Page 12 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
their involvement is LAC QRIS will be referred to as the LACOCC or QRIS group throughout the remainder of this report.
The Gateways for Early Educators Program is coordinated by and implemented through the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles (CCALA). This is a network of seven Child Care Resource and Referral (R&R) and three additional agencies that provide outreach in Los Angeles County. CCALA is a member organization that works to 1) ensure uniform, quality services across the County, 2) negotiate contracts, and 3) coordinate data collection for advocacy, along with many other tasks. All of the agencies provide subsidized child care assistance; and seven of the ten agencies (the R&Rs) provide a variety of referrals to services in the community (including child care referrals), trainings for early childhood educators, lending libraries and other services and programs. Families who receive subsidized child care through the R&R agencies are welfare recipients, or have recently been served by welfare programs, and other low-income families who meet program criteria. Staff at these agencies have significant understanding of the needs of adult learners and extensive experience in providing effective training and technical assistance and coaching for early childhood educators.
Through the training component of the program, Gateways includes 40 hours of training derived from ten key curriculum areas selected to provide an overview of the skills and knowledge needed by those working with young children and is based on the California Preschool Learning Foundations. This program was tested at pilot sites from 2008 – 2009, and launched countywide in January 2010. Upon completion of 40 hours of training the participant receives the Karen Kaye Award of Achievement and is invited to attend an awards ceremony at the end of the year. Additional training is available upon completion of the initial 40 hours to support continuing professional growth and development, leading to second, third, etc. certificate levels.
The coaching program was first piloted with STEP (Steps to Excellence Program at the Los Angeles County Office of Child Care; the predecessor to the LACOCC QRIS) and 5 of the CCALA agencies in 2010. The goal was to assist early childhood educators in improving their scores from their initial STEP assessment and achieve a higher quality rating score. With funding from LAUP and First 5 LA the coaching component of Gateways was able to become a countywide program, similar to the training component. STEP modified their program based on lessons learned from the pilot, including working with the early childhood educators sooner in the process, before the first rating and conducting a preliminary assessment to provide information for coaching, a process implemented in the new expansion funded by LAUP and First 5 LA. This partnership is one of the QRIS in the state of California and has started implementing the national Race to the Top (RTT) program.
To implement the Gateways for Early Educators Program each of the seven R&R agencies has dedicated staff that provides technical assistance at child care settings,
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