes;
• Emerge from a conceptual framework, e.g., the strengthening families framework;
• Are marked by personnel ownership and responsibility;
• Have institution-wide support; and
• Rely on multiple outcome measures.

Use this Logic Model Template and Glossary of Terms when formulating your own activities.  This template will help you describe your action plan:  the discrete activities that make up your overall plan, the flow of inputs to the needed, the outputs, deadlines, as well as expected outcomes.  Feel free to add rows for more activities or additional columns to depict immediate, intermediate, and longer term outcomes.  Logic modeling is useful because it:

• Identifies both process and outcome portions of your efforts related to strengthening families;
• Clarifies each element of your efforts related to strengthening families;
• Provides a graphic summary;
• Shows the relationships between your efforts and other strengthening families efforts;
• Helps identify major questions the evaluation should address; and
• Makes explicit the underlying focus of an initiative.