NIEER Newsletter

Hot Topics Head Start Improvement Act Federal legislation introduced this week would “replace the existing Head Start program with block grants to states and Indian tribes for prekindergarten (pre-K) education,” according to the official Congressional

Hot Topics State of Mind A new report finds widespread support for expanding public financing of early childhood programs in… Nebraska. Surprised? The Buffet Early Childhood Institute/Gallup Survey revealed that two-thirds of residents in this Midwes

Hot Topics Educare: New Research on Impacts As local, state, and national policy discussions are conducted regarding public investments in child care, it is important that quality be front and center. Educare provides one of the strongest examples of q

Hot Topics Little Town in the Big Leagues The Hechinger Report this week explored why six states—Idaho, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and Montana—have bucked the trend of investing in preschool and spend no state funds for early education.

Hot Topics Kids Today A new study by Daphna Bassok and Scott Latham published in Educational Researcher finds that students who entered kindergarten in 2010 had stronger math and literacy skills than those who entered in 1998. Increases in academic ski

Hot Topics Equal Pay for Equal Work In Massachusetts, at least 23,000 eligible children in low-income families are on waiting lists for preschool due to a lack of teachers. “It’s a serious crisis,” Amy O’Leary, director of the Boston-based Strategies f

Hot Topics To help children, help families A recently published series of briefs, La Familia: Latino Families Strong and Stable, Despite Limited Resources, explores Latino family life through extensive examination and analyses of data since 2010, findi

Hot Topics New Research Summaries Inform Policy But Offer No Easy Answers Diverse opinions over how much teacher qualifications and class size influence the quality of early childhood education have stymied policymakers’ efforts to improve learning and

Hot Topics Weighing In on Wages Our recent State(s) of Head Start report revealed not only that Head Start teachers and assistants are abysmally paid on average, but that the salary gap between Head Start teachers and public school teachers differs gre

Hot Topics Down to Seeds and STEM The newly released comprehensive report, STEM Starts Early: Grounding science, technology, engineering, and math education in early childhood, provides educators and advocates a new reason to mobilize. Debunking the no

Hot Topics (Factual) News You Can Use The National Institute for Early Education Research conducts academic research to inform policy supporting high-quality, early education for all young children. NIEER provides independent, research-based analysis a

Hot Topics Where NOT to Cut Spending As the new administration begins outlining plans to reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over the next 10 years, a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education under

Hot Topics Everyday People In an exit interview with National Public Radio, Department of Education Secretary John B. King Jr. this week described DOE as “a civil rights agency with a responsibility to protect the civil rights of students and to ensure

Hot Topics Democracy in Action   2017 brings a new president, new Congress, new legislative sessions and budgets—all providing both opportunities and challenges for policies supporting high-quality early learning for all children. ASCD, formerly known

Hot Topics Plus ça change.. Yesterday’s Hot Topics continue to be on the policy agenda. Take a look at how they got started and stay with NIEER Weekly as we follow developments in 2017. January: EdCentral proposed six ideas for what candidates should b

Hot Topics All Over the Map Early education research shared this week shows how location and other factors influence opportunity, especially for low-income families and children. Both reports also illustrate the challenges researchers face when evaluat

Hot Topics New Research on Head Start Across States, Territories Coming Next Week Our new research report is the first to describe and analyze in detail Head Start enrollment, funding, observable classroom quality and duration, staff qualifications and

Hot Topics If the kids are united, they will never be divided In the aftermath of the election that many found divisive, it has never been more important to understand that policies addressing the changes and challenges in today’s world need to avoid “

Hot Topics A Fresh Set of Eyes on Hispanic ECE Three new reports from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families suggest the gap in ECE participation rates between low-income Hispanic children and their peers appears to be closing.

Hot Topics Voters Turn Thumbs Down–and Up–on Early Education While both presidential candidates campaigned on better supports for parents and their young children, early childhood education was more directly on the ballot at state and local levels, w