Early Literacy and Math

High 5s is a kindergarten 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.. A rigorous evaluation of the out-of-classroom model showed positive impacts of the program on student outcomes, and feasibility research of the in-classroom model suggests that it can be implemented in a variety of settings and is well-received by school staff. The kindergarten program is available for district use now. The team is looking for opportunities to extend the curriculum to include grade...

Funder: AccelerateYPL has partnered with Accelerate on three randomized controlled trials of small group tutoring programs with different populations. We are seeking to understand the impact of these tutoring programs on student achievement, the conditions required for successful implementation, and which students may benefit most from small-group tutoring. Ed Corps: From Fall 2024 - Spring 2025, YPL evaluated the effect of implementation support for in-person literacy tutoring for students reading below grade level in grades K-3.Cignition: In the same time period (Fall 2024 - Spring 2025), YP...

Funders: U.S. Department of Education, Arnold VenturesLiteracy tutoring is one of the most effective strategies for improving student literacy achievement. However, it can be difficult to scale and one approach to increase access is to provide virtual tutoring. While evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of in-person tutoring is strong, evidence for virtual tutoring is limited. YPL is partnering with MDRC and Reading Partners, a national organization that uses volunteer tutors to provide literacy tutoring to elementary students, to evaluate the effects of two delivery models of their tutori...

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 ...

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...

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...