Children’s School Success (CSS) Project

Project Director: Samuel L. Odom

The Children's School Success (CSS) project is one of eight five year research projects awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of an Early Childhood Education Initiative to Promote School Readiness. Co-investigators at Indiana University, Purdue University, San Francisco State University, University of Kansas, and University of Maryland are investigating the effectiveness of an integrated preschool curriculum model to improve the educational opportunities and reduce the educational disparity for young children exposed to risks such as poverty, disability, and linguistic differences. The curriculum model consists of academic (science, math, language and literacy), social and individualization components that are well-integrated and have a solid base of scientific evidence documenting their effectiveness. CSS employs a randomized cluster design. In Year 1, we secured ten classrooms/teachers at each of our five sites and randomly assigned them to control conditions across the years. Each year the previous control teachers/classrooms become the next set of implementation teachers/classrooms, giving everyone the opportunity to work with the curriculum. Quantitative data is collected on children at the beginning and end of the year to gauge growth using eight different scientific measures including follow-up testing on children who have entered kindergarten and first grade.

In field-based research, one challenge is to train teachers to use the curriculum elements with a high degree of fidelity. Three days of training are provided to the teachers at the beginning of the year. Across the year of implementation, site coordinators spend approximately one day in each classroom each week, observing, modeling, providing feedback, and planning activities for the next week. Throughout the year site coordinators also collect field notes, implementation rating scales, the amount of curriculum material teachers were able to implement during the year, and the number of days each child attended class. These measures have been combined to form a composite "dosage" measure. Not only is CSS concerned with the quantitative data gathered in the pre-post curriculum assessment and the fidelity of treatment measures, but qualitative methods are also employed. The questions addressed in this analysis are: 1) How do teachers' beliefs about teaching young children affect their use of the curriculum? 2) Is level of training (non-degree vs. college degree) associated with teacher beliefs and use of the curriculum? 3) Do local or national policies, such as Head Start regulations, affect teachers' use of the curriculum? and 4) Are there features of the family and/or community that affect teachers' use of the curriculum?

As Year 3 begins, it is amazing to think how far we have progressed. At the end of Year 2 we have collected data on 476 children. The data team at the University of Kansas has been busy entering all of the data into the central research data bank and beginning to analyze the data. The investigators and site coordinators have spent their summer fine-tuning the curriculum to make it easier for the teachers to implement. Teacher training sessions have been conducted in many sites and the next rollout of the curriculum is underway.