2019 Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Winners Reflect on Their Experience

The McCormick Center, a thriving, nationally-recognized early childhood leadership organization, was created by our founder, Paula Jorde Bloom, from an initial grant of just $600. Paula’s legacy supports the competencies of early childhood program leaders and brings credibility to the important and complex role of these leaders, or as she was known to call them, the “gatekeepers to quality.”

After her passing in early 2018, Paula’s family established the Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Fund to support emerging early childhood leaders who are dedicated to providing the highest quality care and education for children and families.

In 2019, two inaugural scholarships were awarded for the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership’s Leadership Connections™National Conference. This is the premier national conference for decision-makers and leaders in early childhood education and brings together key stakeholders interested in early childhood leadership. Recipients received complimentary full-conference registration to Leadership Connections and lodging, valued at more than $1,100.

The 2019 Paula Jorde Bloom Scholarship Recipients

Angela Young is a Grant Writer and Fundraiser for Pride Academy in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Carrie Griffin

Carrie Griffin is the Owner and Director at the Shining Star Early Learning Daycare in Shawnee, Kansas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We asked both recipients to reflect on their experience:

MCECL: How did participation in Leadership Connections impact your development as an early childhood leader?

Angela : I am now more aware that government laws and policies for the ECE profession needs more advocates to change standards. I am in the process of developing more information about the importance of seeing changes in the ECE profession to my local government officials and in my organization.

Carrie: Participating in the Leadership Connections conference has impacted my development as an early childhood leader in two different ways. The first is that I have grown more comfortable and confident operating my family child care business by using communication strategies that we practiced in Susan McDonald’s preconference workshop. The heart of every good relationship is communication, and nurturing my connection with both the children and the parents has made my program stronger.

The second way the conference impacted my development as an early childhood leader was by giving me the tools I needed to improve communication with my fellow board members. I serve on the board for the Child Care Providers Coalition of Kansas as Treasurer, and I am extremely proud of the work my board does supporting family child care providers in our state. Every workshop that I attended at the conference gave me a huge amount of information to take back to my board. As leaders, we must exemplify professionalism and be able to work in harmony, and I learned so many ways we can improve the harmony of our team. Although the intended audience for many workshops may have been directors of a child care center, they were all very relevant to my position as a board member.

 

MCECL: What was your biggest takeaway or learning moment from Leadership Connections?

Angela : The biggest take away is understanding that lawmakers need to be proactive in creating policies for early childhood education. Many lawmakers continue to believe that childcare centers are just “babysitting” children until they attend kindergarten. Until lawmakers take our profession seriously, progression will remain stagnant.

Carrie: My most impactful learning moment came from a workshop titled “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” presented by Cara McKeown. I was mesmerized by the story of the team who thought they were highly efficient because they never had any disagreements. Then I learned that lack of conflict is dysfunction and it stems from the first dysfunction: lack of trust. In a healthy functioning team, coworkers (or board members in my case) must learn to trust each other enough to voice their opinions, even if they are in opposition to another teammate. When done in a healthy way, conflict is essential to a team so that the very best ideas can be hashed out. This idea struck me like a lightning bolt, and I couldn’t wait to get home and share these revelations with my board.

I carefully put together a presentation based on what I had learned from the conference and shared it with my team at our annual retreat in July. An entire weekend of communication and sharing information about our personalities and conflict resolution styles has made our board stronger and better able to serve the providers and children in our state. We now encourage each other to disagree and work to find the best solution to every situation. We also trust each other’s intentions and we no longer wonder about ulterior motives. Along with all the communication skills I learned at the conference, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” has truly turned our board into an efficient and harmonious team!

 

MCECL: What advice or encouragement would you share with someone who is considering attending Leadership Connections for the first time?

Angela : Come to the conference with the intent of creating connections. The most valuable part of attending this experience is the communication with ECE professionals. They have a wealth of knowledge and are able to help with concerns or issues that you are experiencing at your centers.

Carrie: My advice to any early childhood professional considering attending Leadership Connections for the first time would be to take the time to meet other attendees. Some of the greatest insight I received was from listening to their stories. In Susan McDonald’s preconference workshop, she had us pair up and take turns listening without speaking or interrupting for five minutes. That was quite a challenge for us, but we were able to fully connect with our partner and I learned so much from them. There were attendees from every part of the world and we all shared a common passion for educating children. It was truly inspiring!

I am very grateful to the McCormick Center for giving me the opportunity to learn from the wonderful professionals that gathered in Chicago for this conference. It was a gift I hope to deserve by sharing the knowledge I learned with the child care providers in Kansas.

 

We are pleased to announce that we will be awarding two scholarships for emerging leaders to attend Leadership Connections 2020. Applications are being accepted between Friday, December 6, 2019 and December 20, 2019.  The 2020 scholarship awards will be announced in January 2020.

Click below if you would like to learn more about the 2020 Leadership Connections National Conference.

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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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