The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) is preparing to undertake the work of reviewing the state early learning standards - Indiana's Early Learning Foundations (the "Foundations"). In anticipation of this work, staff at IDOE have requested support from the Region 8 Comprehensive Center in identifying approaches states have taken in…

Everybody knows that children's exposure to learning opportunities prior to age 5 has a profound and lasting effect on their success in school and beyond. Each fall, millions of children enter kindergarten; some of those 5-year-old children have a preschool education experience and some of those children do not. To ensure a child's learning…

In this policy brief, an introductory review of early childhood education from a national perspective is followed by brief sketches of the north-central region's action and agendas. The states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin are covered. Concluding commentary identifies three program areas that should be better…

Stressing the need for activities that are amusing, useful, and fun, this paper outlines a family literacy project that provides parents preparing for the General Education Development (GED) test with literacy activities they can do with their children at home. The paper explains that the project was developed for participants of the Indiana…