CER
The Center for Evaluation and Research, LLC provides comprehensive evaluation services for education, health, human service, and faith-based programs. Our experienced program evaluators work closely with our clients to provide quality process and outcome evaluation services. Christy Hurt of the Center for Evaluation and Research is the CAL-NET project evaluator. Major evaluation services offered include:
- Evaluation planning
- Selecting appropriate evaluation instrumentation and methods
- Data collection, organization, and analysis
- Formative evaluation
- Outcome evaluation
- Reporting
Project Overview
The Rural California Early Childhood Education Professional Development Program (CAL-NET) targets early childhood educators living in the nine county region in northern California. Tehama County Department of Education is the recipient of the grant funds and has served to oversee the program and ensure that services are extended to all nine counties. The map to the right illustrates the nine county region served by CAL-NET. The nine county area is large (25,000 square miles),
but is very rural in nature with a total population of only 650,000 inhabitants.
Staffing
The following staffing plan and structure have provided the effective management necessary to achieve project objectives: The Project Director oversees the administration of the CAL-NET program, including supervising the Tehama County Professional Development Specialist, the Special Education Consultant, and the Project Secretary. The nine Professional Development Specialists were each hired by their respective County Offices of Education, which provide their direct supervision. The Professional Development Specialists and the program's Special Education Consultant meet together monthly for training and planning purposes. Center for Evaluation and Research has been contracted to serve as the evaluator for the program. Carla Piper, a University of Pacific professor, has been contracted to assist with training, course and curriculum development, and development and refinement of ClipBoard. The following are the goals and objectives of CAL-NET and the progress that has made during the second year of implementation.
Goal 1
CAL-NET early childhood educators will participate in high-quality professional development that is ongoing, intensive, classroom-focused, and based on scientific research on early childhood cognitive and social development, including the age-appropriate development of oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness, alphabet knowledge, and numeracy skills, and on effective pedagogy for young children.
- Objective 1.1: Each year, 250 CAL-NET early childhood educators will participate in a minimum of 100 hours of ongoing, intensive, classroom-focused professional development (including peer coaching and mentoring) related specifically to age-appropriate development of oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness, alphabet knowledge, and numeracy skills, and on effective pedagogy for young children as measured by project attendance records, documentation of the professional development provided, results of the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO), and information provided on the ClipBoard Portfolio
- Summary of Evaluation Findings: During the first year of the project, the structure in order to accomplish this objective was developed and has been implemented during the second year of the project. The following provides information on the structure of the project, educational opportunities, and level of participation.
- Program Development Specialists : The Project Director developed Memoranda of Understanding with each of the nine participating counties which provided funds for the hiring of a Program Development Specialist for each county. Each County Office of Education was responsible for recruiting and hiring a Program Development Specialist. All nine of the participating counties have hired Program Development Specialists through Memoranda of Understanding with were in place by July 2004.
The Professional Development Specialists are responsible for overseeing the trainings throughout the nine county region, facilitating the onsite coaching and onsite courses. The Professional Development Specialists have been meeting with the early childhood educators in their counties and assisting them in developing their professional development plans which outline their short-term and long-term educational goals. The Professional Development Specialists are helping to link the educators to the appropriate workshops, training and courses.
In order to provided a cohesive program, the Program Development Specialists meet at least monthly with the Project Director and the Evaluator. They report their progress monthly and Tehama County maintains the database for all participants.
As of September 30, 2005, there were 609 CAL-NET participants. The following chart provides information on the numbers of CAL-NET participants in each of the counties.