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.

Based on data collected through the Kids in Columbus study, this paper examines the extent to which families with young children accessing WIC services experience food insecurity. It also looks at whether food insecurity varies by family characteristic.

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.

The purpose of this study was to identify which new mothers may be especially prone to use Facebook more often and more intensely, and to further examine the potential consequences of Facebook activity for new mothers’ emotional well-being.

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.

Young children with developmental disabilities often demonstrate delays in learning important early literacy skills, and are often at a higher risk for future reading problems. This study asks: to what extent are there differences in the home-literacy experiences of children with and without disabilities, and how are these experiences related to children’s early literacy skills?

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.

This study suggests that there are complex patterns of kindergarten readiness for rural Appalachian children from low-income families. A significant number of low-income children from rural Appalachia appear to be at-risk. These results suggest the need for further research into similar populations, and continued efforts to improve pre-K access and quality for socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.