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Washington is at a crossroads on K-12 education policy. Policymakers can (1) continue down the path of top-down accountability; (2) devolve power to states and districts, thereby returning to the status quo of the mid-1990s; or (3) rethink the fundamentals, do something different, and empower parental choice. This article discusses how the federal government can achieve equity. The author believes that the best interests of the nation require something other than either a return to the happy days of local school governance or evolutionary improvements to the type of top-down accountability found in No Child Left Behind. He suggests that a fundamentally new approach is needed. He proposes to reform the nation's schools on the basis of two principles that have served the nation exceedingly well throughout its history: (1) federalism; and (2) choice. This approach places the federal government in a central role in providing information and compensatory funding and in promoting a competitive and information-rich marketplace for education services. (Contains 1 table.)

Calls for schools to pay heed to children's social and emotional learning have proliferated in recent years. Is the current enthusiasm for educating the 'whole learner' a much-needed correction to [...]

This study examined the effects of age and schooling on emergent literacy and early reading skills of 337 children from low-income backgrounds. Children were followed longitudinally from the end of Head Start to the end of 1st grade. A subset of the sample (n = 183) was followed through the end of 2nd grade. The oldest children in preschool and kindergarten had significantly stronger emergent literacy skills than classmates who were younger by 10 months. These differences did not translate to differences in reading skill at the end of 1st or 2nd grade. Children who began school a year earlier than same-age peers outperformed these peers on measures of both emergent literacy skills and early reading skills. The impact of a year of schooling on emergent literacy skills was 1.7 times greater than the impact of other processes associated with age. The impact of a year of schooling on early reading was 4.3 times stronger than the effect of age.

G. J. Whitehurst et al. (1988) taught mothers specific interactive techniques to use when reading picture books with their preschool-age children. This intervention program, called dialogic reading, produced substantial effects on preschool children's language development. However, the costs of one-on-one training limit the widespread use of dialogic reading techniques. In this study the authors aimed to replicate and extend the results of the original study of dialogic reading by developing and evaluating an inexpensive videotape training package for teaching dialogic reading techniques. Mothers were randomly assigned to receive no training, traditional direct training, or videotape training. Results supported the conclusions of Whitehurst et al.: Dialogic reading had powerful effects on children's language skills and indicated that videotape training provided a cost-effective, standardized means of implementing the program.

Abstract Lipsey, Farran, and Durkin (2018) report the results from the third-grade follow-up of children who, as four-year-olds, were in the treatment and control groups of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (TVPK). Results include an intent-to-treat analysis of state test scores based on a randomized trial (RCT). TVPK produced substantive positive impacts on children during the pre-K year, but differences between treatment and control children faded to zero, and, for state test scores, turned negative as children moved through elementary school. The negative outcomes, although not without precedent, are surprising to many. The more general finding of very rapid fadeout of preschool impacts is consistent with a large number of studies. Researchers and policymakers can respond to the Lipsey et al. findings in several ways. These include dismissing the findings because of the assertion that TVPK is a low-quality program, or arguing that the research design was flawed, or claiming that the results of other strong studies of preschool interventions conflict with results reported for TVPK. Each of these lines of attack does not survive close inspection of their empirical entailments. Three paths forward are respectful of the findings: (1) continuing the priority of advancing public pre-K for four-year-olds, coupled with efforts to improve longer-term program effects by capitalizing on findings from research on heterogeneity of impacts; (2) reframing the purpose and metrics for success of pre-K away from affecting children's achievement in later grades to providing positive and engaging experiences for children when they are enrolled; and (3) pursuing new models of policy that shift the focus from school readiness to family support. Significant additional investments in research and evaluation will be required to pursue the effectiveness of new policy frameworks for early care and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present investigation is a replication of an emergent literacy intervention in Head Start with a new cohort of children and includes a follow-up of both the original cohort and the replication cohort through the end of 2nd grade. Positive effects at the end of Head Start obtained in the original study were replicated, and effects on emergent literacy skills in both cohorts were maintained through the end of kindergarten. Effects of the emergent literacy intervention did not generalize to literacy outcomes at the end of 1st and 2nd grades. Growth in emergent literacy skills and literacy skills from year to year was strongly influenced by variation in the Head Start centers and school districts attended by children in the sample. Although children in the sample began formal reading instruction with relatively low levels of emergent literacy skills, they showed substantial gains with respect to national norms by the end of 2nd grade.

The authors of this chapter propose and test a model of individual differences in the development of emergent literacy. The model provides a means for evaluating the contribution of various aspects of the home environment to children's emerging literacy skills and helps to clarify the processes by which family environment and different domains of emergent literacy are related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]