Background: The Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Program aims to increase the number of highly effective educators by supporting the implementation of evidence-based practices that prepare, develop, or enhance the skills of educators. The three central goals of this program are: (1) Recruit, prepare, and retain effective and…

Background: Retention of early-career teachers is a persistent problem in the United States, with 44% of teachers leaving the profession within five years nationally (Ingersoll et al., 2018). Similar trends are seen in Georgia as a whole (Henson et al., 2015), and among Atlanta Public Schools (2019). Retention of Black educators presents an even…

High-performing teachers tend to seek out positions at more affluent or academically challenging schools, which tend to hire more experienced, effective educators. Consequently, low-income and minority students are more likely to attend schools with less experienced and less effective educators (see, for example, DeMonte & Hanna, 2014; Office…

Decades of evidence demonstrates that high-quality, well-implemented early education can positively impact the learning trajectories of vulnerable, high-needs young children. Yet, the majority of publicly-funded programs nationwide struggle to implement to quality standards with fidelity and fail to significantly advance children's early…

For over a century, school systems in the U.S. have attempted to improve instructional quality by investing in the education and training of their teachers. Today, over 90% of teachers report participating in some form of professional development (PD). Practitioners have responded to critiques of PD by re-envisioning it in the form of…

This paper examines measures used by studies associated with Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative (PCER) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Analysis of 17 measures of fidelity used by 13 curriculum interventions highlights how research in preschools is and is not measuring fidelity of implementation. The following…

The National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education's (NCRECE) program of research is a series of experimental studies of specific approaches to training early childhood (EC) educators to be effective in implementation of curriculum and instructional interactions focused on promoting language and literacy skills, two domains that operate…

Improving teacher effectiveness is a key strategy to ensure student readiness for college and careers and to address achievement gaps and persistent low performance. In response to the new Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) the National Writing Project (NWP) created a professional development (PD) program to support…