First five years are identified as a critical period of child growth in scientific literature. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10 that appropriated a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support early childhood development. As a result, Kern County Children and Families Commission administered over $10…

The role of the visual arts in early childhood education has long been recognised and valued as an essential component of the curriculum. The project featured in this writing stems from a collaborative relationship forged between a non-profit, community-based early education centre and community arts centre. As a result of this collaborative…

Preschool experience plays a role in children's development. However, for programs with language and early literacy goals, the question remains whether preschool instructional experiences are sufficiently effective to achieve these goals for all children. In a multisite study, the authors conducted a process-product description of preschool…

The backlog in terms of readiness for formal learning structures of children in low-income countries necessitates intervention programmes to alleviate the disadvantage. In these low-income countries, it is unlikely that the state will provide facilities or programmes for preschool children, as resources are just not available. Therefore, as an…

Children's vocabulary development represents a critical foundation for their reading skills. This article describes a curriculum-based vocabulary progress monitoring tool that was used to track the development of Head Start children--and particularly those at highest risk for later reading difficulty--as they learned new words during the school…

This evaluation research compares the first-grade competencies of two cohorts of Bangladesh children who attended "Succeed" preschools, with a control group who did not attend preschool. Testing of these groups occurred in 2006, 2007, and 2005, respectively. The Succeed program aims to improve children's learning and children's school…

This large-scale study describes what children know and can do when they start school in Scotland. The description became possible because a third of Scottish Authorities are involved in a single, broadly based, on-entry baseline assessment of children. The study also looked at variations by home background, sex, age and pre-school experience…

In February 2007, First 5 LA contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractors, Juarez and Associates, American Institutes for Research (AIR), and Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center, to conduct the First 5 LA/LAUP Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS). The authors conducted the study…

Described are preschool and school programs offered by North Dakota's Southeast Mental Health/Retarded Center for normal and handicapped children and their families. The preschool program includes the following services: an educational program for parents of normal children, a home program for parents of children with developmental delays, an…

This report attempts to respond to a series of questions commonly asked about the nation-wide experiment to provide equality of educational opportunity to children born to families of poverty. The report focuses on the following questions: (1) Why did this program of experimenting with early childhood education happen to get launched midway in the…

This document is the first in a series of 12 early childhood program descriptions compiled by the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. The program described here is the Demonstration and Research Center for Early Education (DARCEE) which was established at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, in…

Operations at the Boston Center for Blind Children's day preschool for visually-impaired, multihandicapped children (3- to 8-years-old) are described. The following stages of evaluation and planning are identified: development of a treatment plan based on performance in the developmental areas of self-help, language, motor skills, socialization,…

This document summarizes research into early childhood education programs for 3- to 8-year-old children in Ontario. The document focuses upon the problems, priorities, and practices which characterize these programs. Two factors in Ontario prompted research into its early childhood education programs: public concern over rising educational costs;…