About four million U.S. children started kindergarten this fall. We know that learning begins long before children start school. What else do we know about these youngsters? Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center on issues pertaining to children and youth, examined a range of available statistics to provide a Read more
The U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced yesterday that $133 million from the 2012 Race to the Top fund will be available for continued investments in state-level, comprehensive early education reform. The Departments intend to fund down the Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 slate Read more
The Early Education Initiative (EEI), part of the New America Foundation, has compiled a wealth of data in an attempt to identify front-runners and possible contenders for the Department of Education’s Race to the Top—Early Learning Challenge grant competition. The data analyzed for all 50 states plus the District of Read more
The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant applications became available August 23, causing a flurry of activity across the country. The purpose of RTT-ELC is to increase the quality of early childhood education in order to help close the achievement gap for low-income and disadvantaged children. Read more
The nine finalist states that did not win grants in the first two rounds of Race to the Top will be eligible to compete for $200 million in additional funds this year. Applications will be available this fall. The states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Read more