High-quality afterschool and summer learning programs are effective ways to support children and teens and accelerate their academic growth. In fact, the American Rescue Plan prioritized a significant amount of funding for out-of-school time programs because of the evidence of their effectiveness. Over the past few years, state educational…

Research has demonstrated that federal Head Start centers, which provide preschool care to children from low-income families, have little or no long-term academic value for children. This "Backgrounder" adds to the evidence that Head Start has failed to achieve its objectives and should be sunset, not expanded, by demonstrating a…

A coalition of districts and schools serving high-need students in Louisiana are partnering with the nonprofit National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to increase equitable access to effective educators for students in high-poverty schools. Through a five-year 2016 federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant, called the LA BOLD (Building On…

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research…

Leadership in infant and early childhood mental health must take into consideration issues of diversity, historical context, power dynamics, and difference in worldview and experiences. This article describes the importance of equitable and effective partnerships with rural/remote, underserved, and Indigenous communities in the United States and…

The Early Childhood Directors Leadership Institute (ECDLI) project addressed a need for effective professional development with a series of Institutes using the Program Administration Scale (PAS), the Program Management Inventory (PMI), and the Plan-Do-Study-Act model, over a 3-year period. Each of the 100 participating program directors in the…

Intentionally designed afterschool and summer programs can benefit students' social-emotional skills, accelerate their learning, and even increase their school attendance during the school year. This infographic touches on the value of these programs, possible barriers that might limit access to students, and states with innovative models.

In this article, the authors describe a 3-year initiative in New York state, led by the New York Center for Child Development (NYCCD), through which more than 2,500 mental health clinicians were trained in the DC:0-5. Funding was provided through the creative use of the Preschool Development, Birth to Five federally funded Block Grant, and…

During the 2019-20 school year, public schools identified 1.3 million students who were experiencing homelessness--2.5 percent of all those enrolled. With the added $800 million that Congress provided in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan's Homeless Children and Youth program (ARP-HCY), many states have started or expanded initiatives to…

In December 2014, then Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan announced that $226 million had been awarded to 18 states under the Preschool Development Grants (PDG) program. Duncan said that expanding access to high quality preschool programs was critically important, and that the states receiving funding would serve as a model for others. The goal…

Created as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five (PDG B-5) program is a competitive, federal grant designed to strengthen states' early childhood systems and improve transitions between programs and services -- such as home visits, early intervention settings, child care and pre-K education --…

The purpose of the addendum is to document the findings from the Year 2 student achievement analyses of a teacher-level randomized experiment, which was designed to examine the implementation and impact of a scalable version of the 2-year MyTeachingPartner Secondary (MTP-S) program as part of a federally-funded Education Innovation and Research…

What goes into designing and implementing a successful program? How do both research and practice inform program development? In this article, the process through which a federally funded training curriculum was developed and piloted tested is described. Using a logic model framework, important lessons learned are shared in defining the situation,…

In 2014, New Jersey was one of the 18 states awarded a federal grant aimed to enhance state preschool programs, improve quality and serve more eligible children in high-quality settings. This "Preschool Development Grant" (PDG) promised to provide the state with $17.5 million per year for four years, beginning on January 1, 2015 through…

In 2014, New Jersey was one of 18 states awarded a federal grant aimed to enhance state preschool programs, improve quality and serve more eligible children in high-quality settings. This "Preschool Development Grant" (PDG) promised to provide the state with $17.5 million per year for four years, beginning on January 1, 2015 through…