The current status of preventive intervention programs designed to reduce the school readiness gap for young children at environmental risk is examined in the context of developmental science. A review of program effectiveness suggests that future progress in this area should be grounded in a knowledge base that adopts the framework of…

Early childhood educators should take advantage of attention on assessment to design appropriate systems. Proper assessments should enable more reflective teaching, honor children's full range of development, and provide safeguards to children from unnecessary assessment or misuse of assessment data. Issues include what standards to measure, what…

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau has launched a five-year initiative that will support state efforts to build comprehensive early childhood service systems. This initiative--the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (SECCS)--provides two year planning grants followed by three year implementation grants to the 50 state…

Argues against placing the school in a lead position for delivery of services; and supports a community-based model in which diverse service providers, administrators, and institutions work collaboratively in a system of linked services. A community-based system would involve a consortium of existing agencies or a newly created entity. (SLD)

This report is designed to support the planning and implementation of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (SECCS) Initiative. It addresses a set of principles that these agencies can use to advance their planning process, reach out to new partners, develop collaborative strategies, and build a…

The project discussed in this report attempts to establish, within a real school setting, a comprehensive and viable way of determining and reporting the growth and development of kindergarten and primary grade children in the public school. The project was developed by a steering committee of faculty members from the Clayton School District of…

In 2003, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) released a "Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Health." In recognition of the critical role states play in the development of early childhood initiatives and of the unique contributions that state Title V programs can make to these initiatives, the Bureau operationalized their…