This Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) annual performance report for the year 2014 describes North Carolina's accomplishments, lessons learned, challenges, and strategies North Carolina will implement to address those challenges. North Carolina's Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge grant is an investment in high-quality…

This study used quantitative measures to explore child abuse reporting trends for early career school counselors and to examine factors influencing their decisions to report suspected child abuse. Thematic coding was used to analyze recommendations for additional training needs regarding child abuse reporting and for the challenges school…

This briefing paper explores Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) policies and practices that state early intervention (Part C) programs may consider implementing to meet the social-emotional and mental health needs of infants and toddlers in the context of relationships with their parents and other caregivers.

The exclusion of caregivers and other stakeholders from conversations about child care policy design exacerbates inequities in the sector. By design, women, people of color, parents, people without wealth or high incomes, and child care providers are severely underrepresented in positions of power, including the government positions that influence…

Parent-mediated intervention can enhance parents' competence in supporting parent-child social interactions. Research and current policy have highlighted the importance of building family capacity in supporting parents to help children with autism develop social communication abilities. Parents who experienced parent-mediated interventions have…

State early childhood administrators are planning to strategically invest the federal appropriations in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) to address disruptions in children's care and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State leaders must consider how this one-time funding can be used effectively while understanding the context around…

In most states kindergarten entry assessments (KEA) are employed primarily to inform parents and teachers. KEAs can serve as a key indicator of child development at formal school entry to inform education, but also could serve as a baseline for assessing progress in the early grades. However, their usefulness for this purpose is limited because…

The Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP) was developed in response to a lack of validated instruments designed specifically to measure the quality of inclusive practices, and it is based on research evidence on the effectiveness of specialized instructional strategies for meeting the individual needs of children in inclusive settings (Odom, 2004;…

How parents support social learning at the preverbal level for toddlers with autism is rarely reported, limiting the field's understanding of factors that may influence early development of social competency. As a central challenge in autism that is resistant to intervention, preverbal social initiating is an important indicator of social…

While home visiting services are an important component of the early childhood (EC) landscape, few states include home visiting data in their early childhood integrated data systems (ECIDS). An ECIDS links together data from different early care and education programs to generate data used to support program and policy decisions. One reason for…

Teacher-child relationships have been linked to children's classroom engagement and to academic achievement. However, researchers have paid minimal attention to individual child factors that predict the development of these relationships. In the current study, we examined executive function (EF) prior to school entry as a predictor of…

The components included in this conceptual framework describe the types of supports and resources provided by the Early Educator Support, Licensure, and Professional Development Office (EESLPD) to guide North Carolina (NC) Birth through Kindergarten (B-K) Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) who work in public and nonpublic school settings and have…

Familism values promote the positive adaptation of Latinx youth, but few studies have examined potential indirect effects associated with these positive effects. In emerging immigrant communities, where fewer resources are available to youth and families to maintain cultural values and ties, familism may be especially important. In this study of…

Although publicly-funded prekindergarten (pre-k) programs have been designed to promote children's school readiness, programs have tended to support early literacy skills to a greater degree than early language skills. Given the importance of both language and literacy skills for children's reading acquisition and academic achievement, the present…

Despite the relative increase in early care and education (ECE) investment over recent decades, access to infant and toddler care continues to be a hurdle for countless families across the nation. While access is a multifaceted issue, main contributors include a lack of available slots and the high cost of providing care to infants and toddlers.…