Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) improves the school readiness of all children, but less is known about whether associations between enrollment in Pre-K and different indicators of social-emotional and executive functioning (EF) skills are sustained as children move into and across elementary school. The current study examines associations between…

Substantial research has documented that Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K) programs have important benefits for the school readiness of young children, especially those from low-income backgrounds. Recent studies in this arena have taken advantage of the Regression Discontinuity (RD) design to evaluate the impacts of Pre-K, due to ethical and pragmatic…

"The Upstart Great Plains TASK Force: Taking All to Success in Kindergarten" was a five-year Education, Innovation and Research (EIR) expansion grant (U411A180001) funded through the US Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Four research studies were conducted during the grant period of 2018 to 2023: a…

Preschool improves children's kindergarten readiness, but the cognitive outcomes of preschool enrollees and nonenrollees tend to converge partially or fully in elementary school. In older programs, most of this convergence occurs in kindergarten (Li et al., 2016), but evidence from today's programs is sparse. Using data on 4,971 children who…

Preschool-aged children identified as at risk for later reading difficulties can benefit from supplemental, small-group emergent literacy intervention. As such interventions become commercially available and marketed to preschool programs, it is important to understand their impacts when implemented by intended end users under routine conditions.…

In the present study, we investigated the relative impact of age- versus schooling-related growth in school readiness skills using four modeling approaches that leverage natural variation in longitudinal data collected within the preschool year. Our goal was to demonstrate the applicability of different analytic techniques that do not rely on…

Despite strong evidence self-regulation skills are critical for school readiness, there remains a dearth of longitudinal studies that describe developmental trajectories of self-regulation, particularly among low-resource and underrepresented populations such as Spanish-English dual-language learners. The present study examined individual…

Parents play a central role in supporting the early learning that positions young children for success when they enter formal schooling. For this reason, efforts to engage families in meaningful collaboration is a long-standing goal of high-quality early childhood education (ECE). Family-school engagement can take multiple forms; in this review we…

Many preschool teachers may be aware of the need to support motor skills and physical activity for their students but they are not sure how to actually achieve this goal. Often preschoolers' only motor time includes recess or a short movement with music activity during circle time, with limited or no structured motor curriculum. This article…

The present study reports associations between features of directly observed classroom processes and school readiness skills across the academic year for 1498 children enrolled in publicly funded pre-K programs in a large and diverse county. In models adjusting for a range of child and family covariates, evidence was detected for the separate, and…

Public preschool programs require the use of a research-based, whole-child curriculum, yet limited research examines whether curricula influence classroom experiences and children's development. We use five samples of preschool children to examine differences in classroom processes and children's school readiness by classroom curricular status…

Early childhood education programs (ECE) invest in assessments of classroom quality to enable accountability and to enact efforts towards quality improvement. The "Early Childhood Environment Rating System -- Revised" (ECERS-R) and "Classroom Assessment Scoring System" (CLASS) are two widely used classroom quality assessments…

Engaging, focusing, and persisting in the completion of tasks are among the skills needed for school success. Tracking whether a child is learning cognitive problem-solving skills is essential in knowing if they are acquiring skills important for development and school readiness; and if not, how they are responding to early intervention. Use of…

The present study examined differences in school readiness skills in the fall of kindergarten between pre-K attendees and non-attenders (n = 2,581) among children in a large, diverse county. Also considered was the extent to which skills associated with pre-K enrollment varied as a function of children's background characteristics and features of…

Professional development (PD) is a potentially important mechanism for enhancing classroom practices and children's learning. In this large-scale randomized controlled trial, we examined the effectiveness of language and literacy PD, with and without coaching, offered at scale to early childhood educators (n = 546) across one state. Relative to…