Early Literacy and Math

When early high-quality math instruction is aligned across grades, it can have a positive effect on children’s math skills, attitudes toward math, and working memory. However, evidence-based pre-K learning trajectories and instructional practices are not typically integrated into the curriculum for the early elementary grades. This lack of integration can have negative results: Children may encounter the same content more than once from pre-K to kindergarten through third grade. Conversely, the math instruction they receive may not cover the areas or progression of learning that research says ...

High-quality early learning programs boost children’s kindergarten readiness and effects can last into adulthood. However, defining and measuring quality is difficult and expensive. Classroom video observations are a classic method used by education researchers to understand how the instructional environment relates to student learning. Although videos provide rich context on what occurs in the classroom, they require a significant amount of human labor and time to accurately code, which can lead to delays in acquiring information. Moreover, early education researchers have found that construc...

High 5s is a small-group math enrichment program, developed at the University of Michigan with the help of MDRC and leading early childhood math experts Doug Clements and Julie Sarama. Participation in the program closed almost a fifth of the achievement gap between low-income children and their peers. Working closely with teachers and schools in Taylor, MI, and New York City, NY, we hope to adapt, expand and then evaluate a more integrated and scalable version of the High 5s program.

With funding from the US Department of Education and Arnold Ventures, the Youth Policy Lab is partnering with MDRC to conduct an evaluation of the Reading Partners program. The three-arm randomized control trial will compare both the Reading Partners traditional in-person tutoring program and their online tutoring program called Reading Partners Connects to a business-as-usual control group. The evaluation will look at both the immediate (one-year) and longer-term (two-to-three year) impacts of Reading Partners tutoring on student reading skills.

The National Collaborative for Accelerated Learning (Accelerate) funded intensive small-group tutoring at several K-12 schools during the 2024-25 academic year as part of its Call to Effective Action. This work is continuing in 2025-2026 through the Evidence for Impact program.  YPL has been serving as an evaluation partner to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of two tutoring models: virtual math tutoring for students in grades 3-6, and in-person literacy tutoring for students in grades K-3. We have used assessment data to help tutoring providers, schools, and policy-m...

Alignment of academic content for grades PreK-3 is considered important among practitioners, policymakers, and educational researchers alike. However, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which alignment across grades, even within schools or districts, actually exists. Using classroom observations and curriculum analysis, we examined the alignment of three widely used elementary math curricula across grades PreK-3. While we found that content is generally aligned across grades, instructional environments and pedagogical practices may not be. Kindergarten in particular, may be poorl...