ECTA
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eNotes
A News Service from the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center
Current and past issues of eNotes can be viewed and searched online at http://www.ectacenter.org/enotes/enotes.asp
ECTA
Center
eNotes
The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) recently launched a new IDEA website, which is meant to provide a "one-stop shop" for resources related to IDEA and its implementing regulations. It is a "living" website and will change and grow as resources and information become available. When fully implemented, the site will provide searchable versions of IDEA and the regulations, access to cross-referenced content from other laws (e.g., the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), etc.), video clips on selected topics, topic briefs on selected regulations, links to OSEP's Technical Assistance and Dissemination (TA&D) Network and a Q&A Corner where you can submit questions, and a variety of other information sources. It is available at http://idea.ed.gov
To provide the public with an overview of the Part B Final Regulations Implementing the 2004 Reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), OSERS will be hosting a series of community-based public meetings. These meetings will provide the public with an opportunity to learn about major concepts and principle changes in the new regulations, and they will provide information about resources and supports available from OSERS to assist in the implementation of these regulations. For more information and to view an updated schedule for the most current meeting information, go to http://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/cbpm/index.html
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently published a new report entitled Age 2: Findings From the 2-Year-Old Follow-up of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). This report comes from the second round of data collection for the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a study of a nationally representative sample of children born in the year 2001. The report provides descriptive information about the children's mental and physical skills at about two years of age, their attachment relationships with primary caregivers, their first experiences in child care, and the contributions of their fathers. It provides data on the children as a whole, as well as various subgroups of children, for example, girls and boys, children from different racial/ethnic groups, poor and nonpoor children, and children living in different types of families. It is available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006043
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released the following correspondence: Head Start: Progress and Challenges in Implementing Transportation Regulations. GAO-06-767R. It is available online at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06767r.pdf
The National Governors' Association recently awarded Montana, New Jersey and South Carolina $50,000 each to support gubernatorial leadership for developing comprehensive, coordinated early childhood (birth to age five) systems. Read the full news release.
A recent evaluation of the Healthy Families New York (HFNY) home visiting program offers a possible explanation for some of the discrepant findings from home visiting programs around the country. While randomized trials of programs involving home visits by nurses have demonstrated positive effects for reducing child maltreatment, randomized trials of paraprofessional home visitation programs have found little effect on child maltreatment. The HFNY study suggests that the differential impact of home visiting programs on parenting outcomes may be due to characteristics of the parent populations served by each program. To read more and to view the pdf go to http://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/index.cfm?event=website.viewSection&issueID=77§ionID=17