Request for Proposals: External Evaluation of Ready to Lead Leadership Academy

INTRODUCTION

The McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University (NLU) invites and welcomes contract proposals from experienced evaluators to assess the effectiveness of the Ready to Lead (RTL) Leadership Academy designed for new directors or assistant directors of center-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs in Illinois. Please take time to carefully read and become familiar with the request for proposals (RFP) requirements.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Since 1985, the McCormick Center has been building the leadership capacity of the early childhood workforce. Funded by grants from philanthropic foundations and contracts with government agencies, the McCormick Center has received national recognition for its work in defining the competencies needed for effective early childhood program administration and delivering high-quality leadership and management training and technical assistance.

At the McCormick Center, our mission is to “empower leaders and advance the field to promote excellence in early childhood education.” Through professional development, evaluation, research, and public awareness, we promote best practices in program administration. By working with states, professional organizations, and directly with early childhood practitioners, we raise the bar on program quality by expanding program leadership.

Ready to Lead was created in 2018 as a four-month leadership academy to meet the unique needs of newly-appointed early childhood administrators and there have been seven cohorts completed over 42 months. The McCormick Center’s research on the developmental career stages of directors demonstrates the unique demands and needs of newly-appointed or novice administrators. These novice directors are described as spending their time “putting out fires” and struggling to navigate responsibilities in areas for which they have no prior experience such as human resources, coaching and supervision, program operations, strategic planning, and fiscal management. The majority of novice administrators have formal education and training in teaching practices but lack education and training in the essentials of leading an ECEC organization. Specialized learning experiences in leadership strategies and program management are vital for new administrators. In turn, administrators who receive early career support are more likely to remain in the field, improve the quality of their programs, and continue to grow professionally. RTL provides professional learning on foundational leadership practices and fills the knowledge and skills gap. This RFP seeks an external evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the RTL model in increasing the self-efficacy and competency of new administrators as well as achieving improved staff retention, commitment to the field, and support of ongoing professional learning for staff.

PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION

This project aims to contribute to the literature in the ECEC field demonstrating the need for specialized professional development for newly-appointed administrators and success of a four-month leadership academy in supporting those administrators.

While presenting a clear picture of the characteristics and needs of novice administrators, the evaluation should focus primarily on 1) the effectiveness of the various components of RTL as model (e.g., delivery modality, duration, curriculum, professional learning community practices, etc.) to meet those needs in general; and 2) the extent to which quantitative and qualitative data provide evidence of RTL’s ability to meet the desired outcomes to increase the self-efficacy and competency of new administrators and to improve staff retention, commitment to the field, and support of ongoing professional learning for staff.

More specifically, the evaluation will employ a mixed methods approach to explore the following questions:

  1. How well does the RTL model meet the unique needs of novice ECEC administrators?
  2. What changes in self-efficacy resulted from participating in RTL?
  3. What gain in competencies resulted from participating in RTL?
    • How are these gains demonstrated?
  4. What long-term outcomes are achieved from participating in RTL, including administrators’ commitment to the field, retention of staff, and support for the professional learning of teaching staff?

TIMELINE

The evaluation will take place between November 2022 and March 2023. The months of November through December will include meetings with the McCormick Center’s RTL team, becoming familiarized with the RTL model, preparing a literature review, and cleaning and organizing data. The final round of data collection will conclude mid-December at which time the evaluator should begin analyses. A first draft of the evaluation should be submitted by February 1, 2023, and final manuscript submitted by March 31, 2023.

DELIVERABLES

  1. Evaluation research schedule
  2. Evaluation framework with detailed methodology, tools, and work plan
  3. Meetings with McCormick Center staff
  4. Crafting, submitting, and obtaining approval of NLU’s Institutional Research Review Board Application for Faculty and Staff Research
  5. Protocol to assure the secure storage, use, and transmission of data, specifically addressing:
    • How and where will the data be stored, for how long will it be kept, what safeguards will be put in place for data with identifying information
    • A description of physical (if applicable) and electronic security
  6. Draft evaluation report by February 1, 2023
  7. Final evaluation report by March 31, 2023, that incorporates quantitative and qualitative evidence. The report must answer each evaluation question and should be precise, written in APA format, and contain the following components:
    • Cover page
    • Table of contents
    • Introduction and literature review (topics covered should include: the unique characteristics and needs of novice ECEC administrators; the role of targeted professional development and leadership training in job satisfaction, quality improvement, administrator retention, and the relationship between self-efficacy and job performance)
    • Methods
    • Results (overall results, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, impact, and relevance to the field)
    • Discussion (summary of overall outcomes and impact of RTL, lessons learned, limitations of the evaluation, and recommendations for future research)
    • References
    • Appendices
  8. Executive summary outlining the key purpose of the evaluation, main points of analysis, key findings, conclusions, and recommendations (no more than two pages in length).

BUDGET DETAILS

Our budget for this evaluation is $60,000. While we, of course, prefer the most cost-effective solution, all proposals that fall reasonably within this range will be considered and weighed based on their merits. All invoices for this project must be billed by April 30, 2023.

PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS

Materials about you:

  1. A brief explanation of your interest in this project
  2. Overview of your experience and qualifications including:
    • Specialized coursework or degree(s) in relevant areas of study
    • Evidence of expertise in mixed methods research and statistical analyses
  3. CV or resume
  4. History of relevant publications or work with similar projects
  5. Any key differentiators about you

Materials about the evaluation:

  1. Overview of how you will meet each of the deliverables
  2. Proposed evaluation timeline
  3. Identification of statistical software to be used for analyses
  4. Detailed projected budget with pricing of any optional elements line-itemed
  5. Terms and conditions

RFP PROJECT TIMELINE DETAILS

  • RFP Sent: [September 30, 2022]
  • Responses Due: [October 21, 2022]
  • Finalists Selected & Contacted: [October 28, 2022]
  • Winner Selected & Contacted: [November 4, 2022]
  • Project Kick-off: [November 7, 2022]
  • Responses Due: 10/21/2022

Send proposals to: Robyn Kelton, Research & Evaluation Manager, robyn.kelton@nl.edu

MCCORMICK CENTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD LEADERSHIP OVERVIEW
Founded in 1985 on a $600 grant, Dr. Paula Jorde Bloom led the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University from a start-up to a driving force nationwide for improving the quality of early childhood education through our dedication to building the leadership capacity of the early childhood workforce.
We empower individuals to build the leadership and management skills they need to create and sustain exemplary programs for young children. Through professional development, evaluation, research, and public awareness, we promote best practice in program administration. By working with states, professional organizations, and directly with early childhood practitioners, we raise the bar on program quality.
The McCormick Center is a thriving part of National Louis University and has locations in Chicago, Lisle, and Wheeling, Illinois. The McCormick Center has over 65 employees and has an operating budget of over $6 million.

OUR AUDIENCE
The primary audience for this evaluation is decision makers, including funders, policymakers, researchers, and state administrators. The secondary audience is leaders in early childhood education, including early childhood administrators, family child care providers, trainers, and technical assistance specialists. Each of these groups can be further divided into more specific groups within the field of early childhood education.

Thank you for your interest in responding to this RFP. We look forward to your response.
If you have any questions, please contact Robyn Kelton at robyn.kelton@nl.edu

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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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