Table of Contents
$15 Million Expands Early Education Model
to 20 Texas Communities
More than 1,000 classrooms across the state are taking part in this project over the next two years
Twenty Texas communities are receiving resources, training and other support to adopt the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM) for improving pre-kindergarten education. More than 1,000 classrooms across the state are taking part in this $15 million project over the next two years.
Susan Landry, Ph.D.
The State Center for Early Childhood Development at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston developed TEEM, a state-mandated effort to improve the school-readiness of children entering kindergarten. TEEM is an education model for giving children from child care, Head Start and school district pre-kindergartens the tools necessary to become good readers and, eventually, better overall students.
The grant funding will provide a full-time project coordinator for each community, research-based materials and books, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) for each teacher to monitor children’s progress and in-depth professional development for teachers.
“Overall, we’re seeing significantly greater gains with TEEM in children’s letter knowledge, print awareness and vocabulary,” said Susan Landry, Ph.D., director of the State Center for Early Childhood Development. “The results of TEEM are statistically robust enough to lead to meaningful improvements for the school-readiness of children.” Senate Bill 23, passed during the last special session of the 79th Texas Legislature, made possible the expansion of TEEM into the 20 communities.
A 2004 report to the Legislature showed that, in the first three months of TEEM, Spanish- and English-speaking children showed substantial gains in early literacy and language development.
In particular, children improved in the areas that are most likely to predict reading success: vocabulary, letter knowledge and phonological knowledge (breaking sentences into words, hearing the beginning sounds of words and rhyming).
“It surprised me that we could get that kind of shift that quickly, but then we’ve never before TEEM been able to put all that together in the same approach,” said Landry, who also is Michael Matthew Knight Memorial Professor of Pediatrics at the UT Medical School at Houston.
Landry is director of the Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education (CIRCLE), part of the UT Children’s Learning Institute, dedicated to research on children’s learning and influences on learning. The institute also includes the Center for Academic and Reading Skills (CARS) and Reach Out and Read-Texas.
The 20 communities receiving the TEEM grant awards are: Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, Brownsville, Carrizo Springs, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Bend, Fort Worth, Houston, Kilgore, Laredo, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, Raymondville, San Angelo, San Antonio, Victoria and Waco.
By Melanie Hillis, Public Affairs