Strengthening School Readiness Through Pre-K for All: A University-District Partnership

Dr. Christina Weiland at the University of Michigan is part of a team of collaborators recently awarded a five-year, $5 million Institute of Education Sciences-funded research-practice partnership grant (R305H170042).. The grant is in partnership with the Division of Early Childhood Education at the New York City Department of Education and will examine the impact of three teacher professional development models on children’s school readiness and later achievement in New York City’s pre-K classrooms. Led by Pamela Morris, professor of applied psychology and vice dean for research and faculty affairs at NYU Steinhardt, the project aims to produce new knowledge that informs future professional development efforts and advances research on pre-K systems at scale in the real world, thus fulfilling pre-K’s long-standing promise of supporting children’s learning and development into the long term.
 
This jointly conceived project marks the next step in an ongoing partnership between researchers at NYU Steinhardt and the Division of Early Childhood Education at the New York City Department of Education to support the city’s rapid expansion of universal pre-K under Pre-K for All. The project will be led by principal investigators at NYU Steinhardt and the New York City Department of Education, in collaboration with NYU School of Medicine, MDRC, University of Michigan, and Westat. At the University of Michigan, Dr. Christina Weiland will co-lead the project's lottery identification strategy.