$8.3 Million to TEEM from Texas Workforce Commission

Learning-readiness program benefits at-risk children in 20 Texas communities

Texas Workforce Commissioners approved in June $8.3 million in Quality Childcare Matching Funds to more widely expand a pre-kindergarten education program developed by the State Center for Early Childhood Development at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Susan Landry, Ph.D.

The program, the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM), is a statemandated effort to improve the readiness of children entering kindergarten. Child-care programs serving poor and at-risk children in 20 Texas communities are receiving resources, training and other support.

Project evaluations have shown that Spanish- and English-speaking children are showing substantial gains in early literacy and language development, key ingredients in assuring success throughout their school years.

“This is highly significant in expanding the TEEM model to many new classrooms and communities in the state. The potential is that we can almost double our reach,” said Susan Landry, Ph.D., the center’s director, chief of the Division of Developmental Pediatrics and the Michael Matthew Knight Memorial Professor of Pediatrics at the UT Medical School at Houston.

“I want to thank the Texas Workforce Commission and Commissioner Diane Rath, who has been extremely committed to this kind of enhancement for the program,” Landry said.

The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) receives funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to spend on quality child care, and the TWC has named TEEM as one of the recipients. TEEM is able to make the required match of the $8.3 million with funds received from the Texas Education Agency and a recent grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

TEEM was created by Senate Bill 76 in 2003. The early education model project encourages shared resources among government-funded public and private child-care programs including non-profit and for-profit child-care centers, public school districts and Head Start.

Key ingredients of TEEM include: a partnership among child care and early education programs, implementing a teacher training program and using research-based, state-approved curricula.

In May 2005, TEEM reported to the Texas Legislature that its model of integrating early care and education services had resulted in greater school readiness among children. In particular, children of teachers who received TEEM training performed better. Overall, children improved in the areas most likely to predict reading success: vocabulary, letter knowledge and phonological knowledge (breaking sentences into words, hearing the beginning sounds of words, and rhyming).

The 20 communities currently receiving TEEM grant awards include: 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 David R. Bates, Public Affairs