|
|
Bright Beginnings is an early childhood curriculum, based in part on High/Scope® and Creative Curriculum®, with an additional emphasis on literacy skills. The curriculum consists of nine thematic units designed to enhance children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development, and each unit includes concept maps, literacy lessons, center activities, and home activities. Special emphasis is placed on the development of early language and literacy skills, and parent involvement is a key component of the program.
No studies of Bright Beginnings meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards, but one study meets WWC evidence standards with reservations. The one study included 198 students from 14 public preschool classrooms in Tennessee.3
Based on this one study, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Bright Beginnings to be small for oral language, print knowledge, phonological processing, and math. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Bright Beginnings in the early reading and writing or the cognition domains.
Bright Beginnings was found to have potentially positive effects on print knowledge and no discernible effects on oral language, phonological processing, and math.
| Oral language | Print knowledge | Phonological processing | Early reading and writing |
Cognition | Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | No discernible effects |
Potentially positive effects |
No discernible effects |
na | na | No discernible effects |
Improvement index4
|
Average: +4 percentile points Range: +4 to +5 percentile points |
Average: +12 percentile points Range: +7 to +15 percentile points |
Average: –3 percentile points | na |
na na | Average: +4 percentile points Range: –1 to +6 percentile points |
1 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from publicly available sources:
the program’s website (http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/cmsdepartments/ci/pre-kservices/Pages/
default.aspx, downloaded August 2008) and the literature reviewed for this report. The WWC requests developers
to review the program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Further verification of the accuracy of the descriptive information for
this program is beyond the scope of this review.
2 The studies in this report were reviewed using WWC Evidence Standards, Version 1.0 (see the WWC Standards).
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the study (studies).
|Institute of Education Sciences
