This study examined the 4th-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments (history, geography, and civics) and 3rd- and 4th-grade social studies standards from nine randomly selected states and organized the content around three global concepts (conflict, movement, discovery) and six specific concepts (war, rebellion,…

Based on the recommendations of the K-3 Assessment Think Tank, an assessment design team consisting of current and former educators and early childhood education scholars developed a kindergarten entry formative assessment (KEA) which was piloted in 193 classrooms during the first 60 instructional days of the 2014-2015 academic year. North…

A state's department of education requested assistance from the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) in developing a tool to assist with cross walking the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Math and English Language Arts with their state's Kindergarten 1/2 day program CCSS Pacing Guide Grade Level Standards to transition with the…

As states and districts expand access to publicly funded PreK programs, researchers and policymakers have been grappling with experimental evidence demonstrating that the benefits of PreK on academic skills are not likely to last into early elementary school. A leading hypothesis to explain this phenomenon is that PreK and the elementary grades…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? In 2017, the California Department of Education's Expanded Learning Division (after-school and summer programs) took a radically different approach by cultivating the…

This report reviews and analyzes California policies that are designed to support early learning in children from birth through age five years. The analysis is limited to early childhood (EC) education-related programs and supports that are likely to directly affect children's cognitive and social development. The information in the report comes…

In order for students to be successful in school, strong foundations are needed at the earliest grades. In a district in central Mississippi, many students entering public school from Head Start were not able to identify alphabet letters or produce letter sounds, based on results of the 2011 Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR).…

Educational systems across the globe are attempting to reshape the vertical and horizontal dimensions of school accountability. The vertical dimension involves devolution of responsibility to individual schools while the horizontal typically entails promoting the professionalism of leaders and teachers through school networks and school-to-school…

Participation in high-quality preschool can improve academic, behavioral, social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes for students of varying backgrounds, including students from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., Andrews, Jargowsky, and Kuhne 2012; Barnett 2008; Camilli et al. 2010; Karoly and Bigelow 2005; Reynolds et al. 2007). However, some studies…

Research shows that participation in a high-quality preschool can improve young children's readiness skills for elementary school, positively influencing behavioral, social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes. However, some preschool program evaluations document that some initial benefits may not persist into early elementary school. To explore how…

Empirical evidence that horizontal alignment of policies and practices from preschool through the early elementary grades sustains the effects of quality preschool and contributes to children's learning is scarce, as discussed above, but there are nevertheless good reasons to expect benefits to such alignment. Moreover, many districts and schools…

Maryland's demanding new Kindergarten Readiness Assessment was administered statewide for the first time. Its results are revealing and sobering. Many states do not even check in any systematic way on their children's readiness for kindergarten, and in previous years, Maryland used metrics based on modest expectations, outdated standards, and…

It is difficult to get a good grasp of the topic of kindergarten entry assessment because there are such great differences in the purpose for the instruments, how they are constructed, and how the data is used. Even so, in many states and communities, there is cause for concern. Until the paradigm of education moves from a preoccupation with…

In 2006, the easyCBM reading assessment system was developed to support the progress monitoring of phoneme segmenting, letter names and sounds recognition, word reading, passage reading fluency, and comprehension skill development in elementary schools. More recently, the Common Core Standards in English Language Arts have been introduced as a…

The English Language Arts Common Core State Standards and corresponding assessments brought about many changes for educators, their literacy instruction, and the literacy learning of their students. This study examined the day-to-day literacy instruction of two primary grade teachers during their first year of full CCSS implementation. Engestr?m's…