It’s important to think about content pieces and young children’s development across the continuum from Pre-K through 3rd-grade.
Carla Garrett,
Early Childhood Specialist
As the Early Childhood program specialist, Carla provides support, technical assistance, and policy guidance across early learning projects in North Carolina (NC). Before joining the SERVE team, she served as the Title I Preschool Consultant at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Carla is most proud of her leadership efforts involving a collaborative effort supporting local services among early learning partners. Using the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as a lever and the NC Pre-K/Kindergarten Demonstration Professional Development Initiative. She continued to grow with expert preschool and kindergarten teacher leaders as they improved their practices, resulting in better outcomes for children.
This project addresses the High Leverage Problem of ensuring equitable student access to high quality early learning environments through providing knowledge and supports to teachers and early learning leaders in North Carolina. RC6 assembled a team of early childhood experts and practitioners at the state, local, and school level who determined the need for a statewide collaborative in this early childhood area because of the challenge to ensure school policies, practices, and strategies for our youngest learners encompass what research and data tell us is essential to their successful development and learning. Thus, RC6 will provide resources, leadership, and mentoring for a professional development initiative focused on the development and implementation of early learning recommendations.
Beginning with a cohort of elementary and early learning leaders, RC6 will provide support as this group participates in a P-3 Leadership Certificate program through the National P-3 Center at the University of Colorado Denver, and subsequently, as the cohort members individually develop next steps for their local communities. Support will include strategies and resources to rethink early learning policies and practices and to prioritize federal funding (including from the state’s ARP) in order to ensure equitable access to learning opportunities for our youngest learners and their families. In addition, leaders will increase knowledge and grow abilities to understand development and content across domains and subject areas thus resulting in improved child outcomes, including the elimination of achievement and opportunity gaps in literacy and mathematics.
In March 2022, Carla led the efforts for the first North Carolina P-3 (Pre-K through 3rd grade) Leadership Certificate Program. The program addresses the issue of ensuring equitable student access to high-quality early learning environments in North Carolina schools by providing support to teachers and early learning leaders across the state. The program came into existence with the supporting efforts of SERVE and the Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) by assembling a team of early childhood experts and practitioners at the state, local, and school levels who advocate best practices in early childhood education. Thus, theRC6 formed a statewide collaborative that included thirteen Early Childhood program leaders across the state, one leader from State Education Agency (SEA), and three expert facilitators. This group met monthly to share ideas, experiences, and strategies and begin developing resources to share with early childhood educators.
The purpose of this white paper is to address the challenge of ensuring equitable student access to high quality early learning environments. The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) assembled a team of early learning professionals, who determined the need for a statewide collaborative to ensure school policies, practices, and strategies for our youngest learners encompass what research and data tell us is essential to their successful development and learning. Also included are innovative approaches using research-based, effective practices for working with young children as they navigate their school experiences. These approaches lead to the highlighted recommendations, which are interconnected and intended for administrators and teachers who work with children in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and beyond.
