New Partners: The High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization considered a leader in early-childhood education, has joined forces with SchoolSuccess.net, a Boston-based, for- profit company that provides Internet-based educational products for parents and teachers.
Through the partnership, programs and tools created by High/Scope will be offered on SchoolSuccess.net’s Web page.
The first example of the collaboration will be available this month, when the company launches EarlyLearner.net. The Web site will be based on an assessment tool developed by High/Scope called the Child Observation Record.
Teachers or parents can use the program to identify young children’s strengths and weaknesses and then use that information to choose appropriate learning activities.
In a press release, David Weikart, the president of the High/Scope foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich., said SchoolSuccess.net “has the knowledge and experience to take what we’ve been so successful with in the off-line world and bring it to the World Wide Web.”
Research Grants: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a total of $10 million to a combination of universities and organizations for child-care research.
A portion of the money, $3.2 million, is being distributed as grants for 12 research studies. The grantees include the Bank Street College of Education in New York City, the Center for the Child Care Workforce in Washington, Temple University in Philadelphia, and the University of Montana Rural Institute on Disabilities in Missoula.
The projects will range from a longitudinal study of the child-care workforce to a study on ways to raise the quality of infant and toddler child-care programs serving low-income families.
Funding will also be allocated to form new research partnerships in Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.
In addition, the HHS Child Care Bureau will create the National Child Care Research Collaboration and Archive designed to make data more available to researchers and policymakers.
“Increasing our knowledge of what child-care systems work best and disseminating that knowledge throughout the country are important steps in improving the quality of child care,” HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala said in a statement.
—Linda Jacobson lindajack@earthlink.net
