eNotes
October 16, 2015In this Issue:
- Promising Practices for "Learn the Signs, Act Early" Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - October 7, 2015
- RethinkDiscipline in Early Childhood Settings: Online Discussion Source: U.S. Department of Education - October 15, 2015
- McKinney-Vento and IDEA: Serving Children with Disabilities Who are Homeless Source: Office of Special Education Programs and National Center for Homeless Education - October 8, 2015
- High Quality Child Care Is Out of Reach for Working Families Source: Economic Policy Institute - October 6, 2015
- A New Framework for Assessing the Effectiveness of Home Visiting Programs Source: Pew Home Visiting Campaign - October 12, 2015
1. Promising Practices for "Learn the Signs, Act Early"
A new collection of Promising Practices for "Learn the Signs, Act Early" provides examples of locally inspired models and ideas that have been carried out and evaluated in programs and communities across the country to spread the reach of Learn the Signs, Act Early, a campaign to help parents and child care providers learn more about early childhood development and the potential early warning signs of autism and other developmental disabilities.
2. RethinkDiscipline in Early Childhood Settings: Online Discussion
On October 15, 2015, Assistant Secretary Michael Yudin convened national experts for an online discussion about the use of suspensions and expulsions in early childhood settings, and local efforts to end the use of exclusionary discipline for young children. Watch the discussion on YouTube. Yudin was joined by:
- Walter Gilliam - Director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy
- Beth Mascitti-Miller - Chief to Office of Early Childhood Education, Chicago Public Schools
- Myra Jones-Taylor - Commissioner of Early Childhood, State of Connecticut
- Alison Pepper - Consultant for faith-based and secular early childhood education programs
3. McKinney-Vento and IDEA: Serving Children with Disabilities Who are Homeless
The following three new briefs from the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) were highlighted on a recent national webinar hosted by NCHE and Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP):
- Navigating the Intersections of the McKinney-Vento Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: Coordination to Help Homeless Children and Youth with Disabilities (October 2015) - Provides practical strategies to help local homeless education liaisons and special education program administrators create a coordinated approach to serve homeless children with disabilities.
- School Help for Homeless Children with Disabilities: Information for Parents (October 2015)- Provides information for families who are experiencing homelessness on how to enroll and keep their children in school, including children with special needs.
- Supporting Homeless Children and Youth with Disabilities: Legislative Provisions in the McKinney-Vento Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (October 2015) - Reviews the requirements of the McKinney-Vento Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) regarding the educational rights of children with disabilities who are experiencing homelessness.
4. High Quality Child Care Is Out of Reach for Working Families
Close to 11 million children younger than age 5 in the U.S. spend an average of 36 hours a week in child care. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, High Quality Child Care Is Out of Reach for Working Families (October 2015), examines child care costs against a variety of benchmarks - including the cost of college tuition, the Department of Health and Human Services' official affordability threshold of 10 percent or less of a family's income, and median family incomes. The report finds that high quality child care is unaffordable for working families, particularly for minimum-wage workers. Annual child care costs for an infant and a 4-year-old range from $13,245 in Atlanta to $29,478 in Boston. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, infant care costs exceed the average cost of in-state college tuition at public 4-year institutions.
5. A New Framework for Assessing the Effectiveness of Home Visiting Programs
In 2013, the Pew Home Visiting Campaign launched the Home Visiting Data for Performance Initiative to develop and build consensus around a set of key performance measures that states can adopt to determine whether their goals are being achieved across a portfolio of home visiting programs. The final report from this initiative, Using Data to Measure Performance of Home Visiting: A New Framework for Assessing Effectiveness (October 2015) is now available online. It provides information to support state and local managers in collecting, analyzing, and using data to gain a clear picture of who is being served in their home visiting programs, to accurately measure the outcomes of these programs, and to improve practices that lead to strong results for vulnerable young families.