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A Spotlight on Early Childhood Education in York, PA: Visit by Swati Adarkar and Ralph Smith

A group photo of people that includes Dr. Andrea Berry-Brown, Ralph Smith, David Jacobson, and Swati Adarkar.

In November, the First 10 Partnership in York, PA welcomed Swati Adarkar, deputy assistant secretary of policy and early learning at the U.S. Department of Education (ED); Ralph Smith, managing director at the Campaign for Grade Level Reading (CGLR); and members of EDC’s First 10 team to their community to learn...

Building a Common Vision of Quality across the Birth-Third Continuum

Birth-Third projects often begin with a focus on aligning community-based preschool and kindergarten. For the leaders of Lowell’s Birth-Third initiative, it was important from the outset that their project be broader in scope, spanning the...

Learning from the Wraparound Zone Initiative

Last Tuesday representatives from six Massachusetts communities came together at the Turnaround with Wraparound Showcase to share their experiences improving the services and supports they provide to children and families. Select schools in Fall River,...

News Round-Up

There have been a number of exciting Birth-Third developments in Massachusetts in the last month or so. I will occasionally do a news round-up to highlight pieces that I think will be of special interest...

Joint Professional Learning in Somerville and Springfield

Last week’s post described how both Somerville and Springfield have developed professional learning initiatives that bring together prekindergarten and kindergarten educators. The work of Somerville’s Kindergarten Readiness Group and Springfield’s Birth-Third PLC begins to suggest what...

Learning from Exemplars: PreK-3rd in Union City, NJ

Somerville is graciously sharing a video of David Kirp’s talk about the Union City, NJ success story: https://vimeo.com/89543325. In addition to Kirp’s book, Improbable Scholars,  see PreK-3rd’s Lasting Architecture: Successfully Serving Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students in Union City,...

Bridging the Public/Private Divide

Joint Professional Learning for Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers Birth-Third is about improving the quality of education and care at three developmental levels—ages 0-3, 3-5, and 5-9—while improving alignment across these levels. A central alignment challenge...