ruepi beyond the abcs

7/30/2019 RUEPI Beyond the ABCs

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Beyond the ABCs and 1-2-3: The Intersection

of K-12 and Early Childhood Education Teacher

Preparation Policies

By Celina Chatman Nelson, Jennifer Kushto-Hoban,

and Catherine Main

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Policy decisions for K-12 and early

childhood care and education

(ECE) have typically been

considered in two separate

dialogues, and when they are

considered together, those for K-

12 policies tend to be retrofitted to

those for ECE. Such fragmentation

has raised significant difficulties

for ECE teacher preparation.

Because there are different

learning standards, teaching

standards, and requirements for

hiring and evaluating teachers

across K-12 and ECE programs

and services, ECE teacher

preparation varies tremendously.

This variation presents significant

challenges for ensuring that ECE

teachers are well prepared to work

with all young children across the

entire early childhood

continuumfrom birth through

third gradeand their families

across the variety of early

childhood programs and settings.

To best meet the learning and

developmental needs of children

in ECE programs and sustain earlylearning gains, policymakers

should coordinate ECE and K-12

policies governing teacher

preparation in a manner that

reflects an understanding of the

salient differences between the

two areas and the important

lessons that can be drawn across

them. Policies governing ECE

teacher preparation should ensure

that ECE teachers are prepared inacademic subject matter and child

development in a way that

particularly supports the

education of young children but

strategically combines practices

and principles from both K-12 and

ECE systems.

education.uic.edu/ruep

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Celina Chatman

Nelson is the ProjectDirector of

Appraising EarlyChildhood TeacherEducation in Illinois.

Jennifer Kushto-

Hoban is a doctoral

student in the

Educational

Psychologydepartment in the

College of Education

at the University of

Illinois at Chicago.

Catherine Main is theProgram Coordinatorof the EarlyChildhood EducationProgram in theCollege of Education

at the University ofIllinois at Chicago.

policyBRIEFUIC Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative

November 2012

Vol. 1, Book 1


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UIC Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative

INTRODUCTION

Policy decisions for K-12 and early

childhood care and education (ECE)

have typically been considered intwo separate dialogues, and when

they are considered together, those

for K-12 policies tend to be

retrofitted to those for ECE. Such

fragmentation has raised significant

difficulties for ECE teacher

preparation. Because there are

different learning standards,

teaching standards, and

requirements for hiring and

evaluating teachers across K-12 and

ECE programs and services, ECEteacher preparation varies

tremendously. This variation

presents significant challenges for

ensuring that ECE teachers are well

prepared to work with all young

children across the entire early

childhood continuum, which spans

from birth through the end of third

grade and comprises three distinct

stages of development: infants and

toddlers, preschool age, and early

elementary school age. Recent K-12and ECE policy efforts focused on

improving teacher preparation and

qualityincluding the highly-

qualified teacher requirements of

the No Child Left Behind Act, several

states adoption of the Common

Core Learning Standards, the new

requirement for half of all Head Start

teachers to hold a bachelors degree

in child development or a related

field, and Illinois new requirement

for all public pre-K teachers to hold

a bachelors degree and state

certificationall involve such

challenges.

The move to improve ECE teacher

preparation and quality is fueled by

the belief that more effective

teachers are critical to ensuring

young children are ready for

school by the time they reach

kindergarten, with an emphasis on

increasing student achievement and

reducing achievement gaps. Indeed,

raising ECE educator requirements

can potentially enhance the overallquality of early childhood settings

and, hence, childrens outcomes. But

efforts to improve ECE teacher

preparation should be more than a

matter of degrees and instead

should be explicitly connected to

efforts to improve the quality of

teacher practices across the entire

early childhood continuum.

Teachers of young children should

be prepared with the specific

knowledge and skills they need to

support all childrens learning and

development from birth through the

end of third grade. To best meet the

learning and developmental needs

of children in ECE programs and

sustain early learning gains,

policymakers should coordinate ECE

and K-12 policies governing teacher

preparation in a manner that reflects

an understanding of the salient

differences between the two policy

areas and the important lessons that

can be drawn across them. Policiesshould ensure that ECE teachers are

prepared in academic subject matter

and child development in a way that

particularly supports the education

of young children while strategically

drawing on practices and principles

from both K-12 and ECE systems.

This brief examines the ECE and K-

12 policy landscape in the U.S., with

specific attention to key challenges

in coordinating ECE and K-12policies as they pertain to ECE

teacher preparation. The brief

particularly reviews relevant

research on child development,

early childhood education, and ECE

teacher quality, and concludes by

offering recommendations for

making ECE teacher preparation

policies more effective.

Policymakers should

coordinate ECE and

K-12 policies

governing teacherpreparation in a

manner that reflects

an understanding of

the salient

differences between

the two policy areas

and the important

lessons that can be

drawn across them.

policyBRIEF


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THE EARLY CHILDHOOD

EDUCATION POLICY

LANDSCAPE

Education policies in the U.S., and

Illinois in particular, have

increasingly focused on raising

requirements for early childhood

educators. The No Child Left Behind

Act spurred increased attention to

issues of teacher quality in K-12

education by defining highly-

qualified teachers as those who hold

at least a bachelors degree and state

certification or licensure, and whodemonstrate competence in all

academic subject areas in which

they teach.1Although teachers of

children in preschool and younger

are not held to these requirements,

agencies and organizations

administering ECE programs and

services have begun to follow suit by

raising requirements on their own.

For example, the federal Head Start

program recently adopted a newpolicy requiring that half of all

teachers nationally must hold a B.A.

in early childhood education or a

related field by 2013. And in Illinois,

the first state to offer voluntary

preschool to all three- and four-year

olds under the 2006 Preschool for All

Children Act, all public pre-

kindergarten teachers are required

to hold a B.A. degree and state board

certification.

There are several other ways in

which policies are influencing ECE

teacher preparation. For example,

across the nation, states are

beginning to make changes to their

teacher licensing and certification

systems. In Illinois, teachers

currently are entitled to teach pre-K-

3, K-9, and grades 6-12. The state

announced in 2011, however, that it

is overhauling its educator licensureprocess and structure. The revised

structure will involve a teacher

license that includes endorsements

for specific age ranges and content

areas, with initial recommendations

for K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 grades

endorsement. This structure was

immediately viewed as problematic

by many early childhood educators,

researchers, and other experts

because it seems to leave

undesirable options for an early

childhood endorsement: birth to

pre-K, or an overlapping

endorsement such as a pre-K-3

(overlapping with K-5). Structures

such as these would serve only to

further isolate preschool programs

and educators from the broader

educational system and thereby

disrupt continuity in young

childrens learning and schooling

experiences. As of the writing of this

brief, the state has not yet made its

final decision about the grade span

configurations for the new license,

but other states likely will struggle

with similar issues as they adapt

their own licensing structures in

accordance with the new K-12

Common Core State Standards.

HISTORY

The fragmentation and complexities

inherent in the ECE landscape can

be attributed in large part to the fact

that ECE programs and services

emerged out of two separate policy

needs and social histories. Child care

1 No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 20 U.S.C. 6301 et seq. (2002).

Beyond the ABCs and 1-2-3

policyBRIEF

The fragmentation

and complexities

inherent in the ECE

landscape can be

attributed in large

part to the fact that

ECE programs and

services emerged

out of two separate

policy needs and

social histories.


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services are traced back to day

nurseries in Philadelphia in the late

18th century and infant schools in

Boston in the 1840s, where widowedmothers and women in poor

families placed their children in care

while they worked.2 During the Great

Depression and again during World

War II, the federal government

subsidized childcare so that women

could participate in the workforce to

help sustain the U.S. economy. As

the numbers of women working

outside of the home has continued

to risewith more than half of U.S.

women in the workforce by 19853

child care services have expanded

through both governmental and

private resources.

Both the childcare and nursery

school movements were altogether

separate from movements in

elementary and secondary

education. In its earliest iterations,

the Head Start Act of 1965 provided

comprehensive education, health,

and family services to young

children from poor families to

support their healthy well-being and

development instead of focusing on

building academic skills. Private

nurseries and preschools grew out of

a separate movement, wherein

middle class and more affluent

families sought professionals to

provide intellectual and artistic

enrichment to their young children.4

In contrast, common schools in the

U.S. began in the mid- to late 19th

century partly as way to ensure aworkforce that was sufficiently

educated to sustain the nations

increasingly industrial-based

economy and remained almost

wholly distinct from early childhood

services for much of the 20th

century.5

CURRENT SITUATION

Because child care, preschool, andelementary and secondary

education originated in response to

very different social issues, public

programs growing out of these

movements were funded and

administered by separate offices and

agencies. Thus, three systems have

developed in silos, each with its own

issues of internal fragmentation. The

federal Departments of Health and

Human Services (HHS), Labor,

Housing and Urban Development

(HUD), and Education (ED) all grant

money for early childhood services.

However, public elementary and

secondary education is sponsored

solely by ED. As a result, there are

several different types of ECE

programs with different governing

bodies (see Figure 1). For example,

HHS governs center-basedprograms, such as those under Head

2 Marly Ann Boschee and Geralyn M. Jacobs, Child care in the United States: Yesterday andToday, National Network for Child Care, 1997, www.nncc.org/choose.quality.care/ccyesterd.html; Sonya Michel, Childrens Interests/Mothers Rights: The Shaping of Americas Child CarePolicy(Hartford, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

3 United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov.4 Emily D. Cahan, Past Caring: A History of U.S. Preschool Care and Education for the Poor, 1820

1965(New York, NY: National Center for Children in Poverty, 1989); Abby J. Cohen, A BriefHistory of Federal Financing for Child Care in the United States, The Future of Children6, no. 2(1996): 26.

5 Michael S. Katz,A History of Compulsory Education Laws. Fastback Series, No. 75. Bicentennial

Series. (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1976).

policyBRIEF


Child care,

preschool, and

elementary and

secondary

education

originated in

response to very

different social

issues.


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policyBRIEF

Start and nursery schools, and

home-based programs, such as

group child care homes and Early

Intervention. ED governs school-

based programs, such as public

school pre-kindergarten,

kindergarten, and the primary

grades. Because each of these

agencies and programs has

different learning standards,

different teaching standards, and

different requirements for hiring

and evaluating teachers, programs

that prepare teachers vary

tremendously. This variation across

teacher preparation programs

presents challenges in ensuring

that ECE teachers are equipped

with the specialized knowledge and

skills they need to work with all

young children from birth through

third grade and their families.

Recently, the federal government has

introduced some promising

initiatives to address fragmentation

within ECE and attenuate the

disjoint between early learning and

elementary and secondary

education systems. In 2010, ED and

HHS announced the formation of an

Interagency Policy Board on Early

Learning. One of its main charges

was to enhance the effectiveness of

the ECE teaching workforce. The

interagency board gave rise to the

federal Early Learning Initiative and

the Early Learning Challenge Fund,

collaborative efforts between ED and

HHS that are intended to coordinate

their programs and services. The

Early Learning Challenge Fund

provides grants to states to improve

early learning experiences for

children birth to eight years old, with

special emphasis on creating model

Source: Eun Kyeong Cho and Leslie J. Course, "Early Childhood Teacher Policy in the United States: Continuing Issues, Overcoming Barriers, andEnvisioning the Future," International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy 2, no. 2 (2008): 15.


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integrative systems that break down

silos between agencies and create

seamless services for young children

and their families. Most recently, EDhas submitted a proposal to create

the Office of Early Childhood, which

would administer the Early Learning

Challenge Fund grants and develop

other collaborative initiatives. As

discussed below, such initiatives

could clear several hurdles in

preparing high-quality ECE teachers

regardless of the specific program

type or setting in which these

teachers will work.

RESEARCH

Research in child development,

economics, and neurological studies

converges on the importance of high-

quality early learning experiences for

childrens later outcomes in various

domains, including schooling and

education, occupation, income,

health, and likelihood of going to

prison.6Accordingly, many educationreform efforts have increasingly

focused on investing more in early

childhood programs and services,

particularly those that ensure young

children are ready for school.

However, these reform efforts ignore

the importance of the continuity of

the practices that build and support

childrens school readiness and are

critical for sustaining early gains in

learning and development in later

grades.7 Because most people equate

early childhood education withpreschool, these practices are too

often abandoned when preparing

teachers to work with children in

kindergarten and early elementary

grades, and preparation instead

focuses almost exclusively on teaching

academic subject matter content.8

Given that early childhood extends

from birth through the end of third

grade, ECE teachers shouldunderstand the commonalities and

differences in childrens

developmental and learning needs

across this entire age range. For

example, because as much as 85% of

human brain growth and

development occurs before children

reach three years of age, very young

children generally benefit greatly

from activities that stimulate

cognitive functions.9 Moreover, justas in infancy, the toddler years, and

the preschool years, children in the

primary grades learn best when

teachers take an integrative

approach that incorporates both

teacher-led and child-guided

learning experiences. In addition,

older children in primary grades still

benefit from opportunities for


policyBRIEF

Research in child

development,

economics, and

neurological studies

converges on the

importance of high-

quality early

learning

experiences for

childrens later

outcomes in various

domains, including

schooling and

education,

occupation, income,

health, and

likelihood of going

to prison.

6 James J. Heckman, The Economics of Inequality: The Value of Early Childhood Education,American Educator35, no. 1 (2011): 31.

7 Donald J. Hernandez, Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence

High School Graduation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011; Arthur Reynolds, Katherine

Magnuson, and Suh-Ruu Ou, PK-3 Education: Programs and Practices That Work in Childrens

First Decade. Foundation for Child Development Working Paper: Advancing PK-3, No. 6.,Foundation for Child Development, 2006.

8 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, The Road Less Traveled: How the

Developmental Sciences Can Prepare Educators to Improve Student Achievement, NCATE, 2010.9 National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The

Science of Early Childhood Development(Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000); Rima

Shore, Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development(New York, NY: Families andWork Institute, 1997); Ross Thompson, Development in the First Years of Life, The Future ofChildren11, no. 1 (2001): 20.


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exploring their environments, taking

initiative and interacting with peers.

However, each of the commonly

recognized stages of development(infants and toddlers, preschool age,

and early elementary age) is also

characterized by unique sets of

needs and circumstances. For

example, the preschool years are

particularly marked by childrens

greater need to self-regulate their

behavior and emotions, and thus

education and care for this group

should focus heavily on fostering

positive social-emotional

development. In contrast, school-

aged children, who are equipped

with more highly developed

cognitive and self-regulatory skills,

should focus to a greater extent on

learning specific academic content

while continuing to develop in other

areas. Because young childrens

gains from even high-quality

preschool programs have been

shown to disappear when their early

learning experiences are not

connected in a coherent structure

with their subsequent experiences in

early elementary grades, it is critical

that ECE educators understand the

full continuum of early childhood to

effectively support childrens

optimal development.10

PROSPECTS FOR EARLYCHILDHOOD EDUCATION

TEACHER PREPARATION

POLICIES

Given the research on ECE, what are

the prospects for current ECE

teacher preparation policies? When

K-12 policiessuch as those

requiring teachers to be certified to

teach specific subject matter content

or to pass skills tests in academic

subjects (such as the Illinois Test ofBasic Skills, equivalent to 11th grade

academic skill mastery)are

applied blindly to early childhood

educators, the teaching workforce

may lack knowledge of critical

content and skills in early academic

learning standards and child

development. Although teachers

might have a solid handle on subject

matter content, they may have little

to no knowledge about how to

deliver that content in ways that

facilitate young childrens learning.

To ensure that raising requirements

for ECE teachers does, in fact,

improve the quality of their teaching

as well as childrens outcomes, states

must improve how ECE teachers are

educated and developed by

preparation for all early childhood

teachersthose working with

infants and toddlers, preschoolers,

kindergarteners, and children in the

primary grades. In particular, all

programs that prepare ECE teachers

must emphasize critical content,

pedagogy, skills, and dispositions

known to be positively related to

young childrens learning and

development.

At the federal level, the recent

collaborations between ED and HHS

have some potential and at least

demonstrate that action is being

taken to address issues around

fragmentation. Moreover, recent

efforts by the nonprofit groups The

National Head Start Association and

The Source for Learning, Inc. have

policyBRIEF


To ensure that

raising requirements

for ECE teachers

does, in fact,

improve the quality

of their teaching as

well as childrens

outcomes, states

must improve how

ECE teachers are

educated and

developed by

preparation for all

early childhood

teachers.

10 Hernandez, Double Jeopardy.


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focused on linking Head Start and

early learning standards to the

Common Core Learning Standards.

But these initiatives are still very newand thus far have focused minimally

on pre-service teacher preparation.

Moreover, the Race to the Top-Early

Learning Challenge Fund, which is

the largest program coming out of

the ED/HHS collaboration, focuses

explicitly on birth to five, and on

ensuring children are ready for

school. While such a focus can help

to ensure that services for infants,

toddlers, and preschoolers areaddressing both their developmental

and learning needs, it ignores the

early learning needs of children in

kindergarten and the primary

grades. Finally, although it is still

early, the level of collaboration

between ED and HHS is largely

superficial, consisting mostly of

liaisons across the various

departments, offices, and agencies

serving young children and their

families. As such, collaboration

needs to occur on a much deeper

level in order to address the issues

we raise here.

Policy initiatives currently being

considered in Illinois would likely

have detrimental effects as well. As

of this writing, Illinois may enact a

new teacher licensing structure that

involves a K-5 grade only license.This structure would be problematic

because it would completely exclude

prekindergarten and younger ages

and ignore the need for K-3 teachers

to be prepared with critical

knowledge and skills in early

childhood education and child

development. If the structure for

early childhood licensing involves

the birth to pre-K or an overlapping

(pre-K-3, K-5) license, preparation

programs would be left with the

current difficulties in preparingteachers to work with children

across the entire spectrum of early

childhood from birth through third

grade. The overlapping license

option is also problematic because it

presents the risk that preparation

will favor grades at either end of the

continuum (e.g., pre-K, fourth and

fifth grades) and insufficiently cover

the overlapping grades in the

middle.

RECOMMENDATIONS

There are several possible ways to

improve the constellation of

education policies influencing ECE

teacher preparation. In Chicago,

stakeholders are discussing the

implications of consolidating all

early childhood services within a

single department, includingpreschool programs funded through

the states Early Childhood Block

Grant. At first glance, this appears to

be a reasonable way to address

fragmentation across the various

programs and services. But this is

true only to the extent that

fragmentation is also reduced at the

federal level, the original source of

funding and regulation. As it stands

now, despite the recent

collaborations between ED and

HHS, federal supports for young

children and their families are still

highly complex and disjointed.

Preschool is still administered by

states and subject to standards put

forth by state boards of education.

Head Start and Early Head Start are

still administered by the


policyBRIEF

As it stands now,

despite the recent

collaborations

between ED and

HHS, federal

supports for young

children and theirfamilies are still

highly complex and

disjointed.


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11 NCATE, The Road Less Traveled.12 NCATE, Increasing the Application of Developmental Sciences Knowledge in Educator

Preparation, NCATE, 2010, www.ncate.org.

policyBRIEF


Administration for Children and

Families within HHS, and these

programs have their own standards

and regulations. Other programs areadministered by other agencies

within HHS and other federal

departments. Because all of these

programs have different program

standards and requirements for

teachers, teacher preparation varies

depending on the specific settings in

which candidates are seeking to

work.

One thus might be tempted to offerconsolidation at the federal level as a

plausible solution. However, there

are also several potential problems

with such a configuration. First, the

federal departments of ED and HHS

have established deep expertise and

knowledge bases in their respective

areas, and consolidation may result

in a loss of these intangible

resources. ED has established

systems that can support youngchildrens cognitive development

and academic outcomes, and HHS

has established systems that can

support their overall positive

cognitive development and healthy

well-being. Second, both are

connected to other systems within

their spectrum of services that can

facilitate continuity of childrens

development beyond early

childhood through adulthood. Forexample, ED can connect early

learning to elementary and

secondary education, as well as

post-secondary and vocational

education; HHS can connect

services for young and very young

children to services for mothers and

families. If ED streamlined its

programs to create a seamless pre-K

through postsecondary educationsystem, and HHS streamlined its

programs to create a seamless

system for supporting childrens

overall healthy development and

well-being, meaningful

collaboration between them could

focus more efficiently on meeting

the needs of the whole child. The

currently proposed federal Office for

Early Childhood may offer promise

in this regard, which might alsoenable creation of a standardized

early childhood career lattice with

comprehensive requirements and

expectations for the workforce

across all ECE settings.

Perhaps most promising are policies

that combine principles typically

associated with ECE and K-12

education. In 2010 the National

Council for Accreditation of TeacherEducation (NCATE) released the

report The Road Less Traveled: How

the Developmental Sciences Can

Prepare Educators to Improve Student

Achievement.11 This report was

followed by a brief that offered

concrete suggestions for how to apply

developmental sciences in teacher

preparation programs, highlighting

the disconnect between the way in

which institutions prepare teachersand what is known about how

students learn and develop.12While

groundbreaking for K-12 education,

this practice has long been central to

ECE teacher preparation. In fact,

child development comprises the

To best meet the

learning and

developmental

needs of children in

pre-K through third

grade and sustain

early learning gains,

ECE teachers

should be prepared

both in academic

subject matter and

child development,

combining practices

and principles from

ECE and K-12

systems.


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primary subject matter content in

ECE teacher preparation programs.

K-12 programs, on the other hand,

focus more on preparing students toteach content in academic subjects

such as reading, math, social studies,

and science. To best meet the

learning and developmental needs of

children in pre-K through third grade

and sustain early learning gains, ECE

teachers should be prepared both in

academic subject matter and child

development, combining practices

and principles from ECE and K-12

systems. Licensing and certificationstructures that align teacher

requirements with childrens

developmental stages would be ideal.

CONCLUSION

Early childhood care and education

encompasses more than just

preschool, extending from birth

through the end of third grade.

Policies designed to improve ECE

programs and services typically

focus on infants and toddlers or

preschoolers, and with few

exceptions, tend to overlook

kindergarten and the early

elementary grades altogether. Young

children will have better long-term

outcomes if they are exposed to

continuous high-quality early

learning experiences across the earlychildhood continuumfrom child

care through preschool and

kindergarten and their first years in

formal schooling. Ensuring that ECE

teachers are trained with specialized

knowledge and skills known to

facilitate young childrens learning

and positive development across the

early childhood continuum is

critical to establishing this

continuity, but this can be done only

through meaningful collaboration

between ECE and K-12 systems.

In addition to the numerous barriers

to coordinating ECE and K-12

policies, there are several other

issues that threaten the supply of

well-trained, high-quality ECE

teachers as well. These issues

include unequal compensation and

work conditions for child care,

preschool, and elementary teachers

across programs and settings; the

need for retaining differentiatedroles within the ECE teaching

workforce; and a diminishing supply

of ECE teachers who have earned a

bachelors degree or higher, since

most ECE teacher preparation

programs are provided by two-year

colleges and the current workforce

would need substantial supports to

successfully complete four-year

degree and certification programs.

Indeed, if policies do notcomprehensively address such

issues in addition to the

fragmentation in ECE teacher

preparation, the prospects for

significantly improving the pool of

high-quality ECE teachers are likely

limited. Still, the coordination of

policies governing ECE and K-12

teacher preparation is a critical

component of effective reform in

this area and a strong starting pointfor tackling the range of challenges

facing efforts to improve ECE

teacher quality.

0 UIC Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative

policyBRIEF

Licensing and

certification

structures that align

teacher requirements

with childrens

developmentalstages would be

ideal.


11/12

policyBRIEF


ABOUT US

The Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative (RUEPI) is an education policy research project based in

the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education. RUEPI was created in response to one of the most

significant problems facing urban education policy: dialogue about urban education policy consistently fails

to reflect what we know and what we do not about the problems education policies are aimed at remedying.

Instead of being polemic and grounded primarily in ideology, public conversations about education should

be constructive and informed by the best available evidence.

OUR MISSION

RUEPIs work is aimed at fostering more informed dialogue and decision-making about education policy in

Chicago and other urban areas. To achieve this, we engage in research and analysis on major policy issues

facing these areas, including early childhood education, inclusion, testing, STEM education, and teacher

workforce policy. We offer timely analysis and recommendations that are grounded in the best available

evidence.

OUR APPROACH

Given RUEPIs mission, the projects work is rooted in three guiding principles. While these principles are not

grounded in any particular political ideology and do not specify any particular course of action, they lay a

foundation for ensuring that debates about urban education policy are framed by an understanding of how

education policies have fared in the past. The principles are as follows:

Education policies should be coherent and strategic

Education policies should directly engage with what happens in schools and classrooms

Education policies should account for local context

RUEPI policy briefs are rooted in these principles, written by faculty in the University of Illinois at Chicago

College of Education and other affiliated parties, and go through a rigorous peer-review process.

Learn more at www.education.uic.edu/ruepi


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