Showing 108 reports filtered by "Early Learning" sorted by date added . Show All Reports
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
From 2015 through 2016, the Early Education Initiative will be producing a series of reports from states and localities across the United States to provide an inside look at efforts to support children's learning from infancy and extending into the early grades.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Minnesota
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Poverty
High-quality early care and education (ECE) programs have been proven to create positive outcomes for children -- especially among those living in poverty. Yet many children from low-income families have a hard time accessing high-quality child care and miss the critical developmental growth and foundation needed for academic and life success. Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) released a new report that examines the financial challenges program providers face, and offers recommendations about actions to increase access to quality care. The report is based on NFF's work with more than 147 nonprofit child care centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Northeastern)-Pennsylvania
Education and Literacy
In the fall of 2014, the Heising-Simons and McKnight Foundations provided support for a National Research Summit on the Early Care and Education of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) in Washington, DC. The goal of the two day summit was to engage and extend the established knowledge base accrued by the Center for Early Care and Educational Research Dual Language Learners (CECER-DLL), while simultaneously informing the future potential efforts by the Heising-Simons and McKnight Foundations specific to the early care and education of dual language learners. Day two centered on the presentation of five McKnight-commissioned papers, the topics of which included:
The report attempts to provide a short summary and synthesis of the topics covered in these papers and the discussion generated at the National Summit on Early Care and Education of Dual Language Learners. In addition, a set of recommendations are presented for each topic with regard to the implications drawn from these synthesis and of particular relevance to the supporting foundations' future investment considerations related to DLLs.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Race and Ethnicity
This brief is divided into two parts. The first provides background on how universal pre-K programs fit into the national landscape of early childhood policy, outlines the main features of New York City's current Universal Prekindergarten Program (UPK) expansion efforts, and draws lessons for other cities and states interested in expanding their programs. The second part provides an in-depth look at the issue of preschool classroom diversity in UPK, highlighting the opportunities and obstacles for integration embedded in current policies and recommending policy changes to address this issue in New York City and beyond.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States;North America-United States (Northeastern)-New York-New York County-New York City
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
As Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) continue to launch and mature across states, questions emerge from stakeholders about how to design and implement effective quality improvement (QI) initiatives that accompany a QRIS. Funders, policymakers and program developers with limited resources are looking to invest in activities that will be most successful in supporting early care and education (ECE) program quality improvement and ultimately improving outcomes for young children. The purpose of this report is to address questions about effective QI initiatives by proposing a blueprint of quality improvement practices and design considerations generated from a synthesis of the existing research literature and input from national experts in ECE quality improvement.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
During the 2014 legislative session, lawmakers passed the nation's most comprehensive legislation in support of English Learners (ELs). The law has three principal goals for all EL students: a) academic English proficiency, b) grade-level content knowledge, and c) multilingual skills development. Chief among the mandates is the requirement that all teachers be skilled in teaching ELs. Delivering these goals will require action at every level of the educational system: state agencies and the Board of Teaching, teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education, school districts and charter schools, and classroom teachers and school staff.This brief examines the LEAPS (Learning for English Avademic Proficiency and Success) legislation in Minnesota, and includes the knowledge of nearly 40 experts from across Minnesota and its diverse communities who were called on to share their thoughts on how state agencies, school districts, charters, and colleges of education can rise to meet the ambitious challenge set by LEAPS.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Minnesota
Education and Literacy, Government Reform
This report explores some of the most financially disadvantaged school districts in the country and identifies a typology of conditions that have created or reinforced their disadvantage. Financially disadvantaged districts are those that serve student populations with much greater-than-average need but do so with much less-than average funding. The Education Law Center of New Jersey's annual report, "Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card," uses a panel of the most recent three years of U.S. Census Bureau Fiscal Survey data on state and local revenues per pupil in order to determine which states achieve systematically greater funding per pupil in districts serving higher student poverty concentrations and which states maintain school funding systems where higher poverty districts have systematically fewer resources per pupil.
The same data have been used in follow-up analyses to identify the local public school districts across states that are saddled with greater-than-average student needs and less-than-average state and local revenue.2 As one might expect, numerous poorly funded local public school districts exist in the least fairly funded states. That is, where a state school finance system is such that higher-need districts on average have lower state and local revenue, there tends to be more high-need districts with lower state and local revenue. And as it turns out, there are unfairly funded districts in what are traditionally viewed as fairly funded states. In other words, poorly funded local public school districts exist in states where school finance systems are, on average, progressive. This report looks at why this happens -- and what can be done about it.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy
Productivity is clearly a priority in state education agencies (SEA). The first two volumes of The SEA of the Future made the case for a "productivity mindset" in our country's state education agencies. Authors in these volumes argued that SEAs must fight against focusing exclusively on regulatory compliance to find more ways to provide local autonomy and consistently measure, assess, and hold themselves, their districts, and schools accountable for both performance and costs. Though these essays sharply challenged the traditional work of SEAs, state leaders responded enthusiastically, saying, "Yes. Where do we start?"
In this third volume of the series, we introduce the "productivity infrastructure." The productivity infrastructure constitutes the building blocks for an SEA committed to supporting productivity, innovation, and performance -- from the state chief to the classroom. These building blocks include:
* Policies to expand the flexibility of district and school leaders and allow them to make choices about resource use.
* State funding arrangements that fund students, not programs.
* Information systems that allow district and school leaders to accurately assess the productivity of policies and practices.
The essays in this volume offer a rich discussion of each of these elements.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
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