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/). Assessments conducted in the 2011-2012 School Year built upon the baseline data on early childhood program environments collected during the 2009-2010 School Year. Assessments from the 2011-2012 School Year and future years may help inform the development of an UPK evaluative review for future school years. As the process evolves, the DOE will continue to update schools and CBOs on how the data will be used in the future.
Assessments will be conducted between January 14 and May 31, 2013. For more information, please see the
Frequently Asked Questions.