Many children of color and children from low-income families enter kindergarten without the academic skills they need to succeed; these disparities in skills early on likely contribute to later achievement gaps observed during elementary school, for children who enter kindergarten already behind are unlikely to catch up. Using empirical evidence, this report suggests that implementing a high-quality universal, publicly funded, pre-k program would significantly enhance children’s development, reduce achievement gaps at kindergarten entry, and even have long-term benefits for children’s long-term school trajectories.

Transgender older adults face many challenges, such as the inability to access healthcare, disproportionate experiences of violence, high rates of HIV/AIDS, employment and housing discrimination, and other physical and mental health related issues. While there are policies and programs in place to help older populations cope with these issues, and help support their successful aging, there are significant social, economic, and service barriers preventing transgender elders from receiving the care that they need. This report includes a detailed literature review on the issues transgender elders face, profiles of the experiences of transgender elders around the country, and more than 60 concrete recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to help improve the lives of transgender older adults.

The City of Seattle is in the final year of a four-year demonstration phase for its Seattle Preschool Program. The four-year demonstration phase of SPP has three purposes. The first is to demonstrate that the approved structure is viable. The second is to develop a community infrastructure to improve the quality of preschool programs. The third is to create norms and a process to support continuous quality improvement (CQI) through evaluation. Results from evaluation during the demonstration phase will inform improvements in these efforts. Further improvements include attention to language to and literacy, integration of content across domains in children’s activities, and supports for sustained, reflective thinking as well as personal care routines that contribute to health. This report can additionally prove useful for cities looking for ways to assess ongoing early education reform or program implementation.

Supporting pre-K programs with a diverse set of funding streams provides more stability than other methods of funding. This report lists varying funding strategies and examples in different cities across the country, providing models to follow for local officials seeking to expand education programs and increase funding for early education in their city.

This toolkit was developed to help cities and local school districts assess the quality of their public pre-K programs. It translates evidence and best practices into a set of items to appraise the design and implementation of the pre-K program. The information gathered through this guide can be useful to advocates, city leaders, and district or local program administrators in building a common understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and priorities of a city’s pre-K program. Local leaders should use this guide as part of a collaborative conversation across community stakeholders.

This guide is intended to provide information and guidance for advocates and other stakeholders as they seek to increase investments in high quality preschool in their states. The benefits of attending a high-quality preschool program are well known, unfortunately access to these programs differs greatly across the United States. To help support policy makers in understanding their states’ needs, advocates and state leaders have distinct but complementary roles to play. When these stakeholders work together to develop policy priorities they are often more successful at achieving wins in preschool quality and expansion. Strategies that have been most successful include identifying and gathering state-specific data to create compelling stories; using research to target and identify the “ask;” and then communicate the “ask.” While states have designed their own early care and education systems, this work can also be done at a local level to increase access to high-quality preschool and expand services to meet family needs.

Black children experience unequal treatment beginning at an early age, which contributes to inequalities in learning and development. By the time they enter kindergarten, Black children are on average nearly nine months behind in math and almost seven months behind in reading compared to their White non-Hispanic peers. Math and reading abilities at kindergarten entry are powerful predictors of later school success, and children who enter kindergarten behind are unlikely to catch up. High quality early childhood education (ECE) programs can help all children enter kindergarten with the foundational academic and social-emotional skills they need to succeed. However, access to high quality ECE in the U.S. is low and unequal.