In collaboration with the Arts Education Partnership, Education Commission of the States is turning its attention to STEAM education (adding the "A" for arts), which can promote a more comprehensive approach and provide state policymakers with more policy levers. Several states have already begun implementing STEAM education and are…

Homeschooling has witnessed an upsurge in the United States since the movement for school choice gained momentum in the 1990s. Most research on homeschooling has been on non-representative samples of median-income white Americans, making it difficult for policymakers to accept its reliability. In addition, homeschoolers now include other ethnic…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "School Leadership." Contents include: (1) Strategies for School Leaders to Melt…

Black and Latinx educators make up a critical portion of the early child education (ECE) field; 31% of the center-based workforce and about half of those employed in Head Start. These diverse educators are from communities where the impacts of the pandemic have been the most detrimental -- according to the Centers for Disease Control and…

Today's researchers seek to determine if contemporary pre-K programs provide the strong return on investment found by researchers in the 1960's High/Scope Perry Preschool Program and 1970's North Carolina Abecedarian Project. Research then showed that these two programs created positive academic effects that accompanied their students as they…

More than a decade after offering students universal preschool, neither Georgia nor Oklahoma has shown impressive progress in student academic achievement, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As Congress considers whether the federal government should encourage states to offer universal preschool, the author advocates…

High-quality pre-K that really improves children's outcomes--that's the goal early childhood professionals will work toward with this groundbreaking text, the first volume in the NEW National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE) series. Combining the most current knowledge of top researchers, policy makers, and federal and…

Family members are a child's first and most important teachers. A growing body of research demonstrates that when families are actively engaged in their child's learning, children are better prepared for school and achieve at higher levels. Increased participation by families in pre-kindergarten programs has also been linked to greater academic…

State-funded voluntary prekindergarten programs have grown steadily over the past decade and now enroll more than one million children. While the overall trend has been one of increasing participation in publicly funded preschool education, access in most states is limited to select groups of disadvantaged or otherwise-at-risk 4-year-olds.…

The debates over the 2003 reauthorization of Head Start highlighted a controversy about the devolution of federal early education policy. At the center of the debate is the concern that state control of early education programs will reduce the quality and effectiveness of federal support for children living in poverty, and their families. The…

Policymakers and education leaders in Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have been working since 2002 to meet all 12 "Challenge to Lead" Goals for Education. At the same time, SREB states have had to struggle with the toughest economic challenges in decades. Even so, SREB states have succeeded in achieving many of the goals…

The Georgia Preschool-Postsecondary Initiative was started in 1995 to bolster student achievement and classroom teacher preparation. Program success will be measured by increasing numbers of high-school students successfully completing algebra and geometry, raising postsecondary admission requirements, and having a qualified teacher in every…

The 29th in the National Center for Early Development & Learning's (NCEDL) "Spotlight" series, this report is based on a technical report available online, and summarizes findings of a study analyzing the change strategies used in the development of pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds in the states of Georgia, Illinois, New…

Noting that one of the major educational policy shifts in recent years has been the establishment of state-funded prekindergarten programs, this report details a study examining how five states (Georgia, Illinois, New York, South Carolina, and Texas) managed this educational policy shift, identified the major facilitators and major barriers, and…

This brief is based on the 61-page report of the same name. This paper, commissioned by the Brookings Institution, studies the emergence of the mixed delivery model, in which pre-kindergarten is delivered in community-based settings and schools. It describes findings of a state survey CLASP conducted to understand the policy choices,…