Consensus is growing that high-quality early education is a critical support to all subsequent learning. In early childhood education quality is generally considered holistically in terms of the physical environment, programmatic structure (e.g., length of the school day), curriculum and instruction, and the nature of interactions between teachers…

This advocacy report documents the shortfall in state funding for child care and pre-K in 2016. In 2015-16, outside New York City, only 1,259 full-day pre-K spots--a gain of only 1%. There are still 89,587 four-year olds waiting for full-day pre-K outside New York City. In low-income communities outside of New York City, a whopping 63% of…

Over the past 20 years, both charter schools and pre-kindergarten education have taken on increasingly prominent roles in the schooling of America's children. Charter schools in 43 states now serve more than 2.6 million students--roughly six percent of all students attending public schools. More than two-thirds of four-year-olds attend some form…

Publicly funded pre-K is often touted as a means to narrow achievement gaps, but this goal is less likely to be achieved if poor and/or minority children do not, at a minimum, attend equal quality pre-K as their non-poor, non-minority peers. In this paper, I find large "quality gaps" in public pre-K between poor, minority students and…

By providing early access to education, early childhood and community-based programs are helping to close the achievement gap prevalent among children from impoverished homes.

The New York State Department of Education (NYSED) has been supporting selected districts in the planning and implementation of PreK-3rd Grade systems. NYSED is supporting the use of the Framework for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating PreK-3rd Grade Approaches developed by Kauerz and Coffman (2013). Recognizing the ultimate goal of PreK-3rd…

Simply put, children with poor English skills are less likely to succeed in school and beyond. What's the best way to teach English to young children who aren't native English speakers? In this article, Lisa Barrow and Lisa Markman-Pithers examine the state of English learner education in the United States and review the evidence behind different…

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) gifted-and-talented programs aim to support all students of exceptional learning potential within the public school system. Using proprietary data made available to us by the NYC DOE, we show, however, that substantial disparities exist in the rates of gifted-and-talented admission test taking,…

This researcher evaluated the impact of an emergent literacy intervention program implemented in a suburban New York school district. The researcher examined archival data collected by the district during the 2010-2011 school year. The sample consisted of 171 general education kindergarten students from two of five elementary schools in this…

This fact sheet provides demographic information for the young Dual Language Learner (DLL) population in New York State, based on Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data pooled over the 2011-15 period. DLLs, defined as children ages 8 and under with at least one parent who speaks a…

Studies show that the mathematics test-score gap is evident at every level of schooling and can be linked to students' earlier performance. For example, a mathematics performance gap was found in children as young as three years of age (Case & Griffin, 1990; Jordan, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1992). Addressing the mathematics performance gap…

The inability of the United States to narrow the achievement gap stems to a large extent from school reform initiatives that neglect the specific conditions in the lives of low-income students that contribute heavily to inadequate school performance. A new consensus is emerging that a more effective approach would be to prevent the achievement gap…

Despite the enactment of No Child Left Behind (2002), many urban school districts continue to battle the achievement gap and struggle with low literacy rates. Authentic writing instruction, a main component of literacy, is being cut in those districts that struggle most to accommodate other demands made by the nation and state. The primary purpose…

"Research on Schools, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility" focuses on research and theoretical developments related to the role of geography in education, human development, and health. William F. Tate IV, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in…