For twenty-five years, Educational First Steps (EFS) has been transforming daycare centers in low-income neighborhoods into nationally accredited early learning centers. Their goal is to set at-risk children on a path to success by improving the quality of early childhood education through mentoring, training, and monitoring early learning centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

A powerful tool in this effort is a custom-built website, called the Mentoring Academy and Assessment Profile (MAAP), that enables EFS staff to efficiently collect and display data, identify areas of need, and track results of their work. “MAAP has been very beneficial on our end by streamlining a process for our field staff to use to bring centers to quality,” says Samantha Moya, Senior Director of Early Learning Programs. “It speeds up the time it takes for the early learning centers to get to accreditation, reducing the time frame by about 20 months when compared to before we had the system.”

Skvare developed the private website for EFS to give management and staff access to educational Standards guides (comprised of NAC, NAEYC and State Licensing requirements), track mentoring and training levels for individual educators, display site visit progress, assessments, reports, and manage training registration. No longer victims to outdated information, EFS staff now have access to up-to-date documents and reports. MAAP gives EFS field specialists the ability to enter data from their site visits in real time. As a result, the data is immediately transformed into reports on dashboards that show progress toward goals for each early learning educator and center.

Educational First Steps Logo

The password-protected website is accessible only by EFS staff. You can learn more about their work by visiting their public-facing website.

Educational First Steps uses the MAAP website to collect and display data while on classroom visits.
Why Drupal was chosen: 

EFS chose Skvare due to their expertise in nonprofit work. Drupal, coupled with CiviCRM, is well-suited for handling the contact information, user access and data reporting for more than 400 educators in early learning centers across a five county service area.

Early childhood educator uses fun activities to help young children learn.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome): 

The Challenge

EFS wanted to deliver the training materials in an online format that could be maintained by staff and give their field specialists remote access to real-time data. EFS initially used a shared drive of more than 200 PDF’s, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets which included embedded links to graphs, charts, and tables. Versioning and editing permissions were not easy to control. Staff were making copies of outdated files, providing feedback on incorrect forms, and dependent on in-office shared-network access.

Along with managing documents, EFS needed to track the large amount of data and intricate steps required for each early learning center to attain national accreditation. The process spans over a period of approximately 40 months and involves hundreds of data points.

The Solution

Educational First Steps needed a cloud-based solution to:

  • Manage contacts for individuals and organizations;
  • Track the steps towards accreditation for early learning centers;
  • Display dashboards for each staff position, showing useful listings and reports;
  • View and input data from any place with internet access; and
  • Manage all educational Standards-related data, contacts, and training events in one place.

MAAP Standards track 227 educational standards of education and safety for early learning centers.

Technical specifications

Drupal version: 
Drupal 7.x
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen: 

Custom dashboards and real-time data

Skvare brought the display of reports, data and listings front and center so that EFS could gain helpful insights into their work. Some of the primary Drupal modules used here are Views, Entity Views Attachment, and Display Suite. Skvare used the EVA module to display a unique dashboard for each job title so that each EFS employees sees the information they need for their particular role. When an EFS staff member logs into the private website, a home screen shows a menu of items, such as:

  • Centers
  • Center map
  • Center budget
  • Center visit report
  • Contact forms
  • Standards
  • Enrollment
  • Quarterly report
  • Administration and Classroom Assessments
  • Overall Assessment Reports and Scoring
  • Student-to-teacher ratio
  • Director and teacher profiles
  • EFS staff assigned to the center

All the above reflect up-to-date information, since EFS field staff are inputting data each day.

Progress reports showing such details as accreditation status of a center or educational level of each educator within a center are displayed using the Views and Display Suite modules. At the granular level, EFS staff can see which of the 227 educational Standards a teacher has mastered, and percentage progress towards attaining their Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential.

Assessment scores show progress towards accreditation over time.

Skvare developed several custom modules to handle various custom functionality required by EFS. In particular the scoring of individual administration and classroom assessments was calculated and formatted for display. The Field collection module was used to handle mentor log functions. When a new Center staff person profile is created, the system automatically generates all the data items that will be needed in the mentor log. As new Standards are added, the mentor logs are updated accordingly.

Another key custom module Skvare developed is for the director dashboard. The director dashboard allows a center’s director to log in and manage their staff’s training registrations and view up-to-date reports of their mentoring progress.

Skvare has received overwhelmingly positive feedback because it revolutionized the way EFS does their work.

Training and Support

Skvare provided more than 60 hours of training with their data analysts and senior management, meeting on site, via phone, and email. Skvare staff trained EFS field specialists on data entry, navigating the system, and how to use the website to help them in their roles. Skvare staff showed EFS assessors how to use their tools and trained managers on getting the data they need to make decisions about allocating resources.

Skvare provides fully-managed hosting on dedicated servers, optimized for data protection, security and  performance. Samantha Moya, Senior Director of Early Learning Programs, confirms, “Knowing that MAAP is safe and sound with Skvare is comforting. I feel confident that we won’t ever lose any information. I don’t have to worry. Skvare gives me that confidence.”

Educator works with preschool age children on learning new skills

Conclusion

What began as a way to organize shared documents has turned into a multi-phase project spanning more than four years. At each step of the way, Skvare collaborated with EFS staff to meet their needs for maintaining and displaying real-time data. The new website helped Educational First Steps become more organized and efficient. As a result, early learning centers can more quickly achieve accreditation because it’s easy to track what goals they’ve met and what remains to be done. Research shows high-quality early education is key to long-term success, and it’s often the poorest children who are going without. When so much is at stake, it’s comforting to know that EFS is armed with the best tools to help them meet the challenge and increase learning in hundreds of classrooms each year.

Community contributions: 

Mark Hanna, Senior Developer at Skvare, contributed code to the CiviCRM Entity module to give tight integration between CiviCRM and Drupal.CiviCRM Entity is a Drupal module which exposes many CiviCRM entities as true Drupal entities. That means that almost any module that can use Drupal entities can also access and manipulate CiviCRM data, Drupal style. The module is now maintained and actively developed by Mark Hanna at Skvare.

Organizations involved: 
Team members: 
Sectors: 
Education
Non-profit