The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume X, Number 2, Summer 2004
Issue Topic: Early Childhood Programs and Evaluation
New & Noteworthy
This section features an annotated list of papers, organizations, and initiatives related to the issue's theme.
Administration for Children and Families Child Care Bureau. (2004). Supporting an early learning framework. Washington, DC: National Child Care Information Center. This free CD-ROM is for technical assistance use in research and practice, and includes resources on Good Start, Grow Smart, the Bush Administration's initiative on early literacy. It can be ordered online at nccic.acf.hhs.gov/sam2004.
Barnett, W. S., Robin, K. B., Hustedt, J. T., & Schulman, K. L. (2003). The state of preschool: 2003 state preschool yearbook. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research. This is the first report in an annual series reporting on state-funded preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds. nieer.org/yearbook2003
Bruner, C. (2002). A stitch in time: Estimating the costs of school unreadiness. Washington, DC: The Finance Project. This report contains an annotated bibliography that cites a number of approaches to estimating social costs and calculating potential returns.
Bruner, C., Elias, V., Stein, D., & Schaefer, S. (2004). Early learning left out: An examination of public investments in education and development by child age. Des Moines, IA: Voices for America's Children and the Child and Family Policy Center. This report tracks state, federal, and school district investment in children's education and development by age. www.voicesforamericaschildren.org/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm?ContentID=3384
Bruner, C., Floyd, S., & Copeman, A. (2003). Seven things legislators (and other policymakers) need to know about school readiness. Des Moines, IA: State Early Childhood Policy Technical Assistance Network. This report includes a matrix describing the four seminal studies and the derivation of the table in this report, including the specific savings each study identified.
Bryant, D., Maxwell, K., & Burchinal, M. (1999). Effects of a community initiative on the quality of child care. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 14, 449–464. This paper reports on the preschool child care quality improvements over the first 3 years of North Carolina's Smart Start initiative.
Buysse, V., Wesley, P. W., Bryant, D., & Gardner, D. (1999). Quality of early childhood programs in inclusive and noninclusive settings. Exceptional Children, 65, 301–314. This study reports that centers in North Carolina that served children with disabilities were of higher quality than centers that did not.
Duke University. (2004). The Foundation for Child Development index of child well-being (CWI), 1975–2002, with projections for 2003: A composite index of trends in the well-being of our nation's children. Durham, NC: Author. Seven areas of quality of life are tracked for children ages 1–19, including educational test scores, health insurance coverage, mortality, poverty, suicide rates, drug use, and crimes committed by children. www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20040324index.pdf
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. (2002). Set for success: Building a strong foundation for school readiness based on the social-emotional development of young children. Kauffman Early Education Exchange, 1(1). This report discusses linking social, emotional, and cognitive development to prepare young children for school success. www.kauffman.org/pdf/eex_brochure.pdf
Foundation for Child Development. (2003). First things first: Pre-kindergarten as the starting point for education reform. New York: Author. This paper outlines the Foundation's P-3 Initiative to align pre-K programs and full-day kindergarten through the third grade. www.fcd-us.org/about/annualreports/fcd.2003.ar.pdf
Hampton, J. (2003). How Florida's voters enacted UPK when their legislature wouldn't. New York: Foundation for Child Development. This paper describes how a campaign for universal preschool was passed despite opposition from the state legislature. The report serves as a how-to guide for child advocacy that can be used by policymakers, practitioners, advocates, teachers, and parents. www.teachmorelovemore.org/docs/HowFloridasVotersEnactedUPK.pdf
Kagan, S. L., & Scott-Little, C. (2004). Early learning standards: Changing the parlance and practice of early childhood education? Phi Delta Kappan, 85(5). This paper describes the growing early learning standards movement and points to some of the critical questions that still need to be answered.
McCall, R. B., & Green, B. L. (2004). Beyond the methodological gold standards of behavioral research: Considerations for practice and policy. Social Policy Report, 18(2). This paper explores the benefits and limitations of theory-driven hypotheses, random assignments, and experimenter-controlled, uniformly applied interventions. www.srcd.org/Documents/Publications/SPR/spr18-2.pdf
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Research Program in Early Learning and School Readiness supports research that centers on preparing children from infancy up to age 8 to succeed in school. www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/crmc/cdb/prog_elsr/index.cfm
Papers presented at the White House Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, held at Georgetown University July 26 and 27, 2001, are available. www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady/initiatives/education/earlychildhood.html
Ribeiro, R., & Warner, M. (2004). Measuring the regional economic importance of early care and education: The Cornell methodology guide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Department of City and Regional Planning. This report illuminates the problems of and offers guidance on analyzing child care as an economic sector. government.cce.cornell.edu/doc/pdf/MethodologyGuide.pdf
The Supreme Court of New Jersey, through a series of historic rulings in the long-running Abbott v. Burke court case, has mandated high quality preschool as one solution to help close the achievement gap between students in New Jersey's poorest urban school districts and their more affluent suburban peers. The following three case studies by Julia Coffman describe the Abbott case and relevant lessons for other states working to make quality preschool universally available. The studies cover New Jersey's experiences with broad-based coalition building, raising preschool teacher qualifications, and building effective research-advocacy collaboration:
- Coffman, J. (2002). Research and advocacy collaboration: A New Jersey case study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project.
- Coffman, J., & Lopez, M. E. (2003). Raising preschool teacher qualifications. Washington, DC: The Schumann Fund for New Jersey and Trust for Early Education. www.trustforearlyed.org/docs/NJAbbottBrief.pdf
- Coffman, J. (2004). Partners for preschool advocacy. Newark, NJ: Association for Children of New Jersey.
The Talaris Research Institute is a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing knowledge of early brain development and providing research-based tools to help parents raise their children. In partnership with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Talaris has created 60-second "interstitials" to air between television programs. The interstitials relay tips for parents and model how parents can support their young children's healthy development. To build on the impact of the interstitials, Talaris will provide training materials to local PBS stations and award grants to selected communities across the country to support outreach activities that advance related local early learning efforts. www.talaris.org
Vecchiotti, S. (2003). Kindergarten: An overlooked educational policy priority. Social Policy Report, 17(2). This policy brief describes the state-by-state status of kindergarten in the United States. Policy issues, including mandating kindergarten, entry age, curriculum and instruction methods, screening and assessment, teacher qualifications, and full-day versus part-day instruction are discussed. www.srcd.org/Documents/Publications/SPR/spr17-2.pdf
New Resources From HFRPDue out this summer are three new briefs in our Issues and Opportunities in Out-of-School Time Evaluation series:
To be notified when these are available on our website, sign up for our out-of-school time updates email. The Family Involvement Network of Educators (FINE) announces the Spring 2004 issue of its FINE Forum e-newsletter. The new issue of FINE Forum examines how families connect with communities, including out-of-school time programs, and how these connections support children's school learning. To be notified when FINE Forum is available, sign up to be a FINE member (membership is free). |
Tezeta Tulloch, Publications Editor, HFRP