” ‘We know that literacy is about knowledge building and knowledge building is about experience, vocabulary, and language. That’s true for everyone. So we think that a lot of what happens in pre-K is what should be happening for all children up through and beyond second grade,’ says Melissa Tonachel, program director at the BPS Department of Early Childhood (DEC).”

“The work involved in transforming the early elementary grades in Boston didn’t happen overnight, but is instead the result of about twenty years of work, with much of it focused on creating a curriculum that aligns the content and instructional practices of the pre-K through second grade span.”

“In many ways, Boston is setting an example of pre-K through second grade alignment that can serve as an example for other districts across the country. A 2023 study of Boston’s alignment efforts from pre-K to first grade found that this sort of instructional alignment may help to sustain the initial benefits of pre-K programs through first grade in a subset of outcome domains. The same study concluded that Boston’s experience provides evidence that, ‘given sufficient investments in coaching and professional development and structures that provide some oversight over both PreK and elementary school settings, it is feasible to implement aligned curricula from PreK to first grade with moderate to high levels of intervention fidelity.’ ”

— “In Boston, Bringing the Best of Pre-K Practices into the Elementary Years,” Blog Post by Aaron Loewenberg, New America, November 26, 2025