Mixed delivery systems increase efficiency and promote successful outcomes for students from PreK through K12 by aligning community-based organizations, public school systems and programs, and city-wide initiatives. Almost every state in the U.S. uses some type of mixed delivery system.
Some of the goals of mixed delivery include:
- Access to high-quality early learning opportunities for every child.
- Choices that value multilingual learners and diversity of cultures for every family and caregiver.
- Support services including transportation, intervention referrals, and health screenings provided through collaborative efforts and formal agreements between partners.
- A priority on relationship-building between the different entities, while nurturing and encouraging family engagement, along with honoring and recognizing the value of existing resources and programs.
Mixed delivery systems are not new but the current emphasis and dialogue may not be familiar to all educators. Conversations around mixed delivery systems involve a variety of subjects. These include instructional quality, cultural diversity, equitable access, compensation parity, and staff turnover.
As national lawmakers deliberate proposals to provide funding for child care and early learning post-pandemic, and states allocate remaining federal COVID-19 relief funds, an examination of structural differences and inequities that may disadvantage CBOs (Community-Based Programs) relative to public school programs demands attention.
Centering Equity
The Annenberg Institute at Brown University (1) published an EdWorkingPaper in September 2022, examining the differences in demographics, quality, and child outcomes in Community-Based versus Public School Programs. Using data from Boston, New York City, Seattle, New Jersey, and West Virginia, researchers found evidence (2) that the type of preschool setting in which a child is placed makes a significant difference in equitable opportunity and outcome.
Children with higher baseline skills and teachers with advanced degrees were more likely to be “sorted” into public school settings. Research shows that children in public school settings are receiving higher quality instruction, with subsequent better outcomes, than those in Community-Based Programs (CBOs).
Pay, working conditions, and access to unions are some of the perks of public school settings. Holding CBOs and public schools to the same standards is a possible remedy to improve child outcomes. They must, however, first address the issue of resource scarcity in community-based programs.
More research and investment in data systems is needed to accurately measure and track family and child demographics and economic disparities. Additionally, researchers want to examine the reasons why families choose CBOs over public school settings when they have a choice. Work schedule alignment, common language and background, and the ability for siblings to be served in the same location may factor into the decision-making. To ensure access to opportunity and equitable outcomes for all preschoolers, more research is needed.
Real-World Experience
Dr. Carla Bryant has over thirty years of national experience creating culturally competent policies, programs, and procedures for comprehensive early learning, P–3, elementary, family support, and after-school programs. She is the creator and Executive Director of the Center for District Innovation and Leadership in Early Education, part of Cultivate Learning at the University of Washington.
DIAL EE offers a fellowship program to support early education leaders in local education agencies to integrate multiple initiatives and resources for an aligned and comprehensive early education strategy. Emily Grunt is a member of the 2022–2024 Dial EE Fellowship cohort.
Emily spoke with Dr. Bryant to learn more about her real-world experience with developing and supporting mixed delivery instruction opportunities. This is the first of a two-part interview.
Carla, would you explain in your words what mixed delivery means?
Mixed delivery is where parents have options based on the needs of their children. Anyone who has raised a child or has assisted other parents with raising children knows that children need different things at different times.
When they’re younger, we may want our child to be with a family member. We call that friends, family, and neighbors. When they get a little older, we may want a drop-in service, maybe at a church. And later on in their lives, we may want them to be in a group setting. We may continue to use a friend, family, and neighbor system because it’s a smaller group setting. Or, we might decide on a larger center setting.
Now let’s say I have a child that has a special need. I think all of our children need things at certain times that we may have to seek out.
The setting they’re currently in may not fulfill that need. So, in this mixed delivery system, there may be places where children will thrive more because there’s someone or a system there that provides the types of services that our children need at that given moment. This mixed delivery system encompasses placement, which may be a center or a home, but also encompasses the types of services that are within the placements.
And, what makes a mixed delivery system even stronger is when all of these settings include a layer of inclusivity and a layer of equity. Equity, as we all are learning, doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same thing. Equity is when everyone gets the services they need.
I want to demystify the idea that this is something new. This is something that our affluent parents have been accessing forever. Their options have been more plentiful because they’ve been able to use their own resources.
What we need to discuss more often in mixed delivery is services for children of parents who work off-hours. For instance, 11:00 pm to 7:00 am shifts. So a lot of times we need to talk about mixed delivery with a wider definition.
Equity, as we all are learning, doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same thing. Equity is when everyone gets the services they need.
Creating Mixed Delivery Systems
You’ve said this is something that’s always been done. Am I correct in saying that it seems like conversations are focusing on how we make early ed strategies within communities that lay out multiple options for children during a 9-hour day?
So now we’re having a conversation about how we create mixed delivery as a system. By default, we have a tendency to want to replicate systems. But there’s context in the community aspect.
What is it that makes sense for this community? The only way to know is to create a collaboration between the school and the community. So the services that are being provided are applicable to the context of the community. And that’s the strategy.
The community, the parents, and the school all have things that they need to have taken care of. The school district is there to educate. And we know that part of educating is about that whole child. It’s about the social and emotional. It’s about the community they come from.
This strategy is; let’s do this together. It’s not the old strategy where, once they walk through that door, we got this. No, when they walk through that door, we come through together, as a community and as a family. Partnering on all of these ideas will get results that children, the families, and the school both want and need.
This strategy is; let’s do this together.
Are we trying to get closer to a community school and mixed delivery being synonymous? Have you seen community schools that are providing mixed delivery options for their community?
I was part of an experience called the Seattle Early Education Collaborative. It was an early ed strategy created out of the city of Seattle’s government structure. The collaborative brought together Head Start, district, privately-funded, state-funded, early ed providers to consider that all of their children end up in Seattle public schools, but the services and placements they receive are all over the place. The question was, “How do we leverage the work?”. This collaborative realized that everyone had to do certain types of training every year. So we asked, “City, are you willing to organize this and then we’ll come and do it?”. Their reply was, “Absolutely”. And so we created a joint professional development schedule including five different Head Starts, the school district, and a number of private sites. This was something they all needed to do and in this case, the city was the convener.
Considering community schools, they are not necessarily doing the services, but they are coordinating and organizing, because someone has to hold that work. This is not something randomly done—we must organize that part of it. So the collaboration that was done in the city of Seattle could easily have been done in a community school.
I hear people talking about community schools as a framework in which you can do an early ed strategy. I hear people talk about community schools as though it’s just a plethora of services that provide health and dental, etc. That is part of it.
Reciprocity
What’s missing is the reciprocity piece. The reciprocity piece is that the community school is not a service provider. It is a convener and a collaborator with the community. It is based on the types of services they would like to have to ensure the success of their child. So, sometimes the community is training the school district.
It’s a back-and-forth partnership. So back to my example of the Seattle Early Education Collaborative. It decided that it could do three things together. One was professional development. Secondly, it decided that it was going to do assessments together.
All of these disparate programs decided to use the same assessment process, to give their data to the city so the city would use it to drive changes and improvements. The third and most difficult thing they decided to do was to create a governance structure that met and made decisions on a regular basis.
This was a citywide early ed strategy that was framed in a structure that would be similar to a community school.
There are two things that I wonder about when we’re talking about kids on their journey from K to 12. The first is, what kind of collaboration can we create between K–12 and early learning settings that will prepare and support children’s entry into the K–12 system from the earliest start?
Secondly, how do we take into consideration where the child has already been? Every single child comes from somewhere. They come with a wealth of knowledge from their families and from the different opportunities they’ve grown up with, and then they enter into this system. Sometimes we pretend like it’s a new situation, but it isn’t because they have all been with their first educator. That educator could be a parent, a caregiver, or a grandparent. It could also be a Head Start, a preschool, or a church program. I don’t know if we have those conversations.
No, this is not new. As an example, I was raised in a community where I was taught to read and do speeches by the age of three in my church. And as it happened, when I went to school, my third-grade teacher was also my Sunday school teacher. So my teacher understood the power that I brought in before I ever showed up. There was this collaboration and respect, and that’s an early ed strategy.
I loved it, Emily, when you said all these kids come from somewhere. Kids don’t all of a sudden show up in an elementary setting and we save them by pouring all this knowledge into them.
No. They come with something, and when you’re a part of a community you learn about it and how to build on what’s already there.
Kids don’t all of a sudden show up in an elementary setting and we save them by pouring all this knowledge into them.
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(1.)Suggested citation: Weiland, Christina, Meghan McCormick, Jennifer Duer, Allison Friedman-Kraus, Mirjana Pralica, Samantha Xia, Milagros Nores, and Shira Mattera. (2022). Mixed-Delivery Public Prekindergarten: Differences in Demographics, Quality, and Children’s Gains in Community-Based versus Public School Programs across Five Large-Scale Systems. (EdWorkingPaper: 22-651). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/pncz-2233
(2.)Christina Weiland, Associate Professor, School of Education – University of Michigan
Meghan McCormick, Senior Associate, Family Well-Being and Children’s Development – MDR
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