New Forum on Leadership in Early Education at Preschool Matters
The Preschool Matters blog at NIERR launched a new leadership forum yesterday with Birth–3rd and Leadership: Steve Tozer’s Message to the Birth–3rd Community. Stay tuned for future installments.
“P-3 Reform in Vision and Practice” by Kate Tarrant
The Build Initiative has published a report on the impact of the US DOE’s Race to the Top–Early Learning Challenge (ELC) in states around the country. The report, “P-3 Reform in Vision and Practice,” was written by Kate Tarrant and is a chapter in the Build Initiative’s E-Book, Rising to the Challenge: Building Effective Systems…
Professor Nonie Lesaux Appointed Board Chair, MA Department of Early Education and Care
Congrats to Nonie Lesaux! See the announcement here.
Birth–3rd and Leadership: Steve Tozer’s Message to the Birth–3rd Community
Research shows that leadership is the second most important influence on student learning in schools. Further, as Steve Tozer points out, leadership is critical to improving the most important factor—teaching. It is hard to imagine improving teaching and learning throughout an entire school or early childhood center without good leadership. Tozer has an important message for the…
Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: Excerpts from a Helpful Overview
A large-scale meta-analysis of 213 studies involving over 270,000 students confirmed that SEL [social-emotional learning] produces significant positive effects in six different aspects of adjustment. These outcomes included improvements in academic performance, SEL skills, prosocial behaviors, and attitudes toward self and others (e.g., self-esteem, bonding to school), as well as reductions in conduct problems and…
TED Talk on Learning from the Abecedarian Project
This is a story about the single most important feat of construction our society undertakes. It is about the assembly required in order to build physically, emotionally, cognitively, and socially healthy children. It’s a process as complex as the most challenging feat of engineering, and a process that is easily thwarted by poverty and stress….
Improving Quality by Assessing Needs, Focused Planning, and Targeted Support
Kimberly Haskins of the Barr Foundation has written a post on A New Model of Quality Improvement in Early Education, an interesting pilot project in Boston. Participating early education programs begin with a needs assessment that informs an improvement plan. The plans include targeted professional development and coaching to address the site’s identified needs. According to…
New Infant-Toddler Report and Other Resources
The Center for American Progress has released a new report, “Emerging State and Community Strategies to Improve Infant and Toddler Services.” The report makes policy recommendations for financing and aligning infant-toddler services and includes examples of both state and community initiatives that target high-needs neighborhoods. Decades of research on brain development and outcomes from early learning interventions…
“Out of the Books in Kindergarten, and Into the Sandbox”
From today’s New York Times: As American classrooms have focused on raising test scores in math and reading, an outgrowth of the federal No Child Left Behind law and interpretations of the new Common Core standards, even the youngest students have been affected, with more formal lessons and less time in sandboxes. But these days,…
“Let the Kids Learn through Play” in the New York Times
Don’t miss Let the Kids Learn Through Play, which includes some interesting research and has been getting much attention since it appeared over the weekend. Also, Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, includes early childhood education in his recent New York Times piece on social programs that have been shown…