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…

Social and emotional competencies have received increased attention as important components of school readiness for young children. Universal programs incorporating social and emotional learning (SEL) instruction for all preschool students are needed given the relation between social and emotional competencies in early childhood and later…

Access to Head Start has been shown to improve children's preschool experiences and school readiness on selected factors through the end of 1st grade. Two more years of follow-up, through the end of 3rd grade, can now be examined to determine whether these effects continue into the middle elementary grades. The statistical design and impact…

The introduction of the "Early Years Learning Framework and the Australian Curriculum-Mathematics" in Australian preschools and primary schools has caused early childhood educators to reconsider what may be appropriate levels of mathematics knowledge to expect from children as they start school. This paper reports on initial data from an…

Parents' interactions with their children can have influential effects on children's language outcomes. Special supports may be needed however, when young children live in poverty and show developmental delays early in life. This study analyzed data for a subset of children enrolled in Early Head Start (EHS) programs and participating in a…

This study examined the effect of participation in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program on the school readiness of children born to teenage mothers versus children born to traditional-age mothers participating in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program. A 45-item survey was collected from the…

Judith P. Hoyer Family Learning Centers, also known as Judy Centers, serve all children birth through kindergarten who live in designated Title I school zones. There are twenty-seven Judy Centers and three satellites throughout Maryland serving forty-four elementary school zones. The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) is conducted in the…

The goal of Head Start is to develop the cognitive and social-emotional skills of children from low-income families to prepare them to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. Presently, Houston Independent School District (HISD) collaborates with four federally-funded Head Start agencies: AVANCE, Gulf Coast Community Services Association (GCCSA),…

The study presented here addresses the question of how time spent viewing and playing with PBS KIDS educational, non-commercial media at home, in family settings, can foster positive outcomes for children and parents/caregivers. The study focused on PEG+CAT, a first-generation transmedia program designed to promote children's mathematics and…

Increasing awareness of the vital developmental implications of the care and education of young children has led to efforts in Maryland to advance early childhood care and education (ECCE). To that end, Maryland has consolidated ECCE services into one division of the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and developed a number of…

Pediatric health care represents an innovative platform for implementation of low-cost, population-wide, preventive interventions to improve school readiness. This article describes the Video Interaction Project, a targeted intervention in the pediatric primary care setting designed to enhance parenting skills and boost school readiness. The…

Children need to be ready to enter kindergarten, or they may begin to fall further and further behind. The achievement gap may start prior to children entering kindergarten due to their lack of early learning opportunities. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of kindergarten teachers regarding which readiness skills preschool…

Due to the socioeconomic status-related gap in early mathematical knowledge and the need to improve low-income children's readiness for school mathematics, the authors developed an intervention, "Pre-K Mathematics", and rigorously evaluated it over several studies. This math intervention has been found to be highly effective at improving…

Child Trends conducted a random assignment evaluation of the Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors program, one of the largest programs in the United States working with low-income Latino parents of children ages zero to five. Since it began in 2007, the program has served over 30,000 parents/families in 34 states. The evaluation study examined the…

This report is a longitudinal examination of "Preschool for All" (PFA) participants, tracking students' experiences across their first four years in elementary school. It builds upon a 2009 study that found that PFA graduates in San Mateo County were better prepared for kindergarten than their classmates who had not attended preschool…