For young Spanish-speaking children entering U. S. schools, it is imperative that educators foster growth in the home language and in the language of instruction to the fullest extent possible. Monitoring language development over time is crucial for promoting language development because it allows educators to individualize student instruction.…

Pre-kindergarten (pre-k) is thought to have both direct and indirect effects on children's outcomes in early elementary school. Direct pre-k effects consistently include moderate to large gains in academic skills and sometimes include increases in problem behaviors that affect acquisition of skills in school. Indirect pre-k effects assume that…

Research Findings: The present study examines the unique and joint effects of individual teacher-child relationships and overall quality of teacher-childinteractions on the motivation of 2,745 kindergarten children (51% girls; ages 5--6) from an ethnically and linguistically diverse county. Teachers reported the closeness and conflict in their…

This study examined the links between classroom skill compositions and preschoolers' early learning and development in the nationally representative Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey 2014 (FACES, n = 1,711 children/207 classrooms) and public pre-K programs in a county in Virginia (n = 1,467 children/123 classrooms). Results from a…

Learning environments can support the development of foundational knowledge and promote children's attitudes toward learning and school. This study explores the relation between school enjoyment and general knowledge from preschool (2016-2017) to kindergarten (2017-2018) in 1359 children (M[subscript age] = 55, 61 months, female = 50%; 58.5%…

The high attrition and turnover rates of qualified special education teachers (SETs) is a significant concern exacerbated by COVID-19. Unfortunately, there are limited studies available on research-based interventions to decrease burnout. The purpose of this study was to describe our processes and results for adaptations and modifications of…

Research Findings: The current study examined whether collective small-group behavioral engagement and teacher behavior management during small-group instruction predicted print knowledge, phonological awareness, letter writing, and expressive vocabulary gains for preschoolers at-risk for literacy difficulties. This study, part of a larger…

Supporting early writing skills in pre-kindergarten lays an important foundation for later writing achievement as well as reading achievement. Specifically, encouraging children to write affords teachers the opportunity to provide scaffolds to improve spelling development. Teachers, however, tend to provide more support than necessary to guide…

Substantial research has documented that Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K) programs have important benefits for the school readiness of young children, especially those from low-income backgrounds. Recent studies in this arena have taken advantage of the Regression Discontinuity (RD) design to evaluate the impacts of Pre-K, due to ethical and pragmatic…

Parents play a central role in supporting the early learning that positions young children for success when they enter formal schooling. For this reason, efforts to engage families in meaningful collaboration is a long-standing goal of high-quality early childhood education (ECE). Family-school engagement can take multiple forms; in this review we…

Purpose: This tutorial is designed for speech-language pathologists who supervise speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) and/or paraeducators. SLP-As and paraeducators often support young children with disabilities within early childhood settings, but do not always have access to professional development to learn and/or enhance their skill…

We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate reading-writing relations. Beyond the overall relation, we systematically investigated moderation of the relation as a function of linguistic grain size (word reading and spelling versus reading comprehension and written composition), measurement of reading comprehension (e.g., multiple choice,…

Preschool children considered at risk for future reading difficulties experience unique and complex combinations of risk factors. In this exploratory study, we used latent profile analysis (LPA) to investigate the underlying classifications of children identified as at-risk for reading difficulties (N = 281) along selected cognitive,…

In this study, we asked whether Montessori schools, which tend to have high student engagement, are associated with lower average rates of chronic absenteeism and/or smaller racial disparities therein relative to non-Montessori schools. We use multilevel modeling to answer this question, following an approach proposed in Author et al., (in press)…

Public school enrollment dramatically decreased during the pandemic, but the patterns of decline and student movement across schools are not yet well understood. Using statewide student-level data from Virginia, we find pre-K-12 enrollment dropped by 4% between fall 2019 and the first post-pandemic fall of 2020. The changes were the largest in…