QUALITY ADVANCEMENT

Improving the quality of child care.

When it comes to early childhood care, quality matters. By improving the quality of the hundreds of child care providers in Tarrant County, we help ensure that families receiving subsidies have access to excellent care. We’re leaders in multiple initiatives, including:

Texas Rising Star

Much like a hotel star rating, Texas Rising Star (TRS) is a quality rating and improvement system for early childhood programs in Texas. CCA manages this program in Tarrant County to systematically improve the quality of child care and provide professional development for early childhood professionals. CCA mentors and supports over 150 child care programs that are on a path to securing a star rating and delivering high-quality care.

Texas School Ready

The goal of Texas School Ready is to improve the quality of instruction provided by early children professionals, who then prepare children for success in school. We improve quality using five evidence-driven components: research-based curriculum, technology-driven child progress monitoring, facilitated teacher professional development, ongoing teacher coaching, and sustainability. Texas School Ready boosts quality instruction in school-based Pre-K, Head Start, and child care programs.

Professional Development and Teacher Registry

Building a world-class early learning workforce is at the top of our list. We’re supporting clear career pathways for professionals that include Child Development Associate (CDA) certification, BA degrees, and more. We also provide a broad range of professional development programs for early childhood professionals, including nature-based learning, classroom design, trauma-informed care, literacy development, and responsive care giving.

In addition, we register early childhood professionals on the Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System Registry, an online “registrar” that allows professionals to store and track their degrees, credentials and training. CCA has registered and supports over 2,000 teachers on this system in Tarrant County.

Classroom Assessment Scoring System

We use a gold-standard educational tool – the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) – to measure the quality of teacher-child interactions, which is a key factor in educational success. Assessed by trained evaluators from SMU, CCA classrooms are now surpassing National Head Start averages in the areas of classroom organization and instructional support, and exceed regional comparisons for
public Pre-K.

In the spring of 2018, CCA convened Momentum, a new event devoted to early learning in Texas. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price invited the mayors of the 25 largest cities in Texas to send early childhood teams to Fort Worth for a packed, 25‐hour agenda focused on improving early education and building better local systems. This invitation‐only event is empowering cities, and is now recognized as a major opportunity for improving policy and outcomes for children statewide.

We’re pleased to be hosting Momentum in April 2020. For more information, contact Samantha Middleton at [email protected].