In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) completed data collection for its third-grade follow-up study of Head Start, a federal preschool program designed to improve the kindergarten readiness of low-income children. Four years later, just before Christmas, the agency finally published the results of the congressionally mandated…

Austin Independent School District's Texas Literacy Initiative (TLI) was a grant-funded effort to improve students' school readiness and success in the areas of language and literacy in the Johnson, Lanier, and Travis vertical teams of schools. This report summarizes results from a survey sent to TLI teachers in Fall 2013 to obtain their feedback…

This executive summary presents results from a study that began in 2013-2014, and involves a longitudinal design to follow a sample of 1,169 children (139 Spanish-speaking DLLs) who attended 199 randomly-selected Georgia's Pre-K classrooms. These findings focus on results from the second year of the study, which included 1,034 of these children…

The "Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation" is testing whether the "Transitional Living" program, operated by the social service organization Youth Villages, makes a difference in the lives of young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice custody. The program, which was renamed "YVLifeSet" in…

"Shared book reading" (also known as "interactive shared book reading") encompasses practices that adults can use when reading with children, which are intended to enhance young children's language and literacy skills. During "shared book reading," an adult reads a book to an individual child or a group of children…

In 2009, Vanderbilt University's Peabody Research Institute, in coordination with the Tennessee Department of Education's Division of Curriculum and Instruction, initiated a rigorous, independent evaluation of the state's Voluntary Prekindergarten program (TN- VPK). TN-VPK is a full-day prekindergarten program for four-year-old children expected…

The Texas Education Agency's (TEA's) 2018 Annual Report is intended to shine light on the agency's commitment to ensuring that every one of the more than five million public school students in Texas is prepared for success in college, a career or the military. In the report, TEA shares success stories of schools who are meeting the needs of their…

Results from a cluster randomized trial of the impact of the Tools of the Mind pre-kindergarten curriculum on preschoolers' achievement, self-regulation, and social behavior are reported. Sixty classrooms with four-year-old children (N=877) were assigned to implement either the Tools curriculum (N=32 classrooms; 498 children) or the usual pre-k…

Wilder Research, in conjunction with the Invest Early leadership team and staff, is conducting a longitudinal evaluation of the program. Annual reports document the implementation and assessment of Invest Early and outcomes for the service system, families, and children. Highlights of this year eight summary include: (1) Invest Early is having…

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) is a school readiness program that helps parents prepare their preschool child for academic success. This home-based, family-focused program targets parents from disadvantaged backgrounds to offer educational enrichment opportunities for their three, four, and five-year old children.…

The preschool years are a critical time to identify and treat early emotional or behavioral problems. Universal screening can be used to identify emotional and behavioral risk in preschoolers and fits well within current service delivery frameworks. This criterion-related validity study examined the use of a brief teacher-rated screener, the…

This study utilized data from the Michigan component of the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study to examine toddlers' joint attention at 14 months (parent report measure of toddlers' initiating behaviors, e.g., extends arm to show you something he or she is holding, reaches out and gives you a toy he or she has been holding, and…

The current longitudinal study used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to examine a model of development that emphasizes early caregiving environments as predictors of social emotional competence (including classroom competence). This path analysis…

Since 2014, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has partnered with the Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University (Gardner Center) to support OUSD's efforts to assess, enhance, and scale their community schools work. They began by working with the district to develop a System Strategy Map to articulate the district's…

Numerous research studies have demonstrated the economic value of investing in effective early education programs that cognitively, socially, and emotionally prepare low-income children at risk of school failure for success in school. School readiness prevents or reduces needless public spending, starting with K-12 special education and lasting…