Page 11 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
2016
Program Description
The Gateways for Early EducatorsTM Program (Gateways), a multi-component, multi- faceted program which launched in 2010, offers diverse and individualized pathways to professional development for all adults interested in early childhood education. Since 2011, the Gateways Program was part of the Los Angeles County Early Care and Education Workforce Consortium (the Consortium) funded by First 5 Los Angeles and Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP). The Consortium, the largest workforce development consortium in the nation comprised of representatives from every part of the early care and education (ECE) field across Los Angeles County. The purpose of the Consortium was to provide and improve training and professional development for the current and potential ECE workforce in response to the growing need to provide quality ECE experiences to children from all socio-economic backgrounds and to work with a shared vision to enhance the overall qualifications and quality of practices of the ECE workforce through coordination of services, educational systems alignment and collaboration. Funding from First 5 LA and LAUP’s 5-year investment provided the Gateways Program the capacity to offer coaching and training throughout Los Angeles County and to serve a significant number of ECE professionals.
The Gateways Program offered three main components to licensed family child care providers, center-based staff, and license-exempt caregivers (those who care for children legally without a license):
 Comprehensive training program that exists countywide in Los Angeles and was developed to align with the areas of the California Preschool Learning Foundations.
 Individualized coaching to support early childhood educators in their career development pathways.
 Individualized coaching to support early childhood educators in increasing the quality of their child care environment.
While the 2015-2016 was the final year of funding for the Gateways Program in the iteration described in this report, Gateways will partnering with the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) and LAUP to provide coaching, consumer education, and parent engagement services in Quality Start Los Angeles (QSLA), the Los Angeles County Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). The Gateways Program will continue to provide training to early childhood educators from all workforce sectors of ECE.
For a subset of participants, coaching services were conducted in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Office of Child Care (LACOCC), and were focused on assisting early childhood educators to improve scores from initial assessments and to achieve higher quality ratings in a Los Angeles County QRIS. The Gateways Program provided the “improvement” component and the LACOCC offered the “rating” component in this Los Angeles County QRIS. The subgroup of participants who received coaching as part of
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