Mississippi LIFT is a Learning Investment for Tomorrow.
We are collaborating with exceptional partners to enhance early childhood care and development across Mississippi! Discover more about our partners below.
The CFM offers ongoing support to the Early Childhood Councils (ECCs), established by the CFM in communities across the state, through parent outreach and education, identifying funding to sustain the work of each council, providing logistical and technical support, and any other guidance that may be needed. The CFM added eight new ECCs to the state this year (24 total) to expand the depth and breadth of Early Care and Education. The ECCs assess the needs of their local communities and develop projects to address them.
In addition to identifying funding opportunities for the ECCs, the PDG-B5 enabled the hiring of a Sustainability Coordinator to explore funding opportunities for the collective work of the grant partners beyond the three-year allotment. The CFM works with an Economist consultant and a Scholar in Residence to determine best practices and identify and communicate the economic impacts of the investment in early care and education. Additionally, the CFM is currently working with law students to conduct a national landscape analysis of health care requirements with a particular focus upon development screening and early care and education.
The CFM contracts with Elucidata, LLC to complete data-related tasks. Through this subcontract, Elucidata has conducted the needs assessment, continues to work on a prototype of an integrated data system, Child Care Access Tracking Systems (CATS), and produces visualization of data on a number of child care variables. This type of ad-hoc data production enables the broader MS LIFT team to make data-driven decisions in programming.
The Mississippi Department of Education, Office of Early Childhood Education partners with early learning professionals in local school districts, child care centers, Head Start centers, and families to provide support and resources to improve the quality of the early learning experience and outcomes for children in pre-kindergarten.
MECIC collaborates with families, early childhood professionals, and communities to support the inclusion of young children with disabilities through professional development, classroom support, resource provision, and advocacy. MECIC is grounded in data driven decision making that promotes high-quality early childhood inclusion within Mississippi’s Quality Support System.
The Evaluation and Research Group (ERG) of the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University is providing evaluation support for the PDG-5 work that is occurring across the state. The primary task of the ERG is to develop and implement a system to track the various performance metrics of the project partners. These data will be used by project administrators for continuous quality improvement, as well as monitoring of project processes.
The Systems Change Lab (SCL), housed in Mississippi State University’s Social Science Research Center, is a team of multi-disciplinary research scientists and associates who address complex societal problems through data collection and analysis, policy research, training, education, facilitative practices, and systems change methodologies. For the MS LIFT project, the SCL is assisting with the Strategic Plan, creating a tool-kit for other states featuring the MS Quality Support System, building the MS LIFT website, and working with a state-level team to develop early childhood educator wage and salary scales.
