Transitions for Young Children: Creating Connections Across Early Childhood Systems

Smooth early childhood transitions are key to ensuring positive outcomes for young children the world over-but in today's fragmented early education systems, it's difficult to ensure continuity among programs and services. Early childhood professionals will help change that with this book, the first to propose a comprehensive, practical framework for repairing fissures in the system and making transitions successful for young children globally. A groundbreaking resource for a wide range of professionals-including principals, school-based administrators, program directors, district supervisors, and curriculum specialists-this book brings together the best thinking on early childhood transitions from leading researchers and practitioners around the world. Focusing on both vertical and horizontal transitions, the expert contributors give readers the in-depth guidance they need to develop a coherent, connected framework of curriculum and instruction across the pre-K-Grade 3 continuum enhance transitions for infants and young children with disabilities and their families address the specific issues dual language learners face during transitions align early learning standards, curricula, and assessments improve all aspects of school readiness-ready children, ready schools, and ready families and communities establish continuity between the child's home and school environment support the quality and stability of the early childhood workforce improve transitions through better accountability policies understand how transitions are affected by a wide range of factors, including poverty, cultural and linguistic diversity, and the child's neighborhood Through the invaluable case studies on diverse programs-both in key U.S. states and around the world-readers will get practical insight into what really works and apply the lessons of real-life success stories. And with the clear and useful analysis of up-to-date research, policy, and