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

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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

4,700+ children are currently served by EFS
EFS is partnered with 82+ childcare centers
As of 2009, 24 of our affiliate centers are accredited by NAEYC and NAC (the ‘gold-star' measures for early childhood education in the USA)
EFS partners with other community groups to leverage additional resources for our centers
EFS does not receive any government or United Way funding

We impact 800+ teachers and directors
We provide teachers with scholarships for certificates and degrees in Early Childhood Education
We conduct professional on-site weekly mentoring to teachers and affiliate center 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 affiliate 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:

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Compared to DISD students overall in first and second grades, students coming into the DISD system from EFS affiliated preschool centers scored significantly higher (at least at the 95 percent level of confidence) in math and reading tests.
EFS affiliated students scored 1.96 to 2.50 percentile points higher in math and 1.34 to 2.90 percentile points higher in reading.
More than 1600 EFS center students who can be identified (and verified) in DISD and who had math and/or reading test scores were included in this first part of the study (a total of 6500 children will be tracked.)
EFS affiliated students included in the study were in Kindergarten, first and second grades.

EFS students represent just 1 percent of the DISD population.