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.
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Parent Involvement and the Social and Academic Competencies of Urban Kindergarten Children
This study shows positive social and academic outcomes for low-income, minority kindergarten children whose parents promote learning in the home and contact schools regularly.
Free. Available online only.
Videotaped Interactions in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project
Rebecca Ryan, Christy Brady-Smith, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn describe the use of videotapes in the national evaluation of Early Head Start.
Families, Schools, and Community Resources
Analyzing family, school, and community resources and needs as related to the family life cycle, examining child welfare and education and ecological approach, and exploration of careers related to children and families. Strategies to improve communication and collaboration are emphasized with a focus on family types, cultures, economic conditions, school systems, community services, political forces, advocacy groups, and other factors that impact young children and their families.
Free. Available online only.
New & Noteworthy
An annotated list of organizations and initiatives related to the issue's theme of Early Childhood Programs and Evaluation.
Transitioning to School: Policy, Practice, and Reality
Robert Pianta of the University of Virginia's the Curry School of Education discusses helping young children to better transition from preschool to kindergarten and into the early years of grade school.
North Carolina's Smart Start Initiative: A Decade of Evaluation Lessons
Donna Bryant and Karen Ponder describe the past 10 years of evaluating North Carolina's nationally recognized early childhood initiative.
Closing the Achievement Gap: Head Start and Beyond
Ed Zigler, Ron Haskins, and G. Reid Lyon discuss the past and future of Head Start, the country's first federally funded early childhood program.
The Road From Research to Outcomes
Jana Martella, from the Council of Chief State School Officers, describes a data-driven approach to developing and integrating policy into the nation's school systems.
Thoughts on Early Childhood Research: Improving Connections
Marilou Hyson and Heather Biggar, from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, offer ideas for how stakeholders in early childhood can share research results.
Learning a New Language: Effectively Communicating Early Childhood Research to State Legislators
Jack Tweedie, from the National Conference of State Legislatures, explains how to convey research to legislators in ways likely to influence their policymaking.
Early Childhood Programs and Evaluation
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange charts the course of early childhood programming and evaluation over nearly half a century. Contributing authors offer a range of views on how best to communicate the importance of investing in a child’s early years and how to improve early childhood programs and policies. Several articles consider the explosion of science—from longitudinal studies of child outcomes to a large-scale demonstration program—that has helped forward our understanding of how young children learn and grow. Finally, a number of articles suggest that better information is needed to close the persistent gap in achievement between children from low-income families and those from middle-income homes.
Free. 32 Pages.
Supporting Governors' Early Childhood Policy Decisions: The Role of Research
Anna Lovejoy, from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, describes how the organization keeps governors informed about emerging issues in early childhood.
A Conversation With Art Rolnick
Economist Art Rolnick discusses his approach to early childhood investment, which he describes as “economic investment in human capital.”
The Home Visit Forum: Understanding and Improving the Role of Home Visitation
Heather Weiss, HFRP director, describes a consortium of national organizations working to improve home visitation models.
Private Foundations and the Move Toward Universal Preschool
Infant-Toddler Intervention on the Road to School Readiness: Lessons From Early Head Start
Helen Raikes, John Love, and Rachel Chazan-Cohen from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation team discuss the importance of intervention in the early years.
Rethinking the Evaluation of Family Strengthening Strategies: Beyond Traditional Program Evaluation Models
Charles Bruner of the Child and Family Policy Center outlines three factors of good family strengthening programs that evaluators are not adequately measuring in their evaluations.
Identifying School Readiness Indicators to Stimulate Policy Action
Elizabeth Burke Bryant and Catherine Walsh, of Rhode Island Kids Count, give an account of the School Readiness Indicators Initiative.
From the Director's Desk
An introduction to the issue on Early Childhood Programs and Evaluation by HFRP's Founder & Director, Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.
Early Head Start: Further Lessons
Catherine Ayoub and Barbara Pan, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describe their work collecting and analyzing longitudinal data to supplement national findings from the Early Head Start study.
The Current State of Early Childhood Education
Lisa Klein, guest editor for this issue, reflects on the progress made inthe early childhood field over the past 40 years and on the work that still has to be done.
The Build Initiative: An Evaluation of State-Level System-Building Efforts
Barbara Gebhard of Build describes the initiative's interactive evaluation approach.
Evaluating Early Childhood Services: What's Really Behind the Curtain
Jack Shonkoff, dean of the Heller School at Brandeis University, describes the highly politicized environment of program evaluation and its attendant challenges.
Early to Read: A Local Emergent Literacy Initiative
This article describes a Knight Foundation early literacy initiative in Philadelphia and its ongoing evaluation.
Designing Quality Assessment Tools in Early Childhood Education and Youth Development
Ted Jurkiewicz and Charles Hohmann from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation describe the design of High/Scope's new Youth Program Quality Assessment tool.