Growing through Leadership Connections™

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Overcoming Challenge with Courage


The McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership equips leaders with key strategies for success and empowers the profession as a catalyst for positive change. As part of this mission, our founder, Paula Jorde Bloom, established the enduring legacy of the Leadership Connections Conference. For 21 years, this vital gathering of decision-makers, leaders, policymakers, and partners has provided a forum for renewal, meaningful learning, inspiration, and professional growth.


The April 25-29, 2022 Leadership Connections, Overcoming Challenge with Courage, offers timely resources to strengthen the collective impact of the profession. Multiple keynote speakers, breakout sessions, the Public Policy Forum, Leadership Colloquium, and celebration of the Visionary Leadership Awardees add to the dynamic exchange of ideas with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of early childhood leaders and strengthening the policies and systems that anchor the field.


Increasing personal and collective impact


During the pandemic and especially during challenging times, Leadership Connections offers support, information, strategies for success, and networking to sustain and energize early childhood leaders. The conference provides opportunities to explore the latest trends and issues in the field and engage with other leaders to tackle issues and generate solutions. Participants express how much the conference has expanded their professional vision, revitalized their personal mission, and fueled practical planning. Below are just a few examples:


  • “I believe this is the best conference for leaders in early childhood who are looking for inspiration, new ideas, networking opportunities, and a complete professional experience. Everyone who attends feels a sense of belonging and respect.”
  • “I am always delighted and amazed how much I continue to learn and enjoy this conference after 11 years.”
  • “This was my second year attending Leadership Connections. I always leave feeling inspired and ready to apply the skills I have learned.”
  • “As always, this conference was outstanding. The presenters were knowledgeable and passionate about the work we do and left me feeling very positive about the field of early childhood leadership. I left with ideas to take back and implement in my program.”
  • “The content of the workshops and guest speakers reaffirmed my ideas about being in a supervisory position, with strategies to use in improving my leadership skills as well as leaving with a feeling of support.”
  • “Through this conference, I gathered at least ten big ideas and tools that I can use in my work and to share with others in the field through my work, in addition to a few life-changing ideas. The over-reaching ideas are empowerment, supporting the growth of staff, creating environments for growth, and taking care of yourself in the process of supporting others.”
  • “The keynotes were inspiring, and the sessions were topical and engaging. I will be watching recordings of the sessions that I was not able to attend. This is an exciting benefit of the virtual format. In making choices about how to spend my budget for conferences, Leadership Connections is always at the top of the list.”


The Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Fund


Paula’s vision included supporting the competencies of program leaders and bringing credibility to the importance of their roles as gatekeepers to quality. A foundational goal of the conference is to support new and emerging leaders in achieving their professional goals through the Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Fund. Recipients demonstrate commitment to advocacy for young children and their families and are active in creating positive change in the field. They are dedicated to providing the highest quality care and education for children and families and use the Whole Leadership Framework to guide program success. We extend congratulations to the following leaders, who are the recipients of the 2022 Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarships:

A woman wearing glasses and a suit is smiling in front of a flag.

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.


Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”

A woman wearing glasses and a plaid jacket is smiling for the camera.

LaDoris Lee is from Chicago, Illinois, where she has spent the past 16 years working as a teacher, director, assistant, and nanny in home, center-based, corporate, and non-profit settings. She is an Erikson graduate student, a 2021-2022 Early Childhood Education Teach Plus Fellow, and is expanding her impact through consulting. LaDoris explains, “Each experience has added to my skill set and allowed me to witness inequitable experiences of early learners in these various settings. Seeing the various practices has challenged me to develop age-appropriate methods to successfully manage my classrooms with acceptance, diversity, inclusivity, and equality at the foundation. As I embark on the next steps of my journey in early care and education, I want to be sure that I can lead successfully. Leadership Connections will help me grow and strengthen my leadership skills by providing me with leadership essentials that will increase my ability to lead.”

Your opportunity to contribute


Your donation to the Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Fund can help support emerging leaders and strengthen their circle of influence. Perhaps you have benefited from attending Leadership Connections in the past or plan to attend in the future and want to make a contribution. The combined donations of caring supporters make it possible for deserving leaders to discover new levels of professional growth and effectiveness. If you would like to help further the vision and legacy of Paula Jorde Bloom, please scroll to the bottom of the donation page. Please indicate “Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship” when making your gift. If you are an emerging or growing leader, we invite you to apply to be a recipient of the 2023 scholarship.


Leaders as gatekeepers to quality


How does attending Leadership Connections become a springboard for positive change? “Everything early childhood administrators do in their leadership roles directly or indirectly influences their programs’ trajectories toward excellence.” Program leaders with specialized training are more likely to support the professional development of their teaching staff, secure and maintain program funding, and achieve center accreditation. They are more effective in creating positive change.


Importantly, participation in specialized training strengthens the effectiveness of leaders in their capacity to improve program quality. Leaders are more confident, have greater clarity about their leadership roles, and are more effective in pedagogical leadership tasks. They develop skills to stabilize the programs and systems essential for children and families. They contribute to equity in the early childhood workforce and improve child and community outcomes.


Additional opportunities


As you explore opportunities for professional growth, consider contacting your state quality rating and improvement system to identify professional development funding opportunities. In Illinois, connect with your local resource and referral agency to locate available scholarships. Outside of Illinois, check out the Child Care Aware search page and enter your zip code. You may want to look for additional professional development funds unique to your state, such as the Illinois Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity Scholarship Program. Ask about early childhood leadership scholarships at your local community college, university, and city workforce initiative. Finally, remember that Leadership Connections and other conferences offer discounted early bird and group rates. Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list to receive early notifications.


We invite you to join us for the virtual 2022 Leadership Connections conference, April 25-29. We know you will come away with innovative strategies to strengthen program capacity, embed equity and excellence, and become more effective advocates on behalf of children and families. We look forward to joining with you as we expand our legacy and impact.

Marie Masterson, Ph.D., is the director of quality assessment at the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership. She holds a doctorate in early childhood education, is a licensed teacher, and is a national speaker and author of many books and articles that address research-based, practical skills for high-quality teaching, behavior guidance, quality improvement in early childhood programs, and leadership. She is a contributing author and editor of the book, Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children Birth Through Age Eight, Fourth Edition.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025
Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed.  Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.
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