Moving Young Learners Forward

A reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is eight years overdue. No Child Left Behind waivers are the temporary law of the land, and Congress is attempting to find common ground in a mostly partisan process.

Over the past several years, interest in pre-K and other early learning programs has been growing. More and more states, both red and blue, have developed pre-K programs and some states and local communities are thinking about how to better connect and coordinate children’s pre-K experiences and learning with what happens in kindergarten and the early grades.

We believe ESEA could be a vehicle for achieving these goals. In a new brief, Moving Young Learners Forward: How to Fix No Child Left Behind, Laura Bornfreund discusses how to better focus on PreK-3rd grades in a reauthorized law, and Conor Williams shares his ideas for how to improve the federal government’s education policies for dual language learners.