Research shows that high-quality early childhood education is a sound investment. Early education is supported by a variety of funding pathways. Blending these funding pathways within a single program can have benefits as well as challenges. This white paper provides a case study of one program that blends funding while also demonstrating the complexities.

In the United States, the number of young bilinguals in PreK-12 settings is rapidly increasing. This paper summarizes key findings and patterns of early bilingual development and separates scientific findings from common myths that influence home and school language practices, assessment and support services, and the organizational structures of education programs these children.

Children who are ready for kindergarten are more likely to achieve future academic success while children who enter behind their peersare at risk for academic underachievement and future unemployment. This white paper presents the results of a study examining profiles of school readiness among 383 entering kindergarteners residing in rural, Appalachian communities.

This white paper provides practical recommendations on how to employ effective data-informed decision-making (DIDM), particularly in early childhood programs. This paper addresses the steps to using DIDM effectively as well as the school- and state-level efforts necessary to support this process using examples to illustrate how DIDM works in the real world.

In this white paper, we present the results of a survey completed by teachers from across Ohio concerning their perceptions of Ohio’s Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA).

This paper presents preliminary data on the feasibility and effectiveness of Summer Success, a community-based, four-week program developed to provide rich instructional programming to children prior to their transition to kindergarten.

Ohio passed a third-grade reading “guarantee” in 2012. This paper examines the impact of that policy seven years later, by analyzing national and state reading achievement data.

Early childhood educators play a critical role in providing the language and literacy instruction that young children need in order to develop key skills for later school success. This study seeks to understand how educators’ backgrounds may be linked to the amount of language and literacy instruction they provide.

Who preschoolers choose to interact with most frequently can have a significant impact on their development of social and emotional skills, and emergent language and literacy skills. This study asks, “Do rural preschoolers interact most often with peers who share similar characteristics or skills, such as learning-related behaviors, and language and literacy skills?”

This study suggests children from lower-income families have lower ability to distinguish between thought and reality because their parents are less likely to discuss their feelings and more likely to use harsher discipline strategies. Child vocabulary appears to be more important than parent discipline for understanding how higher-income children acquire greater false belief understanding.

Some scholars argue that educating children with disabilities separately allows them to receive more targeted, intensive instruction than they would be able to receive in an inclusive classroom setting. Advocates of inclusion counter that educating children with disabilities in an inclusive setting enables them to develop important academic and social skills.

This book is an essential guide for those many individuals who serve as children’s first teachers and who understand, as we do, that interactive book reading is an important context for helping children learn and develop.