In 2019, Child Trends partnered with the Institute for Health Research and Policy of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC-IHRP), EMT Associates, Inc., and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) to publish the first comprehensive policy analysis (see ED613844) to explore codified state statutes and regulations covering…

Home visiting is a service delivery strategy for inter-generational family-centered supports during the pivotal window from pregnancy to early childhood. Expanded federal support for home visiting began with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program, which was authorized by Congress in 2010, and provides funding…

A healthy school is one that fully supports a student's academic, physical, emotional, and social well-being. Increasingly, state education policies are moving beyond a focus on academic mastery to include aspects of healthy schools. Despite a growing knowledge base that stresses important linkages among aspects of well-being, policies tend to…

Work climate is a broad term that encompasses all facets of the work environment, other than training and education, that support or detract from employees' ability to succeed. In this brief, the authors use a sample of center-based child care classrooms in Georgia to examine how different aspects that affect work climate (e.g., wages, employee…

Initiatives focused on improving aspects of students' well-being in schools--such as addressing childhood obesity, preventing bullying, and restricting schools' use of exclusionary discipline--are gaining momentum. However, such efforts are often implemented in silos, without recognition of their interconnections. To advance the common goal of…

In response to executive order mandates from states and governors, many early care and education (ECE) settings closed or transitioned to providing virtual services to children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. For ECE coaches, these closures resulted in the need for rapid adjustments in the way they provided coaching services. These…

There is evidence that early care and education (ECE) teachers and caregivers share common challenges, it is not clear whether their challenges differ by geographic location. That is, are there any regional characteristics that may affect the ECE workforce differentially? To better understand the pressures facing the ECE workforce and whether…

This brief explores whether the geographic location of the early care and education (ECE) workforce might be associated with variations in well-being. Child Trends examined differences in Arkansas's ECE workforce by region and by urbanicity. Measures of well-being were derived from a comprehensive statewide ECE workforce survey. For this study,…

Early literacy skills are the foundation for school success. This is particularly important for groups of children at heightened risk of poor educational outcomes, such as English language learners and children from low-income families. Informed by a growing body of research and evaluation studies that point to the importance of home literacy…

Schools take different approaches to creating and fostering a healthy and safe environment for youth. Varied approaches include setting limits for acceptable behavior, defining the consequences for breaking school rules, and the provision of services to address problem behaviors. One important issue that schools have to address is substance use…

Georgia has been at the forefront of the pre-kindergarten movement since implementing its pre-k program in 1992 and creating the nation's first state-funded universal pre-k program in 1995. Georgia's Pre-K, administered by "Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning" (DECAL), aims to provide high-quality…

The primary purpose of the accompanying final study was to evaluate the impact of two professional development models on teacher-child interactions in Georgia's Pre-K classrooms. Teachers were randomly selected to participate and were randomly assigned to one of the professional development conditions or to a control group. Because of this…

This report presents a rich and nuanced statistical portrait of America's Latino children, drawn from the latest nationally-representative data. It is a complex picture. Some facets will be familiar, while others are less well known. All have important economic and social implications, particularly with respect to education as the pathway to…

Children in immigrant families are more likely than children in native-born families to face a number of risk factors for poor developmental outcomes, including higher poverty rates, lower household incomes, and linguistic isolation, (for example, when older children and adults in a household have difficulty speaking English). Previous research…

Existing literature highlights the positive influence of high-quality early care and education on the development of young children, and particularly young children in impoverished or low-income families. Reflecting the promising influence of high-quality early care and education on children's developmental outcomes, policy makers and state…