Child care has become a higher profile public policy priority as politicians have taken notice of Americans’ child care concerns. Last year, Congress passed the largest ever increase—$2.37 billion—in the federal government’s major child care program. F

The 2015 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council’s (IOM & NRC) Transforming the Workforce report highlights the state’s role in creating a pathway for early care and education (ECE) teachers to acquire education and professional develop

In a report published by the Center for American Progress, NIEER researchers find that providing high-quality prekindergarten to all children nationally would dramatically reduce inequality in academic preparedness at kindergarten entry. Here we provid

At CEELO we believe all organizations benefit from a continuous improvement process based on evaluation. That’s why we’re not only engaged in providing Technical Assistance (TA) to states across the country, but we also evaluate our own work and act up

Inquiring minds often want to know which states offer “universal pre-K.” As states vary in what they define as universal pre-K (UPK) and in how far they have progressed toward fully implementing a universal program as intended, the answer is somewhat c

Looking back over 2015, it’s been a year packed with action around early childhood education at NIEER, in the states, and across the country. US News wrote here about their 5 biggest stories in early education, including the expansion of NYC UPK (we ad

Newly released findings from Vanderbilt’s rigorous study of Tennessee’s state-funded pre-K program are a needed tonic for overly optimistic views. No study stands alone, but in the context of the larger literature the Tennessee study is a clear warning

(Part II of II. For Part I click here.) Governance change has been a catalyst for broader system development in the states that have chosen to focus on this subsystem (Dichter, 2015; Gomez, 2014), though much more empirical work needs to occur in order

Similar to birds migrating north every year, a wealth of information on early education flies annually into the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), as specialists from state education agencies provide data for the Annual State of P

Steven Hicks serves as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Early Learning at the U.S. Department of Education. Mr. Hicks first began in the Department as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow, having taught preschool through third grade in Los Angeles, Calif

By Jacqueline Jones, PhD, President/CEO, The Foundation for Child Development The past 10 years have seen unprecedented federal, state and local attention to the education and healthy development of young children. Government resources have been target

  Author Susan R. Andersen is an early childhood advisor, formally with the Iowa Department of Education. She has served on the Board of Directors of NAEYC, NAECS-SDE, Council for Professional Recognition and as a National Head Start Fellow. She has ta

By Eleanor J. Shirley, MA, CSW, Nebraska Department of Education, Office of Early Childhood. In October of 2013, Eleanor was appointed Director of the Nebraska Early Childhood Quality Rating and Improvement System, Step Up to Quality, legislated by the

As part of an ongoing series of interviews with leaders in early childhood education, CEELO spoke with Jenna Conway, Assistant Superintendent, Early Childhood Education, Louisiana Department of Education, about their process of implementing major chang

This year at the CEELO Roundtable in New Orleans, Steve Barnett talked about the findings reported in The State of Preschool 2014. He noted that we might be considered to be “on the sunny side of the street,” at the moment: quality is up in some states

I recall sitting at my desk in 2002 as the Early Childhood Programs Coordinator at the Vermont Department of Education, when I first received a survey from a relatively new organization called the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)

Certain practices evoke strong reactions among early educators. Kindergarten “red-shirting (Katz, 2000),” academic “hothousing” (Hills, 1987), and developmentally inappropriate practice raise ire, yet pale in comparison to the issue of retaining childr

April 20, 2015 Kyle Snow, Ph.D, Director, Center for Applied Research, National Association for the Education of Young Children, discusses Common Core State Standards and Developmentally Appropriate Practice. The numerous, and diverse, entries in this

The first responses addressing concerns about CCSS in early childhood education are from Kathleen A. Paciga, Columbia College Chicago;  Jessica L. Hoffman, Winton Woods City School District; and William H. Teale, University of Illinois at Chicago. Conc

The first responses addressing concerns about CCSS in early childhood education are from Kathleen A. Paciga, Columbia College Chicago;  Jessica L. Hoffman, Winton Woods City School District; and William H. Teale, University of Illinois at Chicago. Lite