After a surprising drop to bronze status in 2022, Rock Island-Milan’s Preschool For All launched a focused effort to rebuild. Through reflection, coaching, and a renewed commitment to their young learners, the team worked steadily to improve. In 2025, their efforts paid off as they reclaimed the Gold Circle of Quality, proving that growth often comes from reassessing, regrouping, and rising stronger.
Famed English photographer Julia Margret Cameron once said, “Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.”
Rock Island-Milan’s Preschool For All experienced that very spiral process coming into the 2025 school year.
Preschool For All is part of ExceleRate Illinois, the state-supported early childhood education quality control system. According to their website, ExceleRate Illinois “provides standards, guidelines, resources and support to help [schools] make sensible changes that lead to better quality outcomes.”
The program spans three classrooms across the Rock Island-Milan school district: Jennifer Mohr teaches at the program’s ‘home base,’ Horace Mann Early Learning Center, where Director Nicole Berry also oversees operations. Amanda Long leads the Thomas Jefferson Elementary class and Susanne Burbridge, the newest member of the teaching team, leads the classroom at Rock Island Center for Math and Science. Historically, Preschool for All maintained silver or gold quality standards.
That changed in 2022: their first bronze status. For a program with a strong reputation, falling to bronze was a hard pill to swallow; a necessary wake-up call.
“I really knew we could do better,” said Amanda Long. “Not that bronze is bad, but … I've been here a long time, and I know what we do on a daily basis, and I know that we can get higher, higher scores.”
The entire team shared that mindset, determined to make sure that the bronze status was a blip on the radar. They had three years to reflect, rebuild and reclaim their coveted gold status.
“I think the motivation really is that you just want to be able to have the top program in the community,” said Nicole Berry. “You want to have a program that - not only are we proud of and to represent in the community … we want to be the premier program that the members of the district choose to send their children to.”
One of the key tasks for all of the teachers was to focus on teacher-scholar relationships. They quickly realized that their methods had to adapt to serve their scholars - all of Preschool for All scholars were born during the pandemic and weren’t able to socialize in ways that previous classes were.
“We always meet the kids where they are,” said Long. “And I have to remember, okay, you know, some of these babies haven't been outside of their house. This is their first real social experience.”
“This is going to sound like a really odd little story,” said Jennifer Mohr. “But one of the times when I realized how some things were lost was when they reopened drinking fountains. We're out playing, we come in to get a drink and nobody knew how to use a drinking fountain. I thought ‘Well, they've never seen one before because they were all closed.’ So it's little things like that that you don't think of.”
Instrumental to their redemption was a monthly 1-on-1 meeting with a coach from ExceleRate. This coaching provided feedback on what was going right, as well as improvement pieces, such as how the classroom landscape looked.
“The focus is each classroom,” said Burbridge. “So the reviewer spent the whole day, you know, on one classroom period. And so they're very focused on every aspect and very detailed.”
The team embraced a 'chop wood, carry water' mentality - steady, repetitive work done with purpose and passion for the young scholars they serve. They never took their eyes off the goal: reclaiming their Gold Circle status. On August 28, 2025, the Illinois State Board of Education made their decision: Preschool for All was once again recognized as having achieved the Gold Circle of Quality. The team could not be more proud.
“We know we offer a quality program,” said Mohr. “We know that. So it's just it's kind of nice to have somebody on the outside acknowledge that. And somebody that doesn't know us personally but knows what standards we're trying to meet, and they can see that we are meeting those standards and going beyond them.”
Preschool for All’s return to Gold Circle status was not by accident - it was a reflection of the spiral path they walked: doubling back, reassessing, and growing stronger with each turn.
