Acknowledgments

Many individuals and organizations have contributed to the design and conduct of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). While it is not possible to name all the individuals who have made significant contributions to this study, we would like to recognize some of the people and organizations who played a critical role during the development and implementation of the ECLS-B. We thank the parents of these children who invited us into their homes and allowed us to talk with both them and their children.

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions and energies from:

• U.S. Department of Education
  • Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)
  • National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)
  • Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA)
  • Office of Indian Education (OIE)
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
  • National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
  • National Institute on Aging (NIA)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
  • National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)
  • National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
  • Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)
  • National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Office of Minority Health (OMH)
• Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
• Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB)
• Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture

Special recognition goes to Jerry West, former Program Director of the Early Childhood and Household Studies Program at NCES, for his leadership and dedication to the ECLS-B project. We would also like to recognize Marian MacDorman (NCHS) for her support in selecting the sample and her ongoing contributions to the design of the ECLS-B.

We thank the members of the ECLS project team within NCES: Chris Chapman, Elvira Germino Hausken, Gail Mulligan, and Peter Tice. Much of the work for this report was performed by staff at the Education Statistics Services Institute (ESSI), which is composed of staff from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and a number of partner organizations. The authors acknowledge the following individuals from the ECLS project team within ESSI for their assistance with analysis and guidance: Sandy Eyster (AIR), Amy Rathbun (AIR), Jill Walston (AIR), and Meryl Yoches (Child Trends); and we also thank Martin Hahn (AIR) for his editorial support.

We recognize the valued contributions of staff at RTI International, in particular Ina Wallace, Alice Turner, Lisa Thalji, Susan Kinsey, Jean Lennon, Kyle Snow, Wendy Visscher, Jim Rogers, Donna Jewell, Ilona Johnson, Melissa Raspa, and Jane Dedek whose endless energies went into the collection of the data and to the development of the data file. Special recognition also goes to our reviewers, Val Plisko (NCES), Marilyn Seastrom (NCES), Mike Planty (NCES), Tracy Rimdzius (Institute of Education Sciences), Xiaolei Wang (AIR), Alison Slade (AIR), and Fumiyo Tao (Institute of Education Sciences) for the high quality of their input into this document.

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