This article originally ran in New America.
As states invest billions to expand public pre-K, the conversation about quality is finally catching up with the conversation about access.
In the past two years alone, the early childhood field has taken major steps toward defining what strong pre-K instruction should look like. In 2024, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released guidance outlining evidence-based approaches to early learning, including stronger supports for oral language, literacy, content knowledge, and cognitively rich learning experiences. And this spring, EdReports released its first reviews of pre-K instructional materials, bringing new transparency to curriculum quality in a field that has long lacked shared standards.
These developments matter. Research from K-12 shows that high-quality instructional materials can improve teaching and student outcomes.
But curriculum alone does not improve instruction.
The real challenge is helping educators use those materials well, which is where many pre-K systems remain stuck in outdated approaches to professional learning.
Too often, professional development for early childhood educators still relies on isolated workshops, compliance-driven coaching, or sporadic classroom observations disconnected from daily instruction. Coaches may check whether daily schedules are posted or centers are labeled with the activity description, but spend little to no time supporting teachers to strengthen instruction tied to curriculum or children’s learning.
Meanwhile, many K-12 systems have spent the past decade moving toward more evidence-based models: curriculum-aligned coaching, continuous feedback cycles, practice-based professional learning, and, increasingly over the past few years, technology-enabled supports that make coaching more scalable and consistent.
Research suggests these same practices work for pre-K as well. Across multiple studies of Pre-K curricula, researchers have consistently found that programs are most likely to improve student outcomes when teachers receive training and coaching on implementation and instructional practice. This is true both for curricula closely aligned with the National Academies’ recommendations, as well as broader whole-child models that received weaker ratings on EdReports’ content quality indicator. The lesson is clear: curriculum quality and educator support go hand in hand.
Too often, professional development for early childhood educators still relies on isolated workshops, compliance-driven coaching, or sporadic classroom observations disconnected from daily instruction.
Some of the strongest public pre-K systems in the country are already operating this way. Programs in cities like Boston and New York have paired high-quality instructional materials with ongoing coaching and instructional supports tied directly to classroom practice. But nationally, these examples remain the exception rather than the norm. Effective professional learning, though impactful, is expensive and difficult to scale using traditional in-person supports because pre-K systems tend to be much less centralized than K-12, have smaller budgets for coaching, and typically employ mixed-delivery systems serving students in public schools and partner community-based organizations.
To close that gap, pre-K systems should focus on three priorities.
1. States and districts should partner with organizations that already know how to deliver effective professional learning at scale.
Many K-12 organizations have spent years developing expertise in curriculum implementation and instructional coaching aligned to high-quality instructional materials. Nonprofits, such as Teaching Matters, Teaching Lab, and Leading Educators, know how to help districts build systems of practice-based professional learning that improve instruction and boost student achievement.
Rather than creating separate approaches for pre-K, early childhood leaders should adapt and extend the best practices from these models into their schools. Some organizations are already beginning this work. Teaching Matters, for example, has supported curriculum-aligned professional learning efforts in New York City Pre-K classrooms as part of the NYC Reads Initiative. This includes a range of services, including 10 weeks of on-site support and professional learning focused on content, pedagogy, modeling of best practices, and collaborative planning. Given rigorous evidence that these models strengthen high-quality teaching practices and boost student outcomes in K-12, there’s reason to be excited about their potential in pre-K to do the same.
2. Pre-K systems should embrace technology as a way to expand access to coaching.
Technology should not replace the relationships at the center of early childhood teaching. But it can help make professional learning more timely, individualized, and scalable.
Emerging evidence from K-12 suggests that AI-enabled and video-based coaching models can improve teacher practice at a fraction of the cost of traditional in-person coaching. Early childhood organizations are beginning to explore similar approaches. Tools of the Mind, which reaches almost 4,000 pre-K educators each year, recently introduced TREE, a virtual video coaching model designed to help teachers reflect on and improve classroom instruction through guided observation and feedback cycles. LENA Grow uses technology to measure teacher-child conversational turns and provide data-informed coaching to strengthen classroom interactions, while Stanford’s FIND-PD model uses video reflection and strengths-based coaching to help educators build responsive, relationship-centered teaching practices.
Used thoughtfully, these tools strengthen—but don’t replace—the human support educators need, and help them provide more effective instruction to the youngest learners.
3. The field needs stronger infrastructure for shared learning about what effective professional development looks like in pre-K.
K-12 systems have invested significant resources into studying professional learning implementation and impact across districts and states. Research-practice partnerships and national initiatives like the Research Partnership for Professional Learning have helped identify shared features of effective models, while creating structures that make it easier to replicate best practices. And professional organizations like Learning Forward share research-based best practices for implementing effective professional learning in K-12.
Early childhood lacks much of this infrastructure. Pre-K systems often operate separately from broader instructional improvement efforts, even as expectations for instructional quality continue to rise due to growing public investment in pre-K access. That needs to change. States, researchers, philanthropy, and intermediary organizations should invest in shared improvement efforts that help pre-K leaders learn from one another, and from K-12 systems that have already navigated many of these challenges.
If states want to deliver on the promise of high-quality pre-K, emphasizing curriculum quality is the right first step. But the next, and arguably more important one, is ensuring educators have the support to bring those materials to life in classrooms every day.
K-12 has already generated important lessons about how to do that. Pre-K systems shouldn’t be afraid to use them.
