Groups Work To Improve Northwest Arkansas' Early Childhood Education

LOWELL -- Providing more high-quality early childhood education opportunities for Northwest Arkansas families is what motivated two organizations to cooperate on a pilot program that launched last year.

The United Way of Northwest Arkansas and Helen R. Walton Children's Enrichment Center celebrated that partnership over lunch Wednesday with other early childhood education professionals.

Through the partnership, officials chose to help three early childhood education centers study the feasibility of obtaining quality accreditation standards. Those three centers included Siloam Springs Children's Center and two facilities in Rogers: Central Child Care Center and Peace Kids.

There are different levels of accreditation for early childhood centers. Level three is the highest.

"It's exceedingly difficult to get to level three," said Michelle Barnes, director of the Children's Enrichment Center, a Bentonville facility that has the level three designation.

There are 494 licensed early childhood centers in Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties. About 25 percent have achieved level three accreditation, Barnes said.

The Children's Enrichment Center and United Way spent hundreds of hours over the past year working with the targeted early childhood centers to offer evaluation, support and technical assistance toward achieving a high accreditation rating.

As part of the feasibility study, the participating early childhood centers had to submit to thorough assessments of their facilities, staff members and practices. The study also included surveys of parents to gauge their satisfaction with the centers.

"These are passionate agencies dedicated to high-quality standards," Barnes said.

The studies serve as benchmarks for the participating centers so they could create strategic plans for program improvements. As each center implements its own strategic plan, it may use its feasibility study to track its progress over time.

Mary Nolan is director of the Siloam Springs Children's Center, which opened in 1995 and has a capacity of 222 children. Nolan is anxious to get started on the next phase of the pilot program, she said.

"I was given the tools and a really good map to get to where we're going," Nolan said of the feasibility study.

Peace Kids has a capacity of 124 children. Central Child Care Center can serve up to 268.

Barnes noted during a presentation at Wednesday's luncheon that for every $1 invested in early childhood education in Arkansas, the return to society is $9.21. Children who attend a high-quality early childhood program are three times more likely to graduate high school than those who do not. In turn, those children go on to require fewer social services and receive higher wages when they grow up, she said.

Though the population of Northwest Arkansas is growing rapidly, the number of early childhood programs in the area has not grown over the past five years, Barnes said.

In addition, Northwest Arkansas has been "a little delayed" in keeping up with national trends toward quality early childhood programs, which are about more than just babysitting, she said.

There are 32,000 children younger than 5 in the four counties of Northwest Arkansas, but only 8,000 are enrolled in high-quality programs, Barnes said.

Sunny Lane, development manager for the Children's Enrichment Center, encouraged those attending the luncheon to get involved by either volunteering at a facility, advocating for early childhood education, or donating money.

The Helen R. Walton Children's Enrichment Center serves 250 children at its Bentonville site. It also houses the Early Childhood Initiatives Center, which opened in 2009 to assist all area child care programs by sharing knowledge, resources and best practices.