The Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF) is a non-profit organization with a commitment to identifying and supporting cost-effective strategies that prepare children to succeed in school.  By the time the MELF initiative ends in 2011, evaluation results across many projects will include knowledge about what works best - and most cost-effectively – to promote school readiness in children from low income families or families facing other challenges.

“School readiness” is a complex, multidimensional construct that includes

• what children know (like their language, their awareness of letters and print, and their grasp of simple mathematical principles),
• their social-emotional competence (how well they get along with others, negotiate challenges, and solve problems), and
• their interest and enthusiasm for learning.

To accurately describe “school readiness,” MELF evaluations will assess children’s outcomes across these different dimensions.

“School readiness” also develops over time. While Minnesota has a history of assessing school readiness at the time children enter kindergarten (e.g., recent Minnesota Department of Education reports), MELF-funded initiatives are trying to capture children’s progress towards school readiness as early as the first year of life.  To guide this process, we have developed a “measurement model” to examine child outcomes from birth to school entry in an effort to describe important outcomes across ages 0-5.

We believe children develop in the context of families, programs, and communities, and that any careful and systematic evaluation will include these factors to best understand which elements are most helpful in building a cost-effective and comprehensive system of early care and education.  Results provided through various evaluations over time will be used to guide this system development and inform policy makers, administrative systems, and community stakeholders.

Strategies for reaching this goal include:

• collecting information across systems and from children, families, and providers,
• using valid, direct measures documenting experiences, perceptions, and outcomes,
• empowering and engaging participants in the process,
• weighing the effectiveness of different programs and service delivery models, and
• sharing results to inform decisions at the policy, community, and program level.

The following questions provide the evaluation framework for all MELF-funded initiatives and evaluations to highlight results for children, families, programs, and communities over time:

1. To what extent are low-income children served by MELF-funded initiatives either ready for school or on a developmental trajectory towards school readiness? 
2. To what extent do low-income families served by MELF-funded initiatives have access to and make use of
• resources available to them to help their children be ready for school? 
• information available to them regarding the quality of early care and education programs?
3. To what extent do early care and education programs served by MELF-funded initiatives meet criteria for innovative, effective, high-quality programs? 
4. To what extent are strategies used by MELF-funded initiatives more cost-effective than others in achieving similar results?
5. How have MELF-funded initiatives improved their local communities’ abilities to sustain quality early care and education programs? 

Partners in the MELF Research Consortium are working to assess the effectiveness of individual MELF-funded initiatives.  The primary projects include:

1. the Saint Paul Early Childhood Scholarship Program evaluated by SRI International,
2. the Quality Rating System: Parent Aware evaluated by Child Trends, and
3. System and Community Analyses and MELF Innovation Grants evaluated by CEED.
4. MELF Baseline Study evaluated by Wilder Research

In addition, CEED has been charged with evaluating the effectiveness of the overall MELF initiative, and to coordinating evaluations efforts with the Consortium partners.

The evaluation of various MELF-funded initiatives began to unfold in late 2007 and will continue through 2010.

Regular updates and annual reports will be posted on the MELF website (www.melf.us). A final report will be completed and made available by December of 2011.