Educational First Steps Fast Facts
Our Mission: To improve the quality and availability of early childhood education for economically disadvantaged children.
THE CHILDREN WE SERVE
EFS seeks to help children who are most at risk of not receiving a sound educational and emotional foundation in the early childhood years deemed most critical by education and neurological experts. These children often repeat the cycle of poverty as they enter the elementary grades unready for kindergarten, most often due to:
- An inadequate vocabulary (language barriers)
- Parents' level of education, maturity and income
- Lack of access to high quality preschools and childcare centers in low-income neighborhoods
HOW EFS HELPS
Through its hands-on Four Steps to Excellence partnership program leading to national accreditation, EFS provides key ingredients for quality early childhood education to assisted centers by:
- Working on-site in the classroom to develop age appropriate, well-run child learning centers that earn national accreditation for educational excellence
- Professionally training teachers and center directors in low-income neighborhoods through EFS own teacher curriculum and subsidized achievement of Child Development Associate (CDA) certificates
- Providing quality educational materials and enrichment directly to impoverished children
- Engaging parents/guardians in their child's learning and social-emotional development
THE SCOPE OF EFS’ WORK
Established in 1990, EFS has a 22-year history of elevating the quality of education for young children.
- 5,400+ children currently served in 94 North Texas childcare centers; 9% of children eligible to enter DISD kindergarten attend an EFS assisted center
- Almost 1,000 teachers prepared in their own classrooms for teaching excellence
- Helping 94 center directors run successful small businesses that can become anchors for their communities
- Uniting other community groups, foundations and corporations to contribute specialized resources to its centers
UNIQUE, POSITIVE RESULTS
- 40 assisted centers have been accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Accreditation Commission, the ‘gold-star' measures for early childhood education
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In 2008, EFS began a joint study with Dr. Richard Scotch of the University of Texas at Dallas, which showed that EFS’ benefits to children persist in kindergarten and beyond. The study, which is being extended to encompass 6,500 students over the next six years documented meaningful benefits to a group of 1,207 disadvantaged students served by centers accredited with EFS’ assistance using actual test performance in the early elementary grades of their public school experience:
- increased likelihood of passing Limited English Proficiency tests at DISD by 28%
- increased likelihood of passing successfully through kindergarten, first and second grades by 16%
- increased average percentile scores on standardized tests of math and language for the entire EFS population by up to three points.
Download a PDF version of Educational First Steps Fast Facts.
To learn more, contact Educational First Steps online or call 214-824-7940 in Dallas or 817-535-0044 in Tarrant County.