Focus Rethinking early education Building a better preschool: Specialized professional learning is key to high-quality early education. By Eric Celeste We’ve been talking about the unique aspects of professional learning for early education teachers for a long time, but many of the challenges are still largely the same. Two crucial challenges of professional learning for early education are teacher preparation and ongoing professional learning, especially keeping up with brain science and social-emotional research. The progress being made in pockets across the country is just the first step toward a system of professional training, learning, and monitoring that can lead to improved outcomes for all students in early education. A foundation of learning: D.C. program addresses achievement gap for 3- and 4-year-olds. By Natasha Parrilla and Kelly