Early Childhood

The Iowa School Boards Foundation (ISBF) is committed to provide educational policymakers and leaders with relevant and credible early childhood research and information. This section of the site contains resources to assist education decision-makers to ensure all Iowa preschoolers experience quality learning experiences that lay the foundation for success in school and life. For assistance with preschool research, collaboration, planning and implementation, contact Lou Ann Gvist, ISBF research project director at 1-800-795-4272 or Lgvist@ia-sb.org.

These ISBF Research Briefs and Reports provide educational leaders with unbiased and relevant research to guide effective decision-making related to quality early childhood learning.

• New! ISBF Building Quality Preschool
• ISBF: Are Preschool Program Standards Enough to Ensure Quality?
• ISBF Leadership in Early Childhood Education - Six Standards and Strategies for Principals Brief
• ISBF Role of the Board for Ensuring Quality Preschool Brief
• ISBF Quality Professional Development in Early Childhood Education Brief
• ISBF Quality Preschool Brief 
• ISBF Preschool Influence Brief
• ISBF Preschool Influence Report

These tools are designed to help schools develop a successful grant application for the Iowa Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program.

• Updated! ISBF PreK 2009-10 Grant Application Writing Tool
  • Writing a successful grant means you must align your story to the scoring expectations! This ISBF tool helps you focus on each grant question and the related scoring criteria. It also provides useful tips, possible examples and space for writing a draft of your text. 
• New! ISBF PreK 2009-10 Grant Calendar & Meeting Topic Tool
  • This ISBF grant planning tool gets you organized as you set important meetings, collect data and collaborate with community partners. It also provides you with critical conversation topics and a meeting agenda template designed to help your collaborative teams plan an effective preschool program. These important discussion topics also directly link to the grant application scoring criteria, which gives you time to collect meeting artifacts that provide the evidence you'll need to write an award-winning grant application!
• ISBF PreK Budget Planning Tool
  • This excel application is designed to support districts interested in participating in Iowa's Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program. Our tool will help school leaders develop a preschool program budget utilizing state dollars in conjunction with other funding streams.

These tools are designed to promote effective school-community collaboration resulting in high quality preschool programs that meet the needs of local children and their families.

• New! School/Community Meeting Roster
• New! Phone Call Log

The two new tools shown above will help you document community collaboration for your preschool grant application.

• Collaboration Sample Meeting Agenda
• Collaboration Meeting Visioning Activity
• Assessing Community Assets Preschool Survey
• Collaborative Relationships: The Building Blocks of Quality Preschool DVD
• Importance of Collaboration
• Benefits of Collaboration
• Effective Collaboration - Tips for Success
• Examples of Collaborative Preschool Programs
  • Tri-County Head Start
  • Ogden Community Schools: The Ogden Early Learning Center
• Preschool funding streams and other resources
• Considerations for Districts Interested in Applying for Funding
• Preschool Bill (HF 877)
• Preschool Bill (HF 877) Legislation Rules
• Acknowledgments 
• Thank you to our sponsors video

• Early Childhood Research & Resources
  • Iowa Department of Education
  • National Association for the Education of Young Children
  • National Institute Early Education Research
  • Pre-K Now-- ISBF makes national impact! The ISBF preschool toolkit is listed as a key resource in Pre-K Now's national report "Beyond the School Yard: Pre-K Collaboration with Community Partners." Click here to see the report.
  • Zero to Three
• Collaboration 
  • Iowa Head Start State Collaboration Office
  • Collaborating Partners in Wisconsin
• Child Care 
  • National Child Care Information and Technical Asistance Center
  • Iowa Child Care Resource & Referral
• Early Language and Literacy
  • Raising Readers in Story County
  • International Reading Association
  • Reach Out and Read
  • National Institute for Literacy
  • National Literacy Trust
  • Reading Recovery Council of North America
  • Reading is Fundamental
  • American Library Association

Call Lou Ann Gvist, research project director at (515) 288-1991 or 1-800-795-4272 for additional assistance.

These resources made possible by the generous support of: