The Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE) is relentlessly committed to ensuring that all pre-kindergarten programs serving our city’s youngest learners provide them with the foundation of skills, knowledge, and approaches to learning needed to start off on a path towards being ready for college & careers. Assessment of UPK classroom environments in both Public Schools and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) is an important part of this larger quality assurance system.
In the 2009-10 School Year, OECE collected citywide non-evaluative, baseline data on early childhood program environments using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale – Revised Edition (ECERS-R) (
http://ers.fpg.unc.edu/). In the 2010-11 School Year, OECE assessed a sample of nearly 500 UPK programs throughout the city. In the spring of 2012, OECE will continue to build upon the baseline data by using ECERS-R to assess a sample of UPK programs that were not assessed in the 2010-11 School Year in Public Schools and CBOs. As the process evolves, the DOE will continue to update schools and CBOs on how the data will be used in the future.
Programs will be notified by November 30, 2011 if they are being assessed in the 2011-12 School Year. Assessments will be conducted between January 16 and June 1, 2012. For more information, please see the
Frequently Asked Questions.