Strategies

The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund seeks to improve school success for all children, with a strong focus on the years from birth to age eight. The Memorial Fund’s programs include Discovery (funded at $3.575 million in 2010) and Educational Improvement ($700,000 in 2010).

Discovery 2010-14

The Discovery initiative aims to create an early childhood system that ensures early learning success for all children by supporting community change and policy reform efforts. At the Memorial Fund we believe that through collaborative work with communities, statewide partners and government agencies, Discovery contributes to a common goal: 

Connecticut children of all races and income levels are ready for school by age five and are successful learners by age nine.

The Memorial Fund has made a long-term investment in Discovery, which is in the ninthyear of a 14-year initiative. Discovery offers grants and capacity building to 52 communities and six statewide partners. Currently Discovery offers capacity building in the areas of collaboration, parent engagement, results-based accountability, community planning and decision-making and facilitative leadership. Other Discovery supports include convening, facilitation, knowledge sharing, communications, and partnerships.

Research findings show that the quality of early childhood experiences improves young children’s growth and learning in ways that dramatically affect the rest of their lives. In Connecticut, local early childhood councils have already been established in one-third of our cities and towns. The councils are taking responsibility for addressing the complex needs of young children and their families, developing plans for meeting those needs, and building agreements for action with all groups with a stake in the lives of children.

Many states are also beginning to develop early childhood councils with elements such as a rating system to help parents find high quality care education programs, uniform teaching credentials to ensure that teachers have the training they need to nurture young children, and state governance and financing structures that ensure access to all children.  Connecticut has worked diligently on many of these elements. As a state, we are still challenged to create a coherent, effective early childhood system.

Our own experience over the last 15 years in working with Connecticut communities has led us to understand that, in order for all children to have access to high quality programs, we need:

• Local early childhood councils that have the authority to allocate resources,
• Parent leadership on the council and in programs that serve children
• Networks of people who analyze, reflect, organize, and act on behalf of children,
• Local leadership in both municipal government and the school system that is fully aware and engaged in early childhood care and education,
• A statewide council or structure that builds on the strengths of local early childhood councils and supports their work,
• Results-based state and community plans to guide decisions about how resources are used,
• Effective communication and coordination among state and local efforts, and
• Ways to measure both local and statewide progress. 

For the next five years, Discovery will continue to help build an early childhood system at both the state and local levels with communities as full partners from creating the vision to implementation. Within this work, Discovery will concentrate on four areas:

• Increased parent engagement and leadership in early care and education through information, support and leadership development. Many Discovery communities support all three approaches; the Memorial Fund will continue to focus its resources on parent leadership training.
• Improved quality of and access to family- and center-based early care and education. The Memorial Fund sees the expansion of high quality family-based care as critical for many working parents, parents of very young children, and others in under-served neighborhoods.
• Improved quality of PreK-3 education and early language and literacy. In partnership with the State Department of Education, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Connecticut Center for School Change, the Memorial Fund will support a pilot community in developing multi-generational, school and community strategies for improving early literacy and raising reading scores on the third grade Connecticut Mastery Tests.
• Increased state and local capacity to set goals, measure progress and encourage those most affected to share their own stories. The Memorial Fund will work with communities and state partners to gather and translate data and experience into stories that can engage citizens, question what does not work, and promote better solutions that support the development of young children. 

Educational Improvement

Through a long-standing partnership with the Connecticut Center for School Change, the Memorial Fund supports district-wide instructional improvement, leadership among superintendents, principals and teachers. The Center also provides a Kindergarten Transition Institute, and Parents Supporting Educational Excellence (ParentSEE) – a leadership development program for parents working to improve schools. 

In addition, the Memorial Fund will support advocacy efforts that aim to reduce disparities in educational outcomes for children whom the current system does not serve well.

Discovery 2010-14 Strategies and Actions

Strategy 1: Build an early childhood system at both the state and local levels with communities as full partners from creating the vision to implementation.

Strategy 2: Increase parent engagement and leadership in early care and education through information, support and leadership development opportunities.

Strategy 3: Improve the quality of and access to family- and center-based early care and education for children from birth through age five.

Strategy 4: Improve the quality of PreK-3 education in ways that increase early language and literacy development among all children and promote continuity of a child’s learning from preschool through third grade.

Strategy 5: Increase state and local capacity to set goals, measure progress and encourage those most affected to share their own stories.