For early childhood development, nearly $14 million in grants
The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center has been chosen to lead a national effort to boost children's intellectual and social development.
The U.S. Department of Education selected FPG as the only National Center to Enhance Early Learning and Development. Grants expected to total nearly $14 million--among the largest in the University's history--will support center activities during the next five years.
"Since its founding almost 30 years ago, FPG has set an international standard of excellence in studying how to improve the lives of young children and their families," said H. Garland Hershey, vice chancellor for health affairs.
"This selection reflects not only the quality of the proposal, but also the rich history of the center and its tradition of blending high-quality research with efforts to put the results into practice," Hershey said.
Center faculty will study the quality of child care and intervention programs and changes in children during their earliest years, especially the transition to kindergarten, said FPG Director Don Bailey, who also will direct the new center.
"Our overarching purpose will be to identify effective practices in the care and education of young children, determine the extent to which they are being used, identify barriers to them and test results and models for improvement," he said. "We will generate knowledge about the complex ways children, families, programs and communities influence developing youngsters, as well as the role of public policy."
Creating effective strategies for putting research results into practice is a central goal, Bailey said. The new center will conduct at least one major survey each year and sponsor an annual conference to synthesize early childhood issues of national concern.
The need for the center is great and is growing, Bailey said. Nearly 70 percent of mothers of preschool age children work, and the demand for child care has grown rapidly.
Poverty, racial discrimination, violence, family dissolution, poor nutrition and other factors have combined to rob millions of children of adequate developmental support. Millions are at risk of school failure even before they enter kindergarten.
"We have little national leadership in early childhood, with the result being that multiple agencies address various pieces of the early childhood problem with little coordination," Bailey said. "A large number of programs have proliferated, but quality varies considerably and is often quite poor."
Nineteen senior faculty at Carolina and three other universities will collaborate with other organizations and 12 internationally recognized research partners at the new center, Bailey said.
Key UNC faculty involved include Donna Bryant, Margaret Burchinal, Richard Clifford, Martha Cox, Lynette Darkes, former FPG director James Gallagher and Pamela Winton. They and their colleagues will work with the School of Education and Department of Psychology researchers and investigators at the universities of Arkansas at Little Rock, California at Los Angeles and Virginia.
Other national research and development centers will study school-age children at the universities of California at Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the State University of New York at Albany and Stanford University.
Donna Bryant and Richard Clifford are two of the lead faculty in the new National Center to Enhance Early Learning and Development. The Department of Education chose the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center for this important effort to boost children's intellectual and social development.
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