Early Care and Education & Pre-K Education

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Transforming Implementation Practice in Early Childhood through the Development of a Professional Learning Program to support Practitioners' Implementation Capabilities

The purpose of this project is to support the development of the early childhood practitioners’ ability to care for children and get them ready for kindergarten by improving their capacity for implementation of interventions in primary care settings.

African-Centered Racial Equity Justice Project: Embracing Culturally Responsive Practices to Improve Early Learning and Child Outcomes

This project will develop an African-centered, culturally responsive practice guide with specific strategies, exemplars, and materials with connected professional learning modules to guide effective implementation. The ultimate and long-term goal is to increase Black children’s social, cognitive, and emotional skills (e.g., racial identity, engagement, learning motivation, regulation), leading to strong academic and social competence and school success.

Black Infant and Toddler Equity Project

Through collaboration with national, state and local coalitions and organizations, the Equity Research Action Coalition will identify, track and align strategies to strengthen the focus on protecting, promoting, and preserving the well being, health, wealth, access and experiences of Black families and their families through anti-racist and cultural wealth policy making framework and communication.

Dataset Preparation Support for Innovative Approaches to Peer Effects in Early Care and Education Research: A New Paradigm for Understanding Peer Effects During Infancy And Toddlerhood and Their Implications for Policy, Research and Practice

The purpose of the proposed project is to investigate mechanisms through which peer effects in infant and toddler settings operate using innovative computational and statistical methods. The study will involve secondary analyses of the Educare Learning Network National Evaluation longitudinal data to address questions about peer effects.

Early Childhood TA Center

The Early Childhood TA Center (ECTA) is funded to support state Early Intervention and Preschool Special Education programs in developing high-quality early intervention and preschool special education service systems, increasing local implementation of evidence-based practices, and enhancing outcomes for young children with disabilities and their families.

Early Education in Rural North Carolina

The extent to which and how early education reduces achievement gaps related to race and income have not been studied extensively in rural areas in the United States, despite clear evidence that these achievement gaps are even larger in the rural United States and high-quality early education is one of the most effective means to promote educational success for all children.

Georgia's Pre-K: Evaluation study of quality rated language and literacy endorsement

In support of efforts related to Georgia’s Quality Rated Language and Literacy Endorsement (QRLLE), we will collect information on the degree to which the Endorsement helps programs to improve their language and literacy practices, and information to advise next steps in the development and rollout of the Endorsement. This study will involve data collection, analyses, and reporting on the QRLLE related to practices observed during the upcoming school year (2023-24). The study will take place during the 2023-2024 school year and will be divided into three phases: (1) August 2023-September 2023: Preparation of data collection measures, IRB application, data collector hiring, observation refresher training, recruitment and scheduling classroom observations (2) October 2023-December 2023: classroom observations and data cleaning, and (3) January 2023-June 30, 2024: prepare report to summarize quality data and describe QRLLE programs and alignment with the LITTLE Program, convene a national expert panel on language and literacy endorsements, and summarize information gathered about QRLLE programs, endorsements nationally, and recommendations for next steps for the QRLLE.

Itticare Instructional Design for Duke Child and Family Studies

In a collaborative project with ITTI Care at Duke Center for Child & Family Policy, Wendy Morgan will work to integrate trauma-informed care practices within infant-toddler childcare settings by evaluating existing training materials and suggesting revisions as necessary and designing comprehensive instructional strategy and training curricula for both coach-the-coach and direct-to-provider professional development efforts.

Meck Pre-K Program Evaluation

This project intends to conduct an independent, unbiased evaluation of the MECK Pre-K program that will be longitudinal in scope, tracking cohorts of MECK Pre-K students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools through 5th grade. Given the longitudinal nature of the evaluation and the need to track multiple cohorts, it is expected that this project will span 10 years. The focus of that evaluation will cover three key areas: program characteristics; program implementation and quality; and student outcomes.

National Evaluation Partner for the Educare Learning Network Implementation Study

This project consists of planning and implementing an evaluation of The Educare Learning Network, a consortium of programs nationwide providing high quality learning environments for at-risk children from birth to 5 years. The evaluation will document the features of Educare and how implementation of the model contributes to program quality and links to child and family outcomes.

NC Pre-K Data Management and Administrative Report

The following specific activities will be conducted for the purpose of producing the legislatively mandated annual report from Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) regarding the North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten Program: Extraction of data from NC Pre-K administrative databases provided to FPG by NC DHHD/DCDEE. This will occur on a monthly basis. Cleaning of monthly data extracts in collaboration with DCDEE staff. Compilation of the cleaned monthly data extractions into a longitudinal database that preserves the time-specific status of the NC Pre-K system. Analysis of extracted data according to guidance of the legislation requiring annual reporting on the NC Pre-K system. Preparation of the legislatively mandated material in draft report format. Analyses and additions to draft report as directed by DCDEE (within the resources provided by this contract). Ongoing communication with DCDEE regarding report content, progress of work, and requested revisions and edits to report draft resulting in production of a final report.

Partnership to Build Teacher Capacity to Promote Language Learning in Infants and Toddlers with and at Risk for Disabilities

This project brings together six Educare Early Learning Network schools and collaborating local evaluation partners (LEPs), UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the University of Kansas in partnership to demonstrate the efficacy of implementing PC TALK, an early language intervention, to support the language learning of infants and young children with and at risk for disabilities. Designed to build the capacity of early educators and parents to promote communication opportunities and the development of infants and young children, the Promoting Communication Strategies will be embedded into randomly selected Educare classrooms across participating schools.

Promoting Seasonal and Migrant Head Start Children's Development: Program Practices That Matter

This study aims to identify unobserved heterogeneity and capture complex patterns of program and classroom characteristics to inform targeted program quality improvement and teacher professional development, and identify program quality features and instructional practices that are beneficial for the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start children’s language and literacy development.

Research-Policy and Practice Collaboration

This project will continue a previously established formal research-policy and practice collaboration between the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS) Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (FPG). FPG will develop structures to initiate working toward the project goals and to develop plans for expanding this work to educate/co-create learning between academia and policy practice in service of career advancement/efficacy.

Scaling Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI) to Serve Students Impacted by COVID-19: High-Dosage Digital Implementation of an Effective Reading Intervention

This project will train school staff who support students using pull-out reading instruction and intervention (e.g., “educators” such as reading specialists, paraeducators, instructional facilitators, tutors) to use Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention) with two adaptations: 1) a digital version of the traditionally “paper and pencil” intervention (“TRI app”) in a 2) high dosage model whereby educators provide daily reading support to multiple K-3 students not yet reading on grade level.

School Characteristics, Classroom Processes, and PK-1 Learning and Development

The main objective of this project is to provide a more nuanced understanding of associations between school characteristics, classroom processes, and students’ language, academic, executive function, and social skills between prekindergarten and grade 1 (PK-1).

STEMIE 2.0

This project's purpose is to expand the knowledge on the practices and supports necessary to improve access and participation within STEM learning opportunities for young children with disabilities and intersecting identities.

Supporting Change and Reform in Preservice Teaching in North Carolina (SCRIPT-NC)

Early childhood educators (ECE) work with young children with disabilities as well as children from diverse backgrounds to support learning and development. It is critical for ECEs to be adequately prepared to serve children who are linguistically, culturally, and ability-diverse. The purpose of this project is to work with early childhood community college programs in North Carolina to enhance and redesign courses to better prepare ECEs to work with children with disabilities and children from diverse backgrounds.

The Power of Language: Does the Quality of Preschool Teacher Language Translate Into Children's Executive Functions?

This project will use secondary data analysis of two longitudinal datasets to test if childcare provider language prospectively predicts child executive functions (EFs) directly or indirectly through child language. We will also examine if different ways of measuring preschool teacher language quality are differentially predictive of child language and subsequent EFs.

Western North Carolina Start with Equity ECE

The Dogwood Health Trust (DHT) Education Strategic Priorities seek to ensure that every child in Western North Carolina has access to early education with nurturing, well-prepared caregivers to prepare them for school and life success. The four goals to meet this outcome include launching landscape studies, improving the early care and education ecosystem, improving K-12 education, and supporting higher education career readiness. The Equity Research Action Coalition at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute will engage in three related strands of work to support DHT’s Education Strategic Priorities. The first strand is engagement in the convening of DHT’s RFP Education Strategy launch, and the second strand is thought and data leadership in an equity-centered academy, followed by an equity-centered report.

Young Children and the Civil Rights Community

The goal of this project is to identify opportunities and barriers to community based organizations, namely civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, The Leadership Conference, the National Urban League, NALEO Education Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), National Congress of American Indian (NCAI) in prioritizing early childhood development including access to high quality and affordable child care.

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

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