This study investigated associations between child care participation and socioemotional and language development of children born to adolescent mothers. Participants were 704 mothers and their children (mean age = 24 months) enrolled in a randomized controlled-trial evaluation of a voluntary statewide home visiting program for first-time young…

It is a matter of concern when large, federally funded programs are evaluated using designs that produce misleading information. In this article, we discuss problems associated with an evaluation design that was adopted by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to document the performance of a major early…

Delaware was in the first group of states to receive a federal grant in 2012 to improve early care and education services and increase the number of infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children in high-quality programs. One component of the state's grant is a rigorous validation process for Delaware Stars for Early Success, a voluntary quality…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

In 2010, the declining birth rate among teenagers in the United States reached an historic low, and since 1991, the rate has declined 44 percent. Though this trend is promising, 372,252 teens nevertheless became mothers in 2010. That same year, 41 percent of all births were to unmarried women. Moreover, in 2010, 15 percent of the U.S. population…

As part of the national Head Start Planned Variation Study, this study used a relatively small sample in an intensive evaluation of program implementation in one field community using the Tucson Early Education Model (TEEM). A modified Solomon four-group research design formed the organization framework. Evaluation of six TEEM classrooms and two…