An End-of-Year Treat: 2009 Highlights from Early Ed Watch

We’ll be closed for the holidays, but before we start pouring the egg nog, we couldn’t resist the chance to highlight some of the posts we’ve run in the past year:

• Analysis of the FY 2010 federal budget for early education
• Coverage of the proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund, which cleared the House in September and is expected to be taken up by the Senate in the coming months
• Analysis of new literacy legislation and the home-visitation program in the healthcare overhaul bill
• Discussions of the debates about play and kindergarten as well as recommendations on how to defuse the pressure and a taste of the last day of preschool
• Our seven-part series on the future of Head Start
• Articles about new studies on children’s language development, as well as a series of posts from research released at the bi-annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development
• A two-part series on Minnesota’s innovations in early education
• A close look at the early education programs and funding sources outlined in President Obama’s budget
• Posts that focus on the importance of improving the quality of pre-K programs
• Timely analysis of stimulus funds for Head Start and other programs
• Ideas for how to build policies that encourage using Title I funds for pre-K
• Our three-part series on Illinois and Chicago — and what we can learn about coming policies from Obama and Duncan’s experience there
• Analysis of the approved FY 2009 budget and funding for early education

Also, don’t miss our policy papers (particularly our reports on New Jersey and California), our issue briefs on using stimulus funds to support early ed, and our video on PreK-3rd in Montgomery County, MD. Happy New Year!