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Alliance for Early Success
May 2025
Support for state early childhood policies and funding continued to be strong in 2024, with policymakers from every region and political landscape acting to improve their early childhood policies. In our annual survey of state early childhood advocates, all states with a legislative session reported a policy win, and 83 percent reported a win that included an increase in state funding. Many legislatures appropriated state funds to close federal funding gaps, signaling the importance of investing...

ZerotoEight
May 21 2025 Early Learning Nation is relaunching as zero2eight, a new editorial vertical at The 74. Our coverage will build upon the previous work of Early Learning Nation, continuing to cover the issues most critical to America’s youngest children. What can you expect as a reader? While we have a new name, page and logo, zero2eight will continue and expand the mission of Early Learning Nation, examining the field of early care and education for children 0 to 8 years old, a crucial period...

Stanford Center on Early Childhood
May 14, 2025
The Stanford Center on Early Childhood is proud to announce two new fellowships that have been graciously funded by The Zaentz Charitable Foundation.
The Zaentz Community Fellowship Program (ZCFP) This program aims to support leadership development in early childhood champions within RAPID communities. The Zaentz Fellows Program (Masters) This is a new fellowship designed to support the leadership development of graduate students interested in early childhood....

Schoolhouse Connection
April 30, 2025
A new report from national nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection reveals that an estimated 446,996 infants and toddlers—ages birth through three—experienced homelessness during the 2022–2023 program year. This marks a staggering 23% increase in just two years. The report, Infant and Toddler Homelessness Across 50 States: 2022–2023, produced in partnership with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, is the only 50-state analysis of homelessness among our nation’s youngest children. It presents the latest state-level estimates of infant and toddler...

K-12 Dive
April 28, 2025
By Kara Arundel
A program that supports infants and toddlers with developmental delays and their families could face significant fiscal pressures due to the Trump administration’s overall efforts to reduce the size and budget of the federal government. While no specific cuts to the Part C program have been announced yet, Congress will be contemplating proposals to whittle down annual allocations and a possible reduction to Medicaid payments — both of which help prop up early intervention services...

EdSurge
April 21, 2025
By Claire Woodcock
Along the Canadian border in north central Washington’s Okanogan County, where the closest major city is at least 100 miles away and infrastructure is sparse, the Okanogan County Child Development Association oversees nine Head Start centers in the region. In an area where wages haven’t kept up with inflation, forcing working families to make measured financial choices, these centers provide child care to nearly 160 area preschoolers, toddlers and infants who are living at or below the...

The Harvard Gazette
April 25, 2025
By Mackenzie L. Boucher
Nonie K. Lesaux had been a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than two decades — nearly her entire professional career — by the time she was named dean in March. A scholar of early childhood education and literacy, Lesaux’s extensive scholarship and minimal political engagement has allowed the new dean and the education school to fly under the radar amid an escalating campaign by the Trump administration to defund...

Time Magazine
March 31, 2025
By Michelle Bezark
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is tearing through the federal government agency by agency, slashing programs, firing civil servants, and cutting research dollars. Polling indicates Americans may be souring on this approach, as program cuts come closer to home. Even then, some 40% of Americans believe the country could run with almost no federal employees. This reflects how disconnected Americans have become from federal agencies and the programs and services they provide....

The Harvard Gazette
March 27, 2025
By Nicole Rura
Nonie K. Lesaux, the Roy Edward Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development, has been named dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Lesaux has served as interim dean since July. “For the past eight months, Nonie has led as interim dean with a wonderful combination of energy and insight,” said Harvard President Alan M. Garber. “Amid unprecedented challenges to both K-12 and higher education, she has demonstrated her ability to meet the moment,...

First Five Years Fund
March 5, 2025
Parents want to make child care choices that best support their family’s individual needs and their child’s development. This is especially true for the two-thirds of children ages five and under who require care because all available parents in their household are working. Yet today, too many parents are left with very few options and struggle to afford the care they do find. The Child Care Availability and Affordability Act and the Child Care Workforce Act...

The New York Times
March 1, 2025
By Brian Goldstone
At 10 p.m., a hospital technician pulls into a Walmart parking lot. Her four kids — one still nursing — are packed into the back of her Toyota. She tells them it’s an adventure, but she’s terrified someone will call the police: “Inadequate housing” is enough to lose your children. She stays awake for hours, lavender scrubs folded in the trunk, listening for footsteps, any sign of trouble. Her shift starts soon. She’ll...

The Mercury News
February 26, 2025
By Jeff Collins
Presley Wilson’s priorities shifted from college to finding a new home after she got booted from her studio apartment in the middle of her first semester at Cal State Long Beach. Homelessness loomed for the transfer student when her financial aid package arrived too late to keep her from falling behind on her rent. Then, three weeks before she had to leave her apartment, a university case worker located a slot in a state-funded program designed...

Vox
February 13, 2025
By Anna North
It’s preschool application season in New York City, where I live. That means parents of toddlers are eagerly and anxiously signing on to a (surprisingly user-friendly) city-run website and ranking their preferred programs, in the hopes that, come fall, their 3- and 4-year-olds will be able to go to a high-quality pre-K in their community — for free....

John Templeton Foundation
January 9, 2025
The John Templeton Foundation is proud to announce nine new grants focused on youth thriving in the digital age. These projects, awarded through the Cultivating Character in the Digital Age funding call, promise to create tools and resources to support character development, advance our understanding of how youth use technology, and spark conversations on how technology can be used for good....

U.S. News & World Report
January 13, 2025
By Elliott Davis Jr., Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky and Julia Haines
The estimated number of people experiencing homelessness in America surged to about 771,000 in 2024 – shattering last year’s record total since reporting began in 2007. That’s according to the latest release of the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The report found that on a single night in January of 2024, at least 771,480 people were experiencing...

John Templeton Foundation
January 9, 2025
The John Templeton Foundation is proud to announce nine new grants focused on youth thriving in the digital age. These projects, awarded through the Cultivating Character in the Digital Age funding call, promise to create tools and resources to support character development, advance our understanding of how youth use technology, and spark conversations on how technology can be used for good....

Columbia Magazine
Winter 24-25
By David J. Craig
On a misty morning this past June, Denver mayor Mike Johnston stood before a small crowd in his city’s bustling downtown business district and made a surprise announcement. Despite Denver’s mounting homelessness crisis — on any given night some 1,300 people could be found sleeping in boxes, tents, and vehicles —the city was on the cusp of solving the issue for one key group: military veterans. Nearly one hundred veterans a night had been sleeping...

CBS News
December 27, 2024
Money Watch
Homelessness in the U.S. jumped 18.1% this year, hitting a record level, with the dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in some regions of the country, federal officials said Friday. More than 770,000 people were counted as homeless in federally required tallies taken across the country during a single night in January 2024, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said...

The New York Times
December 27, 2024
By Jason DeParle
Homelessness soared to the highest level on record this year, driven by forces that included a surge in migrants seeking asylum, a national housing crisis and the end of pandemic-era measures to protect the needy, the federal government reported on Friday. The number of people experiencing homelessness topped 770,000, an increase of more than 18 percent over last year and the largest annual increase since the count began in 2007. Nearly every category of...

CBS News Chicago
November 7, 2024
By Jeramie Bizzle
Barbara Bowman, a pioneer in early childhood education, has died, the Erikson Institute announced this week. Bowman passed away Monday at the age of 96. She began as a preschool teacher in 1950, got her master's in education from the University of Chicago, and co-founded the Erikson Institute. The institution trains people in social work, child development, and early childhood education. It's meant to give educators the skills to help children thrive. "Barbara Taylor Bowman was a...