The ADVANCE Training Project is a project of San Diego
State University Foundation, a nonprofit corporation
affiliated with San Diego State University. Our goal is
to provide a variety of professional development
opportunities to Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) and
volunteers (participants) within Neighborhood House
Association (NHA) Head Start to advance teaching
competencies and enhance the school readiness of
low-income children and children with learning disabilities.
Special features of ADVANCE include complementing coursework with mentoring programs at NHA.

The University of California at Davis is evaluating the effects of the professional development opportunities in the NHA child care programs. The purpose of ADVANCE is to increase the expertise of ECEs in research-based school strategies to improve the school readiness of low-income children and children with learning disabilities.

The evaluation is focusing on three components:
1) describing the children served by agencies involved in the program,
2) examining the implementation of the program (process evaluation), and
3) examining the impact of the program on the child- and site-level outcomes (outcomes evaluation).

A quasi-experimental design is being used to examine changes at the child, staff, and site level across all Partner programs, utilizing data routinely collected by agencies as well as data collected by the evaluators.

OUR PARTNERS

Dr. Thomas Roberts, Ph.D. - Principal Investigator, Department of Child and Family Development, San Diego State University

Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez, Ph.D. – Co-Investigator
Neighborhood House Association (NHA) Head Start, San Diego

Diane Harkins, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.,
Center for Human Services, University of California (UC), Davis

Funding for this project was provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

© 2003 ADVANCE