Every two years, the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) solicits applications from local and regional organizations that would like to have a positive impact on the school readiness of their communities by implementing the Texas School Ready (TSR) Comprehensive program. Thus far, the TSR Comprehensive program has served more than 550,000 children with close to 1,500 teachers participating each year. In June 2021, CLI announced the 24 TSR Comprehensive Lead Agents, local and regional organizations selected to implement TSR Comprehensive, for 2021-2023.

The purpose of TSR Comprehensive is to provide an effective, research-supported, early childhood classroom model that empowers teachers to prepare at-risk children to enter kindergarten at or above grade level. Throughout the school year, educators enrolled in TSR Comprehensive are provided tools to help them learn more about the specific instructional needs of the children in their classrooms and how to support children using engaging lessons and activities. Through TSR Comprehensive, educators improve their teaching skills by getting feedback from dedicated coaches using video recordings of lessons, activities, and coaching. The new skills and techniques that educators learn through TSR Comprehensive positively affect the learning environment and educational experience for children. Teachers participate in TSR Comprehensive through our face-to-face model or remote/virtual model.

Although previously focused solely on pre-K classrooms, TSR Comprehensive is now a birth-to-five model that offers services to early childhood partners serving preschoolers as well as infants and toddlers based on the community’s needs. Some early childhood partners, particularly those based in high-need, at-risk communities, benefit from coordinated, site-wide TSR Comprehensive service delivery to support high-quality caregiving across age groups. This coordinated approach better prepares partners for participation in quality improvement programs, including childcare partners’ application into quality improvement programs like Texas Rising Star.

Our goal is to serve as many communities and programs across the state as possible, and CLI will also provide services through a new remote community to early childhood programs in other areas of Texas. Our partners will soon begin recruitment for Fall 2021 – sign up for the waiting list on our website: www.texasschoolready.org/apply

Learn more about TSR Comprehensive and the Texas School Ready Project on our website: www.texasschoolready.org