About WELS

WELS has a seamless data system that captures site information, beginning with the classroom, ratios and group sizes and classroom assessments. It is able to assign teachers to classrooms and provide information about teacher credentials and on going professional development. It continues the linkage with work plans generated from an assessment or checklist and documents visits and tasks completed by teachers, coaches, and directors. WELS is able to utilize classroom assessments like ELLCO, CLASS through a software application developed by Bluejeanware for a direct entry or digital version of assessments and synchronize with WELS to use for measuring progress, creating and implementing workplans and reporting. It has the capacity to be used by multiple users – assessors, coaches, and administrators for 10 to over 1000 sites.

WELS got its start in 2002 as a data management system to track and maintain site records, quality improvements, and program grant funds to sites for the Quality Enhancement Initiative to assist with NAEYC accreditation that was a multi-year grant funded by United Way of Miami-Dade and Bank of America.

In 2004, the National Institute for Innovative Leadership (NIIL) collaborated with Bluejeanware. to make the vision of creating a web-based early learning data management system a reality.

That same year we got our first client, Florida SPARK a Kellogg funded project, sponsored by The Early Childhood Foundation Initiative of Miami, Florida. Intent of WELS for this project for 100 sites was to establish a database of participating Miami-Dade County early learning programs, school age, and family childcare homes with data collected that included licensing, demographic, assessment and accreditation information.

In 2007, WELS became the QRIS web-based information system for Quality Counts for Miami-Dade County, Florida. Quality Counts is a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early learning programs and family childcare homes in the Miami-Dade County. There are over 1600 sites in the MiamiWELS database. The MiamiWELS system captures all necessary data for each of the six QC Standards, performs calculations for the quality rating, and includes an approval process and a detailed explanation of the quality rating calculations.