High quality early childhood education is vital for students to achieve later success in school, but finding qualified teachers has been a constant struggle for early education centers and pre-kindergarten classrooms throughout the nation. A report released Monday, Nov. 28 from the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) at SIUE describes how Illinois colleges are working together to overcome this challenge.
Their efforts are part of the Educator Preparation Program Innovation (EPPI) grant from the Illinois Board of Higher Education and one of a wide array of projects funded through the state’s Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge award. The IERC report details the innovations resulting from this grant and lessons learned from the colleges’ experiences.
“This in-depth look at partnerships for early childhood teacher preparation is the latest in our series of studies of Illinois’ education workforce and provides insights into the strategies used by these partnerships and the broader implications of their efforts,” says IERC Executive Director Janet Holt.
The EPPI grants partnered 20 four-year universities from throughout the state with one or more nearby community college campuses to design new models for early childhood educator preparation and develop innovative solutions for common challenges. A partnership between SIUE and Kaskaskia College, Lewis and Clark Community College, and Southwestern Illinois College was among the seventeen groups participating in the IERC study.
The IERC study describes how the partnerships used the grant funds to create more seamless pathways for attaining teaching credentials and to improve the quality of early childhood teacher preparation. The innovations detailed in the report include:
● New articulation initiatives to ensure that students’ credits hours can transfer across postsecondary institutions;
● Systems for aligning assessments so students can demonstrate progress toward key competencies;
● Strategies for advising and supporting transfer students, both academically and financially;
● Promising practices for improving the field experiences for teachers in training; and
● Approaches to improve instruction skills for early childhood math, bilingual students, and infants and toddlers.
According to, Bradford R. White, the lead author of the report, the EPPI grants were successful in producing substantial progress with a relatively small investment and over a short amount of time— $50,000 or less over approximately ten months. However, he notes, it will be important to collect follow-up data on the academic and social-emotional success of Illinois’ youngest students to determine the ultimate impact of these efforts.
The complete report, along with other reports in the series, is available at ierc.education. For more information, call the IERC at (618) 650-2840 or (866) 799-4372.
