The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has proposed a 10-year campaign to enable the country to meet the national education goal of having every child start school ready to learn. The campaign has a 7-step agenda. First, every child must have a healthy birth, and be well-nourished and well-protected in the early years of life. The…

In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10, the California Children and Families First Act, which provides for an excise tax on tobacco products to fund parent education, health and child care programs that promote early childhood development for 0-5s. Since the adoption of its first Strategic Plan (2000), the Orange County First 5…

The purpose of this report is to provide the Center for Excellence (CfE) in Early Childhood Development with a set of recommendations regarding how to measure school readiness in Ventura County. This report defines school readiness according to the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) which identified the following three important components of…

Argues that the Japanese model of early years education enables children to make comparatively fast progress once they begin elementary schooling. Asserts that the understanding of group behavior and needs of other children contributes to children's sharing of responsibility and positive learning attitudes. Maintains that preschool routines…

Examined associations between individual dimensions of the home literacy environment and specific emergent literacy skills among low-income preschoolers. Found that three dimensions of family literacy environments--language and verbal interactions, learning climate, and social and emotional climate--differentially foster preschool children's…

The UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities (CHCFC) has developed the School Readiness Critical Pathways (SRCPs) as an evidence-based conceptual model that links related outcomes and strategies. This helps to organize an array of broad and diffuse evidence regarding the strategies that produce school readiness outcomes for…

Many young children in immigrant families do not have good access to health and education services. To the extent that their life prospects are compromised as a result, these children--and the entire society--suffer. This article discusses the needs of children from birth to age eight, with a particular focus on the education needs of young…

The Michigan School Readiness Program (MSRP) is a state-funded prekindergarten program in Saginaw for 4-year-olds from the inner city with the goal of providing an environment that develops school readiness skills. The seven program components are: cognitive, psychomotor, affective, parent participation/education, curriculum, staff development,…

The Michigan School Readiness Program (MSRP) is a state-funded prekindergarten program in Saginaw for 4-year-olds from the inner city with the goal of providing an environment that develops school readiness skills. The seven program components are: cognitive, psychomotor, affective, parent participation/education, curriculum, staff development,…

The origins, rationale, and design of a program to prepare refugee children for elementary school experiences in the United States are described. The program, conducted in overseas refugee camps, began in 1987 as a complement to adult transitional programs. All children receive 18 weeks of instruction, with a schedule and activities similar to…

Kindergarten marks a new beginning for parents and their children, and presents challenges for parents as their child makes the transition between home and school. This handbook describes what parents can expect from their child's Catholic kindergarten program in Alberta, Canada. The handbook describes how young children learn, how their learning…

Few adults deliberately set out to cause children stress or to teach them how to deal with it, yet adults do just that with every word, action, and reaction. This book collects work in the field of human development on how adults can help children learn to cope with stress. Each of the 30 chapters previously appeared in "Young Children,"…

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau has launched a five-year initiative that will support state efforts to build comprehensive early childhood service systems. This initiative--the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (SECCS)--provides two year planning grants followed by three year implementation grants to the 50 state…

If early childhood systems are to be effective at the population level then they must be able to provide family-centered care to all the racial, ethnic and cultural groups that they serve. Despite major policy driven and technological advances in healthcare, health disparities across different races and ethnicities persist. For example, the infant…

This report outlines the national and state environmental context for the SECCS Initiative in supporting MCH strategic planning in early childhood systems building. This strategic context has implications for roles, relationships, and activities within a planning process and ultimately an implementation process. It summarizes the opportunities and…