Parents' perceptions and beliefs regarding the benefits of early childhood music classes for toddlers are a significant determining factor in their decision to introduce music into their children's lives. The current study aims to explore the beliefs and experiences of 12 mothers attending parent-toddler music classes in an early childhood music…

This paper analyses how teachers and toddlers enact participation frames in bidialectal early education in Limburg, the Netherlands. Teachers' language choice is often context-bound as they use the national language, Dutch, for instruction and the regional language, Limburgish, for playful or social-emotional situations with individual children.…

Guided by translanguaging pedagogy, this study examines how monolingual English teachers in a Pre-K school in China navigate between English and Chinese to construct a translanguaging classroom. Findings based on classroom observations and interviews reveal that, despite being constrained by their monolingualism, the English teachers enacted…

Absent a nationwide plan for universal public prekindergarten, states and districts have taken various approaches to increasing access to school-based educational opportunities for their youngest learners. Though some of these programs have focused on making public prekindergarten available to all families, others have targeted families most in…

This study examined parents' and teachers' social constructions of disability, school readiness, and the transition to kindergarten process for children with disabilities who participated in a self-contained preschool special education (SPED) class, called a special day class (SDC). The 12 participants included parents of children with…

This study leverages six years of public prekindergarten (pre-K) and kindergarten data (N = 22,469) from the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to examine enrollment in BPS pre-K from 2012-2017 for students from different racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic groups. The largest differences in enrollment emerged with respect to race and…

Pre-kindergarten (pre-k) is thought to have both direct and indirect effects on children's outcomes in early elementary school. Direct pre-k effects consistently include moderate to large gains in academic skills and sometimes include increases in problem behaviors that affect acquisition of skills in school. Indirect pre-k effects assume that…

After an active election season, State of the State addresses offer time for new and incumbent governors to outline policy priorities and celebrate state accomplishments. Since 2005, we've tracked, analyzed and identified education policy trends in governors' State of the State addresses to help you understand trending education issues across…

This transnational comparative study between Costa Rica and the United States provides an in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences of the early literacy practices of educators in the Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten classroom settings. Drawing upon Costa Rica's curricular approach to Early Childhood Education, based upon the…

This paper reviews research on the design and effectiveness of preschools in the United States. Three randomized controlled trials that enrolled roughly 350 total children in demonstration studies during the 1960s and 1970s shape much of the current discussion of preschool. We examine what these studies and more recent ones based on random…

In 2021-2022, Head Start served nearly 790,000 young children, primarily from low-income families. However, the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) estimates that far more children are eligible than can be served due to limited resources, heightening the importance of targeting services effectively. House Report 117-96 includes a…

Parental involvement in early childhood education significantly impacts children's academic, socio-emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Extensive research indicates that parental involvement plays a more influential role in a child's academic success compared to socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or educational background. However, a noticeable…

This study considered the influences of socioeconomic status (SES), home learning environment, and age of enrollment in early childhood education and care (ECEC) on early literacy and numeracy development of 5-year-olds in England (N = 2,577), Estonia (N = 2,110), and the United States (N = 2,234) by leveraging data from the International Early…

As part of its effort to make universal prekindergarten (UPK) available to four-year-olds, California has recently expanded transitional kindergarten (TK) in its public schools. TK will be a full pre-K grade level in all districts by the 2025-26 school year. Other states that seek to broaden access to early care and education (ECE) can learn…

Tempe PRE was designed as a high-quality preschool program to create more opportunity for children in Tempe. In the 2021-2022 school year, NORC at the University of Chicago conducted an evaluation of Tempe PRE to understand how the program was being implemented and its effects on children and families. They also collected students' outcome data…