Background: Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) programs often expand by offering Pre-K in both public schools and in community-based providers (CBOs). This approach gives families more options and allow UPK programs to increase access more quickly. However, little is known about which CBOs select into these systems. This is an important gap in the…

Background: When New York City's (NYC) Division of Early Childhood Education (DECE) enacted their historic expansion of free programming for four-year-olds under Pre-K for All, they designed a complex system of professional learning (PL) to support teachers and high-quality programming. This study, developed in partnership between NYU and DECE,…

Background: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of interventions can provide critical evidence for educators and policymakers by providing insights into the effectiveness of related interventions. The quality of included studies builds the foundation for a high-quality review, while bias in the included studies increases the risks of unreliable…

Background: Early care and education (ECE) has lasting, positive effects on children's school readiness (Phillips et al., 2018; Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Over the past several decades, access to city or state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) has increased considerably (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2023) with well-documented, positive impacts on child…

Background: The past half-century has resulted in a substantial expansion of early childhood center-based care in the United States. Today, over 74% of American children aged 3-5 attend center-based care (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Although public pre-k is considered socially favorable,…

Purpose: The purpose of this project was (1) to collaborate with public preschool programs to adapt, test, and revise the implementation model of an innovative early mathematics intervention, "Pre-K Mathematics" and (2) to determine whether this model makes it possible for local programs to sustain their implementation without reducing…

Background/Context: There has been a growing realization in American education that the traditional focus on academics, particularly mathematics and English language arts, is insufficient to guarantee success in the modern workforce and society (Griffin and Care, 2015). Educators, policymakers, and researchers have correspondingly broadened the…

Background: Pre-k convergence refers to the tendency for the positive effects of pre-k on children's academic skills to diminish over time, observed across decades of observational and experimental studies (Ansari et al., 2020). Researchers have tested multiple mechanisms to explain convergence, with mixed results; none of the proposed mechanisms…

Background: Publicly funded four-year-old preschool (or 4K) programs have expanded over the past several decades (Friedman-Krauss et al. 2021). Many high-quality preschool programs lead to gains in academic and social skills for students (Cascio and Schanzenbach 2013; Gormley and Gayer 2005; Weiland and Yoshikawa 2013; Wong et al. 2008),…

Background: Early math knowledge is the strongest predictor of later academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007), but math achievement gaps that are present during preschool prior to kindergarten entry (Starkey & Klein, 2008) persist in elementary school. This is especially true for young children who are very low-performing in math relative to…

Background/Context: The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the way we conduct research. For some modes of data collection, such as interviews, there was a ready (if not perfect) analog: face-to-face became phone-based; paper and pen surveys moved online. Others, such as direct assessments of child development, proved more challenging. Despite the…

Background/rationale: There is clear evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic had significant negative effects on the learning and development of school-age children in the United States, with disproportionate impacts on children from racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically marginalized groups (Irwin et al., 2022). There is less consistent evidence…

Background: The United States does not have a comprehensive, publicly funded early care and education (ECE) system. As a result, disparities in access and participation in quality ECE in the U.S. are well-documented. Low and middle-income families participate less frequently in ECE compared with higher-income families, often due to conflicts with…

Background: Gaps between dual language learners (DLLs) and monolingual English-speaking children have been reported at kindergarten entry, and many DLL children are classified as long-term English learners, having less access to the general curriculum in the upper grades (NASEM, 2017). The supposed underperformance of DLLs might be due to the…

Background/Context: Although professional development using coaching has been widely adopted as a way of improving early care and education practice, only recently have researchers begun to look at the content and features of coaching that lead to desired outcomes. This study examines one of the first projects to explore coaching components among…