Early childhood education (ECE) is critical for educational outcomes; 90% of brain development happens before the age of 5. Studies have shown that high-quality ECE interventions result in improved academic achievement, cognitive development, emotional development, and self-regulation. Furthermore, ECE benefits accrued over children’s lifetime include improved earning potential and economic opportunity, as well as reductions in public and private healthcare expenditure. The absence of ECE is also strongly felt; a child without ECE is 25% more likely to drop out of school, 40% more likely to become a teenage parent, 60% more likely to never attend college, and 70% more likely to be arrested for violent crime.

The supply of ECE in the US is severely hampered, with existing providers lacking adequate capacity, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 51% of Americans live in a child care desert, largely low-income and minority communities.

Solution

Acelero is an ECE platform serving low income communities, as a direct operator of Head Start (HS) centers (Acelero Learning) and via tech-enabled services to other HS operators (Shine Early Learning) and states and municipalities (Shine Advance).

Acelero started operating HS centers in 2005, focusing on closing the Achievement Gap by delivering high-quality educational outcomes, and have been nationally recognized for their results.

Building on their years of direct teaching and operating experience, they launched Shine Early Learning in 2011, sharing best practices and providing critical infrastructure to other Head Start operators nationwide. Small-scale studies of educational outcomes with Shine Early Learning partners results have been extremely positive. Looking to make a deeper impact on the early childhood education system at scale, in 2019, they launched Shine Advance to support state and municipal governments to improve the quality of early education providers under their jurisdiction, through IP and tech-enabled services.

Acelero operates 54 centers in 4 states, directly serving 5,000 children annually; and through their work with state agencies, child care centers, home-based providers, private and public pre-K and Head Start and Early Head Start programs, they impact more than 150,000 children and their families across 28 states and territories.

Why We Invested

Acelero’s CEO, Henry Wilde, was a co-founder of the organization 20 years ago. He is extremely mission-aligned, knows the early childhood space very well, and is backed by a veteran management team of 28 comprised of recognized and diverse leaders in the field committed to the outcomes-based business model, leading curriculum development and comprehensive support for teachers, families and students, with 1500+ other employees.

Acelero has a strong and proven direct center business model built over their 20 year history, along with a unique solution set. They have developed a strong, four-pronged early learning framework, comprised of educational content, teaching, family engagement, and data-driven management. Acelero operates in a large, but heavily fragmented early childhood education and childcare market, where both quality and technology adoption levels are highly variable. This positions an established, technology-forward player like Acelero well to succeed in this market.

Beyond directly operating Head Start centers, the organization is uniquely positioned to serve Shine clients from other Head Start providers to a diverse set of state and municipal governments, and the strong traction they have achieved to date speaks to that.

Impact

We believe that high-quality early childhood education imparted directly (via Acelero directly-operated centers) and indirectly (via Shine Early Learning/Advance) will be critical in closing the achievement gap for low-income children, and contributing to increased economic mobility. We have confidence that they will be able to do this because they are one of the only players in the space with best-in-class externally validated outcomes, with Acelero students outperforming the Head Start standards by 2.9 - 4.7x on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The impact of the Acelero/Shine model has also been demonstrated at scale. They have been repeatedly recognized as a Head Start exemplar by the Office of Head Start, and studies performed by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University have regularly measured the improvement in outcomes delivered by Acelero since 2015, including some of the highest ever outcomes gains ever recorded in a Head Start program.

Furthermore, we believe that Acelero, through its rigorous professional development model and upskilling program for Acelero employees, enables increased economic opportunity for employees in low-income areas. At a systems change level, we also believe that proving that a high quality, for-profit, PE-backed model can work in early-childhood education will catalyze the space and education investing in the US.