Acelero, Inc.

Shine Early Learning is a division of Acelero, Inc. — a national organization with 1,700 staff — which, since 2011, has worked with individual early childhood providers, states, municipalities and school districts to implement proven practices that deliver positive results for children, families and communities. All of Shine Early Learning’s work is undergirded by the belief that every child has the potential to succeed at the highest levels regardless of income, race, geography, language or country of origin, and high-impact, evidence-based approaches can help early childhood programs and systems change the trajectory of a child’s education. Too often, however, early childhood education — and technical assistance systems, particularly — fails to live up to that potential.

Among early childhood education training and technical assistance providers, Shine is unique in that it is a direct outgrowth of Acelero, Inc.’s experience as a direct operator of early childhood programs through Acelero Learning Head Start: Since long before Shine began delivering support to other early childhood education programs in 2011, we were providers ourselves. Our Acelero Learning programs serve 4,352 young children in 52 centers across the country.

When we support providers, we are not offering coaching or services grounded solely in theory, but rather we know from experience what it is like to walk a mile in their shoes. We access dozens of public funded programs; we work closely with licensing, the CACFP program and K-12 school districts; more than 10% of the children we serve directly have diagnosed disabilities; and our mission and work are grounded in diversity, equity and inclusion. Today, we are recognized as one of five national exemplar Head Start programs out of 1,800 nationwide. Our centers have been recognized as among the top 1% of Head Start programs in the country. During the pandemic, which has been deleterious to the field of early childhood education, a study conducted by Brown University researchers found that children enrolled in our programs — both in-person and virtual — still achieved significant child outcome gains. This track record of excellence is unique in the early childhood space.

We have achieved these results by using data rigorously in all elements of our work to drive innovation and continuous improvement; building the best early childhood education programmatic team in the country; developing solutions built to scale; nimbly adjusting to changing dynamics; and providing intensive support in implementing game-changing practice. Moreover, we have done so by forging local and national partnerships to ensure that we are meeting the needs of localities and continuously learning from others and improving our work.

Today, the services of Shine Early Learning directly impact the services of early childhood education programs serving more than 250,000 children in 28 states across the country. These partners include large municipalities, school districts, for-profit and non-profit child care operators, Community Action Programs, and a wide range of national and local non-profit organizations.

The program for which we are requesting evaluation support is our more recent public systems technical assistance program, Shine Advance. Shine Advance work begin three years ago with our first public systems project for the state of Indiana, SPARK Learning Lab Indiana (SPARK IN) (www.indianaspark.com). In 2019, Shine Early Learning was selected as the State of Indiana’s statewide technical assistance and training system for over 5,000 ECE providers. A 3-tiered technical assistance system allows providers to leverage asynchronous professional development, tools, and resources; to participate in virtual and in-person learning communities; and receive intensive individual supports, all according to the provider’s individualized needs and aspirations as identified through a Shine-designed self-assessment tool built in collaboration with the public system with whom we are partnering and the community partners who will use the tool. The three tiers are described below.

Tier 1 - Supports for All: The foundation of our supports are the universal learning opportunities that are available to all early childhood education and care professionals. These supports include coaching, training, self-assessment, resources, Help Desk, and peer learning opportunities accessible in multiple avenues. This “no wrong door” philosophy ensures that early childhood education and care professionals can access the support they need when they need it without having to search.

Tier 2 - Targeted Coaching and Support: Our targeted coaching experiences embody the Shine Early Learning philosophy and methodology for professional development which focuses on building the competency of pedagogical and business leaders and, in turn, increasing the quality of children’s and families’ experiences in the early childhood education and care program. Developed from the Acelero Learning model, our coaching cycle validates responses from the program’s completed self-assessment, assessing knowledge and skill, to inform the development of a mutually agreed upon program development plan that includes a SMART goal and action plan for success. The program leader, with the coach’s support, then engages in a practice, observation, and reflection & feedback mini cycle in an effort to improve overall practice. The program leaders then evaluate the plan and goal for effectiveness with the coach before assessing progress and making any necessary revisions.

Tier 3 - Intensive Support: For some areas of program improvement, leaders may want or need more individualized and intensive coaching to improve their practices and those within their program. In response, we offer intensive coaching interventions which can be provided virtually or on-site in the program. Tier 3 services provide support for an area of development that the program leaders identify through the self-assessment and/or allows capacity for responsive intervention for regulatory issues such as health and safety violations. Individualized coaching experiences support the program leaders in achieving their identified goals and improving their practices.

Our delivery of service considers the unique needs, type, and level of supports for the classroom, provider, child, and system. Additionally, we establish peer networks across shared geography and/or cultures, as well as shared self-assessment results, to facilitate provider engagement quality improvement. We understand that for providers to be successful, we must leverage their experience in their communities and foster additional provider-to-provider, community-based connections. The peer networks - which are experienced in structured professional learning communities, peer-to-peer trainings, communities of practice, and regional advisory councils - serve as one underpinning of a community-informed, comprehensive technical assistance, training, and development solution which provides equitable and proven strategies for diverse audiences. The Quality Support Center develops both the pedagogical and business competencies of leaders and delivers quality outcomes at scale.

Since 2019, we have expanded Shine Advance to operate in Philadelphia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. As a technical assistance and training provider for states, municipalities, and programs across the country, we understand the importance and role of quality technical assistance. We also deeply understand the challenges of measuring child- and family-level impacts with systems-level work and are seeking to partner with you through the MIT LEAP program to help us design a data analytic strategy that will give us child and family level insights today and scale with us as we expand our solutions to more states.

Shine Advance projects elevate the voices and insights of providers from diverse areas of the city or state in which we operate. We take a multi-faceted approach to engage, learn from and co-create solutions with the communities we serve:

• Co-construct implementation plan and key metrics with the State and key community members.
• Build upon existing relationships. 
• Initial listening tour
• Regional Advisory Councils - one in each region or key area
• Identified staff positions - DEIB Manager, DEIB Specialist, Funding for sub-contractors to engage with Tribes, Hispanic/Latinx, African American, Hmong, and rural populations
• Combination of centralized staff and remote staff throughout the project area (e.g., city, state)
• Focus on hiring diverse and representative staff to assist in developing relationships
• Dedicated community engagement resources
• Translation services 
• Contracting and engaging with local partners for key service delivery areas

As an example, in our newly awarded Wisconsin YoungStar project, we  designed six Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) to ensure that local voices contribute to the statewide design of our efforts. We will leverage the Wisconsin Registry’s statewide advisory council and WECA’s deep engagement in communities around the state to inform the ongoing development of our programming. Our partnership with Athena Communications (a marketing, engagement and communications firm) will further our engagement with parents and providers to better support our efforts to engage providers in dialogue about YoungStar. What we have learned through our engagement to date is that feedback from providers influences the administration of YoungStar supports on a narrowly local basis. Providers will continue to have this local influence under Shine, but we will ensure that more voices are elevated on a continual basis to provide feedback and input into the overall structure of the program.

Approaches or Strategies:

• Organized hub of technical assistance which ensures strong partnerships and high quality experiences
• A responsive and equitable three tier approach including universal, targeted, and intensive supports
• Quality improvement focused on business and pedagogical leadership competency building through self-assessment
• A scalable and responsive system that empowers the provider to direct the improvement activities
• A community-inclusive strategy that surrounds participants with peer supports for network and agency-building.

Essential Activities:

• Participant completes a self-assessment and co-designs an aligned learning path with Shine Advance support.
• Based on self-assessment results, tiered support is provided as described in the overall program description above.
• Regular, rigorous data collection, analysis and review

Targets

• Meaningful improvements in all leading indicators/metrics from state priorities.
• Increase in diversity of programs achieving highest level ratings – for example, increase in representative leadership; increase in families of color served by highest-rated programs; diversity in location of highest-rated programs, e.g., rural, urban.

Outcomes

• Children served by providers in SEL network are kindergarten ready to thrive, succeed, and excel
• Increased leadership capacity and competency in one or more ways
• Providers served in SEL network achieve sustained self-sufficiency, compliance and overall quality of operational and pedagogical programs
• Provider cultures are inclusive, equitable and committed to continuous learning.

Ultimate Impact

• Early Care and Education Field Transformation:
  • The SEL network has a strong infrastructure and community which supports high-quality early care and education development at all stages
  • Increase the diversity (type, population served, composition of the program, etc.) of providers to meet unique family needs
  • High-quality early care and education leads the way for all children to thrive and live to their full potential

• Narrowing of Opportunity Gaps
  • Infants and toddlers are safer, healthier, and more emotionally well
  • Disparities and opportunity gaps by race, place, and immigrant status begin to narrow

Our public systems work requires that we meet or exceed metrics identified by each contracting partner, which are initially set in the public bid requests. An annual report (example here for SPARK Indiana) is submitted to demonstrate our progress toward or achievement of agreed upon metrics. Our metrics include a mixture of dosage and effectiveness. Our analytic work to date falls at an Evidence Level 2. With the data we have access to and a strong data analytic strategy, I believe we can achieve Level 3. Our already started work to fully define and codify our approach will allow us to better measure program fidelity and ultimately understand how our intervention achieves impact for different stakeholders.

Below is a representative sample of indicators, from our SPARK Philadelphia project, which also provides the evidence sources:

• # of PHLpreK providers with STAR 3 or 4 ratings will increase
• # of PHLpreK seats with STAR 3 or 4 ratings will increase
• # of PHLpreK providers moving from unrated, STAR 1, or 2 up to STAR 3 or 4 will take less time
• # of PHLpreK children enrolled in STAR 3 or 4 providers will increase
• Pre-Qualified PHLpreK providers will be prepared for any seat expansions or reallocations in a given program year
• # of PHLpreK providers with children experiencing incidents of suspensions or exclusions will trend towards zero (0)
• Pre-Qualified PHLpreK providers will be prepared for any seat expansions
• CLASS ratings will remain stable or improve, with an emphasis on instructional support domain improvement

*PHLpreK - Philadelphia Pre-K

*STAR - Philadelphia’s Quality Improvement Rating System (QRIS). A QRIS is a systemic approach to assess, improve, and communicate the level of quality in early and school-age care and education programs.

*CLASS - Classroom Assessment Scoring System, a nationally recognized and validated teacher-child interaction observation system

Depending on the project, we have diverse indicators (key indicators for SPARK Indiana are shared in the annual report provided in response to the immediate prior prompt). All of the projects included in our Shine Advance program offer access to providers’ quality rating improvement system data. QRIS are composed of five common elements: (1) standards; (2) accountability measures; (3) program and practitioner outreach and support; (4) financial incentives; and (5) parent/consumer education efforts.

Shine Advance collaboratively designs and implements public systems training and technical assistance to scale positive impact for children and families.

Our organization's mission is to design and deliver inclusive, anti-bias, and rigorous approaches that eliminate the gaps between young children’s inherent potential and their achievement in school and life. With our partners, we aim to accelerate child and family outcomes that honor the aspirations and cultures of the communities we serve.

In our direct service programs through Acelero Learning Head Start and our community partnerships with other programs that directly serve young children through Shine Early Learning, we co-create solutions that are used directly with children, families, teachers and individual program leaders. This proximity allows us to more clearly and simply use data understand how our tools and services impact the children and families we support. In turn, we can make smart, strategic improvements to our direct service offerings, which we know are directly tied to child and family outcomes. 

Our Shine Advance government partnerships, however, provide scaled training and technical assistance, and the level of intervention is often at the state, regional or district level. The opportunity for scaled impact is vast. We have, however, found it more challenging to analyze direct impact for children and families resulting from this program model. 

We are requesting the LEAP Fellowship program will help us design and implement a secondary data analytic and evaluation strategy that effectively utilizes the many diverse data sources we already access and use to measure key aspects of our program effectiveness for children and families. We request support to define the direct impacts we are able to measure and create the strategy and tools to replicate this measurement in other Shine Advance projects as we continue to scale. Building a family- and child-focused secondary data analytic strategy that utilizes commonly available data we access through our Shine Advance partnerships will allow us to cost-effectively build analytic models that efficiently analyze key metrics within and across projects. We are better when we have access to valid and reliable data analytic methods that can help us celebrate our wins and continuously improve and refine our tools and services.

At Acelero, Inc., we envision a world where children become champions of their own making; where historical biases and systemic inequities no longer stand in the way of their infinite promise. Though our staff may never meet many of the children and families our tools and training are designed to serve, we are no less committed to achieving our vision in lockstep with the community and system-level leaders. We welcome LEAP leadership to maximize our core value of data-informed learning to drive deeper impact at scale.