Second Ready to Read Project Will Test Home Use of Sesame Street and Between the Lions Programming

JAN. 18, 2008 | The Education Development Center, Inc., (EDC), has awarded $200,000 to the National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives for the Ready to Read Project, a two-year evaluation of the use of Sesame Street and Between the Lions segments in classrooms and homes of three- and four-year-olds in several Mississippi communities.

The center, known as Rural Early Childhood, is a program of the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute.

Mentors in the EDC-funded study will demonstrate to parents how to incorporate special collections of segments from the two television series into family activities at home. Focusing on key early literacy skills, the center will compare the progress of children who experience the lessons based on Sesame Street and Between the Lions and the progress of other children who experience a different set of parent-child learning activities. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting contracted the Education Development Center to evaluate the effectiveness of the television programs.

Cathy Grace, Ed.D., professor of curriculum and instruction and director of the MSU Early Childhood Institute, collaborated with educators and social scientists at the Education Development Center and SRI International to design the research project.

Rural Early Childhood also will evaluate use of the Sesame Street and Between the Lions collections in classrooms for three- and four-year-olds over a two-year period. Following pilot use of the curriculum materials, the center will revise the materials for possible nationwide dissemination by the Ready to Learn Initiative.

Rural Early Childhood has conducted several studies of early learning and the early childhood services sector in rural America. Its 2006 analysis of data in the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that rural children arrive at kindergarten 60 percent more likely than non-rural children to need special education.

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