Laura Bornfreund: All Related Content

This week the National League of Cities (NLC) released a set of case studies on five cities that are trying to create a seamless educational pipeline for children from birth through third grade: Boston, Hartford, San Antonio, San José and Seattle. The preK-3rd efforts in these cities are led by mayors in partnership with local school districts and community-based organizations.

This month’s issue of Educational Leadership magazine, published by ASCD, features an article I wrote, “Preparing Teachers for the Early Grades.” In it I share findings and recommendations from my policy paper, “Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensing and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten, and the Early Grades.”

School districts have always been allowed to use federal Title I funds to establish preschool programs for disadvantaged children, and in fact they can use these dollars to support children beginning at birth.  But because Title I is part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ( ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind, it is most often used to fund K-12 programs. Some school district leaders may not even know that these funds can be used for programs before kindergarten or may be unsure about what is and is not allowed.

As enrollment in pre-K programs grows, state lawmakers are developing strategies to monitor these programs and determine their impact on student learning and readiness for school. According to a new report from the Educational Testing Service, 50 state-funded pre-K programs in 40 states have established at least some policies for collecting such data—but every state must grapple with the difficulty of assessing the youngest children, who are not developmentally ready for traditional, pencil and paper tests.

This week the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services announced more details on the next round of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge. Five states – all of which earned at least 75 percent of the points available in the first round – are eligible to compete: Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin.

Last week the National Journal asked about the merits of the Obama administration's RESPECT (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching) proposal.

We hope you found our six-part blog series on the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge winners helpful. We combined all six posts into a PDF report for easy reading, and added a list of web resources to the end.

Be sure to check out our special page on RTT-ELC for all of our past posts on the competition as well as for continuing coverage. We expect to hear more news about the 2012 RTT-ELC in the near future.

Last November, we wrote briefly about the second round winners of the Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. Our review of the winning applications and peer reviewers’ comments found that five of the 23 overall winners applied under the early learning competitive priority, but only four were awarded the extra point by peer reviewers. In this post, we will take a much closer look at the winning proposals awarded the early learning competitive priority point.

Data can be a valuable tool in helping states and school districts implement effective policies and practices and teachers shape their instruction to meet the individual needs of their students. But how those data are used is just as important as the kind of information collected.

States are making progress toward building longitudinal data systems and implementing what the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) calls the 10 Essential Elements. For example, states have collected data on students’ standardized assessment scores and graduation status (for the list of the full 10, see the table below).  

According to DQC’s latest survey of states, however, most continue to struggle using their data systems to inform and guide policy decisions.

This is the fifth post in a series on winners of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC), the Obama Administration’s competition to spur improvements in early learning for children up to age 5.  Two weeks ago, we wrote about states’ plans to develop the workforce. Prior to that, we dove into states’ plans to improve early learning standards, birth to 5. The first two posts in this series described states’ plans to use and evaluate quality rating & improvement systems. Today we explore states’  plans for kindergarten entry assessments.

One of the priorities for the RTT-ELC was “Measuring Outcomes and Progress.” States had two options under this category: kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) or early learning data systems. Applicants could choose to describe their plans for one or both options. All the winners chose to write about their plans for KEAs. Six of the nine winners also explained their plans for building or enhancing their states’ early learning data systems. In addition to the 40 points available for this priority area, states could also earn 10 extra credit points for having a high-quality plan to implement a common, statewide KEA that informs instruction and services in the early grades of elementary school.

Last week I spoke about the future of early learning in federal education policy at the annual policy symposium of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

There’s plenty of talk these days about how to judge teachers, including those who work with young children. But what about judging the programs that prepare those teachers? Are researchers examining the right qualities when they assess whether a teacher-preparation program is good or bad?