First 10 Blog

Families at school working around a table

Two-way communication and developing family leadership skills are two powerful strategies to engage families. In September, our First 10 Network Meeting focused on starting the year off right with families by offering strategies on effective communication and family leadership development. First 10 facilitators, Maria Katradis and Jenny Portillo-Nacu, led the...

Kappan Magazine has just published an article I wrote , The Primary Years Agenda: Strategies to Guide District Action. I draw on examples from Massachusetts and other states to make the case for three Birth-3rd...

Innovations often evolve out of a series of what may seem to be minor developments. As a consequence, instead of waiting for disruptive products and technologies, we need to create the conditions for individuals, groups,...

From yesterday’s New York Times: It has been nearly 20 years since a landmark education study found that by age 3, children from low-income families have heard 30 million fewer words than more affluent children,...

By the start of middle school, The Afterschool Corp. estimates that children in poverty have received 6,000 fewer hours of learning outside of school—both enrichment and support—than their middle-income peers. While many programs target low-income...

This Education Week article discusses new kindergarten-readiness assessments, including advances and concerns. See comments by Kyle Snow and Libby Doggett in the excerpts below. All 3,500 kindergarten teachers in Maryland are using a new readiness...

Birth-3rd is about all manner of collaboration, and most collaboration requires meetings of one kind or another. Kathryn Parker Boudett and Elizabeth City of Data Wise fame have a new book, Meeting Wise: Making the...