The federal Early Head Start (EHS) program began in 1995, and a randomized trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of 17 EHS programs. In all, 3,001 low-income families (35% African American, 24% Hispanic, and 37% White) with a pregnant women or an infant under the age of 12 months were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group (with…

Indirect effects of preschool classroom indexes of teacher talk were tested on fourth-grade outcomes for 57 students from low-income families in a longitudinal study of classroom and home influences on reading. Detailed observations and audiotaped teacher and child language data were coded to measure content and quantity of verbal interactions in…

Using data from an urban public pre-k program, the authors add to and extend the emerging evidence base of the effects of public prekindergarten programs on child school readiness. They also use data collected in treatment classrooms to examine associations between teacher characteristics, fidelity-to-curricula, dosage and child outcomes. Their…

Multilingualism is an international fact of life and increasing in the United States. Multilingual families are exceedingly diverse, and policies relevant to them should take this into account. The quantity and quality of a child's exposure to responsive conversation spoken by fluent adults predicts both monolingual and multilingual language and…

Conversations are a primary tool for language development in preschool classrooms. Unfortunately, opportunities to have meaningful conversations between children and adults may not exist in preschool classrooms, especially those that serve children from high poverty contexts. Conversation Stations were implemented in preschool classrooms to ensure…

A clustered randomized design was used in which 28 inclusive preschool classrooms were randomly assigned to receive 2 years of training and coaching to fidelity in the LEAP (Learning Experiences and Alternative Program for Preschoolers and Their Parents) preschool model, and 28 inclusive classes were assigned to receive intervention manuals only.…

The Atse Kituwah Academy (New Kituwah Academy) houses the new Cherokee immersion school in Cherokee, North Carolina. Cherokee is located on the Qualla Boundary in the mountains of the western part of the state, the contemporary homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). In 2005, a comprehensive study of the health of the Cherokee…

This study investigated trajectories of Korean children's growth in the awareness of four phonological units--"syllable," "body," "rime" and "phoneme"--over time, by following a sample of 215 children over a period of 15 months, beginning at their first year of preschool and collecting four waves of data. Much of the existing research suggests…

This brief report focusing on children' s kindergarten readiness i s the third in a series of reports describing data from the 2009 cohort of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES 2009). Previous FACES 2009 reports described the characteristics of children and their families and programs as they entered Head Start in fall 2009…

Skagit/Islands Head Start (SIHS) in Washington State has always taken pride in its high-quality learning program. But in spring 2002, a problem was discovered: the child assessments from 13 centers serving children from birth to age 5 indicated that although Spanish-speaking 3-year-olds entered with language and literacy skills at a level similar…

Recognizing the importance of starting early, the purpose of our article is to examine if and how vocabulary is taught in commercially prepared early literacy curriculum for pre-K. Ten curriculum programs are reviewed to determine the prevalence of vocabulary instruction and the pedagogical practices used to support the learning of words and their…

Response to intervention (RTI), the controversial three-tiered, triangular instructional model is getting stretched in new directions by educators who favor holistic, proactive support strategies over formal remediation. A senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Virginia Buysse…

This study examined whether the Head Start Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) program is more effective than the standard Head Start program at improving the language, emergent literacy, and social-emotional skills of preschoolers. Head Start centers in three Pennsylvania counties were randomly assigned either to use the REDI program…

Drawing on data from eleven preschools in four European countries (Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and the UK), this edited volume explores the progress of preschool children learning English over a period of two years. In the first volume, children's lexical and grammatical comprehension, the quality of L2 input, the effect of immersion on L1…

This article explores the benefits and challenges of a Spanish language immersion preschool from the perspective of a non-Spanish speaking African American family. Data explored include the decision to enroll, reactions from peers and family, home-school communication issues, language development, and family involvement. In addition,…