In 2021, California launched the Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) program (AB 130), requiring public schools with kindergarten to provide free, high-quality, inclusive pre-kindergarten to all four-year-olds regardless of birth date. Starting in 2022, it increased the original age-eligibility for Transitional Kindergarten (TK)--students turning five…

California's 2020 Master Plan for Early Learning and Care gives the state's families choice among programs and providers--private or public, subsidized or unsubsidized (if eligible), offered in schools, child care centers, and family child care homes. This landscape changed significantly with the introduction and subsequent expansion of Universal…

Although research provides ample evidence of teaching methods that facilitate students' learning of specific word meanings, the potential of instruction to impact students' general vocabulary knowledge has remained an unanswered question. This article reports on a three-year formative experiment that developed, implemented, and tested a long-term,…

In 2019, Policy Studies Associates conducted an evaluation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Literacy Enrichment Afterschool Program (LEAP), focused on identifying program strategies to support early literacy development. The recommendations that emerged from this evaluation for the Free Library can also inform the efforts of other public…