NAPA Endorsement Final Report

In 2024, DECAL partnered with Child Trends and the Georgia Foundation for Early Care and Learning to pilot a new Nutrition and Physical Activity (NAPA) Endorsement for child care centers participating in Quality Rated. Fourteen centers engaged in a series of activities, including in-person and virtual trainings, online self-assessments, and individualized technical assistance, and also received stipends and mini-grants to support implementation. This report summarizes findings from Child Trends’ mixed-methods evaluation of the pilot, which examined administrator satisfaction, participation, and program outcomes. Overall, participating administrators viewed the Endorsement as a valuable opportunity, and results suggest that structured supports and resources can strengthen child care programs’ nutrition and physical activity practices.

CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot Theory of Change

DECAL has contracted with Child Trends to evaluate the CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot, which is being conducted at three technical college sites through 2025. This brief summarizes the Theory of Change behind the pilot and Child Trends’ plans for evaluating the pilot.

Understanding the Need for Nontraditional-Hour Child Care in Georgia

DECAL partnered with the Urban Institute to further examine a previous finding that some parents needed child care to be open longer hours and beyond traditional hours. In this brief, the Urban Institute presents what parents say is important to them when they seek nonparental care for their children during nontraditional hours. They describe the numbers of parents working nontraditional hours in Georgia, where they live in the state, and what kinds of jobs they work. Finally, they provide recommendations on how Georgia could better support parents with these needs.

Evaluation of DECAL Scholars Program

In 2021 DECAL contracted with Child Trends to evaluate the DECAL Scholars program, established in 2002 to minimize barriers to recruitment and retention of the early childhood workforce. This report describes Child Trends’ evaluation with respect to three research questions: 1) Who has applied for and received benefits? How have providers accessed benefits? 2) Is participation in DECAL Scholars linked to intended outcomes for providers? 3) How do applicants, recipients, and stakeholders perceive the Scholars program? What areas do they identify for improvement?

Evaluation of Georgia’s Language and Literacy Endorsement, 2022-23

In 2020, Child Trends partnered with DECAL to evaluate the pilot of a new Language and Literacy Endorsement for child care programs participating in Quality Rated, Georgia’s quality rating and improvement system. In 2022, DECAL offered the Endorsement to an expanded cohort of center-based programs and launched a pilot Endorsement with licensed family child care homes. This report summarizes 2022-23 evaluation findings and provides recommendations to inform future implementation of the Endorsement. Overall, family child care providers, center-based teachers, and center administrators found the Endorsement to be a positive and worthwhile experience, and center-based teachers and family child care providers reported that they gained practical skills and knowledge to apply to their classrooms and programs.

Georgia’s Pilot Language and Literacy Endorsement (the Endorsement) was created to recognize and promote high-quality language and literacy practices by providing professional development opportunities, materials, and financial stipends to child care providers. The pilot consisted of eleven child care centers throughout Georgia. In 2020, DECAL partnered with Child Trends to evaluate the pilot Endorsement process to understand the experiences of participating programs. Child Trends collected the experiences of programs through two rounds of semi-structured interviews with an administrator from each program and a series of online surveys of teachers. This report outlines administrators’ and teachers’ reasons for participating in the Endorsement and the extent to which the programs were able to benefit from their involvement. Overall, teachers and administrators found the Endorsement to be a positive and beneficial experience. This report also provides a series of considerations for improving the Endorsement and expanding it to reach more programs, teachers, and children across Georgia.

Lifting Infants and Toddlers Through Language-rich Environments (LITTLE) grants, which began in 2017, are designed to support language and literacy instruction in high-quality infant and toddler classrooms throughout Georgia by providing on-site coaching, professional learning opportunities, and materials. As a first step in evaluating the LITTLE grants, researchers from Child Trends analyzed data collected by DECAL during the first two years of the grants. This report provides a summary of some demographic characteristics of LITTLE grant participants and examines changes in classroom practices and language environment over time for the first two years of the program.