Research-based policies, practices and programs

Common elements in PK-3 alignment (also called a “three to third” approach) include:

• High quality preschool for three- and four-year-olds
• Attention to the transition between preschool and kindergarten
• Alignment of curriculum from preschool through the third grade
• Cross-training of teachers across PK-3, anchored in developmentally-informed, child-centered learning
• Instructional practices that support individual children’s academic and social-emotional learning
• Active parent and family engagement
• Collection and use of data for quality improvement and accountability¹

North Carolina’s FirstSchool was launched in 2005 to create a seamless experience from preschool through the third grade for children and families, with special attention to the needs of vulnerable children.² FirstSchool is located at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina, and is aligned with the national P-3 Center housed at the University of Washington.³

At least one evaluation of a state’s PK-3 system has shown positive results. A five-year RAND evaluation of Hawaii’s P-3 initiative, conducted over the period 2008 through 2014, revealed third grade reading improvement equal to an additional nine weeks of schooling each year with more students in the participating group achieving reading proficiency than among the comparison group. Key contributors to this success were:

• Development of cooperative, informed relationships among teachers across PK-3
• Newly implemented early learning standards
• Local decision-making on activities
• Establishment of measurable outcomes
• Better policymaker-staff relationships
• Parent support⁴

The National P-3 Center at the University of Washington notes that while PK-3 alignment is being implemented in many states, additional research to document both the implementation process and student outcomes is required.⁵ A core guidance document is available from the national P-3 center:  Framework for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating PreK-3rd Grade Approaches.⁶

Professional development opportunities are typically siloed in the birth-to-five and K-3 systems, with little to no cross-system pollination. North Carolina could identify opportunities to expand a comprehensive professional development system that would:

• Train teachers across birth-through-age-five and K-3 settings
• Support birth-through-eight educators in gaining needed credentials

All opportunities for educators and school leaders would be developed and delivered within a developmentally-appropriate, science-informed, birth-through-third-grade aligned learning framework.

Professional Development for Educators

High-quality professional development improves teachers’ practices. A review of 35 studies over the past 30 years has found that professional development programs that result in gains in student achievement have several features in common, including that they:

• Are focused on the subject area the teacher teaches
• Incorporate active learning
• Support collaboration
• Use models and modeling to demonstrate effective practice
• Provide expert coaching and support
• Offer opportunities for feedback and reflection
• Are sustained in duration, over months or years¹

Better trained professionals create better learning conditions and environments which, then, impact student learning.

A well-designed system would satisfy the following criteria:²

• Credentials help educators advance in their careers and earn more
• Credentials are portable and widely accepted across programs and states
• Credentials are stackable and build upon each other, allowing early childhood educators to move from short-term certificate programs to longer-term degree programs
• Coursework is accessible to staff working either part-time or full-time and across multiple languages, and includes a combination of online and in-person formats, on evenings and weekends and in locations that are easily accessible to workers
• Experiences and supports go beyond coursework to include workshops, technology offerings and continuous technical help through mentoring and coaching
• Credit is given for prior learning
• System includes an ongoing quality assurance process to ensure that the program represents the most current research and standards of best practice³
• System reflects issues of child and family diversity and challenges educators to recognize implicit bias⁴
• Professional development provides science-informed content for educators serving children with special learning needs, including those who are English language learners⁵ that recognizes and builds on their unique assets⁶

Many states have increased degree and credential requirements for early childhood teachers. This is most obvious in publicly-funded pre-K. In 2015, NIEER reported that 33 states required a bachelor’s degree for lead teachers and 21 required at least a CDA for assistant teachers.⁷ Head Start has also slowly increased teacher degree requirements over time. After a rigorous review of the literature, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a recommendation that all lead teachers in all early childhood settings have at least a bachelor’s degree.⁸

Additionally, the IOM reports that increasing degree requirements is not in-and-of itself a shortcut to quality and stability in the workforce. Any changes to credentials must support existing teachers in pursuing the needed education, be accompanied by increased compensation, be made based on a clear timeline and in close collaboration with institutions of higher learning, and be made with the local job market in mind. 

Professional Development for Elementary School Principals and Child Care Center Directors

School leadership is one of the most influential school-related factors related to student achievement, second only to teaching. This impact is greatest in high-need schools.⁹ Children’s transitions between early care and education and elementary school are smoothest when elementary school principals understand child development and value early care and education.¹⁰

The Wallace Foundation cites five core practices of effective school leaders:

• Shaping a vision of academic success for all students
• Creating a climate hospitable to education
• Cultivating leadership in others
• Improving instruction
• Managing people, data and processes to foster school improvement¹¹

Effective school leaders are those who establish a caring and professional community, foster collaboration, ensure safe learning environments, and routinely engage with teachers on data and professional development.¹²

Like teachers, school leaders need effective preparation, evaluation, and ongoing professional supports to be successful instructional leaders. To reduce turnover and better equip school leaders for their personal success and that of their teachers and students, the National Association of Elementary School Principals recommends that state and local education agencies build leadership capacity of future school leaders by defining the roles and qualifications of administration and developing common competencies of effective leadership.¹³

School leaders need regular feedback to improve leadership skills. Evaluation tools that create and assess performance goals tied to domains of effective leadership are critical for measuring and improving leadership capacity. A valid, reliable rating system for measuring effectiveness and quality that takes school and community factors into account would measure growth rather than overall performance for chronically or historically underachieving schools.¹⁴

Students with family and life conditions that place them at risk of lower levels of educational success (including race/ethnicity, poverty and chronic adversity) are disproportionately retained in grade, compared with their white, middle-class peers.¹ Focusing on educational equity will promote educational success for all students.

The Council for Chief State School Officers has identified 10 research- and evidence-informed practices that can guide state educational leaders to focus efforts on educational equity, including:

• Prioritize Equity: Set and communicate an equity vision and measurable targets
• Start from Within: Focus on the state education agency
• Measure What Matters: Create accountability for equity
• Go Local: Engage Local Education Agencies (LEAs) and provide tailored and differentiated support
• Follow the Money: Allocate resources to achieve fiscal equity
• Start Early: Invest in the youngest learners
• Engage More Deeply: Monitor equitable implementation of standards and assessments
• Value People: Focus on teachers and leaders
• Improve Conditions for Learning: Focus on school culture, climate, and social-emotional development
• Empower Student Options: Ensure families have access to high-quality educational options that align to community needs²

The Pyramid Model for Promoting the Social and Emotional Development of Infants and Young Children is a tiered framework of evidence‐based interventions that promote young children’s social-emotional and behavioral development.¹

• Tier I is universal promotion of children’s social-emotional health. Programming for Tier I is based on what is needed to build strong nurturing interpersonal relationships and environments.
• Tier II is targeted prevention of impaired social skill development and lack of emotional regulation. Some children require more systematic and intentional instruction to learn appropriate expression of their emotions, cooperation and problem-solving.² Tier II includes guidance, coaching and support for family members and teachers to improve children’s social and emotional skills.
• Tier III consists of highly targeted interventions. They are intensive and individualized, and designed from Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) practices. PBIS can be implemented across environments and by caregivers. Within the context of the Pyramid Model, PBIS involves the following practices:
• Convening a team, including the family and teacher or other caregivers, to create and implement a child’s intervention plan
• Conducting a functional assessment to identify factors related to the child’s behavior
• Identifying strategies designed to address factors that trigger the child’s behaviors
• Implementing replacement skills as alternatives to the challenging behaviors and strategies to ensure that the challenging behavior is not reinforced³

PBIS in North Carolina. From 2008 through 2011, North Carolina participated in a multi-state initiative to implement the Pyramid Model. Training was provided to practitioners and administrators from Smart Start, Head Start, Early Head Start, Migrant Head Start, Early Interventionists, and Child Care specialists. The work and resources of this team continue to be available online.⁴ Currently, the national Technical Assistance Center for Social Emotional Intervention (TACSEI), funded through the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, offers technical assistance to states on the Pyramid Model to improve the early care and education workforce and support young child social-emotional development.⁵

As reported by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, schools implementing PBIS experienced:

• More instructional time
• Improved staff and student attendance
• Increased student proficiency in math and reading
• Increased parent participation and partnership
• Improved community involvement and support
• Decreased staff turnover⁶

North Carolina Healthy Social Behaviors in Child Care Center Settings initiative. This project, based on the Pyramid Model, addresses behavioral issues with a goal of reducing the expulsion rate of NC child care centers. It offers services to child care center teachers and administrators designed to identify, prevent and modify challenging behaviors.⁷ Healthy Social Behavior Specialists serve all 100 counties in North Carolina. A Project Manager, employed by Child Care Resources Inc., provides guidance and oversight of the project. More than 4,000 child care centers have been served since the project began in 2005.

The Healthy Social Behaviors project is being expanded to provide more Pyramid Model training to cross-sector early childhood professionals, help create course content to embed social-emotional development theory and practice in college coursework, and expand training for program administrators and child care center owners on North Carolina’s new policy on suspensions and expulsions in licensed child care settings.

To better understand the cost of high quality care, North Carolina could annually project the additional costs for North Carolina early care and education programs to achieve high quality, as measured by National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) quality standards, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation, Head Start standards, and the North Carolina Star Rated License. 

Based on findings from the February 2017 legislative study, Study Costs and Effectiveness Associated with NC Pre-K Slots,¹ the state could develop a multi-year investment strategy to:

• Increase the state’s contribution to the total cost of Pre-K services
• Raise the salaries of Pre-K staff to approach parity with kindergarten teachers with the same education and experience
• Support parents to be able to afford and access high quality early care and education

Access to child care enables parents to work, provide economic security for their families, and contribute to the national economy.² Nationwide, 11 to 12 million children under age five are in early care and education settings for an average of 36 hours a week, although national research suggests that only about 10 percent of this care is of high quality.³

The fees charged for child care can absorb 30 percent or more of the budget of a lower-income working family, versus just seven percent of the household budgets of higher-income families.⁴ Many parents (three in four women surveyed recently, and one in two men) report having made employment decisions in response to challenges of both quality and cost of child care, including:

• Changing employment
• Shifting schedules
• Taking on second jobs
• Leaving the workforce⁵

And yet, parents in their middle twenties earning a median annual salary of about $30,000 who opt out of the workforce in their children’s first five years face long-term accumulated losses in income, wage growth, benefits and retirement assets of just under $500,000 for women and nearly $600,000 for men.⁶ 

North Carolina ranks 11^th in the nation in the cost to families of early care and education relative to median income.⁷ Child care subsidies—funded through the federal Child Care Development Block Grant (and state dollars) and designed to help support low-income families with these costs—reach only about 15 percent of the parents who are eligible to receive them.⁸

The cost of having one child in center-based care in North Carolina in 2015 was just over $9,000 per year, absorbing about 20 percent of the median income of a North Carolina family. If a family has two young children in care, those fees would double to about 40 percent of the median income.⁹

For single-parent families earning the minimum wage, center-based child care fees can absorb nearly two-thirds of earnings.¹⁰

Access has traditionally been measured by availability and affordability of care.¹¹ Research suggests access to high quality care and programs is highly unequal across income groups nationwide.¹² The federal Office of Program Research and Evaluation (OPRE) has identified a set of access barriers that help explain overall enrollment patterns, including under-enrollment and variability by geography. States with integrated data systems that link and include data from multiple sources can better create a more comprehensive picture of access by region.¹³

 Access barriers include:

• Geographic proximity of early care and education programs
• Limited parent and caregiver knowledge and access to information about the availability of early care and education
• Reliable transportation and the alignment of center hours with parent work hours
• Limited availability of early care and education options for families of children with physical, emotional, or developmental disabilities
• Language barriers and fear of deportation for immigrant families, regardless of immigration status¹⁴

Parents, providers and policymakers all face barriers to enrolling young children in high quality early education programs. The most common challenges are related to cost and financing. The chart below outlines some of those challenges.

North Carolina could Identify barriers to full enrollment for preschoolers in high quality early education and establish a five-year investment plan for North Carolina that ensures access at ages three and four for all eligible children born in 2017, with prioritization of resources for all children born into families at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.

With participation from the education policy and research sectors, North Carolina could recommend one or more tools to more adequately assess the quality of K-3 classrooms, including environmental, social-emotional and academic factors.

The Education Commission of the States K-3^rd grade quality compliance review and the federal Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation propose guidance on measuring quality in high quality elementary education classrooms.¹ The National Association of Elementary School Principals² has also presented a set of standards for measuring quality. The two sets of standards overlap. The basic elements are summarized below.

Other school quality rating resources include:

The Environmental Rating Scales (ERS) developed through the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina are valid and reliable measures of quality care environments and can be used to measure the environmental quality of formal, informal, and school settings.⁵

The CLASS assessment is a valid and reliable measure of teacher-child interactions in Pre-K through third grade classrooms through in-class observations.⁶ The corresponding observational tools, coaching, and professional development track progress over time and improve high-quality teaching practices.

Federal guidance, most recently through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction guidance both stress the importance of family and parent engagement in children’s education and their knowledge of school quality. These resources could be used to create new, consistent family engagement policies throughout the birth-through-third-grade system.

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) renames “parental involvement,” a required element of Title I education, as “parent and family engagement” and requires that schools receiving Title I federal funds conduct outreach to all parents and family members of enrolled students. Each school district receiving Title I funds must develop, with parents and family members, a family engagement policy and incorporate that policy into the school district’s strategic plan. Objectives for family engagement must be specified and measured, and at least one percent of Title I funds must be reserved to support districts in implementing parent and family engagement activities. Funded activities must include at least one of the following:

• Professional development for district personnel in family engagement strategies
• Home-based programs for students and families
• Information sharing of best practices in family engagement
• Collaboration with community organizations with a record of successful family engagement
• Other¹

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has published online a Toolkit for Parent, Family and Community Involvement.² The Toolkit includes three components:

• The Family and Community Engagement in Schools (FACES) Assessment,
• The Family and Community Engagement in Schools Action Plan and
• The School-Family-Community Resource Guide.

In lieu of or in addition to minimum wage adjustments, create an industry-specific, targeted tax credit to address early care and education wage inequities.

The current North Carolina minimum wage is tied to the federal minimum wage, set at $7.25 in 2009.¹ In response to documented challenges of achieving self-sufficiency among families earning the minimum wage, several states and municipalities have begun to raise the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.²

In the child care sector, upward changes in the minimum wage, while good for employees and their families, can result in challenges for both providers and families qualifying for child care subsidies. Child care providers are unable to absorb the additional labor costs without raising the fees charged. For families, even slight improvements in income may result in losing eligibility for child care subsidies, despite the reality that the added income is insufficient to cover child care fees.³

There are wage gaps between the early care and education workforce and elementary school teachers, as well as disparities among wages paid by different early childhood programs and centers. An industry-specific tax credit for early care and education workers could address these gaps without creating financial challenges for either the provider sector or families who need the service.⁴

Across the nation, stakeholders from very different sectors have come together to build an information base about informal care in their jurisdictions and to test strategies to support this “system” of care that serves so many vulnerable young children with little or no regulation.

Examples of these partnerships include: 

• Promoting First Relationships¹ through the University of Washington
• First Steps Family, Friend, and Neighbor Program² with the Grand Rapids, Michigan school system
• Tütü and Me Play and Learn Groups³ in Hawaii, with the Partners in Development Foundation and the Association of Hawaiian Evangelical Churches and the United Church of Christ, the Kamehameha School District and the Hawaii State Department of Social Services
• The Oregon Family, Friend, and Neighbor Training and Toolkit Project⁴ through SEIU Local 503, the Oregon Commission on Children and the Oregon Department of Education’s Child and Adult Food Care Program

A North Carolina informal care research and policy partnership could include, as an early part of its agenda, the following action steps:⁵

• Administrative Data Analysis. Using administrative data and surveys, determine the prevalence and characteristics of informal care in North Carolina, especially child care by grandparents and other extended family members.
• Accountability and Outcomes. Examine the tools and processes for gathering data on child outcomes in family, friend and neighbor care. Determine whether the current NC Quality Rating and Improvement System can be modified to include voluntary registration by informal caregivers.
• Federal Policy and Program Impacts. Examine how informal care in North Carolina is likely to be impacted by changes at the federal level (including as the result of the reauthorized Child Care Development Block Grant and possible new funding sources). Explore how evidence-informed programs now operational in other states could be funded and implemented in North Carolina to support caregivers providing informal care for young children.
• A Research Agenda. Gather and analyze results from other jurisdictions that have implemented various support strategies with extended family informal care. Study the impact on child outcomes resulting from the expansion of kin care.

The National Women’s Law Center has published a Catalog of Strategies to Support Family, Friend and Neighbor Care, which includes detailed examples of efforts from other states.⁶  Current efforts to improve the quality of care offered within informal care settings include the following strategies:

• Making evidence-based home visiting services available to family, friend and neighbor caregivers
• Linking family, friend and neighbor caregivers with licensed child care centers in a hub and spokes model
• Involving family, friend and neighbor caregivers in play and learn groups sponsored by licensed family child care providers
• Increasing training opportunities for family, friend and neighbor caregivers in child development, early literacy and available service and support resources⁷

Reading intervention research results are frequently organized around five components of literacy – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Because there are many evidence-informed interventions within the reading domain, a group of comparative websites are provided below.

• Reading Rockets Invention Programs Comparative Charting.¹
  This site provides information including grade appropriateness, instructional format and assessment resources for groups of reading interventions that have been reviewed by such rating entities as What Works Clearinghouse, the Florida Center for Reading Research, and the Best Evidence Encyclopedia.
• National Center on Intensive Intervention: Elementary School Reading.²
  This site provides information on the results of studies of reading intervention programs (and practices) including level of evidence, type of study and participants, program design, fidelity of implementation, and measures of outcomes. In addition to research studies specific to an intervention, the site indicates whether the program has been reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse.
• The IRIS Center.³ This site, located at Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University, identifies evidence-based instructional and intervention practices (and programs) for use in pre-service preparation and professional development in PreK-12 programs. IRIS also disseminates and offers trainings on those resources.

In addition, North Carolina’s own Read Charlotte has closely reviewed the evidence on individual programs that promote early reading skills.⁴

• National Center on Intensive Intervention.¹ This site provides information on the results of studies of math intervention programs (and practices) including level of evidence, type of study and participants, program design, fidelity of implementation, and measures of outcome. In addition to research studies specific to an intervention, the site indicates whether the program has been reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse.
• University of Missouri Evidence-Informed Intervention Network: Mathematics.² This site provides math interventions focused on specific content areas linked with the type of problem being demonstrated by the student (i.e., acquisition, proficiency or generalization). Each intervention rated includes a summary brief for use at the school level.
• Johns Hopkins University Best Evidence Encyclopedia.³ This site includes top-rated elementary school instructional practices for math along with websites for each.
• Hanover Research.⁴ This best practices site provides a review of the math instruction literature and identifies the following as evidence-supported programs:
  • Fraction Face‐Off!
  • Hot Math Tutoring
  • Number Worlds
  • I CAN Learn Pre‐Algebra and Algebra
  • DreamBox Learning
  • enVisionMATH
  • Do The Math
• The IRIS Center.⁵ This site, located at Vanderbilt University and Claremont Graduate University, identifies evidence-based instructional and intervention practices (and programs) for use in pre-service preparation and professional development in PreK-12 programs. IRIS also disseminates and offers trainings on those resources.