A “ Noble Bet ” in Early Care and Education Lessons from One Community ’ s Experience

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND ® is a registered trademark. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of its research sponsors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. PREFACE RAND was commissioned by the Heinz Endowments to evaluate the vision, organization, administration, and operation of the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), a major effort to improve early care and education (ECE) for low-income children from birth through age five in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding communities of Allegheny County. ECI was conceived and designed from 1994 to 1996, and operated under the auspices of the United Way (UW) of Allegheny County from 1996 through 2000. Its quality of service and child welfare outcomes are being examined separately by a research team from the University of Pittsburgh and Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. 1 RAND's research effort involved, first and foremost, approximately one hundred intensive, confidential interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders: United Way managers, ECI staff, members of the foundation community and other funders, neighborhood representatives , early childhood service providers, business leaders involved in ECI, government officials, academic experts, and early childhood advocates. RAND also obtained and examined a substantial amount of written documentation pertaining to ECI, primarily through the assistance of ECI management and neighborhood agencies. These documents were used not only to understand ECI's history, but also ______________ 1 That team's findings to date are reported in S. iv A "Noble Bet" in Early Care and Education: Executive Summary to examine its enrollment and costs. Finally, the RAND study team explored existing empirical literature on ECE. Although ECI led to the establishment of new, high-quality ECE services in several communities, it failed to achieve many of its major goals, despite the good intentions of everyone involved and despite the support of a wide array of community leaders. This volume which relays the results of RAND's evaluation. We sought both to explain why ECI was not more successful and to suggest how future initiatives might produce better results. The report describes ECI's goals and objectives and articulates the breadth of the initiative's ambition to create a comprehensive new system for delivering ECE to low-income children in Allegheny County. …