Research Findings: Assessment and accountability have been given prominent attention in the field of education in recent decades. Educators have been debating what assessment is, how it is practiced in school, and how it is used for accountability purposes. A case study was conducted of the assessment practices in a Hong Kong preschool to…

Research Findings: An effective quality rating system will lead to quality assurance and improvement of early childhood education programs. Many studies have been conducted to examine the validity of quality rating instruments in Western countries, but few have been done in China. The present study investigated the effectiveness of the Beijing…

Research Findings: In the past 20 years school districts have increasingly adopted classroom-based social and emotional development programs. The dissemination of these programs, however, has surpassed our understanding of and ability to assess factors that influence program implementation. The present study responded to this gap by developing a…

Research Findings: This article is a natural follow-up to intent-to-treat findings indicating that the MyTeachingPartner Consultancy, inclusive of online video resources and Web-mediated consultation, improved the quality of pre-K teachers' interactions with children. This study takes a close look at implementation fidelity within the effective…

Research Findings: The study evaluated the "safe kindergarten" program designed to promote kindergartners' communication and social skills based on principles of Imago marital and family counseling (H. Hendrix, 1990). Participants were 92 kindergartners from 4 kindergartens (intervention = 46; comparison = 46). Teachers in intervention…

Research Findings: Early Head Start home-based programs provide services through weekly home visits to families with children up to age 3, but families vary in how long they remain enrolled. In this study of 564 families in home-based Early Head Start programs, "dropping out" was predicted by specific variations in home visits and certain family…

This exploratory study examined the impacts of New York's Universal Pre-kindergarten (UPK) program as perceived by directors at child care centers and preschools not receiving state funds. Although only partially implemented, UPK's mixed-delivery system grants monies to a substantial number of qualifying community-based early care and education…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a preschool emergent literacy enrichment curriculum. Participants were 126 Head Start children, their teachers, and their parents. Matched centers were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: experimental literacy, experimental math, or control. Teachers in both experimental groups implemented…

Discusses the effectiveness of a group self-management procedure (involving opportunity to perform a behavior, performance self-assessment, matching with the teacher, and reinforcement contingent on a student-teacher match) for increasing the on-task behavior of four disruptive preschool boys. Presents results regarding child engagement behavior,…

Investigated the effects of participation in the 5th Dimension--a mixed activity system based on Vygotsky's cultural-historical activity theory and implemented as a university-community collaboration--on third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders' learning to comprehend written directions. Found that children with extensive participation performed better…

Examines the degree to which states' political climates, resources, policies, and interagency services predict progress in the implementation of Part H of Public Law 99-457, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). (Author/BB)

Used post hoc matching design to compare children who participated in the Home Instructional Program for Preschool Youngsters throughout Arkansas with children from same classrooms with either no preschool experiences or with other preschool experiences in Grades 3 and 6. Found that HIPPY showed a modest positive impact on school suspensions,…

We examined the effectiveness of the PATHS curriculum in a magnet elementary school serving a distressed urban area. Aspects of social-emotional competence were examined for second graders who had, and had not, received the PATHS intervention. The intervention groups differed, with the control group having lower social-emotional competence than…