Early Care and Education & Pre-K Education

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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.

Bright Spots: Strengthening the Education-to-Career Continuum in North Carolina

This project will support a cohort of place-based, cross-sector educational collaboratives ("myFutureNC network") across the state to develop model programs that significantly increase the number of students successfully pursuing post-secondary education and entering the workforce. This pilot aligns with the state's goal of having 2 million individuals between the ages of 25 and 44 with a high-quality credential or postsecondary degree by 2030.

Dataset Preparation and Sharing of Educare Implementation Study Data for the Mindfulness and Mastery Evaluation

Data collected by Educare schools and provided to FPG for the Educare Implementation Study are also pertinent to the Mindfulness & Mastery Grant evaluation conducted by the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Under data sharing/confidentiality agreements with each of the sites, these data will be shared across projects.

Early Care and Education Equity Analysis

The purpose of this project is to engage with grassroots and grasstops early education partners to identify and conduct a landscape analysis of active North Carolina policies and regulations focused on young children and their families (birth to age 5) with a focus on policies that show effect or promise in mitigating (or exacerbate) racial disparities in early care and education.

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.

ECERS-3: Identifying Gaps and Equity Challenges

The goal of this series of studies is to develop recommendations that could be used to inform the next revisions of the ECERS-3, a global early care and education quality measure for children aged 3-5 that examines quality from the child's perspective.

Educare School-Family Partnership Justice Project

The purpose of this project is to conduct a pilot study examining the impact of Family Engagement Specialists' beliefs and attitudes (e.g., bias) on their engagement with families.

Effects of Implicit Bias on Children's Early Outcomes

The purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between implicit bias, teacher expectations, teacher–child interactions, and child outcomes. There are disparities in child discipline and development that can manifest early for poor and/or minority children and can have lasting consequences.

Equity Research Action Coalition

The Equity Research Action Coalition will co-construct with practitioners and policymakers actionable research to support the optimal development of Black children prenatally through childhood across the African diaspora using a cultural wealth framework. The coalition will focus on developing a science-based action framework to eradicate the impact of racism and poverty and all its consequences on the lives of Black children, families, and communities, and to ensure optimal health, well-being, school readiness and success, and overall excellence.

Equity-Focused Research-Action Coalition and Repository Development

The goal of this project is to support the development of an interdisciplinary, multi-organizational research action coalition to identify anti-racist, culturally-sustaining, and asset-focused factors that ensure that Black children, their families, and communities thrive. Specific to this project is the development of a national repository/clearinghouse that provides up to date information on actionable research, practice, and policy evidence about what matters and works for Black children.

Evaluation of a Pilot of the Pyramid Model in NC Pre-K Classrooms in Private Center-Based Programs

FPG will partner with the North Carolina DCDEE to conduct an evaluation of a pilot implementation of the NC Preschool Pyramid Model (Pyramid Model) in selected private center-based preschool programs where NC Pre-K classrooms are housed. The pilot implementation of the Pyramid Model is an extension of the existing implementation in many NC Pre-K classrooms currently located in public school settings.

Moving Beyond the Average: Building a Comprehensive Module of Classroom Quality That Incorporates Children's Individual Experiences

This study utilizes three large-scale early childhood education datasets (NCEDL, SWEEP and LAExCELS) to explore how children’s engagement, measured by moment-to-moment time sampling, varies within classrooms and explores if variation in levels and quality of child engagement and activity type/setting is associated with children’s outcomes.

National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement

The National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Head Start, in partnership with the Office of Child Care is one of four National Centers that develop evidence-based best practices for Early Head Start and Head Start programs across the country, as part of a comprehensive Office of Head Start Training and Technical Assistance System. The goal of this project is to support family well-being, effective family and community engagement, and children’s school readiness, including transitions to kindergarten.

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.

National Implementation Research Network

The mission of the National Implementation Research Network is to contribute to the best practices and science of implementation, organization change, and system reinvention to improve outcomes across the spectrum of human services.

NIRN - Milton-Union Exempted Village Schools

Milton-Union Exempted Village Schools is seeking support for the use of implementation science practices and tools for their district and school improvement efforts in early literacy. To support development of implementation capacity, the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) will provide virtual and onsite training, coaching, and consultation supports for the district and school leadership and implementation teams.

North Carolina Early Learning Network

The overall goal of this project is to improve services, program management, and child outcomes for preschool children in the Exceptional Children Program in all Local Education Agencies across North Carolina through the development of a statewide system of professional development and support. Activities provide support for local coordinators and staff who serve preschool exceptional children through training, technical assistance, follow up, networking, and opportunities for collaboration.

Research-Policy and Practice Collaboration

The purpose of this project is to provide DCDEE with expertise in research and analysis related to short- and long-term policy questions focused on young children’s education and development.

RISER-RAPID-EC-Educare Learning Network: Black Families Partnership Project

The purpose of this multi-organization partnership is to leverage existing collaborations, expertise, and work to bolster all three partnering organizations’ activities to mitigate the impacts of this double pandemic – COVID-19 and racism – on Black families with children, birth to age 5.

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).

STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education Center (STEMIE)

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

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.

University of Florida Literacy Matrix Evaluation

In collaboration with the Lastinger Center, FPG proposes to evaluate the effects of a literacy matrix (LM) for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. This project will evaluate educator data as measured by metrics collected as part of the Flamingo LMS. In addition, should student data be made available, these data will be examined to determine student growth following educators' completion of the LM.

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

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