The Buffett Early Childhood Fund and the Ounce of Prevention Fund work with local public and private partners in communities across the country to establish Educare Centers.  These Centers comprise the growing consortium known as the Bounce Learning Network. Clayton's Head Start and Early Head Start programs are a part of this Educare network.

Partnerships in the Bounce Learning Network share a single commitment:  to build, develop and implement local Educare Centers that give at-risk children, from birth to age five, opportunities for school success and lifelong achievement.  Through their combined efforts, members of the Bounce Learning Network serve as catalysts for broader early childhood programmatic, policy and systems change. 

In an effort to measure our growth, the Clayton Early Learning Institute participates in a national implementation study to help our Educare Center staff and partners use the tools and data to reach full implementation of the Educare Model.  As a part of this project, data are used to continuously inform the work of the Educare Center, improve practice, better individualize programs to the needs of children and families in the center, and identify areas for program, systems and/or policy change.  

The Research and Evaluation Department of the Clayton Early Learning Institute does this by collecting ongoing child assessments in the areas of social-emotional development, language and literacy development, and general academic knowledge to describe and document the progress of the children and families served by the Educare Center.

We do this in order to inform Clayton's program improvement efforts, individualize our practices to the needs of the children and families we serve, and to satisfy accountability requirements set by funding agencies.  Within the Bounce Learning Network, Educare Centers incorporate the latest findings from academic research and lessons learned from the day-to-day experiences with young children, families and staff to enhance their work.

Recent results from this study suggest that the earlier children enter Educare, the better prepared they are for school. Our partners at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute recently examined kindergarten-bound children from five Educare sites, including Clayton Educare, enrolled during the 2007-08 school year.  Children who had enrolled in Educare prior to age 2, scored higher on measures of vocabulary and general school readiness than children who entered Educare later.  These early-entering children had scores that approached the national average for vocabulary and exceeded the national average for school readiness when they left the program for kindergarten.  Further details about these results are detailed in a report available from Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.

In addition to Clayton, five Educare Centers - in Chicago, Omaha, Milwaukee, Tulsa, and Miami - - are serving young children and their families. Four Educare Centers are under construction - in Oklahoma City and Seattle, as well as second Educare Centers in Omaha and Tulsa.