The Petal Early Learning Collaborative is one of 14 pre-K collaboratives in Mississippi that is funded by the Early Learning Collaborative Act.
The collaborative model creates partnerships with school districts, nonprofit groups, Head Start centers and private child care providers to deliver high-quality early childhood education to 4-year-olds.
The Petal Public School District and the early childhood community in Petal have done such outstanding job of working together to benefit young children that the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) selected Petal to highlight at its 2018 National Legislative Conference.
The Mississippi’s Early Learning Collaborative program has been a major success story for the state. Students who attend the collaboratives outperform all other groups on the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment.
The Early Learning Collaborative program is of such high quality that the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) recognized Mississippi for two years in a row for being one of only six states in the nation to meet all 10 quality standards for early childhood education.
Learn more about the Mississippi Department of Education’s early childhood initiatives at mdek12.org/ESE/EC.