{"product_id":"2940148811121","title":"National Evaluation of Early Reading First","description":"The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 created the Early Reading First (ERF) program to enhance teacher practices, instructional content, and classroom environments in preschools and to help ensure that young children start school with the skills needed for academic success. This discretionary grant program provides funding to preschools that particularly serve children from low-income families so that the preschools can support age-appropriate development of children’s language and literacy skills. The program, which was authorized under Title I, Part B, Subpart 2 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as reauthorized by NCLB, reflects the research of the last several years about the kinds of skills that young children must have to become successful readers. These skills include oral language (expressive and receptive language and vocabulary development), phonological awareness (rhyming, blending, segmenting), awareness of the print conventions, and alphabet knowledge (letter recognition) (Whitehurst and Lonigan 2001; Pullen and Justice 2003).\u003cbr\u003eThe NCLB Act also mandated an independent national evaluation of the ERF program and required a final report to Congress. This final report presents the impacts of the program on the language and literacy skills of children and on the instructional content and practices in preschool classrooms.\u003cbr\u003eThe main findings of the national evaluation of ERF are that the program had positive, statistically significant impacts on several classroom and teacher outcomes and on one of four child outcomes measured. Specifically, ERF had positive impacts on\u003cbr\u003e•\u003cbr\u003ethe number of hours of professional development that teachers received and on the use of mentoring as a mode of training\u003cbr\u003e•\u003cbr\u003easpects of classroom environments and teacher practices that were major focuses of the ERF program, including\u003cbr\u003e▪\u003cbr\u003elanguage environment of the classroom\u003cbr\u003e▪\u003cbr\u003ebook-reading practices\u003cbr\u003e▪\u003cbr\u003ethe variety of phonological-awareness activities and children’s engagement in them\u003cbr\u003e▪\u003cbr\u003ematerials and teaching practices to support print and letter knowledge and writing\u003cbr\u003e▪\u003cbr\u003ethe extensiveness and recency of child-assessment practices\u003cbr\u003e• other, more general aspects of classroom quality, including the quality of teacher-child interactions, the organization of the classroom, and the planning of activities for children.\u003cbr\u003eWith regard to child outcomes, ERF had a positive impact on children’s print and letter knowledge but not on phonological awareness or oral language.\u003cbr\u003eERF neither enhanced nor diminished children’s social-emotional development during the preschool year. Patterns of results that were observed for the overall sample were also observed for most subgroups examined.","brand":"ReadCycle","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47079329923312,"sku":"2940148811121","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148811121_p0.jpg?v=1763714473","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148811121","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}