New Tools for Improving Attendance in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten
Chronic absenteeism is particularly high for students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten compared with those in elementary and middle school. For young children to succeed and develop a strong foundation for learning, they must attend school regularly. Check out new resources to help identify and reduce chronic absenteeism from REL Mid-Atlantic.
Centering Equity: Authentic Family Engagement Is Bi-Directional: Engaging in Meaningful Family Partnerships
For young children, families are the chief facilitators of their earliest learning experiences, their connections to the array of resources within their communities, and their access to all services and supports. For these reasons, it is not surprising that strong, productive family partnerships in early learning have clear ties to long-term cognitive, academic, and social-emotional benefits for children. This is particularly true for children and families of color from low-income communities, for whom a key strength lies in supportive family systems, deep relational bonds, and meaningful family traditions.
Administrative data is an important data source for answering policy questions in early care and education
A new resource from the Child Care Administrative Data Analysis Center (CCADAC) highlights administrative data sources that can answer these and other policy questions. For the last few years, Child Trends has led the CCADAC—funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation—and its efforts to increase the use of administrative data to address policy-relevant questions in ECE. CCADAC defines administrative data as the data about services, providers, families, and children that are regularly collected as part of operating a program. They are sometimes the best—or only—data that can answer policy-relevant ECE questions like those noted above. These data are also relatively low-cost because they have already been collected, allowing researchers to find answers to questions without collecting any new data.
