Several organizations in Hamilton County have joined forces to transform local child care and early education in an effort to improve children’s learning outcomes by the time they reach third grade.
The three-year action plan, called Early Matters, is coordinated by education advocacy organization Chattanooga 2.0. It involves several strategies developed after a year of research and community engagement.
“This plan for early childhood is a way to make a coordinated and aligned investment towards a common goal in early childhood,” Jennifer Andrews, director of Early Childhood Strategies at Chattanooga 2.0, said in an interview.
Research shows the first eight years of a child’s life are a critical developmental period, and third grade is widely acknowledged as a benchmark year that determines future academic success, Andrews said.
“The target audience for the plan is economically disadvantaged children and their families from birth to age 8,” she said. “No matter which way you cut the data, students and children who are economically disadvantaged are the farthest behind, and they remain the farthest behind, no matter what subject.”
According to Chattanooga 2.0’s research, 89% of students who are not kindergarten-ready will still be catching up in third grade.
The initiative is partially funded by Bright Start TN, a statewide project led by Tennesseans for Quality Early Education. The organization provides a $300,000 fellowship over three years for a local organization to coordinate and implement the plan.
Hamilton County was selected as one of six Tennessee communities to partner with Bright Start TN on the effort. Each partnership includes a steering committee.
The other communities are Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Northeast Tennessee and West Tennessee. Hamilton County’s organizers say they will be the first to launch their pilot plan, starting this week.
For the next year, the strategies will be tested in three Chattanooga ZIP codes based on census tracts with a high social vulnerability index score. This means there is a large concentration of at-risk and economically disadvantaged residents. Those ZIP codes are 37404, 37406 and 37412.
The strategies will target three major barriers to early education: access to resources, access to affordable child care and parent-child connections.
“Children who are economically disadvantaged are going to experience more adversity than their peers,” Andrews said. “One of the single most common factors for children who can develop resiliency to make it through all of the hardship that they’re facing is at least one stable, committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver or other adult.”
To help foster those parent-child bonds, Erlanger Health System will be expanding its Nurse Family Partnership, a $4 million grant-funded program.
Nurses work with economically-disadvantaged women during pregnancy and after they give birth until the child is 2 years old, visiting them at home at least once every other week.
“We focus really hard on mom-baby attachment and normal newborn growth and development, so many of our nurses are lactation consultants,” Elizabeth Morton, nurse supervisor for the Erlanger Nurse Family Partnership, said in a phone call.
As the child grows, nurses then work with their clients on financial stability.
“Our third program goal is to help our moms and our families move toward economic self-sufficiency,” Morton said, “whether that’s staying in school with a baby or getting enrolled in college or getting job training to help them to be able to get a living-wage job.”
She said attachment plays a significant role in a child’s future success.
“Mom-baby attachment is so important for things like language acquisition, school readiness and success in school,” Morton said. “And also we know that a confident mom is going to raise a confident child who’s going to become a competent parent.”
The Nurse Family Partnership program is one of many strategies Early Matters plans to implement. Other strategies include:
— School-based health clinics.
— Use of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.
— A parent resource hub.
— Increasing early childhood health needs assessments.
Early Matters comes on the heels of the state’s new third-grade retention law, which requires school districts to hold back third graders who do not score proficiently on the English language arts portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test.
Based on last year’s scores, 64% of third graders may be retained next year if their scores do not improve when they test again in spring.
By 2025, the hope is that participating communities will see 5% more third grade students performing at grade level in reading and math.
Andrews said Early Matters is still seeking funding. Though it is not known exactly how much is needed for a communitywide early childhood education system, it is estimated it will cost around $12 million over the next three years if all strategies are implemented.
“This is a community-driven plan,” Andrews said. “This is not a prescription from any one community partner. This is something that we need to wrap around and support the children in our community.”
Residents can stay updated on the plan’s progress at bit.ly/EarlyMatters.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.