The Even Start Family Literacy Program was established in 1989 to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy for low-income families, by improving the literacy skills of parents and their young children. Even Start projects offer family literacy services, defined as four integrated instructional components: (1) Childhood Education (ECE); (2)…

This report from the Washington State Department of Early Learning (DEL) describes some of the Department's work since it's creation in July 2006. Among other achievements, the Department has laid a strong foundation for raising the quality of child care and the state's preschool program, strengthened both the safety in and the reach of early…

The purpose of this article is to review evidence concerning the joint impact of family characteristics and child care experiences in understanding children's development. Although child care experiences are related to children's development across a variety of domains, family characteristics, particularly socioeconomic status and parenting…

This article highlights the centrality of language in early childhood development and the potential for language delays to negatively affect long-term outcomes in educational and social domains. Given the high rate of language delays in the foster care population, an emphasis should be placed on assessing language skills among children ages 6 and…

The reliability and validity of the Dominic Interactive (DI) assessment were evaluated. The DI is a computerized self-report measure for children, which assesses symptom presence for seven DSM-IV diagnoses. The participants were 322 children (169 cocaine exposed, 153 noncocaine exposed) who were recruited at birth for a prospective longitudinal…

Historically, the school psychologist's work in early education has been restricted primarily to providing services to young children with special education needs. A more contemporary model calls for an expanded role with a focus on school readiness and the provision of services to all young children and their families in a prevention-oriented…

Previous research on infant swimming has reported contradictory findings. Cross-sectional observations revealed a disorganized phase between about 3 and 12 months, which was attributed to "cortical inhibition" and implied slow learning (McGraw, 1939). However, training with a single infant during this period revealed rapid acquisition (McGraw,…

Child engagement can be used as a child outcome measure, a measure of program quality and a guide for programming decisions. Measures of engagement cited in the literature are examined and features of those measures are described. Based on the gaps identified in the existing measures, the characteristics of a measure of engagement with the…

Purpose: To examine the functional impact of specific language impairment (SLI). Specific goals were to determine whether (a) subjective ratings of narrative quality differentiate children with SLI from their normally developing (ND) age-mates, (b) laypersons and teachers differ in their ratings of narrative quality, (c) objective measures confirm…

After reviewing the controversy over traditional grading systems, the pros and cons of various grading systems, and recent practices in reporting and marking pupil progress, this report presents the results of a survey in which 341 districts responded about their reporting and marking practices. The results are broken down by the size of the…

RAuthor Rebecca Olness combines her love of children's literature and her experience as a classroom teacher and literacy specialist to show teachers that it is possible to teach both content and literacy concepts simultaneously. Chapters cover social studies, science, mathematics, and the arts. In these pages readers will find rationale and…

Policy decision makers, early educators, and early interventionists face numerous challenges as they develop and implement statewide accountability systems to evaluate and improve children's early intervention and early childhood special education outcomes. Kansas was an early adopter of the Child Outcomes Summary Form (COSF) developed by the…

State agencies have been exploring a variety of options for addressing the Office of Special Education Program's (OSEP) requirements for measuring outcomes for children in early intervention (Part C) or preschool (Section 619) programs. OSEP requires the measurement of children's performance in three outcome areas: (a) acquisition and use of…

The Early Childhood Technology Integrated Instructional System (EC-TIIS), a Steppingstones of Technology Innovation Phase 1--Development project, was developed by the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood (the Center) at Western Illinois University as an online instructional system. EC-TIIS' ultimate goal was to improve technology services…

In fiscal year 2004, the Congress appropriated $6.8 billion to serve 919,000 poor children through 1,680 Head Start grantees nationwide. Recent reports of financial improprieties at a number of Head Start programs around the country raised questions about the effectiveness of the oversight provided by the Department of Health and Human Services'…