Last month, Conor Williams and I wrote a series of posts on how young learners, PreK-3rd grade, could be better supported in a newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind.
An ESEA reauthorization is eight years overdue. No Child Left Behind waivers are the temporary law of the land, and Congress is attempting to find common ground in a mostly partisan process.
Over the past several years, interest in pre-K and other early learning programs has been growing. More and more states, both red and blue, have developed pre-K programs and some states and local communities are thinking about how to better connect and coordinate children’s pre-K experiences and learning with what happens in kindergarten and the early grades.
We believe ESEA could be a vehicle for achieving these goals. In a new brief (that brings these posts together), “Moving Young Learners Forward: How to Fix No Child Left Behind,” I discuss ideas proposed for incorporating a more robust focus on PreK-3rd grades in a reauthorized law and Conor Williams shares his ideas for how to improve the federal government’s education policies for dual language learners.
[Cross-posted at Ed Central]
