Massachusetts has just launched a new system to support early education in the state called StrongStart: https://eecstrongstart.org/

You can read all about it in their press release below:

UMass Boston’s Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation to Lead Statewide Professional Development Initiative for Early Education and Out-of-School Time Workforce 

Grant-funded work is part of EEC’s Massachusetts StrongStart, an integrated system for supporting high quality early education and care. 

Boston, MA, August 29, 2019―The Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at UMass Boston (the Leadership Institute) announces today that it has been selected to administer the Department of Early Education and Care’s (EEC) three-year, $12.4 million StrongStart Training and Technical Assistance Grant. Through this award, the Leadership Institute will oversee the design and implementation of training and technical assistance services through five StrongStart Professional Development Centers (PDCs) located across Massachusetts. 

Through the StrongStart PDCs, the Leadership Institute at UMass Boston will support quality improvement in early education and out-of-school time programs and the professional development of leaders and educators to steer that change. The Leadership Institute will work closely with EEC to coordinate and align the state’s professional development and quality improvement systems for the early education and out-of-school time workforce, which includes more than 9,000 licensed programs and an estimated 70,000 early educators working in family child care, center-based child care and out-of-school time programs. 

“We’re incredibly excited to partner with EEC to support the state’s early education and out-of-school time workforce. The new StrongStart system places Massachusetts at the cutting edge of innovation in the design and delivery of professional development for providers, educators, and leaders in the field,” said Dr. Anne Douglass, the Leadership Institute’s founder and executive director. “Our recent research on the early education and care workforce shows that there is a high demand for professional development training and for on-going support for leaders and leadership development for those who work in programs that support children and their families. StrongStart will have technical assistance and training relevant for educators and administrators at every level of their career, and these services will be designed and delivered by people who have deep experience in the field.” 

In addition to training and technical assistance, the PDCs will offer a statewide leadership coaching program to support leaders as they create cultures of continuous learning and improvement in their organizations and establish professional development opportunities in the workplace that strengthen teaching quality and children’s learning. 

StrongStart PDCs are located in the Western, Central, Northeast, and Southeast regions of the state, as well as Metro Boston. Complete contact information is available on the Massachusetts StrongStart Professional Development System website, which launched today concurrently with this announcement. 

In addition to EEC, the Leadership Institute’s strategic partners in StrongStart’s program design and delivery include the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Holyoke Community College, The Community Group, Child Development and Education, Inc., the Ounce of Prevention Fund, the 

United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, the Pyramid Model Consortium, and representatives from child care, Head Start, family child care and out-of-school-time care, other professional development providers, and leaders in the sector. 

About the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation 

The Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at UMass Boston offers training in entrepreneurial leadership to frontline early educators and child care business owners serving young children with a focus on disadvantaged communities. It conducts original research to identify how systems and policies can be redesigned to cultivate the leadership of early educators at scale. It also establishes applied research-practice-policy partnerships that contribute new knowledge about early educator entrepreneurial leadership as a powerful lever for change. The Leadership Institute is a university-wide initiative at UMass Boston and is housed in the College of Education and Human Development at UMass Boston. Founded in 2016, the Leadership Institute was created in response to demand from graduates of our first entrepreneurial leadership development programs piloted in 2012.