The Early Childhood Education Act is the name of various landmark laws passed by the United States Congress outlining federal programs and funding for childhood education from pre-school through kindergarten. The goal of the act is to provide a comprehensive set of services for children from birth until they enter kindergarten.
Legislative history
Since the Early Childhood Education Act was initiated in the 60s, various laws have been passed and continue to be passed as part of the Early Childhood Education Act to better prepare young children for school. These programs were intended to help children in the pre-kindergarten years to be more successful once starting school.
Head start
Founded in 1965 by Jule Sugarman, Head start was one of the first programs initiated as a result of the Early Childhood Education Act. Its goal is to enhance the social and cognitive development of children offering services in the area of education, health, social and nutrition. This program was originally intended to be a "catch up summer school" that would teach the children from low-income families everything that they need to know before starting school in only a few weeks span. The program has since been redefined and acts have been passed for Head Start programs to keep progressing towards providing better services to pre-kindergarten children from low-income families.
National Academy of Early Childhood Programs
In 1985 the National Association for the Education of Young Children established the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs for voluntary accreditation according to health, safety and education standards. This program was intended to create a more reliable standard of accreditation for early childhood education programs. The Special Education Preschool Grants program provides grants to states to fund special educational services to children 3 to 5 with disabilities. The Special Education Grants for Infants and Families grant program assists states in implementing services for children with disabilities from birth to 2 years old. What children learn and the skills they gain in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten determine how well they will succeed academically in the next few years that follow.
The National Institute for Early Childhood Research is an institute that concentrates on using research to support and enhance Early Childhood programs in the United States. This institute has been using research to promote a higher education for young children since 2002. They are currently doing research on several projects.
Evaluations
The 'Even Start Classroom Literacy Interventions and Outcomes Study is a controlled study that assesses the contribution of the enhanced parenting component of the program. This program was created in 1989. The focus of this program was to help the parents of low-income families in order to improve the literacy skills of their children. By increasing the parents' knowledge and skills needed for reading and writing, the literacy skills of their young children would most likely increase as well. It focuses on evaluating whether focused literacy instruction combined with parent education will provide better outcomes than current programs. The study compares schools’ programs who received funding from the Early reading grant and those who did not.