Join Us Thursday: Partnerships for the Whole Child (Panelists Posted)

I’m looking forward to moderating the first webinar in our 4-part series, School-Community Partnerships for the Whole Child this Thursday at 4:00 ET. Please join us as we learn about: Boston’s innovative PreK – 2nd Grade curriculum, coaching, and professional learning model and its collaboration with community-based preschools, The district-wide use of non-evaluative classroom observation…

New Webinar Series: How School and Communities can Serve the Whole Child

Save the Dates. Such great work happening all around the country. We have lined up four engaging panels of fantastic leaders to share their expertise and experience. Our theme: Advancing equity through comprehensive approaches that address teaching and learning, deep family engagement, health and social service supports, and continuous improvement. Excited to be working with…

Pianta to Policymakers: Build a System, Include K-5

Early childhood expert and UVA dean, Robert Pianta, in The Hill: “There is precious little evidence that boosts from pre-k are then followed by boosts in kindergarten, first, and second grades – the kind of cumulative impact that produces lasting increases in academic achievement. More to the point, focusing so intently on universal pre-K obscures the fact…

Survey Finds Majority of K-3 Teachers Feel Unity With Preschool Educators

Marva Hinton of Education Week writes: “Sometimes there seems to be a disconnect between educators who work with children prior to elementary school and those who teach in the early grades, but new survey results find a strong connection between the two groups. The National Association for the Education of Young Children, or NAEYC, recently released results…

Pre-K isn’t an inoculation: What comes next matters

Important new research out of the University of Virginia. Provides additional support for P-3 approaches. The New America Foundation has a nice summary blog post. A few excerpts: “In a new study out of the University of Virginia, The role of elementary school quality in the persistence of preschool effects, the authors find that the quality…

How a School-Based Early-Learning Program Boosted Later College Attendance (Ed Week)

“Preschool may be be good at offering short-term academic gains for kids, but a program that provided services starting at preschool through 3rd grade showed benefits for children that boosted their college attendance rates years later, according to a new study. Researchers examined the life outcomes of nearly 1,000 children who attended the Chicago Child-Parent Centers…

“Want to Beat the Stock Market? Bet on Early-Childhood Education”

I’m posting this from Normal, IL. Over the next couple of days I’ll be visiting two of the CPC P-3 Centers that University of Minnesota professor Arthur Reynolds discusses below in an excerpt from a recent Education Week commentary. I look forward to sharing what I learn as part of an ongoing study of Place-Based Collaboration…

“The Preschool Fade-Out Effect Is Not Inevitable”

In Education Week by Stanford professor Deborah Stipek: “Is fade-out inevitable? No. Studies have shown definitively that investment in preschool can yield sustained effects and significant social and economic returns. But fade-out is common and remains a persistent reminder that simply providing preschool to low-income children is not sufficient to achieve long-term benefits. If we…

New Case Studies: PreK-3rd Alignment

The U.S. Department of Education recently released a set of case studies of PreK-3rd Alignment and Differentiated Instruction. The case studies are of the Boston Public Schools, the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, Early Works, FirstSchool, and the SEAL program. The alignment efforts in these programs all emphasize developmentally-appropriate instruction and focus on building students’ vocabulary, oral language…

A Lesson For Preschools: When It’s Done Right, The Benefits Last (NPR)

From a recent NPR article: “Is preschool worth it? Policymakers, parents, researchers and us, at NPR Ed, have spent a lot of time thinking about this question. We know that most pre-kindergarten programs do a good job of improving ‘ specific skills like phonics and counting, as well as broader social and emotional behaviors, by…