Principal Alison Harris is blunt in describing what she confronted on her arrival to Ranson IB Middle School in 2011. "I was placed in what many people would call an impossible situation," she says. During her initial visit to the school in 2009-10, she watched as students changed classes--while teachers pressed against the lockers to…

This study examines the role of condom use knowledge and attitudes, and parent-teen communication about sex and relationship quality on reports of condom use self-efficacy among rural, African American youth. Participants were 465 North Carolinian youth (10-14 years). Results indicated that greater condom use self-efficacy was predicted by greater…

The start of kindergarten signifies the beginning of elementary school and everything that may come with it: a new building, new teachers, new expectations, and a different routine and culture. These new students transition into kindergarten from different settings, bringing with them a variety of assets and experiences. From a holistic…

A number of studies have identified childcare environments as significant resources for children's development, learning through play, and contact with nature. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how, from a child's perspective, specific outdoor physical environments in preschools stimulate children's cognitive play. Emphasizing on the…

Quality Rating Systems (QRS) are currently operating, under development, or being piloted in over 25 states or local areas. As the QRS model becomes integrated into the landscape of child care and education service delivery, policy, and the decisions parents make about child care across the United States, there is an increasing need for…

Great Expectation and New Beginnings is a prenatal family support program run by the Family, Infant, and Preschool Program (FIPP) in North Carolina. FIPP has developed an evidence-based integrated framework of early childhood intervention and family support that includes three primary components: providing intervention in everyday family…

Four foundations for young children's development appear to underlie children's competence and predict success in school from pre-kindergarten through third grade--self-regulation, representation, memory, and attachment. If teachers united what they know about child development with quality educational practices, what would school be like for…

The field of early care and education is continually seeking to determine factors that contribute to the overall quality of the education for young children. Individual characteristics of teachers, including education level, have been associated with classroom quality. Program demographics, including turnover rate for teachers, also have had…

"The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (PL 107-110) established the Reading First Program (Title I, Part B, Subpart 1), a major federal initiative designed to help ensure that all children can read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Reading First (RF) builds upon research indicating that effective reading instruction on…

Response to intervention (RTI), the controversial three-tiered, triangular instructional model is getting stretched in new directions by educators who favor holistic, proactive support strategies over formal remediation. A senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Virginia Buysse…

In the current study characteristics of the teacher and classroom that influence teacher responsiveness to the course or consultancy are explored. If classroom quality or characteristics of teachers, such as anxiety levels or efficacy in teaching prior to intervention participation are predictive of responsiveness, then future programs will be…

Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides funding to states to provide services for children from birth to three years of age with developmental delays and disabilities. States have flexibility--and therefore variation--in determining the criteria for eligibility. A study published in the Journal of Policy and…

A randomized, controlled study was conducted to assess the effects of the Nuestros Ninos professional development program on classroom practices and child outcomes related to language development and early literacy skills in both English and Spanish. Fifty-five teachers and 193 Latino dual language learners (DLLs) enrolled in the North Carolina…

A significant body of research exists on the development of early literacy skills and their relationship to the development of literacy as a whole. Phonological awareness, orthographic processing, rapid automatized naming, phonological memory, and receptive vocabulary have all been shown to be predictive of early reading outcome measures. What is…

The "Experimental Evaluation of the Tools of the Mind Pre-K Curriculum" study was designed to compare the effectiveness of the "Tools of the Mind" ("Tools") curriculum to the curricula the school system is currently using in enhancing children's self-regulation skills and their academic preparation for kindergarten.…