For more than 20 years, United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey (United Way) has made high-quality early care and education a cornerstone priority of its investment strategy. United Way has also been a longtime champion of school readiness for the youngest children in southeastern Pennsylvania. In 1996, the organization joined…

Since 2007, nineteen Houston Independent School District (HISD) campuses have partnered with Literacy Now to offer the Reading Intervention program. The Reading Intervention program provides individualized, small group reading tutorials for at-risk students in kindergarten to second grade to create proficient readers by the end of third grade.…

Most of the authors in this issue of "Future of Children" focus on a single strategy for helping both adults and children that could become a component of two-generation programs. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on the other hand, look at actual programs with an explicit two-generation focus that have been tried in the…

Improving teacher quality in early education is a major part of ensuring young children's school readiness and closing the achievement gap. This is the book decision-makers and administrators need to begin developing coordinated, effective teacher quality systems--ones that not only get teachers ready for the classroom, but also promote continuous…

Project Early Kindergarten (PEK) aims to improve the school-readiness of Saint Paul children and help close the achievement gap through offering high-quality educational experiences for preschool children. This report comes at the conclusion of the sixth year of PEK. Following an initial planning year (2004-05), PEK has served children through the…

The Saint Paul Public Schools' Project Early Kindergarten program aims to improve the school readiness of Saint Paul children. The program offers a rigorous academic approach and targets children who are English Language Learners, come from low-income families, or need Special Education services. Ultimately, the program intends to help close Saint…

In the past decade in the United States, pre-kindergarten programs for four year olds have expanded rapidly as a potentially powerful intervention intended to promote school readiness for children at-risk for future school failure. This paper describes in detail multi-dimensional profiles of observed quality across 692 classrooms in 11 states…

The importance of a smooth transition into school for children who have received Early Intervention Services (EI) but have not received the Ongoing Reviewable Resource Scheme (ORRS) funding has become of increasing concern to stakeholders involved with these children. The EI and School Focus (SF) teams of the GSE in Pakuranga collaborated…

This report describes the development and implementation of a kindergarten readiness screening program. Chapter I defines the terms used in the report, discusses the needs assessment that gave rise to the practicum, and presents the terminal and process objectives of the practicum. Chapter II presents reviews of related literature and similar…

The Responsive Environment Program for Spanish American Children (REPSAC) is a group educational program for "high risk" (of low birth weight and with various handicaps) Spanish American children. It aims to provide successful experiences for these children in both English and Spanish language learning and in improving cognitive and…

This report summarizes the proceedings of two clinics on early childhood clinics and provides descriptions of successful preschool-to-elementary transition programs. The two clinics brought together Head Start representatives, public and private day care personnel, elementary school teachers and administrators, state department of education staff,…

The Bridge To School Program was designed to supplement and extend the scope of an ongoing early childhood developmental program, the "Readiness Program", by providing individualized attention and instruction to specially selected seriously learning disabled children between the ages of 5 and 7 in order to facilitate the development of…

An evaluation of the School Readiness Program is presented in detail. Each of four objectives is examined: (1) To provide effective teaching-learning settings; (2) To determine and alleviate health problems; (3) To develop language skills; and (4) To develop Spanish language skills for children in bilingual centers. The accomplishments of the…

Initial results from the Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP) are presented. The project provided a comprehensive set of educational and diagnostic services to families and children from birth up until entry into kindergarten. Teacher ratings and independent observers recorded the classroom behavior of program participants as well as a group…

This paper describes an external evaluation study of the Responsive Environment Early Education Program (formerly known as the Responsive Environment Program for Spanish American Children), an educational intervention program for "high risk" (low birth weight) 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children in Clovis, New Mexico. Major goals of the…