Saying Good-bye to Amanda Moreno, PhD

April 2013 -- After almost four years at the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy, Dr. Amanda Moreno will be stepping down from her Associate Director position to take a tenure-track faculty position at the Erikson Institute. Although we are very sad to see her go, this is a wonderful opportunity for her and we at the Morgridge College of Education and the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy wish her the best in her new position.

“I am thankful to every one of you for sharing in this work and teaching me so much,” Dr. Amanda Moreno said. “Given that the Institute is now in the extraordinarily capable hands of Dr. Douglas Clements and the rest of our wonderful staff and students, I have absolutely no doubts that the best is yet to come.”

We certainly wish Dr. Amanda Moreno the best in her future endeavors and we are thankful for her four years of leadership. She played an essential role in the successful launch of the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy.

Supporting Parental Engagement in Children's Developing Literacy by Eric Dearing, PhD

On November 15, 2012, Dr. Eric Dearing was the keynote speaker for the Marsico Institute's Early Learning Community Lecture Series. Dr. Dearing is an Associate Professor at Boston College's Lynch School of Education. He discussed the importance of modeling, which help children how to learn to adapt and thrive in life. That is, when parents are engaged and involved, children feel better about learning. Learning achievements become valued and, in turn, become reinforcers. When children are engaged at home, then they have better relationships with their teachers and are more interested in learning. The level of parental engagement matters more than the skills of the parent. Dr. Dearing stresses that parents and family members have to believe that they genuinely have a role that makes a difference and that matters.

Mary Ann Bash, founder of Each One Teach One (EOTO), presented on "deep, deep parental engagement" and the power and joy of words. She bases the EOTO method on the exposure to and repetition of new words. EOTO is an after-school program that provides support for kids gain exposure to new words and opportunities to repeat them than they typically get at home or in a regular classroom. Children wear lanyards with words written on them. These are the vocabulary words that they want to remember -- their "keys to the future." 

MIELL hosts the Early Learning Community Lecture Series annually and brings in national and international experts on early learning topics, and offer an evening social event and lecture, free of charge.

Why the Head Start Headlines Are Wrong by Amanda Moreno, PhD

Why the Head Start Headlines Are Wrong by Amanda Moreno, PhD

January 24, 2013 -- Excerpts from The Huffington Post

If you take a bath on Friday, and get dirty on Saturday, this means the bath was ineffective. The preceding, clearly flawed, logic sums up the misguided hysteria over a recent HHS report showing that the positive effects of Head Start fade out by third grade. The early childhood field has grappled with the "fade-out effect" multiple times before. We seem to have no trouble understanding why people lose ground after weight loss, addiction recovery, or treatment for depression because we know intuitively that an intensive intervention represents an extraordinary divergence from the natural course of human difficulty. And so it is with children growing up in poverty.

Consider this: despite the fact that cognitive impacts were not sustained into third grade for the overall sample, children who received their Head Start treatment year when they were three years old and whose mothers were not depressed did sustain cognitive outcomes. Given the large size of this group, this equates to a full 34 percent of the overall three-year-old cohort not experiencing fade-out on these critical outcomes, five years after attending Head Start. This proportion should be considered remarkable given the fact that most of the control children still attended some type of formal early education program.

Why am I so stubbornly convinced that the solution is to fix rather than chop? Because I don't believe in magic, and because of research that indicates that higher resources and additional enrichments in elementary school lead to more long-lasting effects of early educational programs. Such an analysis hasn't been done yet for Head Start (and given that these data are available, it is frustrating that the fade-out results were released without looking into this obvious question), but it has been done for Early Head Start.

A long-term follow-up of Early Head Start children through fifth grade showed, familiarly, that many of the broad impacts seen in early childhood had faded. However, children who had Early Head Start, plus formal care at ages three and four (which, in many cases was Head Start), plus a lower-poverty school at age five had superior outcomes on measures of cognitive performance seven years later in fifth grade to those students who had any two, any one, or none of these early educational experiences (and having any two of the experiences was also significantly better than having one or none.)

This shows the critical importance of that ongoing force on the other end of the tug-of-war rope that gives children a fighting chance to combat the natural course of risk. If you throw disadvantaged children back into environments rife with their own risk factors and provide no further mitigating (let alone enriching) efforts, why would you expect any outcome other than a slide? Try to do something similar with obesity, addiction, or depression and then call their interventions ineffective, and you would be (or should be) laughed out of any room.  Read more

Dr. Moreno is the former the Associate Director of the Marsico Institute.

Additional posts by Dr. Moreno:

• Killing Kindergarten in The Huffington Post
• Four Myths of Education Reform Nobody Is Talking About in The Huffington Post
• Time to amend SB 191 in the Denver Post online
• Pre-K Testing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly : Interview on BAM! Body Mind and Child with Rae Pica

Renowned Marsico Institute at the University of Denver Names New Executive Director

January 9, 2013 -- The University of Denver’s Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy (MIELL) at the Morgridge College of Education has named Dr. Douglas Clements as its new Executive Director.

Dr. Clements, Kennedy Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and current member of the Marsico Institute’s Advisory Board said in a statement, “I am honored. The Marsico Institute has a well-deserved reputation for developing and disseminating research-based innovations and information in early childhood education and care. I promise to enthusiastically extend and expand that reputation—MIELL’s work deserves widespread, national attention."

Prior to joining the Morgridge College of Education (MCE), Dr. Clements was Professor of Early Childhood, Mathematics, and Computer Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where he was granted the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2007. Previously a kindergarten teacher for five years and a preschool teacher for one year, he has conducted research and published widely in the areas of the learning and teaching of geometry, computer applications in mathematics education, the early development of mathematical ideas, and the effects of social interactions on learning.

He has authored over 100 refereed research studies, 8 books, 50 chapters, and 250 additional publications. Equally impressive, over the span of his prestigious career, Dr. Clements has been awarded, either solely or in partnership with others, approximately $35,000,000 of sponsored research funds. Clements was a member of the National Math Advisory Panel, convened to advise the President of the United States on the best use of scientifically-based research to advance the teaching and learning of mathematics. He also was a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Early Mathematics. Clements helped develop the Common Core State Standards Committee of the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, writing national academic standards and the learning trajectories that underlie them.

Dr. Douglas Clements' CV and Portfolio

2013

01/01/13  Dr. Douglas Clements is named as Marsico Institute's new Executive Director

01/24/13  Dr. Amanda Moreno is featured as a contributor to The Huffington Post in Why the Head Start Headlines Are Wrong  | All Blog Entries by Amanda Moreno | RSS feed

2012

12/06/12  Colorado awarded $29.9 million in Race to the Top Early Learning Funds

11/15/12  Community Lecture Series: Supporting Parental Engagement in Children's Developing Literacy by Dr. Eric Dearing

07/31/12  Dr. Ginger Maloney steps down as Marsico Institute's Director

2011

11/11/11  Community Lecture Series: Promoting Literacy from Birth to Five by Dr. Nell K. Duke

08/03/11  Dr. Amanda Moreno is featured as a contributor to The Huffington Post in Four Myths of Education Reform Nobody is Talking About  | All Blog Entries by Amanda Moreno |  RSS feed

07/13/11  Is Pre-K Testing and Accountability Coming? in The Huffington Post features the discussion panel that Amanda Moreno was part of in Pre-K Testing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on 06/13/11

06/13/11  Dr. Amanda Moreno is interviewed as part of a discussion panel on Pre-K testing in the new Race to Top - Early Learning Challenge program on BAM! Body Mind and Child with Rae Pica on Pre-K Testing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  |  Listen  |  Join the Discussion

05/12/11  Marsico welcomes new staff member Sheridan Green

03/12/11  Dr. Amanda Moreno's manuscript detailing the reliability and validity of an infant-toddler authentic assessment she developed in partnership with the Clayton Early Learning Institute was accepted for publication

Moreno, A.J., & Klute, M.M. (in press). Infant-toddler teachers can successfully employ authentic assessment: The Learning Through Relating System. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

03/10/11  Dr. Amanda Moreno wrote a guest commentary on measuring teacher effectiveness in the early childhood years for the online edition of The Denver Post

2010

11/01/10  Dr. Amanda Moreno quoted in parenting magazine  Parent-Digital.com

10/29/10  The Marsico Family Foundation hosts the dedication of MIELL at the new Morgridge College of Education building

10/28/10  Community Lecture Series: Brain Rules for Baby by Dr. John Medina

10/20/10  Dr. Amanda Moreno quoted in parenting magazine  Parenting.com

10/07/10  K-ching! Kindergarten Determines Future Income features studies showing that kindergarten quality affects adult income

04/29/10  Community Lecture Series: The Science Behind Why Early Childhood Matters! by Dr. Jill Stamm

2009

11/13/09  Colorado mentioned as leading the pack on reform in New America's Blog

06/01/09  Original article announcing Marsico gift and establishment of the Institute

Spring 09  Original article discussing early vision of the Marsico Institute

03/30/09  Community Lecture Series: Best Practices for Serving Very Young Latino Children and Their Families by Dr. Michael Lopez 

Community Lecture Series: The Building Blocks of Pre-K Math by Dr. Doug Clements