S. 4190 — Creating Early Childhood Leaders Act

This section sets forth congressional findings that principals and school leaders have the second-largest in-school impact on student achievement (after teachers); are increasingly supervising prekindergarten programs without early childhood education training; and must understand early childhood development standards due to their lifelong impacts. The section states the purpose of the Act to ensure principals and school leaders effectively support teachers in providing developmentally appropriate instruction to prekindergarten students.

This section revises the school leader preparation requirements under the Teacher Quality Partnership Grants program (i.e., competitive grants to partnerships of institutions of higher education, high-need local educational agencies, and other entities to strengthen teacher, principal, and early childhood educator preparation and retention) by (1) replacing clause (v) to require eligible partnerships to engage parents, community members, local educational agencies, businesses, providers of early childhood education programs, and other community leaders to leverage resources for student achievement; (2) making a conforming punctuation change to clause (vi); and (3) adding clause (vii) to require preparation in child development, social-emotional development, developmentally appropriate behavioral interventions and supports, and effective instructional leadership skills for children from birth through age 8 to manage early childhood education programs.