Early childhood education

Reporters: Natalie Cheng, Marie FrenchMentors: Elizabeth Brixey, Judd Slivka

Overview• Current status of reporting project

• Research on early childhood

• Challenges and successes

• Lessons learned

• Analytics and future research

Central issue:Public funding for early childhood

education

● Title I preschools○ Text○ Photos○ Infographics

● Early childhood and special education○ Video series, online

● State subsidies for childcare○ Text ○ Photo○ Infographics

Title I preschools

Title I preschoolsQuestion: What is Title I preschool in

Columbia Public Schools like and how effective is it for families?

Title I preschools• Several drafts• Currently

going through accuracy check process

• Publication: December 19

Visual focus

Multiple families

Shannyn and Taysir

Early childhood special education• Central focus on one family’s story

• Multimedia gathering - 7 visits, 3 hours+ on average, 20 hours of footage

• Challenges with production and storyboarding

• Coordinating with the Missourian

• Lessons learned

Early childhood special education

• Three-part story:o Intro

Early childhood special education

• Three-part story:o Techniques

Early childhood special education

• Three-part story:o Changing circumstances

Early childhood special education

• Current status:o Working with Derek Pooreo Adapting structureo Publishing next semester

State child care subsidyQuestion: How does the state subsidy

system for childcare work? What challenges or benefits have families and providers seen?

Subsidies: Documents and data

• State monthly reports on child care assistance

• Block grant applications sent to the federal government

• Data on child care providers in Boone County requested from DSS

• Memos

Childcare providers in Columbia said difficulties with the application process for the state’s assistance for child care make it difficult for parents to get the assistance needed to work or go to school. Parents can face long wait times for approval, lost paperwork and a time-consuming application process.

“The system just isn’t working. It’s broken for most

of the families,” said Paul Prevo, director of Tiger Tots Child Development Center...

“Who doesn’t want the parents to be able to take

their kids to school, go to work, be a functioning member of society in every way that you can imagine? That should be everyone’s goal,” Prevo said. “When it takes 30 or 45 days to get approval, that’s hindering that goal pretty harshly.”

Central charactersMultigenerational

household

Melissa De Long

Savannah Sixta

Jeremiah Sixta

Infographics

Research: Studies on ECE• Perry Preschool Project, North Carolina

Abecedarian Project and Chicago Child-Parent Center Study

• Head Start national study by US Dept. of Health and Human Services

Source: Perry Preschool Project

Challenges

• sourcing

• finding focus in broad story

• matching visual and text elements

• production of video

Successes

• initial buy-in from sources

• extensive sourcing and research

• publication of subsidy story

• produced Title I preschool story

• positive feedback on ECSE story

Lessons for future convergence reporting projects• Start sourcing as early as possible

• Find solid direction for stories, narrow topic

• Be prudent about gathering multimedia for specific newsroom

• Organization is key for big multimedia projects

Lessons for future convergence reporting projects• Back things up!

• Be in constant communication with editors for all components

• Shoot high, but don’t be afraid to rein it in

Research: Analytics• Post-publication, not yet available