The academic success of students in schools across the state is a top priority for California policy-makers. But for some students, academic goals set by the state remain out of reach. The issue of "CenterView" concentrates of the situation of the more than 74,000 children in the California foster care system. By the standard measures…

This article explores perceptions of community college students and their characteristics, focusing on issues of responsibility, perceptions of self and others, personal experiences, and academic preparedness relative to community college status. A brief survey was developed to measure these perceptions in both community college and 4-year/senior…

Past research on school-level factors that predict children's development has focused largely on associations between a limited number of characteristics, such as school size and school resources, and children's academic achievement. Few studies take a more comprehensive look at the measurement of school climate or examine its relationship to…

This study investigates the effects of the Family and Child Education (FACE) prekindergarten program on school readiness. The FACE program is located in Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools on some of the most rural American Indian (AI) reservations in the United States. It explicitly integrates the language and culture of the communities in…

Evidence from over four decades of research affirms that family involvement in a child's learning is one of the strongest predictors of social, emotional, and academic development; however, Euro-American, middle-class families tend to be more involved in schools than minority and low-income families. A major factor influencing family involvement…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) "The High Cost of Low Educational Performance": New OECD Report Finds that 25 Point Increase in PISA Scores…

How good does an early childhood program have to be in order to achieve school readiness outcomes for children? This is known as the "threshold question," and policy makers and others have wanted an answer to this question since the onset of public investments in early care and education (ECE) programs. With expansion of Head Start and…

Background: Socially disadvantaged children with academic difficulties at school entry are at increased risk for poor health and psychosocial outcomes. Our objective is to test the possibility that participation in childcare--at the population level--could attenuate the gap in academic readiness and achievement between children with and without a…

The traditional kindergarten program often reflected a rich but generic approach with creative contexts for typical kindergartners organized around materials (manipulatives or dramatic play) or a developmental area (fine motor or language). The purpose of kindergarten reflected beliefs about how children learn, specialized training for…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) review in this topic area focuses on interventions that have a primary focus on outcomes associated with the school readiness of children with disabilities, including outcomes in the areas of cognition, communication competencies, literacy, mathematics achievement, social-emotional development and behavior,…

This rapid review of research evidence was commissioned by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) to investigate the issue of relative age in the international context. The review findings are drawn from 18 research studies published from 2000 to 2008 and carried out in Australia, Chile, the United Kingdom and the USA together with…

The Texas College and Career Readiness Standards define what students should know and be able to accomplish in order to succeed in entry-level college courses or skilled workforce opportunities upon graduation from high school. This paper answers the following questions: (1) Who developed the Texas College and Career Readiness Standards?; (2) What…

This study examined whether the Head Start Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) program is more effective than the standard Head Start program at improving the language, emergent literacy, and social-emotional skills of preschoolers. Head Start centers in three Pennsylvania counties were randomly assigned either to use the REDI program…

Researchers use many different methods to calculate the high school dropout rate, and depending on the approach, the numbers can look very different. But, no matter which method is used, the key finding is the same: too many students are leaving school without the knowledge and skills they need to meet the demands of twenty-first century…

The campaign for universal preschool education in the United States has gained great momentum. Precisely as strategists intended, many Americans have come to believe that pre-kindergarten is a good and necessary thing for government to provide, even that not providing it will cruelly deprive the youngest residents of their birthrights, blight…