AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation

AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation is a non-profit located in Washington, DC. Our mission is to close achievement gaps and prepare all children to thrive in kindergarten and beyond. Doing so transforms the lives of the children we teach, our families and the community.

Research has shown that high-quality early childhood education can equip children with the skills they need for life. In addition, economically-disadvantaged children have shown significant improvements after attending preschool. 

AppleTree currently implements our evidence-based instructional model, Every Child Ready, at multiple locations in the nation's capital, New York City, and parts of Texas. In addition, as part of the Texas Education Agency's Open Education Resource Program, AppleTree is adapting this instructional model to be cusomized to the state of Texas as a free delivery model available to all Texas pre-kindergarten classrooms. 

Every Child Ready: Texas will be available at no cost to all Texas educators for the 2023-2024 school year. The Every Child Ready: Texas instructional model offers:

• Comprehensive early childhood curriculum that teaches academic and social-emotional concepts through separate themed units for three- and four-year-olds
• An approach to an integrated curriculum that constantly exposes children to a variety of content domains throughout the daily components
• Complete alignment to all Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines
• Lessons, books, and resources in both English and Spanish
• A multi-tiered assessment to evaluate academic, and Social and Emotional Development in children as well as classroom quality
• Diverse pre-kindergarten program options, including guidance for remote, in-person, hybrid, and full or half-day settings
• Family connection tools
• A professional learning program to support the implementation of the curriculum and provide professional growth opportunities for new and seasoned teachers

The target beneficiaries for our project are education leaders, preschool teachers, children, their families, and policymakers. The problem we aim to solve is determining the best delivery models and conditions for successfully implementing the - Every Child Ready: Texas instructional model. This product is a comprehensive curriculum to support all children in PK3 and PK4 (ages 2-5) in access to high-quality instructions. Teachers receive a curriculum resource that gives all experience levels the tools they need to provide high-quality, differentiated instruction for all children.

We believe that by making this high-quality resource freely accessible to all children, we will positively impact teaching and learning across the state. An essential part of implementation is understanding conditions for success and adjusting delivery and resources as needed to meet the needs of a variety of participants. Therefore, we believe a robust research agenda should be part of the implementation. The LEAP project will support this effort by building out the research agenda.

In developing our Every Child Ready (national) instructional model, we have designed and revised the product with continuous feedback in a rapid cycle research framework. Our schools serve a diverse population of children and their families. Feedback is gathered from teachers through listening tours by our executive team and surveys.. AppleTree schools survey parents and family members throughout each academic year and use the feedback to engage them in their children's learning more effectively. Surveys are translated into multiple languages and accessible to families that speak different languages at home. We use this feedback to improve instruction and revise Every Child Ready 

Every Child Ready: Texas - will be offered by the Texas Education Agency as an open education resource, in its creation, we have sought input from teachers and school leaders as well as the Texas Education Agency for this product. The implementation of Every Child Ready: Texas will also include focus groups, designed to include the perspectives of multiple stakeholders such as educational leaders, policy makers, teachers, and families.. 

IF educators are provided with high-quality, evidence-based teaching and learning resources that support young children’s learning across multiple domains

AND resources are tailored to meet teachers where they are in their practice

THEN pre-Kindergarten children will receive high-quality learning experiences designed to meet their individual needs

WHICH WILL LEAD TO educators who are confident and prepared to meet the needs of their students

AND children who are ready to thrive in Kindergarten and beyond

At present, we are at Level 4 of Nesta’s Standards of Evidence.

Our current instructional model has evidence from three experimental and quasi-experimental studies. One Randomized Control Trial shows stronger child and teacher outcomes after implementing a unit of study from the model compared to classrooms using a business as usual curriculum approach. Two quasi-experimental studies show more substantial outcomes for children in math and literacy and stronger outcomes for teachers in CLASS instructional support in classrooms using the Every Child Ready model compared to classrooms using another curriculum. 

Through this project, we hope to: 

• Apply similar approaches to determine if this version of the curriculum yields similar results
• Build systems and procedures to support level 5 evidence integration.

We hope to collect additional data highlighting implementation conditions so we can have more robust evidence of our theory of change in various implementation conditions.

We will collect child outcome data in math, early literacy, language and communication, and social-emotional development. We currently collect this information for our national instructional model and will use a similar data collection approach with this revised product and user base. 
We plan to incorporate longitudinal data collection into the research design for this project. We will leverage community partnerships to monitor children’s academic progress using state testing and other data sources as available. Texas uses a variety of formal assessments beginning in Kindergarten, with all students taking the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness program (STAAR) to measure math and reading outcomes starting in third grade. We aim to use these resources to monitor ongoing learning in the elementary school testing grades. Additionally, as available, we will build relationships with schools and districts to incorporate more behavioral and social-emotional data points.

We do not have a system for tracking teacher and school (user) profiles or family/community satisfaction but want to build this into our procedures moving forward.

AppleTree seeks expertise to inform the short, mid, and long-term evaluation of an evidence-based, high-quality, freely-accessible pre-kindergarten instructional model. 

AppleTree values research and understanding of the usefulness of all products and services. We value a mixed-methods approach, incorporating multiple data sources to understand impact fully. Before the state-wide launch of Every Child Ready: Texas, AppleTree hopes to leverage the expertise of LEAP Fellows to build a comprehensive research agenda and strategy. We plan the research agenda will be implemented over the course of three to five years and will launch in August 2023. 

Overall, the LEAP project would help us answer several broad questions. Specifically,

• Are children better prepared for Kindergarten after exposure to the model? In what learning domains?
• Do educators find the curriculum model easy to use?
• Do educators find the model relevant and valuable to their teaching practices?
• Does success look different in different settings and circumstances?

The successful outcome of this project would position AppleTree to leverage this tremendous learning opportunity within the state of Texas and beyond. As both a research institution and a publisher, we are well known for our commitment to continuous improvement and our ability to leverage research to make real changes and improve outcomes for teachers and children. Our hope is that LEAP Fellows will better position us to accomplish this commitment to innovation at scale and share our findings more broadly with the early education community.