News & Resources from the Office of Early Learning
June 2014 Issue
 President
Obama’s vision of a high-quality early learning system for all children – from
birth through school entry took a big leap forward last week with the
announcement of a new $500 million funding opportunity for the Early Head
Start-Child Care Partnership. These competitive
grants from the Administration for
Children and Families will expand the
availability of high-quality infant and toddler care by supporting partnerships
between Early Head Start and child care providers. Almost any organization is
eligible to apply for competitive
partnership or expansion grants, including territories, community
organizations, non-profit or for-profit organizations, and state and local
governments. So no excuses accepted!
In
a few months, another part of the President’s vision will be realized
through the release of the Preschool Development
Grants
applications. Your 600+ comments from
our posting of the Executive Summaries have made the
applications much stronger. Every State, plus the District of Columbia and
Puerto Rico will be eligible to apply. While
States must be the applicant, this is a real opportunity for communities –cities,
towns, counties, neighborhood, districts, rural or tribal areas—to partner with
their State to provide universal, high-quality preschool for all 4 year-olds
from low and moderate-income families.
By
getting more children off to a great start in life we hope we can fulfill the President’s
charge: “…I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on
accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our
dreams.”
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 My Brother’s Keeper
The My Brother’s Keeper Task Force has released its Report to the
President. My Brother's Keeper is a new initiative that was launched to help
build ladders of opportunity for boys and young men of color and help put them
on the path to success. In developing its recommendations, the Task Force
identified six key milestones:
1. Getting a healthy start and entering school
ready to learn;
2. Reading at grade level by third grade;
3. Graduating from high school ready for
college and career;
4. Completing post-secondary education or
training;
5. Successfully entering the workforce; and
6. Keeping kids on track and giving them
second chances.
Recommendations focus on areas of action including:
1. A Healthy Start and Ready for School
- Eliminate suspensions and expulsions in preschool and other early learning settings
- Implement universal early health and development screenings
2. Reading at Grade Level by the End of Third Grade
- Close the word gap by launching a public and private initiative to increase joint and independent reading time outside of school and build a reading culture in more homes
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 New Poll Reveals Strong Support for Early Learning
Gallup released a poll on legislative priorities for Washington to focus on. The poll found very strong support (65% of the public) for “Passing new legislation providing access to high-quality preschool to every child in America.” Read more about it in this article.
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 Program Spotlight: Wisconsin’s
RTT-ELC Team Uses Porch Chats and Parent Cafés for Parent
Engagement
In many
communities, the front porch has always been a gathering place where family,
friends and neighbors actively engage with each other about issues that impact
the neighborhood and its families. The Wisconsin YoungStar Front Porch Chats
will involve 1-2 parents facilitating discussions about quality childcare,
exchanging stories and experiences with the YoungStar program and listening for
compelling stories that might contribute to the collection of YoungStar
testimonies and the identification of YoungStar ambassadors.
Parent
cafés are structured as groups of approximately 25 targeted participants and 5
parent hosts held in community spaces. To be mindful of parents’ schedules, each
parent café series is held once per month for 3 months. Each session focuses on
some of the Strengthening
Families protective factors and allows the group to come together for
reflection, closing needs and questions from the participants. The parent café
includes dinner for every participating family and quality childcare while the
parents are engaged in the actual café. Other states, including Maryland and Illinois, are also using these approaches to reaching families of young
children and engaging them in conversations about quality early learning.
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 Technical Assistance
The ELC TA Program recently hosted a webinar on using data on technical assistance and coaching efforts to support quality improvements as part of your tiered quality rating and improvement systems. Webinar slides are available here. Find this story and others in the ELC TA newsletter Spotlight on ELC TA. Past issues and a subscription button can be found on our site. Visit us at www.elcta.org for new resources and information related to early learning.
For information regarding Race to the Top- Early Learning Challenge states and the FY11 Scopes of Work, please click here.
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 i3 Grant Improves Outcomes
for American
Indian Children
Through the U.S. Department of Education’s
Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant, Parents as Teachers
is working to improve school readiness and increase parent engagement among
Native American children and families. This
$1.3 billion investment in school reform supports innovative programs that help
close the achievement gap and improve outcomes for high-needs students,
including Native American children. The funds allow recipients to expand and
develop successful innovative practices that can serve as models for the
nation. Read
more here.
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 Upcoming Implementation Support for
State Systemic Improvement Plans (SSIPs)
The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has begun an initiative to provide support to States as
they begin the first phase of development of their SSIPs. The SSIP is a
comprehensive, multi-year plan focused on improving results for infants,
toddlers, and children with disabilities.
It is a critical component of Results Driven
Accountability (RDA), OSEP’s revised accountability system under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). RDA shifts OSEP’s accountability efforts from
a primary emphasis on compliance to a framework that focuses on improved
results for children with disabilities, while continuing to assist States in
ensuring compliance with the IDEA’s requirements. In developing the SSIP, States will use data
to identify gaps in child outcomes, analyze State systems, and then implement
targeted, evidence-based reforms to address the gaps. Over the next several months, OSEP will be
providing support to States on the SSIP development process through site visits
and conference calls with State staff and stakeholders. OSEP will collaborate with other Department
of Education offices, when possible, as it conducts this work. States will submit the first phase of their
completed SSIPs to OSEP in April 2015.
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 Report on Opportunity Gaps
A new
report for CEELO by Milagros Nores, PhD, and W. Steven Barnett, PhD, Access to High Quality Early Care and
Education: Readiness and Opportunity Gaps in America, describes readiness
and opportunity gaps in access to high quality early education. The report
describes the “readiness gaps” at kindergarten entry as of 2010, and examines
the extent to which there are “opportunity gaps” in early care and education
services that may be associated with those readiness gaps.
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FastFact
on Reading Proficiency
Lori
Connors-Tadros, PhD, produced a CEELO FastFact brief on Definitions and Approaches to Measuring Reading
Proficiency. The item provides definitions of
reading proficiency and selected resources about national and
state approaches to measuring proficiency.
Webinar on
Research Related to Child Care, Head Start, and Preschool
Diane
Schilder, EdD, was featured in a Webinar for Ounce of Prevention
called Child Care, Head Start, and Pre-K Partnerships: Research
Findings.
Keynote
Presentation
Lori
Connors-Tadros, PhD, presented the Keynote speech Every Day, Every Year of a Hoosier Child's Life is
Important! to the Indiana Department of Education Early
Learning Summit.
Annotated
Bibliographies
CEELO has
added two annotated bibliographies to resources this month, one on Early Childhood Assessment, and another
on Financing Early Care and Education. Both
provide a detailed list of resources with a brief description of each item.
 New Grant Opportunity
The
Maternal and Child Health Bureau at the Health Resources and Services
Administration at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services has announced
that a new funding
opportunity
is now available. The application due date is July 7, 2014.
Bridging
the Word Gap Research Network supports the creation of an interdisciplinary
research network for scientific collaboration, with a focus on research
designed to improve our understanding of early language exposure and vocabulary
acquisition for children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds and
of effective interventions to address them. The Network should include
researchers across a range of disciplines reflecting attention to the health
and development of the child and family.
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 Voices from the Field by Steven Hicks
Interview with Tonja Rucker, Principal Associate, Early Childhood
Success, Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, National League of
Cities
Steven: How did you being your
career supporting early learning?
Tonja: In graduate school,
my advisor had procured a Head Start transition evaluation grant so I was able
to do my dissertation work in Head Start in
Baltimore. After graduation, I was so grounded and so impressed with the
Head Start program, and I knew it was a place we could connect with families
and educators across the spectrum. My first job out of grad school was with the
city of Baltimore. We had the Head Start grantee and I served as their
transition coordinator for the city. I had a wonderful opportunity to work with
Head Start directors, the school district in Baltimore city, and a number of
partners across the city to ensure that kids were transitioning from Head Start
to public schools with all the support that they needed.
Steven: The National League of Cities has an initiative with ED and part of that
is to support early learning. What are some of the things around early learning
that mayors and other city leaders are doing to which we should pay attention?
Tonja: We are so thrilled to
be partnering
formally with the Department of Education, with a formal MOU, and to host
these community conversations around the country to learn about how local,
state and federal leaders are all coming together around education. As you
noted, a number of those community conversations are focused on early
childhood. Our membership has an option to look at afterschool, postsecondary,
early education, and the whole continuum, and a number landed on early
learning. We have mayors and leaders across the country who are focused on
early learning, and it’s a great time to be working in the field. We know that
we can’t do it alone, so the ability to partner with federal government and
state colleagues are important. Certainly at the local level, there are a
number of things city leaders are doing.
I think one of the things that comes to mind is the role mayors and
council members can play as conveners, bringing together key policy makers,
stakeholders, and leaders across the spectrum.
We’re just so impressed with the numbers of mayors that are formally
reaching out to their K-12 counterparts for the first time. Even though a lot
of school districts are not under mayoral control, mayors recognize that they can
play a really big role and be supportive of school districts. So we see these
true, authentic partnerships that are emerging across the country, where mayors
are engaging and asking their school district counterparts, “How can we help,
and what resources to bear can the city bring and work with the school district
to accomplish some mutually agreed upon goals?”
Steven: Why is the President’s
proposal to provide high-quality preschool for all four-year-olds important to city leaders, what are some of the
challenges you see, and how do you see the role of the cities in this effort?
Tonja: I can’t tell you the
number of mayors for whom – just to hear the President talk about high-quality
preschool in some of the state of the
union speeches and just his everyday speeches – it has given the support
they need. To be able to point to the President
and say that at all levels of the government, from the President all the way
down, is something we have to pay attention to. It’s been so important, and I
think that “high quality” is the key. Mayors want to ensure that the quality of
these early education programs is there, and that parents have choices and they
know about the importance of quality. What we’re seeing is that a number of
mayors are looking at universal pre-k and thinking how they get that effort
underway. I think they realize that usually the mayors and communities that
have been at this for some time have worked to build up parent engagement and
professional development for early educators.
Those that have got that groundwork done are certainly in a position to
make this happen. I think financially,
the sustainability and the long term funding for high-quality, universal pre-k
is certainly a challenge. But I know some mayors have done their due diligence
and have built partnerships and put together infrastructure. A number of mayors have an office for early
childhood, and out of that office there’s a great body of work that’s been done
and data to show that this has had an impact. There’s a lot of desire to have
this in a number of cities, and they’re taking the necessary steps to lay that
foundation. Having the President and Secretary
Duncan and the Department
of Education so vocal and so out in the front and willing to support local
municipal government is a key factor to how this work is going to spread across
the country and we’re just so grateful for the partnership at the federal
level.
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 FPG Launches National Pre-K and Early Learning Evaluation Center
To meet the growing need for guidance from researchers with experience
in early childhood education and program evaluation, UNC’s Frank Porter Graham
Child Development Institute (FPG) is launching the National Pre-K and Early Learning Evaluation Center.
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 Building Leadership Capacity in Early
Childhood Pre-Service Teachers
Building leadership capacity within the early childhood
profession is a key concern for many early childhood instructors and
policymakers. This qualitative research study analyzed early childhood
teachers’ perceptions of leadership and how they could use their role to
generate change and build family and community partnerships. The full text of
this study is available on ERIC. To find other peer reviewed, full text articles on early
learning in ERIC, click here.
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 National Policy Digest
The National Policy Digest offers a summary of what is
occurring in education policy, particularly in early childhood education. For
example, the Division of Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional
Children has released the 2014 edition of the DEC Recommended Practices in Early
Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education. This document is intended to
provide guidance to practitioners and families about the most effective ways to
improve student outcomes and facilitate the development of young children who
have or are at-risk for developmental delays or disabilities. Furthermore,
NIEER has recently released the latest edition of its annual publication, “The State of Preschool Yearbook,” which provides information on the
preschool programs of all 50 states. There has also been research conducted by the University of Chicago, which finds that home visiting
programs can increase healthy infant feeding practices.
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 NAEYC Initiative
NAEYC is excited
to announce a new initiative funded through a grant from the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. During this four-year grant period NAEYC will work to expand
the coverage and complexity of existing higher education opportunities for
those who are becoming early childhood professionals. A full description
of the initiative can be found here.
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 Hispanic Immigrant Children's English Language Acquisition: The
Role of SES and Early Care Arrangements
Results
show significant, positive main effects of early care arrangement and socioeconomic
status (SES) on English proficiency. However, results also reveal that the
association between early care education (ECE) and English proficiency differs
by SES. Among 1st- and 2nd generation Hispanic children from very low-SES
households, the odds of being proficient in English for children who attended
ECE is more than double the odds for children who did not attend ECE. Learn
more about the study here.
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 Low-Income Latino Children Show Great Benefits from Montessori
Pre-K
Researchers
theorized that some of the gains experienced by Latino children might be attributable
to the Montessori method’s emphasis on individual instruction and independent
learning for Latino children who may still be learning English. Read more here.
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 UPS Partners with United Way to Invest in Grade-Level Reading
UPS and its employees are making a substantial donation of more
than $5 million
to support United Way’s grade-level reading work and to contribute
to ensuring that more low-income children have a strong foundation in
education. To read more about the donation made to United Way, click here.
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 Child
Trends Hispanic Institute
The Child Trends Hispanic Institute was launched on June 11,
2014 with the release of its first report. The Institute provides
timely and insightful research-based information and guidance to policymakers,
practitioners, the media, corporate leaders, and private philanthropy who work
to improve the lives and future prospects of Latino children and youth.
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 Medical
Compliance Starts at Birth
New research from Professor Heckman and colleagues shows that quality
early childhood programs that incorporate health and nutrition help prevent
chronic disease. Findings reveal substantially better health in the mid-30s
with a lower prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic
diseases, such as stroke and diabetes. Learn more about the study by watching
this video, by reading the full research paper, or by reading the research summary.
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