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Session Title: Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK): Cultural Connections to Ready Schools, Native Hawaiians, Spanish Speaking Immigrants, and Refugee Children and Families
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Panel Session 328 to be held in Federal Hill Suite on Thursday, November 8, 9:35 AM to 11:05 AM
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Sponsored by the Pre-K - 12 Educational Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Anthony Berkley,
W K Kellogg Foundation,
tb2@wkkf.org
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| Abstract:
The purpose of the proposed panel is to describe evaluation results from Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK). SPARK is a nation-wide school readiness initiative funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Panel members include the Initiative Level Evaluation (ILE) Team and local evaluators from Hawaii, Florida, and Georgia. The panel will describe key learning pertaining to cultural connections between schools that serve vulnerable children and their communities. Lessons learned include evaluator experiences in working with Native Hawaiian children, Spanish speaking immigrants in Miami-Dade County, and refugee children and families from Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East now living in suburbs near Atlanta.
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Pathways to Ready Schools: Cultural Connections between Schools That Serve Vulnerable Children and Their Communities
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| Patrick Curtis,
Walter R McDonald & Associates Inc,
pcurtis@wrma.com
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| Kate Simons,
Walter R McDonald & Associates Inc,
ksimons@wrma.com
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The W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) launched a nationwide initiative emphasizing community-based collaboration and the development of strategic infrastructures to support early care and education and school readiness among vulnerable children. As part of the project, the Initiative Level Evaluation Team developed a definition of ready schools called Pathways to Ready Schools. The pathways were included in a survey of 252 elementary school principals in the State of Ohio. Respondents rated the importance of the pathways to a ready school as well as the need for improvement in their own schools. The authors analyzed the data from the survey comparing the ratings of achievement pathways to cultural connections and found that the ratings of principals from schools with 50 percent or more economically disadvantaged students rated the need for improvement in cultural connections in their own schools 11 percent higher than principals from schools with 50 percent or less economically disadvantaged students.
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Three Methods for Assessing Pre-K Programs and Elementary Schools in Hawai'i
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| Morris Lai,
University of Hawaii,
lai@hawaii.edu
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| Susan York,
University of Hawaii,
yorks@hawaii.edu
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The SPARK Hawai'i evaluators will compare three methods for assessing pre-K programs and elementary schools in Hawai'i: the SPARK developed Pathways to Ready Schools, the Culturally Healthy and Responsive Learning Environments (CHARLE), developed by Hawaiian educators, and state developed Hawaii Preschool Content Standards (HPCS). The evaluation team chose to analyze the connections, overlap, and gaps among the various domains. CHARLE consists of 16 principles that are further delineated into Schools and Institutions, Family, Community, Teacher, Learner, and Organizations. By comparing each domain to the SPARK Pathways and the HPCS, the team was able to determine a 'strength rating' for the bridges linking the groups of principals. The result raised as many questions as answers, but gave SPARK Hawai'i a basis for discussions on how to align the three assessments as an aid to facilitate children's transition to formal education.
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Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) Florida: Impact on Spanish Speaking Immigrant Children and Families
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| Charles Bleiker,
Florida International University,
bleikerc@fiu.edu
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In a four-year evaluation of the SPARK Florida project, one group of children and their families stood out as a special population-Spanish speaking immigrants. The two neighborhoods chosen for the SPARK project, Homestead/Liberty City and Allapattah/Model City have high concentrations of recent immigrant families. One purpose of the study was to evaluate the performance of immigrant children in order to identify factors that predict success or failure in elementary school. The evaluators will present the results from a general developmental assessment (LAP-D) and a social and emotional battery (DECA) administered at the beginning of the project compared to a recent measure of children's school readiness (ESI-K and DIBBELS). Within group differences will be analyzed by country of origin as well as between group differences comparing the immigrant population with a matched comparison group of non-immigrant Spanish speaking children.
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The Impact of Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) Georgia on Refugee Children and Families
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| Kevin Baldwin,
Wellsys Corporation,
kbaldwin@wellsyscorp.com
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SPARK Georgia uses a hub-based approach to service delivery in the community with eight hubs located in two counties. One hub services refugee families exclusively in a community that has experienced a large influx of refugees from Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. The purpose of this sub-study was to compare the developmental and reading readiness of refugee children compared to groups of Spanish and English speaking children. The evaluation team found that while the refugee and English speaking groups performed at the average levels on both the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and the GRTR! (a reading readiness screener), the Spanish-speaking children scored below average on some subscales of the ASQ. All groups performed average or better on the GRTR!, an encouraging finding given the linguistic challenges faced by these children.
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