What began as a grassroots effort to support early childhood education in Lowndes County is now becoming a centralized initiative at the Mississippi University for Women, where the Center for Education is launching a program aimed at using data to create long-term impacts on child development.
Funded by a $500,000 grant, the Wise Start Early Childhood Project, as well as the newly established Office of Early Childhood in which it’s housed, is intended to strengthen local early learning systems.
The new initiative builds on work done through Excel by 5, a program that works with families, child care providers and educators to prepare children for school and identify gaps in support services.
The new Wise Start program will take those efforts to the next level, Center for Education Director Penny Sansing Mansell said.
“We’ve seen a lot of good work happen in our community, especially through Excel by 5 and through local businesses supporting the work, but this is to take it to the next level,” she told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “This is for us to be able to sustain what we’ve been doing, have a home to collect the data, and then be able to continue to make an impact here locally and hopefully be able to have a better impact in the region and state later.”
Establishing the OEC provides a centralized location to continue those efforts and other initiatives, said Dean of the School of Education Marty Hatton.
“This project is the next step in the hard work we’ve been doing,” he said in a press release. “The OEC will serve as a hub for all of our early learning initiatives, giving them a place to grow and thrive.”
The Wise Start program will use data based on the specific needs of local families, child care providers and educators to provide whatever resources and support are needed to ensure children are prepared when they eventually start school.
The goal is to have a strong idea of the needs in the community and respond with tailored solutions driven by community-based data, Mansell said.
“We’ve done a lot of work on that end with Excel by 5 and saying, ‘OK, these are the pieces that we have and these are the gaps that we have in our services and systems,’” she said. “But now we’re kind of at that point where we’ve got to do something about it.”
Mansell said research indicates 90% of a baby’s brain is developed between birth and age 5, creating a small window of opportunity for parents and child care providers to make sure children are on track before starting school. Coordinated resources and support through the Wise Start program allow children who need interventions receive them as soon as possible.
“We don’t talk enough about the expenses that it saves … when those young children are prepared to start kindergarten, whether it’s something that’s been caught through the early intervention and referral network, or it’s just that child being prepared to go and learn and play and interact with other children,” Mansell said.
Data collected through the program will also help inform solutions to what Mansell characterized as one of the biggest hindrances to the regional workforce: a lack of child care. She said recent studies have shown the largest group of untapped workforce in the state is young parents who can’t find child care.
“We know that, because of the number of child care seats being so small and low statewide and in our area, more families are really looking for higher quality (child care), and we know that our businesses are really needing more seats so they can have more people go into the workforce,” Mansell said.
Using data, the OEC can track the success of professional development efforts for local educators and providers, ensuring training translates into impact in the classroom.
“The impact is only felt if we are tracking it and we can prove it,” Mansell said. “If we want to continue to make a big difference, you’ve got to be able to track it and prove it so that the impact is bigger.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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