Early Childhood Education in Arizona and Florida
The Importance of Language and Literacy
Helios Education Foundation believes that every individual in Arizona and Florida should
have the opportunity to attend and be prepared to succeed in postsecondary education. With this vision as the driving force of our strategic direction, the Foundation invests its
leadership, expertise and resources across three key impact areas: Early Childhood
Education (children ages birth to five), the Transition Years (Grades 5-12) and
Postsecondary Scholarships.
It's clear that the ages of birth to five represent the most critical stage in the growth and
development of young children, forming the building blocks for a child's future success
from pre-school through postsecondary education. Because of this, Helios is investing in
transformative early childhood education programs with a focus on teacher professional
development in Arizona and Florida.
Our strategic partnerships are yielding better prepared educators and practitioners and increasing the number of high quality early learning environments in child care centers and family child care homes. Children reading proficiently by the end of third grade is extremely important, so we've focused our funding on initiatives that improve teachers' knowledge, practice and understanding of language acquisition and emergent literacy.
The Foundation's initiatives not only reach in-service teachers working in early learning environments, but they also reach pre-service teachers pursuing a degree in early childhood education. Through this work, we are building emergent literacy and language acquisition into postsecondary education programs and bridging the gap between the early childhood and K-3 education systems.
Since 2006, Helios has invested over $100 million across the education continuum in Early Childhood Education, the Transition Years and Postsecondary Scholarships in Arizona and Florida. Over $10 million of that has been invested in early childhood education teacher professional development programs in both states.
We have already begun to measure the impact of our investments and are using that data to create and implement best practices. By strategically investing across multiple layers of the early childhood education system, Helios is helping create a pipeline of early childhood educators destined to help our children succeed.
Paul Luna
President and CEO