Early childhood expert Jeanne-Brooks Gunn of National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College offers new research on program effectiveness)

As ambitious state-funded pre-kindergarten programs are stalled or halted by fiscal woes, early childhood education experts gathered with government officials and business leaders from 14 states last week to learn more about child development and gain a deeper understanding of children's learning, behavior and health from top experts.

Such partnerships are a positive development at a time when budget uncertainties are halting plans for pre-kindergarten expansion in states like Virginia and Tennessee.

The conference -- sponsored by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University -- included findings of A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy.

Discussions included an overview of the impact of early experience on brain development and lessons learned from public-private partnerships. A gold mine of research and reports presented at the conference are well worth the time of journalists and others interested in early education policy, including papers that look at early childhood program effectiveness by, among others, Jeanne-Brooks Gunn of the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College.

A story about the conference can be found in Education Week .