History

The McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership has evolved over its 22-year history both in its mission and the type of activities it sponsors. Founded in 1985 by Dr. Paula Jorde Bloom as the Early Childhood Professional Development Project, activities in the early years focused primarily on research relating to the quality of work life of early childhood educators. In 1985, Dr. Bloom developed an organizational climate assessment—The Early Childhood Work Environment Survey. Climate assessment as a research focus for understanding the dynamics of organizational life continues to be an important activity for the Center. To date, over 2,300 programs have received a Work Environment Profile summarizing the collective perceptions of staff regarding different organizational practices.

In the late 1980s, the narrow research focus that dominated the first few years of the Center gradually gave way to an expanded range of training and technical assistance activities to support directors in their administrative roles. In 1989, the Center received a major grant from the Head Start Bureau to provide leadership and management training for Head Start directors in Chicago. Participants in that program received a master’s degree in Early Childhood Leadership and Advocacy.

In 1993, the Center launched a new leadership training program, Taking Charge of Change. This initiative was innovative not only in its content and delivery, but because it represented a funding collaborative of philanthropic foundations, government agencies, and private corporations. To date, fourteen cohorts of 30 directors each have completed this year-long professional development experience.

In 1994 the Center became a partner in the McCormick Tribune Foundation’s Focus on Quality initiative. The Foundation generously sponsored two cohorts of early childhood directors, McCormick Fellows, through a master’s degree program and facilitation of NAEYC center accreditation. In 1997 an organizational development grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation provided Center staff with the opportunity to develop a vision that would guide its activities into the next millennium. The resulting strategic plan highlighted the need for a new name and a more focused mission of promoting the leadership development of early childhood educators. The change of identity to the Center for Early Childhood Leadership became official in January 1998.

Noteworthy initiatives between 1999 and 2004 included the launching of The Next Step, an advanced leadership training program to prepare Professional Development Advisors for the Illinois professional development system, beginner and intermediate level Technology Training for early childhood administrators, and the launching of Leadership Connections, a national early childhood leadership conference for administrators across the country. In 2001 and 2003, the Center published two major research reports, Who’s Caring for the Kids? and Zoom: The Impact of Early Childhood Leadership Training on Role Perceptions, Job Performance, and Career Decisions. In 2003 Tim Walker, the Center’s Director of Technology, published a Microsoft XP technology manual for early childhood administrators. And in 2004 Drs. Bloom and Talan published the Program Administration Scale, a tool to measure the quality of leadership and management practices in center-based early care and education programs.

January 2005 marked another important milestone in the life of the Center with the receipt of a $2.1 million gift by the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the renaming of the Center to the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership. The McCormick gift accentuated more than a decade-long collaboration between the two champions in the quest for high-quality early childhood services. The gift funded new initiatives to support early childhood program administrators, a national public awareness campaign, and an endowment for research, scholarships, and special projects.

That same year the Center also received a $1.5 million gift from the Josephine P. and John J. Louis Foundation and the Michael W. Louis Charitable Trust to establish an endowed chair.  Dr. Bloom was named the first recipient of the Michael W. Louis Chair of the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership.

In 2007 the Center underwent a major expansion when Illinois launched Quality Counts, a new quality rating system for family child care and center-based early care and education programs. Quality Counts assessors from the McCormick Tribune Center conduct all the on-site assessments of classroom and program quality required for the star-rating system.  Prompted by the need for an assessment tool in Quality Counts to measure the quality of family child care business practices (similar to the PAS for center-based programs), Drs. Talan and Bloom have recently developed the Business Administration Scale for Family Child Care (BAS).