preschool

Highly trained, well-paid preschool teachers with low-student ratios, clean, safe classrooms with blocks, playdough, art supplies and outdoor spaces where kids can run and play could be key to closing the racial achievement gap, according to a new Rutgers University study.

When the parents or caregivers of young children start the San Bernardino County, California, CARE program, they are desperate. One mother said she hadn’t been able to go to the store in four years because of her 5-year-old son’s challenging behaviors.

Steve Sturm believes every child should have the same opportunities that his 3-year-old daughter Reagan enjoys. Things like new boots, trips to the trampoline park — and preschool. But for children known to the foster care system, too many miss out on the earliest years of their education.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this month on school discipline with a topline finding that “black students, boys and students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) in K-12 public schools.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a bill in July to create a new cabinet-level agency to oversee the children’s issues in the state based on the recommendations of the Washington State Blue Ribbon Commission on the Delivery of Services to Children and Families.

Building on a decade of work at the intersection of child welfare and education, the Stuart Foundation launched the Education Equals Partnership in 2012.The Partnership is dedicated to improving educational experiences and outcomes for students from foster care, starting with preschool and extending through college.

This report describes the Head Start CARES (“Classroom-based Approaches and Resources for Emotion and Social skill promotion”) demonstration, which was designed to test strategies for supporting children’s social-emotional competence in Head Start classrooms.

Many early childhood education programs appear to boost cognitive ability and early school achievement in the short run. However, most of them show smaller impacts than those generated by the best-known programs, and their cognitive impacts largely disappear within a few years.