Promoting Success for Pre-K Teachers, Families and Children

The current study examines the impact of ParentCorps in high-poverty Early Education Centers in New York City (NYC). The study is conducted within the context of the NYC Department of Education (DOE) Pre-K Thrive initiative. As part of this initiative, the Center for Early Childhood Health and Development (CEHD) at NYU Langone Health is implementing services to strengthen family engagement and support parents and teachers in building safe, nurturing and predictable environments for young children. Services include resources to support social emotional learning (SEL) and family engagement (FE) for all Pre-K for All (PKFA) programs and all PKFA families; Professional Learning to support the use of evidence-based SEL and FE practices for teachers and leaders from 350 PKFA programs; and ParentCorps programs for PKFA children and families in 50 PKFA programs (which is a subset of PKFA programs receiving Professional Learning). The current study evaluates the relative value of Thrive Professional Learning plus ParentCorps compared to Thrive Professional Learning. This study will include 158 pre-K teachers (teachers and teaching assistants) across 23 Centers (12 Centers receiving Thrive Professional Learning plus ParentCorps, 11 Centers receiving Thrive Professional Learning only). All teachers in the 23 Centers will be invited to complete 2 self-report surveys over a two-year period. A sub-set of teachers will be randomly selected to participate in 2 interviews during this period. In addition, teachers in sites randomized to ParentCorps (12 Centers) will be invited to consent to the use of weekly implementation surveys, observational data and semi-structured interviews about experiences with implementation, collected as part of standard implementation practice of ParentCorps, for the purposes of this study.