This study utilizes data gathered from a nationwide survey of preschool educators in the United States to examine the prevalence of teaching practices associated with academic-focused rather than play-based approaches. The research delves into how these practices vary across different types of preschool programs, including publicly funded, such as…

Philadelphia's Preschool Program (PHLpreK) has recently concluded its seventh year, following its initiation after a 2015 referendum approving the creation of a universal pre-K program for children ages 3 and 4. NIEER has been evaluating the program since its inception, focusing on program quality, components, and children's learning and…

Research Findings: The classroom physical literacy environment is a malleable and domain-specific contributor to children's emergent literacy acquisition. However, what shapes the physical literacy environment remains unclear. In this study, we drew on a sample of 895 4-year-olds across 223 classrooms from the Professional Development Study and…

A major challenge to promoting effective early science and engineering education is the lack of reliable and validated assessments that align with current educational guidelines for science and engineering. Existing early science and engineering assessments either cover a narrow range of concepts and practices and/or are not designed in a way to…

Public PreK programs are an increasingly popular policy tool to equalize early learning opportunities. Programs can be universally available or targeted to support children's readiness. At the intersection of early childhood and K-12 education, their hybrid status can be difficult for families to negotiate. Based on interviews completed in 2018,…

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),…

This publication summarizes an academic review paper on preschool effectiveness, "Lottery Evidence on the Impact of Preschool in the United States: A Review and Meta-Analysis" by Jesse Bruhn and Emily Emick. The 44 papers summarized fall into three categories: studies of three model preschool programs begun in the 1960s known as…

The Perry Preschool Project, the longest-running experimental study of an early childhood education program, demonstrates how such interventions can yield long-term personal, societal, and intergenerational benefits for disadvantaged populations. The evidence is clear: investments in high-quality early childhood education and parental engagement…

This paper reviews research on the design and effectiveness of preschools in the United States. Three randomized controlled trials that enrolled roughly 350 total children in demonstration studies during the 1960s and 1970s shape much of the current discussion of preschool. We examine what these studies and more recent ones based on random…

Building on the idea that the culture of an organisation has an extremely deep influence on the personalities, minds and identities of people who participate in it (Hofstede 2015) -- we reflected on how the US and Polish cultures' specific values and beliefs were represented and symbolised in the early childhood settings. We focused our analysis…

Early childhood education programs (ECE) invest in assessments of classroom quality to enable accountability and to enact efforts towards quality improvement. The "Early Childhood Environment Rating System -- Revised" (ECERS-R) and "Classroom Assessment Scoring System" (CLASS) are two widely used classroom quality assessments…

This document compiles information from multiple sources to offer readers a snapshot of Preschool Development and Expansion Grant (PDG) states' progress towards implementing a full comprehensive assessment system, as well as the tools they are using for each of the components.

Many states with preschool programs, as well as other interested organizations and individuals, have undertaken research and evaluation efforts to improve their understanding of state preschool program implementation, results, and impacts. A 2004 review by Gilliam and Zigler examined state efforts to evaluate preschool programs from 1997 to 2003.…

This paper aims at investigating the changing constructions of childhood in two Finnish pre-school education curricula during the time of pre-school reform in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These constructions are part of the underlying curriculum containing postulates and values that influence the written curriculum documents. They determine the…

As evidence becomes increasingly important in educational policy, it is essential to understand how research design might contribute to reported effect sizes in experiments evaluating educational programs. A total of 645 studies from 12 recent reviews of evaluations of preschool, reading, mathematics, and science programs were studied. Effect…