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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 National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded grants to support six new research centers of a major network focusing on the biomedical and behavioral aspects of autism. These centers will join two that were funded last year. The overall initiative, called STAART (Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment) Centers Program, demonstrates NIH commitment to autism research and responds to a need expressed in the Children's Health Act of 2000. To read more go to: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/news/autgrts.htm.
A new publication from the Early Head Start National Resource Center is now available in pdf:
Early Head Start Program Strategies: Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Infants, Toddlers, and Families.
Go to http://www.ehsnrc.org/pdffiles/mpsmentalhealth.pdf.
A recent publication from the Finance Project is now available online in pdf:
A Stitch in Time: Calculating the Costs of School Unreadiness, by Charles Bruner, September 2002.
Go to:
http://www.financeproject.org/Publications/stitchintime.pdf
Implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program: Systhesis of State Evaluations, a congressionally mandated analysis of state SCHIP evaluations published by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in March 2003, is available online at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/impchildhlth.pdf
Schools' Use of Assessments for Kindergarten Entrance and Placement: 1998-99. This report uses data from the base-year (kindergarten) of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 to describe the use of entrance or placement tests prior to kindergarten by schools in the U.S. It examines the different ways that schools use the information from these tests. It describes schools use of entrance and placement tests by public and private schools, and by schools with different concentrations of low-income children, different grade levels taught, and different numbers of children enrolled. Go to: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003004.pdf
School districts and states are increasingly turning to computer-based testing to meet new demands, raising a host of new questions about assessment, according to EDUCATION WEEK's sixth annual report on school technology. The report, released May 8, 2003, includes in-depth articles on issues surrounding online assessment, state profiles, and state-by-state data on school computer use. http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2004/10/15/tc-archive.html