For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building an infrastructure of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas…

Research suggests that investing in young children can help build a strong future workforce, improve children's educational success and health, and potentially reduce some of the social ills that drain the nation's resources and will. To have an informed conversation about future investments, it is important to start from an understanding of the…

This policy brief explores kindergarten readiness observation and its benefits to local and state level stakeholders; highlights efforts by California counties and other states to measure school readiness; and makes recommendations for moving toward statewide use of kindergarten readiness observation tools. Key points include: (1) Early efforts to…

"KidsCount in Colorado!" is an annual publication of the Colorado Children's Campaign, which provides the best available state- and county-level data to measure and track the education, health and general well-being of the state's children. KidsCount in Colorado! informs policy debates and community discussions, serving as a valuable…

Character includes the emotional, intellectual and moral qualities of a person or group as the demonstration of these qualities in prosocial behavior. Character education is an inclusive term encompassing all aspects of how schools, related social institutions and parents can support the positive character development of children and adults.…

Part of UNESCO's Action Research in Family and Early Childhood series, this monograph is based upon a technical report on the Early Childhood Education (ECE) component of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in India. This document overviews the ICDS and how better use could be made of World Food Programme (WFP) food aid along…

The mere act of living in today's society is dangerous to the health and well-being of children and adolescents. The concept of the socially toxic environment is offered as a parallel to the environmental movement's analysis of physical toxicity. Social life is more risky than it was just 40 years ago, and the level of social and cultural poison…

This research synthesis is organized around identification of instructional priorities for emergent literacy and existing evidence regarding curriculum design for those instructional priorities. First, areas of emerging evidence are identified and two major ideas are extracted: (1) children need to develop knowledge of and facility with multiple…

The Rhode Island Child Care Training System (RICCTS) is intended to tie all aspects of the state's child care and education training into a single system that will produce staff who are competent in delivering high-quality programs for young children. The RICCTS was evaluated for the effectiveness of efforts to ensure quality programming for young…

This report focuses on the teaching of English to Aboriginal children in primary schools in Australia. A definition and analysis of dialectal differences between Aboriginal (Australian) English and Standard (Australian) English is offered that includes the phonological, morpho-syntactic, lexico-semantic, and pragmatic differences of the Aboriginal…

This report evaluates the dissemination to rural communities in New Jersey of a program previously found to be successful in rural Appalachian communities. The report evaluates the collaboration process between Research for Better Schools (RBS), the New Jersey Rural Assistance Council (RAC), and Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL), who…

Both concurrent and predictive validity of two developmental instruments, each purporting to measure the same five developmental dimensions, were compared. The Developmental Profile II (DPII), a commercial test, was administered to the same children when they were in prekindergarten and first grade. The initial samples were 91 and 267…

Both parents have unique contributions to make in the development of a child. Mothers and fathers think and act differently from one another, and children thrive on these differences. This book examines gender differences in child rearing, focusing on the conflict between male experts' advice promoting early independence and women's desire for…

Focusing attention on possible underlying causes of a child's misbehavior, this guide uses a situational approach for solving specific behavior problems that commonly occur with young children. Each behavior is discussed in a separate chapter, with step-by-step recommendations provided to correct the problem. The book encourages readers to…

This revised and expanded version of the 1960 classic "Summerhill," edited by Albert Lamb, portrays Summerhill School throughout its development. The book reveals A. S. Neill's fundamental belief in the self-regulated school in which children make their own rules and determine for themselves how much they will study. Neill's commitment…