The State Fiscal Stabilization Fund of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act requires states to make commitments in four key education policy areas - data, stan-dards and assessment, low-performing schools, and teacher effectiveness. States, led by their governors and education agencies, will be developing policy plans that will be presented to the U.S. Department of Education in order for them to access the final round of Stabilization Fund money. These same policy elements will be critical to the $4.35 billion in discretionary "Race to the Top" grants the Department will award to states moving the most aggressively to implement policies that improve student achievement.

Although the four Stabilization Fund commitments focus primarily on K-12 education, state policies in each of those areas should properly address early learning to be truly best-in-class. States increasingly are seeking to develop integrated policy sets for education from birth through graduate school ("B-20"), believing that such integrated policy sets use state resources most efficiently and give students the best chance of success. Stabilization Fund plans provide state education leaders with the leverage to force key conversations about how best to develop comprehensive and thoughtful state B-20 policies in four critical issue areas. This white paper explains how state leaders should think about including early learning in the Stabilization Fund commitments, with specific analysis of key principles and guiding questions in each of the four policy areas.

Click here to read the full paper.

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