Below are resources for early childhood professionals and those serving the early childhood community.

Educational Outcomes  The Educational Researcher recently published an article highlighting the impact of Early Childhood Education (ECE) on longitudinal outcomes in education. Noteworthy findings include a significant reduction in special education placements, increases in high school graduation rates and positive impacts on grade retention.

Progress and Challenges in Developing Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (TQRIS) in the Round 1 The federal Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge grant program promoted the development of rating systems to document the quality of early childhood education programs. This evaluation report describes progress made by states that received the Round 1 grants in developing and implementing Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (TQRIS). TQRIS uses a set of progressively higher program standards to evaluate the quality of an early learning and development program and to support program improvement. The report is based on interviews with TQRIS administrators in the nine Round 1 states in 2015. The authors found tremendous variation across states in TQRIS structure, features, and processes; each state’s TQRIS is uniquely designed and implemented. This key finding cuts across all three state objectives that were the focus of this report. States differ in terms of the timing of implementation, the policies used to promote participation, the amount and type of data available about programs and the children enrolled in them, the methods used to classify programs by type, the rating structure, the number of TQRIS components that contribute to the final rating, the way components are measured and defined, and how components are combined to arrive at the final rating. (National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance)

Pre-to-3: What Is an Early-Childhood Education Professional?  And what does that question mean for K-12 administrators? (Education Dive)

Early Test Scores Do Not Future Predict Academic Growth; School Quality Matters More  Some schools are doing more with less: advancing poor students who start with an academic disadvantage at a faster clip than schools serving wealthier students. (THE Journal)

Oklahoma – Does Preschool Pay Off? Tulsa Says Yes  In 2001, not long after Oklahoma had adopted one of the nation’s first universal pre-K programs, researchers from Georgetown University began tracking kids who came out of the program in Tulsa, documenting their academic progress over time. In a new report published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, researchers were able to show that Tulsa’s pre-K program has significant, positive effects on students’ outcomes and well-being through middle school. (NPR)