Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.


BATTLE CREEK, MI — Kindergarten readiness rates for children attending Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS) increased by 39.4 percentage points over 10 years due to the creation of a cutting-edge prototype focused on effective, efficient, and equitable Early Care and Education, according to a team of independent evaluators contracted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to produce a report tracking the data.

The evaluators collected data from 2013-14 to 2023-24 school years at the request of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation which has been a funder of a collective of organizations in Calhoun County focused on ECE known as the Early Childhood Education Collective of Calhoun County.

“Something like this is very remarkable,” according to the evaluators of the increases especially when poverty rates are factored in.
 
According to the report titled “Early Care and Education in Battle Creek,” 37.8% of all children 5 years old or younger were living in poverty in 2017, with a slight decrease of 32.5% in 2022.
 
“In this case, the basic argument put into the report is that with this great work, Battle Creek adds so much additional value to kids,” the evaluators say. “If everything goes along business as usual, the Kindergarten readiness rate would most likely be only about 30 percent. To reach 54.9 percent shows that the work being done is producing great results.”
 
Among the first programs in the state of Michigan that addressed the importance of pre-K learning was the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP). This free program for 4-year-olds is ranked #1 in the United States.
 
“We were making sure that every child had the opportunity to have a pre-K experience because we knew the value of it,” says Maria Ortiz Borden, Co-executive Director of Pulse which is one of the Collective’s members. “We Knew that learning began at birth. We get individuals enrolled and then figure out what are the mechanisms we need to prove that it’s working and to get continued investment.”
 
John GrapThese mechanisms included a continuum of care that began with home visits to newborns done by the Calhoun County Intermediate School District (CCISD). Known as Welcome Baby visits, this touchpoint with new parents served as an entry point to get information and resources available into the hands of new parents.
 
Borden says about 80 to 90 percent of all newborns in Calhoun County are being seen as a result of these visits. The interactions are a way to enroll infants in a Unique Identification Code (UIC) program which makes it possible to track interventions from birth through enrollment in Kindergarten. Among the tools used for this is Help Me Grow, a website that connects families with children from birth through age five to local resources helping children grow up healthy and ready to succeed in school.
 
These steps happened “a dozen years ago when we had to put a stick in the ground and commit to a coordinated, aligned, equitable support system for families in Battle Creek,” says Kathy Szenda-Wilson, Co-executive Director of Pulse. “We did this through shared measurements and power strategies focusing folks on a facilitated process to change systems so they work for families and have a coordinated outcomes system. A lot of this was possible because of a single point of entry for families” which starts with the home visits and the UIC.

John GrapThe report states that a combination of home visits; extended days and hours, childcare; playgroups; Reading a Reader/Great Start Readiness Program (RAR/GSRP); Shared Services Alliances; and a summer program is a smorgasbord of various programs representing the type of effective, efficient and equitable ECE.
 
“This prototype has a very large effect size and has the potential for scaling up and transforming ECE in Battle Creek,” the report says. “If a child participated in all six programs, the effects of these six programs could move the child from the 50^th to the 97^th percentile. The ECE prototype has great potential for scaling up.  Related to scale-up is the need to innovate to create unique ways of reaching families who have not yet been reached.  The work with Burma Center/Catching the Dream Learning Center, Voces, and others was a very intentional approach to reach children and families within the BCPS catchment area in a new way that meets their needs.
 
“The collective impact model in Battle Creek emphasizes a few things, a common agenda and a shared measurement system, continuous communication, mutually reinforcing activities emphasizing equity, and the backbone organizations in the Collective. To produce longitudinal data from home visits to the summer program before entering Kindergarten is very rare. This ECE work in Battle Creek raises the boat for all children and reduces gaps in equity.”
 
Megan Russell Johnson, Program Officer with WKKF, says she thinks it’s impressive that “we have in place such a rigorous and longitudinal approach to collecting data. It’s only with a process and system in place like this that we’re able to report out on those findings. You have to have systems in place to gather that type of information to know whether what you’re doing is having an impact on children.”
 
Megan Russell Johnson. WKKF Program OfficerShe says since WKKF was founded in 1930 programs focused on children have been a core component of its work and continue to be core to the mission it supports today. This is why they have and continue to fund efforts such as ECE.
 
“At the collective level, it’s very good to see that individual efforts add up to something greater. We know children and families interact with many programs and opportunities and how well they’re able to access what’s available determines how they’re being served,” Russell Johnson says. “This data has been used by individual programs to determine what’s working, who it’s working for or not working for or not reaching and to determine how to better serve children and reach those with the greatest need who have not had access to opportunities in the past.”
 
Kathy Szenda-WilsonAn analysis of longitudinal data from kindergarteners to third graders in Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS) indicated students who took part in GSRP had 6.7 points more (equivalent to 3 months of growth) in reading and 3.2 points more (equivalent to 1.5 months of growth) in math by the end of third grade Spring Measure of Academics (MAP) assessment than those students who were not in GSRP, says the report.
 
“The analysis of the longitudinal data revealed in comparison to those who did not participate in GSRP, those who participated in GSRP continued to have more growth during kindergarten years and then had the same amount of growth during grades 1 to 3, a finding that explains why the effect of GSRP has been sustained until the end of the third grade.”
 
Szenda-Wilson says the documentation of this type of success has “provided us with an opportunity to lift up the power of the early learning space with K-12 folks.”