Why Develop the Community Approach?
The goal of the community approach is to achieve emotional, educa­tional, societal, and medical well-being of all children. This approach blends funding of public and private resources to distribute learning pro­grams and resources community-wide more efficiently, and offers many benefits to children, families, schools, and communities.

The community approach allows families options in providing quality care and education to all four-year-olds, regardless of ability or family income. The community approach preserves the health of the child care system in the community while generating additional state funds for the community to educate four-year-olds.

Benefits to Children and Families;
Schools; Child Care and Head Start
Click here to view benefits

The Forces for Four-Year-Old Committee and Initiative also have many resources to help districts explore or implement community approaches. Go to Forces for Four

Getting Started Resources
(Links below are to PDF documents at the DPI web site)

Community Approaches to Serving Four-Year-Old Children in Wisconsin: Lessons Learned from Wisconsin Communities

Creating a Community Approach to Serving Four-Year-Old Children in Wisconsin: Public Awareness Packet

Community Articles
(Links below are to the DPI web site)

• Has a Cooperative Attitude: Wisconsin Communities Embrace the Community Approach To Serving Four-Year-Olds: This article from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards Association News is an update on the four-year-old kindergarten program in La Crosse and how it spread to other Wisconsin communities.

• Sandbox Synergy: This article (PDF document) from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards Association News describes efforts in LaCrosse to develop a community wide approach to 4-year-old kindergarten and how child care and the district became partners in 4k.

Evaluation

Year II EEM Final Reports by the Wisconsin Child Care Research Partnership (WCCRP)
As part of its second year activities for the EEM Project, the Wisconsin Child Care Research Partnership conducted extensive research among all elementary school districts. The Year II final reports (below) increase knowledge about the value of collaborations between child care, Head Start, and public school 4-year-old kindergarten programs to families, teachers, and communities. The research adds to the Research Partnership's current research work on early care and education, especially for low-income children. These reports constitute major efforts to optiain responses from collaborative community approach 4K and comparison sites across the state.
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/flp/wccrp/matters.html

Baseline Report A (109k PDF document)
This report shares research conducted as part of the Early Education Matters project under contract from the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, funded by the Joyce Foundation. February 2005. The research was conducted by the Wisconsin Child Care Research Partnership and provide an accurate baseline assessment on the status of 4-year-community approach to serving four-year-old children. Baseline Report A details information about each of the 12 public school districts that offered community approaches to 4K during the 2003-2004 school year.