Each day we see the realities of educationalinequity juxtaposed against the concrete evidencethat when students in low-income communitiesare given opportunities they deserve, they excel.

Early Childhood Education

Need

Half of the achievement gap between white and African-American children we see in 12th grade is present before kindergarten starts, according to Nobel Laureate of Economics, James Heckman.

More than 85 percent of the brain is developed before the age of five.

Research shows that infants and toddlers in low income communities are exposed to around one-third the numbers of words as children from more affluent communities.

	Overview		Accomplishments to Date
	Board and Supporters		Contact

Overview

Given the power of early intervention to tackle the achievement gap before it widens to three or four grade levels, Teach For America launched a national early childhood education initiative in 2006 to bring increasing numbers of outstanding pre-K teachers to our country’s lowest income communities. After spending two years in the pre-K classroom, these individuals, from all academic majors and interests, will continue their work to eliminate educational inequity as leaders in early childhood education or other sectors.

The success of the pilot program in Metro D.C. along with the potential of high quality pre-K to influence a child’s life trajectory compelled us to expand these efforts to five other regions in 2007:

Chicago, New York City, Greater Philadelphia-Camden, Los Angeles, and Houston

In addition to these sites, Teach For America intends to expand its ECE initiative to several new ones in 2008 and will likely place ECE corps members in the following regions:

Bay Area, Denver, New Mexico, South Louisiana, and Greater New Orleans

Through our continued efforts to grow this initiative, the number of total ECE corps members will quadruple in three years, from 112 in 2007 to 561 in 2010, reaching more than 9,000 students in their first experiences with school.

Year	Incoming ECE Corps Members	Total Number of ECE Corps Members	Total Number of Students Reached
2006	26	26	442
2007	94	112	1,904
2008	150	234	3,988
2009	263	398	6,766
2010	325	561	9,548
Total	858	1,331	22,648

This expansion means that in five years nearly 500 ECE alumni will have the experience and conviction from teaching pre-K to become lifelong leaders in early childhood education. As the ECE landscape continues to evolve and attract stakeholders at the local, state, and national level, the efforts of our alumni as excellent teachers, school leaders, public policy leaders, and advocates for change in other sectors will have a catalytic effect on broader reform efforts in the early childhood education arena.

Accomplishments to Date

Corps Member Impact:

From its pilot year in 2006, the Early Childhood Education Initiative has already catalyzed substantial progress for our nation’s youngest and most impressionable learners:

Impacted 408 pre-K students by placing 24 highly qualified teachers in school-based settings, 100 percent of whom held a leadership role on campus and who had an average GPA of 3.5.
Khadija Ahmjad (Metro D.C. Corps ‘06) witnessed firsthand the incredible potential of her four year olds to grow, both academically and socially. She partnered with her aide and students’ families to meet individual students’ needs and create a highly supportive and enriching classroom culture. Students encouraged and helped each other and parents regularly contributed to the class activities, by recording several books on tape for their classroom library and making time, even during their own lunch breaks to volunteer. In the end, 100 percent of Khadija’s students achieved mastery on foundational skills.
Alyson Cummings (Metro D.C. Corps ‘06) realized the power of a highly engaging, interactive, and supportive pre-K experience by guiding and tracking her students’ progress throughout the year. She proactively worked to increase their oral vocabulary and facilitate a smooth transition to school by modeling how to use new words and full sentences in her interactions with them and affording multiple opportunities for them to express themselves and interact with their peers during center time, Read Alouds, and meals. Michael, who entered Alyson’s class knowing only Spanish, finished the year with some of the strongest reading English reading comprehension and math skills of anyone in the class.

Alumni Impact

Despite the fact that Teach For America did not formally place corps members in pre-K settings prior to last year’s pilot, several alumni are already making strides in the larger early childhood education context as school leaders and advocates for high quality pre-K, such as Aaron Brenner, Hillary Roselund, and Larkin Tackett.

Aaron Brenner (R.G.V. Corps '95) leads a high need, high performing pre-K through grade 2 charter school in Houston, Texas, in which 95 percent of his kindergartners can read and write on grade level in English and Spanish;
Hillary Roselund (Metro D.C. Corps '99), after teaching pre-K for four years in Washington, D.C., went on to pursue her master’s in education at Harvard. She then spearheaded a pilot program within JumpStart which connects volunteers, age 40-55, with high need pre-K students in five Boston schools. The program has expanded to Oakland, CA and, with Hillary’s guidance, will become an integral part Jumpstart’s work in school districts across the country
As the Legislative Director for Texas State Senator Judith Zaffirini, Larkin Tackett (Delta Corps '00) worked on a number of early childhood education policies including the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM) and the Equal Readiness Certification System.
Six ECE school leaders in California, Texas, Washington, D.C, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

Early Childhood Education Advisory Board and Supporters

Advisory Board

Helen Blank
Director of Leadership and Public Policy
National Women’s Law Center

Catherine Brown
Domestic Policy Director
Hillary Clinton for President

Carol Brunson Day
President
National Black Child Development Institute

Gayle Cunningham
Board member
National Association for the Education of Young Children
Executive Director
Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity

Libby Doggett
Executive Director
Pre-K Now

Ron Haskins
Senior Fellow
Brookings Institution

Michael Levine
Executive Director
Joan Ganz Cooney Center for Educational Media and Research, Sesame Workshop

Gene Sperling
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Former Director, National Economic Council

Caitlin Sullivan
Program Manager of Education Initiatives
CityBridge Foundation

Supporters

CityBridge Foundation
PNC Financial Services Group
McCormick Tribune Foundation
Sandi and John Thompson

Contact

To support the Early Childhood Education Initiative with a gift or to request additional information about our impact, please contact:

Sophia E. Pappas
Director of Growth and Development, Early Childhood Education Initiative
Teach For America
sophia.pappas@teachforamerica.org
212-279-2080 x696

Sophia Pappas (Newark Corps ’03) taught public school pre-K at Madison Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey after graduating summa cum laude from Georgetown University. After just three months of teaching, Sophia’s resource teacher designated her a model teacher for both novice and veteran pre-K teachers in the district. Sophia was noted for her accomplishments and efforts to effect systemic change when she was named a finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship in 2005. She also wrote a blog for Pre-K Now, the national non-profit organization advocating pre-K for all three and four year olds, focusing on her daily experiences in the classroom during the 2006-07 school year. Sophia’s firsthand observations of the incredible prospects of pre-K compelled her to take on the role of the Director of Growth and Development for Teach For America’s Early Childhood Education Initiative.