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March 5, 2020

Ensuring balance, consistency and happiness in early childhood education

Contributed by Toni Berrafato, Director of Evaluation and Learning

Our mission, to build a community of happy children, parents and teachers, means that every day we hold ourselves to the highest standards of safety, cleanliness, organization, professionalism and education by putting the right processes and people in place to achieve excellence.

 

A large part of my role as the Director of Evaluation and Learning is to monitor and assess if we’re delivering what we promise to our stakeholders. Using a brand scorecard helps Doodle Bugs! to identify and improve various internal business processes and their outcomes.The scorecard looks at both strategic and financial measures to get a more comprehensive view of our performance. This technique helps us build a business and educational program that will stand the test of time.

We ask ourselves “Are we delivering what we promise?”; “What type of learning experiences are children encountering daily?” “Are our facilities safe and clean?” and “How is this impacting the financial health of our centers?” This top-down perspective provides us with the opportunity to study our daily practices, and fine tune our procedures.

 

There are five areas that our brand scorecard inspects at each center. Then, each area is scored based on a series of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that help to make up the center’s overall grade.

1. Center Performance (financial)
2. Educational Program
3. Facility & Safety
4. Customer Satisfaction
5. Employee Satisfaction and Development.

 

For example, in the Educational Program section, we conduct a Program Quality Assurance Reviews (PQAR) and Environment Rating Scale (ERS) evaluation in each classroom.

 

PQAR is a bi-annual, on-site inspection to ensure centers are successfully delivering the BRAVO! Lesson plans.

 

ERS is an assessment completed yearly in each classroom that provides an in-depth look at teacher skill levels in specific areas (ex: language development, literacy), classroom management practices and health and safety procedures.

 

The results of these assessments and others help us to continuously elevate our BRAVO! Curriculum, new hire orientation and professional development trainings to create the best learning environment possible for the children in our care. Plus, it ensures the Doodle Bugs! experience is consistent at each of our locations.

 

We know that a high-quality, early childhood education program impacts children far beyond the years that they spend with us. We’ve invested in the processes that continuously develop our program and teachers, ultimately ensuring we deliver what we promise to the families we serve.