Conclusions and Discussion PROCESS EVALUATION Overall, teacher and student retention were all satisfactorily high (78% and 72% respectively), and exceeded national benchmarks, where available. Professional development supporting teacher quality was adapted to overcome barriers to transportation, childcare challenges, and limits to physical gatherings. As stipends for participating in professional development shifted away from CFSRP teachers to EEAP apprentices and CFSRP directors/teacher mentors in 20202021, Camp Fire witnessed corresponding changes in teachers’ level of engagement in program activities. CFSRP teachers who were expected to participate in professional development had lower levels of participation than desired in 2020-2021. Camp Fire staff are using this finding to consider how to effectively incentivize professional development participation in the future. Finally, with the assistance of virtual technology, mentors were enabled to provide support and build relationships with educators while maintaining pandemic precautions.
CHILD OUTCOMES Overall, child outcomes were positive: children showed appropriate developmental trajectories with improvements in mathematics and literacy from beginning to end of year, and steady or increasing social-emotional skills. Infants and toddlers were generally on target developmentally, showed improvement over the course of the year on the ASQ®-3, and continued to perform at or above their age in each domain. A concerning deviation from this pattern was lagging personalsocial skills in each group and lagging communication skills among infants. Only half of infants increased or maintained age-appropriate levels of communication during the school year. CFSRP staff and mentors attribute this difference to the effect of learning during a pandemic, when interaction with children and adults outside the home or childcare center has generally been more limited than under typical circumstances, and when a majority of adults and language role models have worn masks during interactions with the children.
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Among prekindergarten students, academic results, as measured by CPALLS+, were moderately positive. Although targets were met in only two of the four domains assessed (listening and rhyming 2), the percentage of 4- and 5-year-old prekindergarten children meeting the target increased substantially from beginning to end of year, including in the domains that did not meet the target (mathematics and rhyming 1). This result indicates that students made great gains during the year. Finally, results from the DECA assessment showed that social emotional skills increased among infants (from 33% to 58% being in a place of strength) and held roughly constant across toddlers and preschoolers from BOY to EOY. The fact that social emotional levels held steady among toddlers and preschoolers was inconsistent with patterns from prior years. It is expected that the lack of growth is primarily attributable to pandemic disruptions in classrooms and staffing, as well as general pandemic strain on children’s social and emotional well-being.
Camp Fire School Readiness Program CAMP FIRE SCHOOL READINESS & EARLY EDUCATION APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM | 2020-2021 SCHOOL YEAR EVALUATION REPORT
