Month: July 2011

While the goal of high-quality preschool programs is to ensure all young learners are ready to succeed in school, these programs are linked with a number of impressive long-term outcomes. Children who attend high-quality preschool are more likely to graduate from high school and go on to higher education than are their peers who did not attend. They are also less likely to require special education services or repeat a grade in school, both of which contribute to savings for taxpayers.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

When we analyzed the data for The State of Preschool 2010, a disturbing trend that we noticed the previous year continued to appear: during these difficult economic times, disparities among states in providing high-quality preschool education are growing larger. Consequently, children’s access to and quality of experiences in preschool vary drastically depending on where they reside.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

As NIEER noted last week, officials from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services released draft guidelines for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) program and will be accepting comments on those guidelines until 5pm EDT today.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.

Last week, in conference calls with stakeholders and reporters, officials from the Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) provided further details on the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) program. The Obama administration announced $500 million for the competitive grants in late May, and will accept feedback on the draft guidelines until July 11 before finalizing the regulations.

Please visit National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) for the complete blog post.