CSP026231_Contract.pdf

State of Ohio Department of Administrative Services Family Child Care and Center Based Child Care/School Curricula and Assessments – RFP #

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On behalf of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth RFP Version 03/01/24

A CONTRACT BETWEEN

THE OHIO DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

ON BEHALF OF THE

OHIO DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH

AND

TEACHING STRATEGIES, LLC

This Contract #CSP026231, which results from Request for Proposals # SRC0000018211 titled Family Child Care and Center Based Child Care/School Curricula and Assessments (the “RFP”), is between the State of Ohio, through the Department of Administrative Services, on behalf of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, and Teaching Strategies, LLC (the "Contractor").

This Contract is the result of agreed upon changes to the RFP including all exhibits and written amendments to this RFP and the Contractor's negotiated and accepted Proposal. It will also include any materials incorporated by reference in the above documents. The terms and conditions for this Contract are contained in Parts 2-4 of the RFP. If there are conflicting provisions between the documents that make up the Contract, the order of precedence for the documents is as follows:

This Contract consists of the following in this order of precedence:

1. This one-page Contract;

2. Part 6, Mutually Agreed Upon Changes.

3. This RFP, as amended; and

4. The Proposal, as negotiated, clarified, and accepted by the State.

Once awarded, the term of the Contract will be from the date of the State’s signature through 09/30/27.

The State may solely renew this Contract at its discretion for a period of one month. Any further renewals will be by mutual agreement between the Contractor and the State. The parties may renew this Contract for up to four years. Any such renewal of all or part of the Contract is also subject to the satisfactory performance of the Contractor and the needs of the State of Ohio.

This Contract has an effective date of the later of September 01, 2024 or the occurrence of all conditions precedent specified in the terms and conditions of Parts 2-4.

To show their agreement, the parties have executed this Contract as of the dates below.

TEACHING STRATEGIES, LLC STATE OF OHIO,

DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES

By: _________________________________ By: ____________________________________

Name: ______________________________ Name: __________________________________

Title: ________________________________ Title: Director

Date: ________________________________ Date: ___________________________________

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Part 6 – Mutually Agreed Upon Changes

• As recommended by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, the Center Based Child Care

Curricula will be the only version of curriculum offered under this Contract.

• Teaching Strategies, LLC has completed Supplement A, State IT Policy, Standard and Service

Requirements. Supplement A has been reviewed and approved by DAS IT.

• The unit cost submitted by the Contractor applies to all versions of The Creative Curriculum® mentioned in Form 7k of the Contractor’s Technical Proposal. This includes:

o The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool, 6th Edition o The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool, Guided Edition o The Creative Curriculum® for Pre-K o The Creative Curriculum® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos o The Creative Curriculum® for Infants o The Creative Curriculum® for Toddlers

• The cost submitted by the Contractor includes online access to The Creative Curriculum® Cloud digital curriculum resources for all curriculum users through September 30, 2027. It also includes the comprehensive support provided by the Contractor beyond the print kit and digital curricula.

Under a contract resulting from this solicitation, all teachers will benefit from the Professional

Development Teacher Membership (PDTM), which offers over 400 hours of training on best practices in early childhood education. This membership also provides access to the professional learning community on The Hub and participation in the Teacher Acceleration Program (TAP).

These resources are designed to support educators without any additional cost to the State or providers, ensuring they have the necessary tools and training throughout the entire contract period. Please see Tab l. “Additional Innovation or Value-Added Services”, for further details.

• The Contractor may update existing curriculum during the agreement period (through June 30, 2027), but does not have plans to do so in the near-term given the Pre-K and Infant/Toddler editions were just recently published. If the Contractor does release new editions, the Contractor will make them available digitally at no additional charge. New print editions would be available for purchase at the same unit price listed in the Contractor’s proposal. Additionally, the Contractor will submit them for approval as High Quality Instructional Materials through the Ohio Department of Education as soon as they are released.

• Both the Mighty Minutes® and Intentional Teaching Experiences™ are included in the curriculum.

The Mighty Minutes® features 100 activities, such as songs, chants, rhymes, and games, that are aligned with curricular objectives and help teachers utilize brief transitional periods effectively.

Each curriculum kit also includes 251 bilingual Intentional Teaching Experiences™, which provide guidance for individualizing instruction for children at all development levels and strategies for supporting multilingual learners.

• The Contractor will submit The Creative Curriculum®, Guided Edition, and The Creative

Curriculum® for Pre-K for review and approval as High Quality Instructional Materials for prekindergarten by the November 1, 2024 deadline. The Contractor has reached out to the

Department of Education and Workforce about this. The Contractor remains committed to making any new editions released and approved through September 30, 2027, available in digital format at no extra charge to those who have already received curriculum through an agreement resulting

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from this RFP. Additionally, any new editions released during the Contract’s term will be available for purchase by the State at the same unit price specified in the Contractor’s Proposal.

• The Contractor provided the following additional clarifications regarding their curriculum provided under this Contract:

o The Contractor ensures that its resource development leverages the science of reading research in ways that are appropriate for our youngest learners, well before they enter the K-12 system. The Contractor’s curriculum aligns with the research of Dr. Louisa

Moats, a nationally recognized author and authority on literacy education, who defines the science of reading as “the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages”. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students” (2019).

In The Creative Curriculum®, the Contractor employs a comprehensive, whole-child approach to pre-seed early literacy skills and cultivate a love of reading throughout a child’s day. This is achieved through authentic play-based experiences and positive verbal interactions, even for newborns in programs serving infants. The Contractor agrees that literacy is about letters, their individual sounds, and how those sounds form words. It is also about understanding the meaning of words and how they relate to what a child already knows and is yet to know as that child develops rapidly from birth to kindergarten. The Contractor’s approach emphasizes supporting children’s development in vocabulary, oral language, phonological awareness, and print knowledge skills —the five pillars of literacy identified by the National Research Panel in its seminal report

(2000). The Contractor also encourage caregivers to provide developmentally appropriate instruction that empowers children to be in control of their learning and fall in love with reading.

o The Creative Curriculum® emphasizes the importance of responsive adult-child relationships as the essential foundation for promoting children’s development and learning. All levels and versions of The Creative Curriculum® are built upon a curricular framework that respects the fundamental connection between caring and teaching.

The Creative Curriculum® for Infants and The Creative Curriculum® for Toddlers provide detailed guidance for how adults can engage very young children in oral language interactions grounded in positive, nurturing relationships and responsive care.

Throughout the curriculum, there are suggestions for promoting language development through strong relationships, such as sharing simple books with young children (like the

“indestructible” Barefoot Books included with the print materials), introducing new toys and other materials, and singing songs, sharing stories, and playing games that provide joyfully opportunities for language interaction. Daily routines are also leveraged as opportunities to strengthen relationships with individual children.

Materials and guidance created especially for caregivers of “twos” provide detailed information for how caregivers can maintain warm interactions during daily routines to nurture children’s language development, while also introducing engaging learning experiences through “Studies for Twos.”

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The Creative Curriculum® options for preschool and pre-K provide similar guidance, appropriate for children in those class levels. This includes everything from the warm welcome caregivers are encouraged to give each child and family each day, to the read-aloud discussions about interesting books with complex characters that help children develop the social-emotional skills essential for success in school and in life.

o All versions of The Creative Curriculum® are designed to align with the research-based progressions outlined in the Contractor’s objectives for development and learning, which span the entire early childhood continuum - from birth through third grade. These objectives are also aligned to the Head Start Early Learning Framework and Ohio’s Early

Learning and Development Standards.

o All versions of The Creative Curriculum® are designed to help caregivers intentionally promote children’s receptive and expressive oral language development as a critical aspect of their overall development. For preschool and pre-K classes, the curriculum includes suggestions for both embedded support (“all day, every day”) as well explicit instruction in the knowledge, skills and abilities related to language and literacy.

Additionally, it provides developmentally appropriate ideas for using other forms of communication, including body language and facial expressions, as well as the classroom’s physical environment to convey positive messages of inclusion, acceptance, independence, and interdependence.

o All versions of The Creative Curriculum® include developmentally appropriate guidance for using daily routines to promote young children’s receptive and expressive oral language development. Caregivers of infants, toddlers, and twos receive ideas for using routines to strengthen positive, trusting relationships with individual children while also fostering their language development. For caregivers of children in preschool and pre-K, Teaching Guides and other Daily Resources describe strategies for leveraging both adult-initiated and child-initiated conversations, as well as other back-and-forth interactions, such as shared writings, to promote high levels of engagement during everyday routines and experiences.

o Caregivers receive guidance on incorporating books and other printed materials into their daily routines for children. In The Creative Curriculum®, caregivers are encouraged to provide a variety of books that cover different topics, cultures, and themes. Caregivers are also provided guidance on maximizing the benefits of reading aloud to children from diverse materials. These rich experiences even as infants and toddlers to hear a wide range of vocabulary and contexts, helping them understand and use new words appropriately.

Additionally, The Creative Curriculum® helps caregivers see read-alouds as an excellent way to foster a strong sense of community within the classroom. Each curriculum includes its own curated collection of children’s literature that is referenced throughout the daily plans. The Contractor encourage teachers and caregivers to use read-aloud time to model and promote reading as a joyful experience that children can come to love.

For example, the Daily Resources of The Creative Curriculum® guide caregivers to be intentional about the reading skills they want children to practice, such as turning the book’s pages from front to back, reading the text on the page from left to right and top to

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bottom., and using expression in a story character’s voice or conveying a sense of wonder when learning about non-fiction topics.

o The Creative Curriculum® provides guidance for caregivers on the importance of socialization and play as valuable opportunities for children to explore sounds, rhymes, and syllables in spoken language. For infants and toddlers, these formative interactions occur most often and most authentically during daily routines with their caregivers. For preschool and pre-K children, short, intentional, and focused instruction each day can be integrated into daily routines to provide additional opportunities for them to play with sounds, rhymes, and syllables.

The Contractor knows that children need both people to talk to and topics to talk about.

When children play, explore, investigate, build, and create, they have more to think about, which in turn gives them more to talk about.

o The Creative Curriculum® nurtures children's literacy development by integrating talking, listening, reading, and writing into every child’s day. Caregivers receive guidance on how to appropriately introduce foundational skills (e.g., the alphabetic principle) through the use of books, book discussions, and read-alouds, as well as how to create print-rich environments. As children become aware of the connection between what they hear and what they see, caregivers guided in helping them learn the letters most important to them—specifically, the letters in their names!

Additionally, The Creative Curriculum® provides caregivers with Skill Development Cards and Intentional Teaching Experience cards that help caregivers extend children’s thinking with open-ended questions, prompts, and back-and-forth conversations.

All of these strategies rely on instructional practices that promote the five pillars of literacy within a comprehensive curriculum designed to support the strengths, needs, and interests of young children.

o Guidance within The Creative Curriculum® reminds teachers that learning to write requires a convergence of many skills beyond literacy, influences by children’s growth across all developmental domains. Caregivers of infants, toddlers, and twos, as well as teachers of preschool and pre-K, are encouraged to provide many opportunities for children to develop the fine-motor strength and coordination needed once they begin to write. From infants discovering their hands to pre-K children building with small interlocking bricks, sculpting with soft clay, or kneading dough during cooking projects, all children need these fine-motor experiences to prepare them for the later physical demands of writing.

For infants, toddlers, and twos, the curriculum offers multiple daily recommendations for experiences that promote development, starting with reaching, exploring, and grasping, and progressing to manipulating toys and exploring art. These activities lay the foundation for skills that will be further developed in preschool.

Additionally, The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool and The Creative Curriculum® for

Pre-K support caregivers in providing modeled, shared, interactive, and independent writing experiences for children, when developmentally appropriate. Shared writing is

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featured each day in large group because seeing their ideas written by a trusted adult has a significant impact on children. This approach also allows teachers to explore a range of literacy objectives while demonstrating writing as a meaningful tool for conveying meaning and capturing ideas.

The Creative Curriculum® also highlights the importance of equipping preschool and pre-

K classrooms with a variety of interesting writing and drawing materials. In addition to traditional writing materials (like paper, crayons, pencils, markers, etc.), teachers are encouraged to include other engaging tools, such as magnetic letters, plastic or wooden letters, individual whiteboards, clip boards, colored paper, envelopes, and recipe cards to motivate children to enjoy writing and spelling.

o The Contractor provides caregivers with the training, professional development, guidance, and implementation support needed to effectively use The Creative

Curriculum® as intended. This proposal offers comprehensive support beyond what is included in The Creative Curriculum® print kit and the digital resources in The Creative

Curriculum® Cloud. Providers that receive curriculum through this contract will also receive the Contractor’s Professional Development Teacher Membership (PDTM) for all teachers throughout the contract period (September 30, 2027), which includes both live and asynchronous sessions. PDTM includes over 400 hours of training on current best practices in early childhood education. In addition to courses specific to The Creative

Curriculum® and GOLD® assessment system, this membership includes all of the course content needed for the Childhood Development Associate (CDA) credential and Child

Care and Development Fund (CCDF) health and safety requirements, offering flexibility for self-paced learning and opportunities to earn Continuing Education Credits (CEUs).

PDTM also grants educators exclusive access to The Hub, Teaching Strategies’ professional learning community, fostering collaboration and expert guidance.

Additionally, teachers can participate in the Teacher Acceleration Program (TAP), and 8-week structured onboarding experience with live coaching to enhance the implementation of The Creative Curriculum® and provide teachers with insight into child development, formative assessment, pedagogy, and classroom arrangement.

The Contractor is accredited by the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and complies with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognized internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices. The Contractor is also accredited to issue the IACET Continuing Education Unit (CEU).

Finally, the Contractor has a dedicated Partner Success Manager who will serve as the project manager for this Contract and the primary point of contact. She will support the

State throughout project implementation by overseeing all contract deliverables.

Additionally, she will coordinate with DCY partners as needed and provide ongoing implementation support to all administrators, early care and education providers, coordinators, and Resource & Referral agencies. This comprehensive support is designed to assist the State in improving the quality of early learning and development in their programs. For more detailed information about the Contractor’s support and implementation plan, please refer to Tab i. Work Plan, which outlines specific activities, timelines, and resources available to facilitate the project.