AppleTree Institute

AppleTree Projects

AppleTree Institute’s support of high performing preschools in Washington DC is accomplished via two projects, Real Estate Asset Development (“READ”) and the DC Partnership for Early Literacy (“DCPEL”):

1. READ

   Real Estate Asset Development (“READ”) creates new preschool classrooms for AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School.

   Through READ, AppleTree Institute partners with community development corporations, public schools, churches, and developers of affordable housing to create and finance new preschool classrooms for AppleTree Early Learning PCS using project finance strategies that blend public grants, private funding, private debt, credit enhancement and lease revenue.

   The result? New preschool classrooms in target neighborhoods home to at-risk children who stand to benefit the most from the charter schools early language and literacy program at a predictable cost.

   READ finance partners include: the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s Office of Charter School Financing and Support, Building Hope, America’s Charters, Boston Private Bank, United Bank, PNC Bank, Non-Profit Community Development Corporation, William C. Smith & Company, Riverside Baptist Church, the DC Public Schools Realty Office, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and the Martin Family Foundation.

2. DCPEL

   The DC Partnership for Early Literacy (DCPEL) is a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Reading First program to transform existing early childhood programs serving at-risk young children into preschool centers of educational excellence that support the development of children’s language, print awareness, phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge.

   DCPEL is designed to increase the scale of the Response-to-Intervention model of instruction that ATI piloted. The chart below demonstrates mean growth in receptive and expressive vocabulary over two years by children who participated in that pilot.

   

   Three-year-old children entered the program at significant risk for language and literacy deficits. Two years later, those children exited the program scoring above the national norm.

   This project features successively more intensive levels of research-based interventions to ensure that all children make progress; universal screening and progress monitoring of student’s progress, and classroom-based professional development. We will be posting more information about DCPEL and our results in the near future.