Conclusions and Discussion

Process Evaluation

Teacher and student retention from beginning to end of year remained high (79% and 74% respectively), and exceeded national averages. Teacher and director professional development and stipends for participating in professional development remained high as well (97% participation in professional development and 88% stipend attainment).

Child Outcomes

Overall, child outcomes were positive: children showed appropriate developmental and academic trajectories, with improvements in mathematics and literacy from beginning to end of year and steady or increasing social-emotional skills.

Infants and toddlers showed strong development and met targets in all ASQ®-3 domains except for personal-social skills. Lower performance in personal-social skills was also a struggle in the 2020-2021 school year, but infant communication development has since improved.

Among prekindergarten students, academic results, as measured by CPALLS+, were moderately positive. Targets were met for mathematics and listening, but not for rhyming. In all domains, the percentage of children improving or making acceptable progress increased over the course of the year or, in the case of mathematics, remained steady at 100% making acceptable progress.

Finally, results from the DECA assessment showed that social emotional skills increased among infants (from 33% to 62% being in a place of strength) and toddlers (from 32% to 42%) and held constant among preschoolers from BOY to EOY.

Classroom And Center Outcomes

Classroom quality was variable during the 2021-2022 school year. Overall, CLASS™ scores increased among infant and toddler classrooms but declined somewhat among preschool classrooms. Further, only one of three preschool quality thresholds was met. An overwhelming majority (80%) of preschool classrooms met the quality threshold for classroom organization. At the same time, achieving quality in emotional support proved challenging (17%), and the percentage of classrooms achieving quality instructional support decreased by half, to 40%, from beginning to end of year.

Center quality showed consistent improvement. Collectively, CFSRPsupported centers exhibited growth in all four areas assessed— staff orientation, staff development, program evaluation, and family support and involvement. The strongest areas at the end of the year were staff development.

School Readiness Outcomes

Prekindergarten and Kindergarten Readiness

Although the number of children in FWISD prekindergarten and kindergarten with prior attendance at a CFSRP center is small, Camp Fire staff can use the results to better understand how their program contributes to school readiness and to identify strategies for improving the program.

Results of the descriptive analyses suggest that CFSRP continues to contribute to prekindergarten and kindergarten early literacy skills. FWISD prekindergarten students who attended a CFSRP center had higher ratings than the comparison group in the areas of letter naming and rhyming (emerging literacy skills for this age group), suggesting that the CFSRP approach with these skills is successful.

FWISD kindergarten students with prior attendance at a CFSRP center had higher literacy ratings than the comparison group of students with no prior CFSRP or FWISD prekindergarten attendance on TX-KEA (kindergarten readiness assessment) literacy measures, as well as on MAP® Reading Fluency™ and Growth™ measures. These results highlight the importance of early education to help children be ready to learn in kindergarten.

For CFSRP program improvement efforts, it is important to note that the ratings for children’s blending skills continue to be low. Though this is an emerging skill with expected lower ratings for this age group, CFSRP can consider implementing additional developmentally appropriate teaching strategies for this literacy skill.

Continued Academic Success

As noted above, the results of the Spring 2022 MAP® Reading Growth™ measures are mixed, with group differences that are difficult to interpret at this time. At the end of kindergarten, first and second grade, CFSRP children had higher ratings in some areas and the comparison group students had higher ratings in other areas. Given that this is the first year that the evaluation included MAP® Reading Growth™ measures for these grade levels, the evaluation should continue to examine the results of these assessments to identify potential trends in the group differences. Given the availability of resources (primarily time and effort to match data), the evaluation could also consider a longitudinal approach to follow the same groups of students from kindergarten to third grade.

In consideration of all results, it is important for Camp Fire staff to continue to critically examine child outcomes both while the children are at a Camp Fire center and when they enter school. With these efforts they can continue to increase the quality of their early childhood programs and contribute to healthy development for young children.