TECEC
Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition

TECEC Executive Director attends National Smart Start Conference

I was thrilled to attend the National Smart Start Conference in North Carolina throughout the week of May 5-9. I joined more than 3,000 professionals from 46 states to learn about the latest early childhood education research, strategies, and partnerships taking place across the country. I attended the following workshops:

15 Years of Lessons Learned in Building a Statewide Early Education System
I listened to North Carolina’s top early childhood education leaders talk about 15 years of success and failures as they worked to build one of the top early childhood education systems in the country.

Raising Young Children to the Top of the Policy Agenda: Lessons from Illinois
I learned strategies from Illinois in how they became the first state to invest in voluntary high quality pre-k for all 3-and 4-year olds, while investing in a high quality system for infants and toddlers.

Ready Communities: Building the Community’s Capacity to Support Early Education
I was able to learn new community building strategies from a panel of parents, teachers, program coordinators, and school board members from the state of North Carolina.

Mix and Match Funding Streams to Serve Children and Families
I joined leaders from across the country to learn about additional ways to successfully mix and match funding streams to create a high quality early childhood education system.

Claiming Personal and Organizational Leadership: Exploring the Things Effective Leaders Do
As the new Executive Director of TECEC, I took this opportunity to polish my leadership skills and learn from other leaders across the country.

Logic Models for Program Design, Evaluation, and Management
As more and funders request logic models in order to measure the success of our work, I took time to learn how to create a user-friendly logic model to share with TECEC funders, as well as our members and partners.

T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood and Pre-k-A Partnership for the Early Childhood Workforce
Many early childhood education advocates in Texas have explored the possibility of implementing the T.E.A.C.H model in the state of Texas. As a result, I spent a morning with the leaders of the model in order to hear more about the program and the feasibility of implementation in Texas.

In addition to the above workshops, I also had the opportunity to hear from Rudy Crew, Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Schools, as well as network with key leaders from across the country. If you haven’t had the opportunity to attend the National Smart Start Conference, I encourage you to make it a priority in 2009. If you have any questions about my trip to North Carolina for the National Smart Start Conference, feel free to contact me at kjohnson@tecec.org.

Kara Johnson
Executive Director
COMING SOON!



Preschoolers in the Texas public education system are expelled at twice the rate of older students (kindergarten through 12th grade).

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