The idea that education leads to the accumulation of capital in the form of more productive workers and that this returns a profit to those who invest in it goes all the way back to Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, the man considered the father of capi

Think the Children’s Movement of Florida is just another garden variety advocacy effort? You’re likely to think again after watching what could be the most compelling 15 minutes of video ever produced making the case for putting children at the top of

The New Mexico PreK initiative expanded quickly when it began in 2005.  Five years later it was serving upwards of 5,000 children. Unlike other state programs with speedy ramp-up times, this one has undergone rigorous examination throughout its early g

The recent New Jersey Privatization Task Force recommendations on pre-K disregard the facts and oppose the best interests of New Jersey’s children. The report highlights pre-K as an example of “successful” privatization, but then calls for the state to

There is no simple answer to the question of what, and how, preschoolers should be taught. The 51 state-funded preschool programs profiled in The State of Preschool 2009 Yearbook present a wide range of program interests and state priorities, and this

Policies directed at encouraging family engagement continue to be of interest for the field as policymakers, researchers and advocates look for ways to improve early childhood education programs and child outcomes. The State of Preschool 2009 Yearbook

As the population of young children changes, there has been an increase in research focusing on English Language Learners (ELLs). For The State of Preschool 2009 yearbook, data were collected on the number of ELLs in state-funded prekindergarten progra

Findings from the 2009 State of Preschool yearbook indicate a slow down in the recent trend of increasing standards for teacher qualifications. Overall, for the 2008-2009 school year, 23 out of 38 states with pre-K programs failed to fully meet NIEER b

If all of the governors’ FY 2011 budgets were to pass as proposed, total state pre-K funding would remain roughly the same as FY 2010 – about $5.3 billion, says Pre-K Now’s just-released Leadership Matters report. Beyond the national total, however, li

Each year, when we publish the NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook, we rank the various state pre-K programs based on children’s access to them and resources allocated to pre-K in each state. Beyond these rankings, however, there’s lots to learn from the

Linda Darling-Hammond’s recent lecture at the Education Law Center in Newark could not have come at a more appropriate time for concerned New Jersey educators. Except for heated debates between a newly elected governor and the New Jersey Education Asso

Today I visited a wonderful publicly funded preschool program run by the AppleTree Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.  In D.C., 40 percent of 4-year-olds attend the District’s preschool programs and nearly a quarter of the 3-year-olds.  The prog

Related Reading Good Morning, Children: My First Years in Early Childhood Education Sophia E. Pappas, 2009 Gryphon House, Inc. Beltsville, MD 188 pp., ISBN 978-0-87659-078-2 $14.95 So much that’s written about preschool education these days comes from

When Michigan’s leaders finally settled on a FY 2010 budget, it looked as if the cuts to the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) weren’t so bad, considering the dire condition of the economy there. The part of GSRP that’s formula-funded received the s

Poverty is a problem in America, and it is a more serious problem here than in many other nations including some with average incomes considerably below ours. However, it is not the only problem in America, nor is it the sole cause or even most importa

Last week, the Associated Press (AP) reported on an evaluation of Tennessee’s state-funded pre-K program commissioned by that state’s Comptroller’s office (See, for example, Memphis Daily News, “Report: Tenn. Pre-K Not Effective After Second Grade”). A