About CLI Engage

CLI Engage is a comprehensive professional development, and quality improvement platform for early care and education programs in Texas.

Since 2003, the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) has been implementing and studying large-scale interventions in early education. In 2014, in partnership with the Texas Education Agency, CLI created a cost-effective, digital delivery system that could disseminate early childhood program improvement tools originally developed for Texas across the state. Learn more about the research behind the Texas School Ready (TSR) program and its tools hosted on CLI Engage.

Scaling Effective Resources

When designing CLI Engage, we believed it essential to retain what we know from research is effective in program improvement models. Our vision–to not only collect data but to interweave its stories with direct connections to practical tools–yields highly targeted support for improving the quality of educational experiences across the widest variety of early learning settings. CLI Engage supports many forms of digital tools and resources, continually updated and enhanced to support more early learning programs, teachers, specialists, and families.

Notable History

For nearly 15 years, the Children’s Learning Institute has managed the implementation and ongoing enhancement of TSR —a data-driven, comprehensive professional development and child progress monitoring program aimed at increasing school readiness skills in students.

• 2014 – TSR’s tools integrate into an innovative online platform known as CLI Engage and pilots with Houston ISD, Dallas ISD, and Fort Worth ISD (more than 2,450 teachers). 
• 2015 – CLI Engage launches statewide and serves over 23,000 teachers from over 900 school districts and other organizations across Texas. 
• 2017 – Texas Kindergarten Entry Assessment (now known as Circle KPM) is launched to school districts statewide, as well as a new online series for training on the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines (Revised 2015).  
• 2018 – The Children’s Learning Institute continues to add new resources for teachers of children ages 0-6, including three additional infant and toddler teacher courses and teacher preparation programs (higher education and high school CTE). 
• 2020 – Progress monitoring tools are added to the platform: KPM literacy screener for kindergarten and TPRI and Tejas LEE for 1st and 2nd grades. State-adopted Circle Pre-K Curriculum is available at no cost for prekindergarten classrooms.
• 2023-present – New online courses and curriculum launch on CLI Engage, all available at no cost.

CLI Engage also hosts a variety of progress monitoring, assessment, and observation tools, linked to professional development and lesson resources to guide quality improvement through collaboration with state agencies and researchers.