We examine the effects of 10 welfare and employment programs on single mothers' use of Head Start for their 3- to 4-year-old children, considering concurrent program effects on employment, income, and the use of other types of childcare settings. In general, these welfare and employment experiments increased parental employment and the use of…

High-quality care is essential to the optimal development of young children. While many children attend childcare away from the home for an average of six hours per day, the environment is not necessarily of the highest quality. An assessment of the indoor and outdoor space, curriculum and activities, teacher and child interactions, materials,…

The overall issue of assessment during early childhood, and its relation to school readiness and other decisions, is currently widely debated. Expanding early childhood education and child care enrollments, better scientific knowledge about early childhood development, and decisions about public spending, necessitate careful consideration of which…

McNamee and Chen describe the Bridging assessment system they developed to measure performance on specific learning tasks for pre-K through 3rd-grade students. Bridging assesses an individual student's skill level on learning tasks in five curricular areas: language arts and literacy, visual arts, mathematics, science, and performing arts. The…

In this short essay, Douglas J. Besharov argues that Congress should mandate an honest assessment of Head Start's strengths and weaknesses to enable the program to more effectively enhance early childhood education. He discusses evidence of Head Start's limited effectiveness and proposes that it begin operating based on research.

Parents, policymakers, business leaders, and the general public increasingly recognize the importance of the first few years in the life of a child for promoting healthy physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development. Whether the evidence comes from sophisticated research by brain scientists or the simple observation of the…

How can early childhood professionals seamlessly link assessment, goal development, intervention, and evaluation for children from birth to age 5--while developing individualized IEP/IFSP goals, creating multiple and varied learning opportunities, and working as a team? The third edition of this highly respected resource has the answers. A classic…

This paper reports the construction of a teacher rating instrument designed to monitor the social and emotional development of school age children and young people (4-17 years). The instrument was developed by reviewing previously implemented checklists to build an extensive list of behavioural and emotional criteria and through the use of focus…

This study examined the utility of a paired-choice preference assessment in predicting reinforcer efficacy for a 13-month old with a history of prenatal drug exposure. First, two paired-choice assessments were conducted one week apart, using the same items. A high level of correspondence between the two assessments was observed. Next, a reinforcer…

Despite the importance of early intervention for most disorders to minimize potential deleterious lifetime effects for the individuals concerned, there is currently no universally accepted protocol for the early screening, identification, and assessment of specific learning disabilities, and no consistent age at which initial diagnosis occurs. In…

Over the past decade, debates on the quality of early childhood services in Germany have focussed on four interrelated issues: access, programme quality, staff training, and evaluation procedures. Each of these four strands is presented and discussed in terms of the controversies and chances accompanying professional and public discourse.…

Children with developmental disorders may present with listening and/or speech discrimination difficulties. This study explores whether teachers can identify these difficulties, using a questionnaire that rates children's listening, speech discrimination and comprehension abilities. The questionnaire was given to class-teachers of 52 pupils, aged…

The U.S. Congress has mandated that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report to help inform policymakers about the progress of education in the United States. Using data from across the center and from other sources of education data, "The Condition of Education 2015" presents 42 key indicators on…

This article reports the results of a preliminary study that applied a randomized posttest-only design to evaluate the effectiveness of a literacy curriculum that incorporated explicit opportunities for Spanish-speaking Head Start preschool children (N = 76) to develop writing abilities in English. The study also addressed English language…

The "Handbook of Youth Prevention Science" describes current research and practice in mental health preventive interventions for youth. Traditional prevention research focused on preventing specific disorders, e.g. substance abuse, conduct disorders, or criminality. This produced "silos" of isolated knowledge about the…