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EARLY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY GRADES

Carnegie Corporation of New York, New York, NY. Program and policy initiatives to meet the needs of young children. Eleven grants, two years.

In the Starting Points State and Community Partnerships for Young Children, model programs being developed by several sites include health care and home-visiting programs for pregnant women, infants, and toddlers; comprehensive family centers for children from birth to age five; training programs for child care workers; and partnerships with business, university, and religious leaders. Many sites have developed new public education strategies, in conjunction with a 1997 Corporation-supported national early childhood campaign. In addition to providing technical assistance to the grantees, the Corporation is funding research projects to analyze the impact of the sites' work on program and policy issues and to assess the sites' integration of federal welfare and other policy reforms.

The Starting Points State and Community Partnerships for Young Children, a program of competitive grants to states and cities, was established in 1996 to plan and implement the reforms called for in the Corporation's task force report, Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children. Site projects are developing and strengthening policies and programs to promote responsible parenthood, ensure high-quality child care choices, provide children with good health and protection, and mobilize citizens to support young children and families. The Corporation has contracted with the Finance Project to coordinate technical assistance to the grantees, assist in strategic planning, hold annual conferences, and manage the initiative's day-to-day operations and communications.

The National Center for Children in Poverty, based at Columbia University's School of Public Health, promotes strategies to reduce the number of children under the age of six living in poverty in the United States and to lessen the effects of poverty on this age group. The 1998 edition of Map and Track, the center's national inventory of policies and programs for young children, examines state efforts to link welfare reforms with children's initiatives. Jointly with the Harvard Family Research Project at Harvard University, staff members are documenting progress achieved under the Corporation's Starting Points State and Community Partnerships grants network, which assists states and cities in strengthening policies and practices on behalf of young children. The Ford Foundation also provides core support.

The Child Care and Education Media Strategies Group was created in 1994 to strengthen the content, coordination, and dissemination of information about early childhood care and development programs. The group is a joint project of the Child Care Action Campaign, a coalition of corporate, union, government, community, and media leaders, and the Communications Consortium Media Center, a public interest organization in Washington, D.C. Along with briefing the media, project staff members sponsor policy forums for community planners, academics, and business leaders. The group, also funded by the A. L. Mailman Foundation for Child Development, plans to become a self-sustaining organization.

Yale University, New Haven, CT. Research and publication on the Head Start program for disadvantaged preschool children. Two years, $325,000. Researchers at Yale University's Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy are studying whether children's participation in Head Start can offset early behavioral problems that are associated with subsequent delinquency. The focus is on three groups of low-income elementary school children: those who participated in Head Start, those who participated in other early care programs, and those who did not participate in a formal program. With further support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the center is also assessing partnerships between Head Start programs and child care providers and completing an analysis of Head Start's effect on long-term development.

Edward Zigler, Sterling Professor of Psychology, Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

The Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative is a program of grants to fifteen states that promotes reforms in the education of young adolescents. These reforms were called for in the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development's report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century (1989). The grantees receive assistance in preparing materials to support the implementation of reforms and in disseminating lessons from the project. A small technical assistance staff, based at the University of Maryland, is providing support to the network of schools and working with Corporation staff members on writing a sequel to Turning Points that will update its suggestions for improving middle grade schools.

The University of Rhode Island's National Center on Public Education and Social Policy is documenting progress made by the schools participating in the Corporation's Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative. Through annual surveys, researchers are determining the extent to which successful practices are being used. In addition, they are eliciting administrators' and teachers' views of the types of professional development needed to help students succeed. The data are being correlated with student achievement scores on standardized tests in all fifteen states that have received grants from the Corporation in order to gauge the overall effects of the initiative in promoting learning.

In 1992 the Puerto Rico Community Foundation created a commission of educators and island policymakers to document problems in the education of Puerto Rico's young adolescents and to propose interventions. With financial and technical assistance from the Corporation's Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative, the foundation is helping twelve demonstration schools in disadvantaged communities to adopt the commission's recommendations. Foundation staff members are documenting initial improvements in classroom practices, including greater academic achievement and lower dropout rates. The foundation is also promoting middle grade school reform islandwide by creating partnerships with two universities and the Puerto Rico Department of Education.

Like the other fourteen recipients of grants under the Corporation's Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative, the Massachusetts Department of Education has supported networks of "systemic change schoolsÓ serving large numbers of low-income students. With this grant to the Massachusetts project, awarded to the Center for Collaborative Education, Metro Boston, efforts are focusing exclusively on Boston. The center is creating a network of schools engaged in reform efforts that within two years is expected to include all twenty-four of the city's middle grade schools. Additional funders are the Boston Public Schools, the Walter H. Annenberg Foundation, and the Boston Plan for Excellence, a local education fund.

In 1991 the Arkansas state legislature passed a comprehensive reform bill whose provisions closely parallel the objectives of the Corporation's Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative. The Arkansas Department of Education, a recipient of grants under the Corporation's initiative since 1990, created a distinct unit within the state education agency dedicated to improving middle grade education. Participants have helped create new standards for curricula, school accreditation, and teacher certification. They are now developing the Arkansas Network of Middle Level Schools, which will provide professional development opportunities for interested schools, including intensive training in math and science instruction and the use of technology in teaching.

Since 1986 the Interfaith Education Fund, formerly the Texas Interfaith Education Fund, has helped break the pattern of diminishing parental involvement in children's education during the elementary and middle school years. With the assistance of local churches and community groups, the fund informs parents about the principles of education reform and encourages them to work with school staff members to help their children succeed. Supported by other foundations, the fund now works with more than 200 schools in Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Texas. In addition to strengthening its efforts in twenty middle schools, the fund is training parents and community members to become leaders of school reform efforts.

CityYouth, developed by the Los Angeles-based Constitutional Rights Foundation, is a program that integrates civic participation into the middle grade curriculum. Math, science, language arts, and social studies teachers are provided with training and materials to help students analyze and address community problems in an interdisciplinary manner. Some 20,000 students in more than 100 schools in California and twelve other states are now participating. CityYouth is continuing to expand nationally and is moving toward becoming a self-sustaining organization. Funding also comes from the city of Los Angeles, the California Department of Education, the Corporation for National Service, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence draws on public health, criminal justice, education, law, and social services to conduct research on violence, particularly adolescent violence. The center issues a newsletter on program evaluation, publishes articles on the results of its studies, and offers technical assistance to violence prevention practitioners. Members of the center's staff and advisory board are preparing reports on ten drug, delinquency, and related programs that meet high scientific standards for effectiveness in preventing violence. They are also expanding dissemination efforts to federal and state legislators. Other funders include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Knight, William T. Grant, and Annie E. Casey foundations.

The National Network of Violence Prevention Practitioners, based at the Education Development Center, is a 200-member organization founded to improve the implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of violence prevention and treatment programs across the country. In addition to providing technical assistance to practitioners, the network conducts regional training workshops. Its two publications, Monthly Alert and the quarterly Connections Alert, between them report research findings and case studies and generally keep readers abreast of developments in the field. Members of the network are recruited through direct-mail campaigns, member referrals, a World Wide Web site, and advertisements in selected publications.

Drug Strategies is an organization that develops, monitors, and evaluates national strategies against substance abuse. Its annual publication, Keeping Score: What We Are Getting for Our Federal Drug Control Dollars, is used by the media, government officials, civic groups, and antidrug coalitions. Making the Grade: A Guide to School Drug Prevention Programs (1996) provides an evaluative resource for school administrators, local officials, community leaders, and parents. Staff members also hold forums for journalists and the media and are currently examining drug abuse and drug policies in seven states. This final grant supports a revision of Making the Grade and the production of the 1999 edition of Keeping Score, which will focus on alcohol abuse.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is a nonpartisan private sector effort created in 1996 to reduce the rate of U.S. school-age pregnancy, still the highest of any industrialized nation. The campaign is guided by several principles: support for diverse values; collaboration with the myriad pregnancy prevention, health, advocacy, and youth-serving organizations that also address teen pregnancy; and a commitment to providing accurate, current information. Four task forces are enlisting help from the media, stimulating state and local coalitions, linking research results about effective programs with these efforts, and fostering dialogues on religion, culture, and values. The campaign is guided by bipartisan advisory groups from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Two additional advisory groups — one of governors, one of corporate leaders — are being established. This final grant supports the addition of several items to the campaign's Web site: fact sheets on teen pregnancy; a list of resources to help parents communicate better with their children about the consequences of early sexual activity; and a page for teens that will ask them to design pregnancy prevention advertising campaigns. Planned publications include a tool kit for states and communities; a report of a focus group of parents and other adults involved with teenagers; and papers on the role of parents and families in reducing teen pregnancy and on the strategies used by other industrialized nations to prevent adolescent pregnancy. The campaign is holding workshops and roundtables that will evaluate abstinence-only programs and strategies to encourage sexually active teens to use contraceptives and to change high-risk behaviors. It is also continuing to provide information to broadcast and print media outlets. Additional support comes from individuals and other foundations.

A model education enhancement program is being offered by Boys & Girls Clubs of America in five public housing sites across the country. It provides young adolescents with structured after-school opportunities to do homework, engage in group discussions, participate in sports, and attend cultural events. The five sites are being compared to five sites with traditional after-school programs and five without programs. Preliminary results show that children who participated in the clubs' education enhancement program had higher grade point averages and fewer school absences than those not in the program. After documenting the factors accounting for these results, the organization will publish the findings and expand the program among its affiliates.

The Growing Up Hispanic Youth Policy Initiative of the National Coalition of Hispanic Health and Human Services Organizations (cossmho) has created an infrastructure to analyze national data on Hispanic adolescents' health status and access to health care. Under the initiative, six Hispanic organizations have been designated regional policy centers, which make research-based recommendations to state and local governments. cossmho is holding a conference in June 1999 for Hispanic leaders about the centers' research results, expanding its World Wide Web site, and mobilizing Hispanic high school students to press for health policy changes. This grant supports three of the policy centers; the others are funded by the Ford Foundation.

Stanford University's Center on Adolescence was established in 1996 with Corporation funding. Its mission is to synthesize and stimulate multidisciplinary research and best practices among families, schools, community organizations, and other pivotal institutions to ensure optimal learning and development among young adolescents. The center has created an interdisciplinary predoctoral and postdoctoral training program on adolescence and an undergraduate certificate program on children and society. Center faculty and students are engaged in numerous research projects, including studies of academic learning among language-minority students from various backgrounds, an analysis of the ways that young people are influenced by their peers and the mass media, and an examination of adolescents who have dropped out of school, engaged in violence, and become involved in the criminal justice system. One cross-national project is comparing political engagement among Bulgarian youth during the transition from communism to democracy with political engagement among young people in Western Europe and the United States. The center will hold two conferences — one in 1999 and one in 2000 — at which researchers and experts in school reform from several countries will examine contemporary issues in education and development. These include the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity of school populations, the health risks of adolescent behavior, and the need for young people to acquire greater technological expertise for future economic success. Reports of the meetings will be distributed to policymakers and practitioners. The center also receives in-kind and financial support from the university.

Mediascope is a media policy organization legally incorporated in California as the Corporation for Advancement of Social Issues in the Media. Its forums, studies, script consultations, and information clearinghouse treat the violent content of media as a public health issue. Beyond encouraging responsible portrayals of conflict in movies, television, video games, popular music, and on the Internet, Mediascope fosters dialogues about the potentially harmful effects of gratuitous violence on young people. Building Blocks: A Resource Guide for Creating Children's Educational Television was issued in 1998. Additional funders include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the California Wellness Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Foundation for Child Development.

Four educational organizations created the New York Networks for School Renewal in 1995 to rebuild the city's public school system around small, autonomous schools that afford students a personalized learning environment. All twenty-six networks consist of three to eight new or restructured schools, which obtain assistance with educational reforms, stipends for professional development, and opportunities to share information. The schools and the networks, which together serve more than 50,000 students, have become models for reform throughout New York. New Visions for Public Schools, one of the sponsoring agencies, is the fiscal agent.

Improving the coverage of education issues in local newspapers is the goal of the Education Writers Association's regional seminars for journalists. The seminars, attended by reporters from newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, cover issues in education, from preschool through higher education, and related topics that affect children, young people, and their families. Topics for the 1998 series included school finance, bilingual education, reading, special education, affirmative action, teacher quality, testing, and math standards. At least three seminars will focus on children's critical life stages: early childhood, the elementary grades, and adolescence. The series also receives support from other foundations.

The Education Trust, formerly a program of the American Association for Higher Education's Office of School/College Collaboration, works to strengthen academic achievement among poor students and students of color. In addition to providing technical support to twenty-four school districts, staff members are producing a variety of educational resource materials, including guidebooks to standards setting and professional development, to assist low-income schools in implementing high standards for student learning. They are also helping communities build local councils to plan and implement improvements. The trust's annual conference, to take place in November 1999, will encourage K–12 and higher education leaders to work together to promote school reforms. Other supporters include the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The naacp Legal Defense and Educational Fund promotes equal educational opportunity for African Americans. In addition to engaging in litigation and public education on elementary and secondary school desegregation, the fund addresses discrimination in educational tracking and placement and works to improve the quality of educational services and programs available to minority students. It also defends affirmative action plans in higher education as a way of redressing inequities in elementary and secondary education and preserving diversity at universities. A new strategic planning committee is examining the economic, social, political, demographic, and educational trends affecting the African American community. The aim is to determine where and how the fund might redirect its activities.

Although many states have begun establishing standards for students' performance, little attention has been directed to changes in teaching that would enable children to reach these standards. The Institute for Learning, at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, was founded in 1995 to help schools redesign instructional practices using current knowledge about how children learn. Working with school districts in Boston, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City, and San Diego and a group of schools in western Pennsylvania, institute fellows are developing and providing tools for translating standards into curricula. They are also implementing training programs for teachers based on these tools. Lauren B. Resnick, Director, Learning Research and Development Center. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Southfield, MI. Support, outreach, and professional development activities. One year, $1,000,000. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was founded by the Corporation in 1987 to improve the quality and professionalism of teachers. The board has created a voluntary performance-based certification system, called National Board Certification, which assesses and certifies teachers who meet standards for excellence in teaching in different fields. Assessment is based on a portfolio of teaching over an entire school year, including videotapes of classroom practice, plans for different types of students and the resulting progress of those students, and teaching exercises and written examinations during the summer. The long-term goal is for the new standards to influence initial teacher preparation and licensing, make the profession more attractive to talented persons, and create a leadership cadre of teachers. The board will eventually offer certificates in thirty fields, defined by age (early and middle childhood, early adolescence, young adulthood) and subject matter, including special certificates for work with students with disabilities and students whose English proficiency is limited. To date, thirty-four states have enacted legislation providing financial incentives for teachers to pursue board certification. Researchers conducting an outside evaluation have concluded that certification is indeed leading teachers into new roles as mentors for novice teachers and as leaders of curricular reform efforts in their schools. They have also found that the board is spurring a variety of other efforts to improve the quality of teaching. The board plans to achieve self-sufficiency through candidates' fees by the 2001–2002 school year. Meanwhile, the Corporation's funding, joined by support from federal, corporate, and other foundation sources, is shifting from core support to funding of the board's outreach and professional development activities in selected cities.

Project 2061 was created in 1985 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to reform science education from kindergarten through high school. It has established benchmarks for scientific literacy at specific grade levels and made recommendations for what students should know in science and math by the time they complete their elementary and secondary education. Project staff members are now analyzing the extent to which selected science and math textbooks are aligned with these benchmarks and standards. Print and electronic versions of the results will be issued to teachers and to district and state textbook adoption committees. Other foundations, the National Science Foundation, and AAAS also provide funding.

This grant, joined by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is supporting the development of a textbook and related materials for a new undergraduate physics course, directed mainly at future K–12 teachers. The aim of the course, to be prepared by Hofstra University's Natural Science Program, is to impart knowledge of basic phenomena in the physical world, foster understanding of scientific research as a cultural enterprise, and develop critical thinking skills. In the course materials, faculty members are integrating everyday experiences and the historical and philosophical aspects of science into traditional physics curricula. Student and teacher guides and sample textbook chapters will be made available on the World Wide Web.

Second Nature's mission is to make the principles of environmental sustainability central to the curriculum of the nation's colleges and universities. Its online database, called "Starfish,Ó was launched in 1997 to collect and disseminate innovative teaching resources and foster communication among teacher trainers and general educators. The database contains full course syllabi, teaching techniques, bibliographic references, and links to online resources from more than thirty sustainability organizations. Staff members are upgrading the database and expanding their work with other institutions to jointly acquire and market educational resources.

The Children's Policy Forum, administered by the Aspen Institute's Congressional Program, convenes members of Congress, scholars, and practitioners to consider the problems of America's children and youth. Its meetings and an annual retreat are designed to inform a core group of congressional representatives about selected issues so they can exercise an effective role in shaping public policy for children. The 1997 retreat explored the developmental and educational needs and problems of children ages three to ten. The 1998 retreat, which focused on youth development, examined race and ethnic relations, school reform, civic values, and violence prevention and pregnancy prevention programs.

The National Academy of Sciences' Board on Children, Youth, and Families communicates the results of research on child and adolescent health and development to officials responsible for shaping health and education policies and programs for high-risk youth. Members of the board, drawn from fields including child development, pediatrics, sociology, public health, economics, and the media, conduct science-based workshops, conferences, panel studies, and media briefings for federal, state, and local policymakers. The board's publications, which include research reports on family violence, Head Start, and the health and education of immigrant children, are also available on its Web site. The board's planned activities include an analysis of the effectiveness of home visitation services and a synthesis of research on brain development in the early years and of scientific research on early childhood development. The board is also funded by other foundations and by agencies of the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Justice, and Labor. The board's Forum on Adolescence, created in 1996 with support from the Corporation, aims to improve the scientific basis for programs and policies related to adolescent health and development. Forum members identify new directions for future research and disseminate information on adolescent development to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. The forum's current work focuses on youth development in community contexts, intergroup relations, and the changing sociodemographic profile of adolescents in the United States. Possible future activities include research on school reform and on parenting education for families with adolescents. A forum report that synthesizes more than sixty academy publications will be published by the National Academy Press in 1999.

In 1996 the Corporation awarded sixteen grants for research on improving relations among African American, European American, Latino, and Asian American elementary, middle, and high school students. The grants, to university research groups and independent organizations in nine states, are for two types of studies: intergroup perception and behavior and the effectiveness of intervention strategies. The Corporation has subcontracted with the National Academy of Sciences to bring the principal investigators together in a meeting to report their research results, discuss potential applications of their findings for schools and youth organizations, and consider dissemination techniques.

Children Now's national program on children and the media engages members of the news and entertainment industries in the effort to improve the coverage and treatment of children's issues. The program organizes an annual conference for scholars, policymakers, children's advocates, and leaders from the print and broadcast media. The 1998 conference analyzed the portrayal, in television and movies, of racial and ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged Americans. The conference is being followed by briefings to media leaders on related issues and the dissemination of research findings concerning television's effect on children's perceptions of racial identity. Other foundations provide further support.

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