Look to Laboratory Schools for Innovation and Leadership

Laboratory schools were developed more than one hundred years ago on university campuses. The roles, structure, mission, and history of university-based laboratory schools uniquely position them to respond to the needs of their communities and provide resources and leadership for the field. All lab schools have different strengths and resources to support growth and innovation, address issues in the field, and provide leadership to address challenges and opportunities; in collaboration with others they hold the potential to multiply the impact of work conducted independently. This practical article seeks to clarify the role of university laboratory schools while highlighting the responses of five early childhood laboratory schools in the United States to current challenges, illustrating ways that lab schools serve as valuable resources to the field of early childhood education. Together, these schools represent different state and local contexts, serve different populations, and have different programmatic structures. As we seek to address current challenges in early childhood education, we remind others to look to laboratory schools as valuable resources and partners for envisioning new possibilities for the field.