Where Is AEII?

The AEII initiative supports publicly funded birth-to-five classrooms across the Commonwealth of Virginia, including in school-based, center-based, and family day home settings. AEII has historically focused on measuring, understanding, and supporting the quality of early childhood learning experiences. VPI distributes state funds to schools and community-based organizations to provide quality preschool programs for four-year-olds who are unserved by the federal Head Start program. ECSE provides services for preschool-aged children (ages two to five) with identified disabilities or developmental delays. Title I funding supports preschool programs in schools with high numbers of students from low income families to ensure that children have opportunities for high-quality early childhood education. Additionally, a few school divisions are piloting VPI programs to support 3-year-olds from historically underserved communities.

During the 2018-2019 school year, AEII worked with 50 early adopter school divisions to measure the quality of classroom interactions and instruction, as well as identify effective professional development opportunities. These 50 participating divisions, located across the state, played an integral role in helping AEII refine its processes and procedures.

In the 2019-2020 school year, AEII expanded its reach across the entire state of Virginia, supporting divisions to identify professional development needs in all VPI classrooms across 122 school divisions. Specific activities include standardized data collection on quality of interactions, production of teacher- and division-level reports about quality of interactions, review of division-wide professional development plans, and consultation and webinars for division ECE leaders to support development of data-driven planning for effective professional development.

In the 2020-2021 school year, AEII broadened its scope to ECSE, Title I, and 3-year-old classrooms to provide inclusive supports to many more teachers and leaders across the Commonwealth.

During the 2021-2022 school year, in a true effort to support a unified early childhood system, the AEII initiative further expanded to include all publicly funded programs across birth-to-five classrooms and settings.

In the 2022-2023 school year, AEII aims to provide individualized coaching and professional development to at least 100 publicly funded early childhood classrooms across birth-to-five programs and settings to support the quality of early childhood learning experiences.