Vol. II, Issue 17—September 1-15, 2013
Bringing you the latest in state and federal early childhood development policy and research
Questions, comments, or suggestions for improvement? Contact Ashanti Huey or Anna Torsney-Weir.
Contents
Federal Updates .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Policy Trends and Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 2
New Research .............................................................................................................................................. 3
Upcoming Events ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Other News, Announcements and Resources ........................................................................................... 4
News from the States .................................................................................................................................. 5
Louisiana ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Maine ........................................................................................................................................................ 5
Michigan ................................................................................................................................................... 5
New Mexico .............................................................................................................................................. 5
Washington ............................................................................................................................................... 6
Washington, DC........................................................................................................................................ 6
Wisconsin.................................................................................................................................................. 6
Highlight: Enhanced Assessment Grants Are Awarded
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than $15.1 million in Enhanced Assessment Grants
(EAGs) to three state education agencies—North Carolina, Maryland and Texas—to develop or enhance
their Kindergarten Entry Assessments. North Carolina and Maryland each applied as leaders of a
consortium of states.
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North Carolina’s award amounts to more than $6.1 million. Other states in the consortium include
Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington DC and
South Carolina. The grant will be used to enhance a K-3 assessment system, which will help
improve student outcomes and promote early learning.
Maryland received a $4.9 million grant and is part of a 7-state consortium that includes
Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio. The grant will be used to
enhance a multistate, state-of-the-art assessment system composed of a KEA and aligned
formative assessments.
Texas’s award of $3.9 million will fund a proposal to implement the Texas Kindergarten Entry
Assessment System (TX-KEA) that is intended to enhance the quality and variety of assessment
instruments and systems used by the state’s school districts, which serve more than 5 million
students—including up to 400,000 incoming kindergarten students.
The EAGs can be used to improve the quality, validity, and reliability of state academic assessments;
measure student academic achievement using multiple measures; chart student progress over time; and
evaluate student academic achievement through the development of comprehensive academic assessment
instruments. Read more here and here.
Federal Updates
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The Affordable Care Act: The Administration for Children & Families (ACF) recently launched a
new webpage to help early learning providers navigate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace.
Open enrollment in the ACA Marketplace starts October 1, 2013 with coverage starting as soon as
January 1, 2014. However, families and small businesses—including early learning programs—can
visit HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov today to find the information they need to prepare for
open enrollment.
Policy Trends and Analysis
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Early Childhood Return On Investment: The organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids recently
released a report entitled “I’m The Guy You Pay Later,” which states that the implementation of a
proposed state-federal early childhood education partnership could reduce the number of people who
are incarcerated nationwide by 200,000 every year and lead to $75 billion in cost savings over 10
years. Read more here.
Socio-Emotional Development: In its education issue, The New York Times published an article
entitled “Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?” which considers the educational value of
developing the emotional intelligence of children in their earliest years. Read more here.
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Early Childhood Workforce Development: An article entitled “Rights, Raises, and Respect for
Early Childhood Teachers: A Four-Decade Perspective” offers reflections from the authors on the
work of achieving rights, raises, and respect for early educators. The authors Dr. Marcy Whitebook
and Rory Darrah began their careers as teachers and have continued to work in the field of education
for more than 40 years. Read more here.
New Research
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Child Care: A new report from the United States Department of Agriculture that focused on the costs
of raising a child found that childcare and education contribute significantly to the price of childhood.
Read more here.
Childhood Obesity: A new website from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation compiles the latest
research on food and beverage marketing to children, showcasing reports that examine marketing
practices, expenditures, and companies’ self-regulation efforts. The page also highlights a
commentary from Bill Dietz—former director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and
Obesity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—that analyzes past efforts to limit
unhealthy food and beverage marketing to young people and provides several recommendations for
how to limit such marketing in the future. Read more here.
Workforce Development: A University of Virginia report entitled “Teachers' Emotional Consistency
Matters for Preschool Children” concludes that consistency in providing emotional support in early
childhood classrooms is related to better academic and social outcomes for children. Consistency was
a better predictor of children's outcomes than several levels of emotional support, and emotional
consistent classrooms may provide an atmosphere that is more conducive to learning because children
know more of what to expect, can feel more secure, and can attend to learning tasks with fewer
disruptions. Read more here.
Upcoming Events
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September 22-23: Ready Nation is hosting the “2013 National Business Leader Summit for Early
Childhood Investment” in Atlanta, Georgia. Read more here.
September 24: The National Women’s Law Center and the Department of Education have joined
together to offer a free online training webinar entitled "Supporting Pregnant & Parenting
Students: Training on New Guidance from the Dept. of Education" at 4:00p.m. EDT on Tuesday,
September 24. Read more here.
September 25: The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO)
Educational Fund is hosting a webinar later this month entitled “Living in the Shadows: Its Effect
on Child Educational Development.” Register here.
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Other News, Announcements and Resources
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Child Care: The New York Times recently published an opinion piece in which the author compares
the different approaches France and the U.S. take in handling the issue of child care. Read more here
and here.
Early Childhood Policy:
o Old Dominion University’s education college has launched an early childhood policy center.
The school states that the center is the only one of its kind in Virginia, and intends to focus on
education, health, family support services and special populations. Read more here.
o MomsRising, along with other organizations, played a life-size Early Learning Chutes and
Ladders game and delivering stories about the impact of high-quality early learning to the
U.S. Senate on September 18th. Learn more about the event here.
Early Childhood Policy Tools: The National Council of La Raza has created the Latino Kids Data
Explorer, a web-based tool that helps advocates, grant writers, researchers and other communitybased professionals easily download and creatively present up-to-date information on the status of
Latino children in their state and nationally. Read more here.
Early Learning Literacy Initiatives: Arlington County Public Library system has launched a
program entitled “1,000 Books Before Kindergarten,” which looks to encourage preschoolers to
strengthen language skills and build their vocabularies. Read more here.
Early Learning and Music: The 2013 issue of Imagine, an online early childhood music therapy
magazine, has just been released. The issue contains 130 pages of ideas, inspirations, and evidencebased approaches to supporting learning and development through music. Read more here.
Early Learning Publications: The Washington Post recently compiled a list of publications that
cover a host of early learning topics, such as kindergarten readiness and sensory learning for children.
Read more here.
Early Learning and Technology:
o The New York Times recently published an article examining the role of math game
applications in early learning, and also chronicled how Sesame Street is exploring an online
component to the well-known television series. Read more here and here.
o The Atlantic recently examined the use of iPads in preschool classrooms and the reaction of
one parent to the new trend. Read more here.
Education and Income Inequality:
o The Hechinger Report recently published an article detailing how a growing income gap in
the U.S. is contributing to an educational achievement gap. Read more here.
o The New York Times recently published an article by Nobel laureate James Heckman entitled
“Lifelines for Poor Children.” Heckman argues that increasing educational opportunities for
low income populations would reduce economic disparity. Read more here.
Food Security: Children's HealthWatch has recently released two research briefs exploring the
importance of access to an adequate, healthy diet during early childhood. “Too Hungry to Learn”
describes how food insecurity can damage children’s health and brain development, having long-term
harmful effects, while “Feeding Our Human Capital” shows how food insecurity in early childhood
makes it harder to gain the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the workforce. Read more
here.
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News from the States
LOUISIANA
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The Department of Education (LDOE) announced plans to include additional school districts to the
Early Childhood Network Pilot program in the months to come, unifying child care, Head Start, and
pre-kindergarten programs in partnerships across the state. The announcement came as the LDOE, the
Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Health and Hospitals released
the Early Childhood Roadmap to 2015, an updated vision for unifying the state's fragmented system
of early childhood education. The roadmap details a path from 13 original network pilots to a fullscale statewide implementation of Act 3 of the 2012 legislative session, which creates a unified
system of childhood care across the state. Currently, 13 pilots in 15 parishes are operating early
childhood networks. Each pilot network brings together child care centers, Head Start providers, and
pre-kindergartens to promote high standards, to train teachers, to measure student learning, and to
enroll parents. This early implementation will serve as the guidepost for the addition of new pilots in
the coming months and ultimately, the completed statewide expansion in the fall of 2015. Read more
here.
MAINE
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Maine Governor LePage issued an Order Regarding Protection of Local Education Control and
Student Privacy Rights, which prohibits Maine from sharing student-specific data for any reason, and
states that education decisions will continue to be made by school boards at the local level. The order
also bars the Department of Education from adopting any education standards mandated by the
federal government and says the department “shall not apply for any federal grant that requires, as a
condition of application, the adoption of any federally developed standards, curricula or instructional
approaches.” Read more here and here.
MICHIGAN
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Dr. Marijata Daniel-Echols, the former Director of Research for HighScope Research Foundation and
current Vice President of Starfish Family Services, has been named as Chief Executive Officer of the
Michigan Early Childhood Investment Corporation. Read more here.
NEW MEXICO
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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan launched his fourth annual back-to-school bus tour in Santa
Fe at the Children’s Project Early Learning Center where he spoke with teachers and students during
classroom visits and then held a town hall on the importance of quality early learning programs. He
also held a roundtable discussion in Albuquerque on the recent turnaround efforts of the city’s
Emerson Elementary before closing out the day at by participating in a town hall meeting at Midway
Elementary School in Polvadera. Read more here and here.
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WASHINGTON
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Representatives Ruth Kagi and Ross Hunter, who chairs the House Full Appropriations Committee,
are planning to convene a small working group of legislators to examine how Washington can better
integrate its existing early learning funding streams and programs to support an improved, more
coherent system of program services that best achieve positive and measurable child developmental
outcomes and school readiness gains. To inform those meetings, Representatives Ruth Kagi and Ross
Hunter invited members of the early childhood community to share information and state approaches
to Integrating Early Learning Funding and Programs with the House Full Appropriations Committee.
Brandy Lawrence, Senior Advisor at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, Christine Johnson-Staub, Senior
Policy Analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Steffanie Clothier, Senior Policy
Director at the Alliance for Early Success, Dr. Bette Hyde, Director of the Washington Department of
Early Learning and David Stillman, Assistant Secretary for the Washington Department of Social and
Health Services participated in the workgroup session. View the proceedings here.
WASHINGTON, DC
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Jesús Aguirre, current director of the District’s parks department, will become the city’s new state
superintendent of education on October 1, 2013. Aguirre will replace Emily Durso, led the Office of
the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) in an interim capacity after Hosanna Mahaley Jones
left the position vacant to take care of her husband. Read more here.
Some D.C. charter school leaders are asking the city’s public charter school board to reconsider the
proposed “Early Childhood Performance Management Framework,” which would extend a system
proposal to rank preschools based in significant part on their performance on varying math and
reading tests. Read more here.
WISCONSIN
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The Journal Sentinel recently published an article focusing on early literacy emphasis within public
schools as the state implements a new statewide assessment aimed at determining the pre-literacy
skills of young children. Read more here.
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The Ounce of Prevention Fund gives children in poverty the best chance for success in school and in
life by advocating for and providing the highest quality care and education from birth to age 5.
The Ounce national policy team partners with and supports early childhood leaders in states as they
advance a comprehensive agenda for at-risk children and families. We do this by providing individualized
strategy and policy consultation and resources; facilitating peer-to-peer learning and networking across
states; and supporting Educare Schools and the Educare Learning Network in the development of their
policy and advocacy work.
The National Policy Digest is a bi-weekly newsletter that shares up-to-date and noteworthy
developments in state and federal early childhood news, policy and funding changes, research, policy
trends and analyses, upcoming events, etc. culled from diverse sources in the field. To subscribe, please
contact Ashanti Huey, policy associate (ahuey@ounceofprevention.org), or Anna Torsney-Weir,
policy associate (atorsneyweir@ounceofprevention.org).
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