Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society

Members of the School Reform and Beyond Initiative met in New York City in December to discuss their continued efforts to build an early foundation for children’s success in school and to close the educational achievement gap that increases dramatically over the first ten years of life. The quarterly meeting focused on three tiers of intervention identified by the group as most salient: birth to age three, preschool and early elementary school.
Researchers from the University of Michigan, Harvard, NYU, Georgetown, and several other esteemed institutions
discussed the status of ongoing work, potential future work, and three recently submitted grant
proposals.

Social science has long held that humans have a selfish streak – that if you probe deeply enough into our motivations, self-interest guides everything we do. But a new book, edited by University of Michigan adjunct research assistant professor Stephanie Brown, along with  Pacific Lutheran University psychology professor Mike Brown and Karmanos Cancer Institute senior scientist Louis Penner, challenges that idea. In Moving Beyond Self Interest: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience, and the Social Sciences (2011, Oxford University Press), Brown, Brown and Penner combine evidence from their respective disciplines that points toward a genuinely altruistic drive to help others.

Research has shown that teaching young kids key social-emotional and cognitive skills – like how to manage their emotions, work together and focus their attention – builds a foundation for school success that can last a lifetime. With a 2-year, $461,412 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the University of Michigan-led School Reform and Beyond project is adapting its elementary school intervention to help low-income preschoolers in Phoenix’s Alhambra Elementary School District arrive at kindergarten ready to learn.