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children_drawing_smOur Mission:
To improve the quality and availability of early childhood education for economically disadvantaged children.

HOW WE WORK:
EFS provides key ingredients for quality early childhood education to assisted centers by:

  • Increasing the number of professionally trained teachers in low-income neighborhoods
  • Providing quality educational materials and helping establish stable, well-run child learning centers that become self-sustaining through the process of earning accreditation
  • Engaging parents and other family members in their children's learning processes and providing opportunities to seek improved literacy and better education

‘AT-RISK' DEFINED
Children in this category often repeat the cycle of poverty and are handicapped in school and in life by:

  • An inadequate vocabulary (language barriers)
  • Parents' level of education, maturity and income
  • Lack of access to high-quality pre-schools and childcare centers in low-income neighborhoods

ABOUT EFS

  • 5,400+ children are currently served by EFS
  • EFS is partnered with 94 childcare centers
  • As of March 2012, 40 assisted centers have been accredited by NAEYC and NAC (the ‘gold-star' measures for early childhood education in the USA)
  • 9.5% of children eligible to enter DISD kindergarten attend an EFS assisted center
  • EFS partners with other community groups to leverage additional resources for our centers
  • EFS does not receive any government funding and is not a United Way agency

HANDS-ON PROGRAM

  • We impact 900+ teachers and directors
  • We provide teachers with scholarships for certificates and degrees in Early Childhood Education
  • We conduct professional on-site weekly mentoring to assisted center teachers and directors

UTD STUDY - AFFIRMING OUR PROGRAM SUCCESS
Educational First Steps and University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have gathered data for students who participated in the EFS assistance program. The study uses test data and other measures of academic proficiency, taken from administrative records of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) to compare the educational achievement of EFS students with students from the general DISD student population who have comparable personal characteristics. The study will continue over the course of six years. The preliminary results show that students' attendance at an EFS assisted center:

  • increases the likelihood of passing Limited English Proficiency tests at DISD by 28%
  • increases the likelihood of passing successfully through kindergarten, first and second grades by 16%
  • shows the persistence of the EFS program, raising average percentile scores on standardized tests of math and language for the entire EFS population by up to three points.

The study is being expanded and extended for the next six years under the direction of Dr. Richard Scotch. The current study is tracking 6500+ children who attended EFS assisted centers.