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Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a surge in publicly funded pre-K programs in the United States. Today, policy makers in 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted them. Combining information from twelve datasets, we use event history analysis (EHA) to examine the influence of a set of predictors on states' decisions to adopt public pre-K. Findings indicate that party dominance in the legislature, legislative professionalism, and unemployment rates are associated with pre-K adoption; regional proximity to previously adopting states is also significant. The authors discuss implications for policy makers and advocates considering future legislative action in the early childhood education sector, including the expansion of pre-K eligibility requirements.

Executive function skills are a set of cognitive processes that help individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior and have been linked to benefits in academic achievement and other learning-related outcomes. Recently, there has been interest in understanding how attending center-based preschool may relate to the development of executive function skills. This study used the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (n [approximately] 9,270) to examine the association between preschool attendance and executive function skills in each grade of elementary school. The results of the analysis suggest small initial associations of preschool attendance with some subdomains of executive function (working memory) but not others (cognitive flexibility). These associations are heterogenous based on preschool type (i.e., public vs. private). The longitudinal analysis revealed rapid attenuation of initially positive associations, but also some indications of so-called "sleeper effects" emerged in late elementary school for working memory. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Policy observers have expressed concern over whether misalignment between pre-K and K--12 has negative consequences for children. This study considers students' exposure to redundant content across the pre-K and kindergarten years. Specifically, it asks, to what extent are skills and concepts taught in kindergarten redundant with skills and concepts taught in one state's public pre-K program, and for whom is redundancy most likely? Overall, findings from teacher surveys show that about 37% of the language, literacy, and math content covered in kindergarten is redundant with content covered in pre-K. The highest rates of redundancy seem to occur for basic (rather than advanced) content items, including the identification of letters and sight words. Moreover, children from families who live at or below the poverty line experience significantly higher rates of redundant content. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the use of data in early education settings--specifically, North Carolina's Pre-K program. In this mixed-methods study, we draw upon in-depth interviews and survey data to examine (1) the types of data available to educators in Pre-K, (2) the ways in which data are intended to be used, (3) how data are reportedly used, and (4) the facilitators and inhibitors of effective data-driven decision making. Our findings reveal that Pre-K settings are data-rich environments, often with informal data collected through developmental screening tools and formative assessment systems. We find that engagement with and use of these data for instruction is variable. Finally, we find data sharing between grades is inconsistent, but an important factor predicting data sharing is co-location of Pre-K programs within elementary school buildings. We consider our findings in the context of existing academic literature and discuss the implications for policy and practice.

In recent years, a debate over kindergarten has ensued. We refer to the actors in this debate as "developmentalists," on the one hand, and "academic advocates," on the other. Developmentalists argue that kindergarten should be centered on child-initiated play and intentional teaching through play, art activities, and hands on activities. Academic advocates argue that young children are capable of learning academic content in kindergarten and that academic instruction is necessary to help some students "catch up" before formal schooling begins. In this paper, we identify the key policy organizations engaged in this debate and analyze the ways they construct their arguments and critique the positions of their opponents. We find that, when discussing their vision for kindergarten, developmentalists and academic advocates share similar goals and views. However, when we analyze the ways the two agendas discuss kindergarten as it is practiced today, clear divisions emerge. Specifically, the agendas use different types of causal narratives to describe the problems with kindergarten and how it got that way. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications and directions for future research.

Leveraging data from two nationally representative cohorts from the ECLS-K (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten), we examine the types of transition practices that schools use to ease children's adjustment to formal schooling. The transition to kindergarten is a critical juncture in a child's life that entails a host of social, behavioral, and academic changes. We find a modest increase between the two cohorts in the number of transition practices that schools offer children and their families, although we also find that fewer of these practices are offered in traditionally underserved schools. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings and suggest areas for future research.

Despite growing interest in the importance of nonacademic skills for student success, very few studies have examined the extent to which schools and teachers are associated with gains in these outcomes. This descriptive study adds to the nascent literature by examining the amount of school- and teacher-associated variation in kindergarten students' executive function (EF) skill gains. Leveraging direct EF assessment data from a nationally representative sample of 10,800 public school kindergarteners, the analysis reveals no variation in EF gains among teachers within schools but substantial variation across schools. Additionally, it shows that school-associated variation in EF and academic achievement are weakly correlated, suggesting that some schools are associated with increases in student achievement but not with EF skills and vice versa.

Tens of thousands of landslides were generated over 10, 000 km2 of North Canterbury and Marlborough as a consequence of the 14 November 2016, MW7.8 Kaikōura Earthquake. The most intense landslide damage was concentrated in 3500 km2 around the areas of fault rupture. Given the sparsely populated area affected by landslides, only a few homes were impacted and there were no recorded deaths due to landslides. Landslides caused major disruption with all road and rail links with Kaikōura being severed. The landslides affecting State Highway 1 (the main road link in the South Island of New Zealand) and the South Island main trunk railway extended from Ward in Marlborough all the way to the south of Oaro in North Canterbury. The majority of landslides occurred in two geological and geotechnically distinct materials reflective of the dominant rock types in the affected area. In the Neogene sedimentary rocks (sandstones, limestones and siltstones) of the Hurunui District, North Canterbury and around Cape Campbell in Marlborough, first-time and reactivated rock-slides and rock-block slides were the dominant landslide type. These rocks also tend to have rock material strength values in the range of 5-20 MPa. In the Torlesse 'basement' rocks (greywacke sandstones and argillite) of the Kaikōura Ranges, first-time rock and debris avalanches were the dominant landslide type. These rocks tend to have material strength values in the range of 20-50 MPa. A feature of this earthquake is the large number (more than 200) of valley blocking landslides it generated. This was partly due to the steep and confined slopes in the area and the widely distributed strong ground shaking. The largest landslide dam has an approximate volume of 12(±2) M m3 and the debris from this travelled about 2.7 km2 downslope where it formed a dam blocking the Hapuku River. The long-term stability of cracked slopes and landslide dams from future strong earthquakes and large rainstorms are an ongoing concern to central and local government agencies responsible for rebuilding homes and infrastructure. A particular concern is the potential for debris floods to affect downstream assets and infrastructure should some of the landslide dams breach catastrophically. At least twenty-one faults ruptured to the ground surface or sea floor, with these surface ruptures extending from the Emu Plain in North Canterbury to offshore of Cape Campbell in Marlborough. The mapped landslide distribution reflects the complexity of the earthquake rupture. Landslides are distributed across a broad area of intense ground shaking reflective of the elongate area affected by fault rupture, and are not clustered around the earthquake epicentre. The largest landslides triggered by the earthquake are located either on or adjacent to faults that ruptured to the ground surface. Surface faults may provide a plane of weakness or hydrological discontinuity and adversely oriented surface faults may be indicative of the location of future large landslides. Their location appears to have a strong structural geological control. Initial results from our landslide investigations suggest predictive models relying only on ground-shaking estimates underestimate the number and size of the largest landslides that occurred.

We extend previous research on traditional one-year adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) by analyzing the performance of 3/27 hybrid instruments. Under this contract innovation, which first appeared in the mid-1990s, note rates [...]

The magnitude of the effect of government-sponsored enterprise purchases on primary mortgage market rates has been a difficult research question with differing data and competing methodologies producing varying results. Here [...]

Empirical research on mortgage default in the single-family market has focused on the value of the borrower's put option using house price indices to estimate contemporaneous loan-to-value ratio or the [...]