High-quality early childhood (EC) education has emerged as a national priority alongside the need for ensuring practitioners have the knowledge and skills to support the learning of all children, including those with disabilities and delays (Snyder et al., 2012). To create high-quality learning environments that meet the needs of children…

Only three out of five children are enrolled in preschool globally, and only one out of five in low-income countries, yet the expansion of preschool education came to a near standstill in 2020. To restart it, we propose a policy instrument called the Preschool Entitlement. It entails the right of every child to 600 hours of quality…

The purpose of this article is to describe an approach that early educators can use to develop meaningful partnerships with families. Specifically, the authors describe their efforts to support teachers in developing home-school connections through a series of Family Projects that strengthened family-child relationships and created opportunities…

"Let's Count Online" is a new e-learning approach to delivering "Let's Count" professional learning. It was evaluated in 2018. The findings suggest that the e-learning platform was successful, and that the outcomes for educators were similar to those achieved by participants using the face-to-face workshop professional learning…

Over the last several years, a growing number of cities have invested in early care and education for 3- and 4-year-old children, known as "preschool." This paper aims to aid cities in planning preschool programs by outlining a range of factors to consider. We largely do not make recommendations, but rather try to identify a range of…

Efforts to improve education should not neglect to provide the rich play opportunities that benefit children in so many ways. In Tanzania, the pre-primary curriculum, for example, guides teachers to use play as the primary method of teaching and learning. Despite this policy mandate for play, however, abundant evidence indicates that Tanzanian…

Reported percentages of young children who engage in challenging behavior is estimated between 10% and 20%. This percentage is even greater for children with disabilities. Not surprisingly, when young children with challenging behavior do not receive services and supports early on, they can experience negative social and emotional outcomes long…

Despite the wealth of evidence that early learning opportunities are crucial for young children in crisis, little evidence shows a commensurate commitment to early childhood development (ECD) provision in refugee and humanitarian programming. The Kyaka II refugee settlement in Uganda is a case in point. Home to over 125,000 Congolese refugees,…

The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) requested assistance from the Region 8 Comprehensive Center (Region 8 CC) to co-facilitate and design a Stakeholder Review Committee. This request is a component of the Indiana (IN) Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and Social Emotional Learning Initiative (2020-R8-I-002 IN-02-Year2). The purpose of…

Both those inside and outside of the education community are becoming increasingly familiar with the STEM acronym and the extensive efforts underway nationally to develop integrated PK-12 STEM programs that promote critical thinking, problem solving, 21st Century skill development and authentic learning experiences (Ingram, 2019). However, for…

ANEER, the National Initiative for Early Childhood Education in Rural Areas, is an innovative and impactful project bringing preschools to remote Moroccan villages. Launched by Zakoura Foundation in 2015, in partnership with the Moroccan Ministry of Education and UNICEF, the free ANEER program aims to create the most favorable conditions for a…

The Sustainable Development Goals highlight the critical importance of pre-primary education and set the broad ambition that by 2030 all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Today, the world is facing a learning crisis: While millions of…

This article describes the practical application of an innovative bilingual preschool program that involves two-way immersion of both English and Chinese in classrooms. This has not been written about extensively, especially in the context of early childhood classrooms in Asian countries. The primary goal of the two-way immersion kindergarten is…

In May 2016 an Invitational Symposium on the Reading for Understanding (RfU) Initiative was held in Alexandria, Virginia. Co-hosted by ETS and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the symposium brought together 160 state and local education leaders to examine the results of the RfU initiative. The goal of the U.S. Department of…

Global Family Research Project joined with four other organizations as part of the LEGO Idea Conference to take an in-depth look at letting families guide the creation of programs and services that best meet their needs. This summary of the event session, held in Billund, Denmark, includes international examples of collaborating with families and…