Having a qualified, stable, and healthy workforce is a critical component of a thriving early care and education (ECE) system. However, ECE educators--especially those who are women of color--have long encountered low wages and a lack of benefits, coupled with a physically demanding and stressful work environment. Burnout and teacher turnover are…

An important element of effective early care and education programming is instructional systems, such as curricula, instructional materials, and professional development (PD). These systems can help teachers to create meaningful learning experiences for young children that allow them to thrive. However, implementing a new curriculum or PD requires…

Many early care and education (ECE) institutions--including Head Start, state quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS), and school district pre-K programs--use classroom quality observations in their quality improvement or monitoring processes. As many states expand their ECE programs, they grapple with questions about how best to use data…

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that when students' social and emotional well-being are poor, their engagement in instruction is profoundly affected. That revelation and the national mobilization for social justice sparked in 2020 have heightened public awareness is heightened that inequitable structures and policies--in school and out--have been…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA--the main federal education law) was signed into law at the end of 2015, but schools and districts have until the 2017-2018 school year to begin implementing their plans to comply with it. ESSA represents a substantial shift from prior law in how it addresses teacher professional growth and evaluation, and as…

Early math has been shown to predict not only longer-term math achievement, but also future reading achievement, high school completion, and college attendance. Yet effects from early math programs often fade out as children move into more varied instructional contexts in elementary school. This fade-out suggests the need for an alignment of math…

The concept of project-based learning (PBL) has garnered wide support among a number of K-12 education policy advocates and funders. This working paper builds on and updates a seminal literature review of PBL published in 2000. Focused primarily on articles and studies that have emerged in the 17 years since then, the working paper discusses the…

In the context of a persistent achievement lag among low-income children despite substantial investments in early education, policymakers and practitioners continue to seek ways to improve the quality of children's preschool experiences. The Making Pre-K Count study addresses whether strengthening prekindergarten (pre-K) instruction in math,…

Early math skills are a strong predictor of later achievement for young children, not only in math, but in other domains as well. Exhibiting strong math skills in elementary school is predictive of later high school completion and college attendance. To that end, the Making Pre-K Count and High 5s studies set out to rigorously assess whether…

Researchers from MDRC and Johns Hopkins University partnered with Florida's Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in 2009 to launch an independent evaluation of the district's initiative to implement Ninth Grade Academies (NGAs) in every district high school. An NGA is a self-contained learning community for ninth-graders that operates as a school…

The early twenty-first century has seen increased attention to developing young children's social-emotional skills and competencies in preschool programs, including Head Start--the largest federally funded early-childhood education program in the United States. At the same time, there has been greater recognition of the importance of adapting…

Investments in early childhood programs are widely viewed as a promising strategy to improve the future educational achievement of disadvantaged young children. However, it can be difficult for teachers to maintain program quality if children in the classroom display challenging behaviors. For example, when some children act out aggressively or…

This report presents results from the Newark, New Jersey, site of the Foundations of Learning (FOL) Demonstration, an intervention and random assignment evaluation of a curriculum designed to target children's behavior and emotional adjustment through the training of preschool teachers. The demonstration adopted the model used by CSRP (formerly…

This report presents results from the Newark, New Jersey, site of the Foundations of Learning (FOL) Demonstration, an intervention and random assignment evaluation of a curriculum designed to target children's behavior and emotional adjustment through the training of preschool teachers. The demonstration adopted the model used by CSRP (formerly…