How to assess pre-kindergarten outcomes is one of the biggest topics in early education today. It was a key aspect of the recent Race to the Top competition, and that means it likely will remain near the top of the agenda.
A new overview of assessment tools arrived to help people gain a better understanding of what’s happening in assessments of pre-kindergarten classrooms around the country. The Educational Testing Service’s report reviews 54 assessment approaches. Plus, it has an easy-to-read summary chart on page 15.
This report, however, is not a quick read, but it should make a valuable contribution to debates about assessments of school readiness in early learning, which sometime appear to lack high-quality data.
Check out yesterday’s story on the new report over at Early Years.
A New Social Media Campaign for Early Learning: A tool to spread the word about early learning news and research debuted this week. Folks can engage the Strong Foundations #B25 social media campaign on Twitter under the hashtag #B25, or by visiting the campaign’s Facebook page.
I will let the leaders of the campaign explain what it’s all about.
(The #B25 Strong Foundations social media campaign is) an effort to spread research-based messages via Facebook and Twitter in order to increase awareness about the benefits of early childhood policies and investments. The aim of the campaign is to focus on the importance of building strong foundations during early childhood which will not only improve children’s outcomes but reduce societal costs later.
-- “How-to Guide for the #B25 Social Media Campaign.”
We can add #B25 to the other leading Twitter tools for early learning news and research: hashtags #ece and #earlyed.
More Analysis of the President’s Early Ed Budget: Analysts continue to break down how early education did in President Barack Obama’s latest budget proposal. Today, the National Institute for Early Education Research published an excellent summary of proposed funding by agency and details by program, where it’s available.