11 Feb SXSW EDU Film & Performance Lineup Announced
We are thrilled to announce that "Tomorrow's Hope" is screening at SXSW EDU (followed by a Q&A) - March 7th in Austin, TX....
News
10 Feb Bipartisan working group calls for rebalancing the budget to invest more in America’s children
By Nora Delaney February 10, 2022 A new bipartisan report calls for "rewriting the generational contract" to increase investments in America’s children significantly by shifting funds from programs that now go toward supporting older, wealthier adults. In the report, "Rebalancing: Children First," leading scholars convened by two of the country’s most respected think tanks propose directing more national funds to help children. Currently, more than 40% of the federal budget flows to Americans over the age of 65, compared to only 7.4% spent...
10 Feb NPR: A top researcher says it’s time to rethink our entire approach to preschool
By Anya Kamenetz February 10, 2022 Dale Farran has been studying early childhood education for half a century. Yet her most recent scientific publication has made her question everything she thought she knew. "It really has required a lot of soul-searching, a lot of reading of the literature to try to think of what were plausible reasons that might account for this."...
02 Feb The New York Times: How to Fix Child Care Before the Next Pandemic Wave
By Jessica Grose February 2, 2022 In January, parents of kids under 5 told me they were in a state of despair and semi-panic; emotionally, they were at the lowest I’d heard them since the pandemic’s beginning in March 2020. ...
19 Jan Families in Alabama have free, full-day pre-K while many Mass. families can only dream of it
By Naomi Martin and Jenna Russell January 17, 2022 BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Leighton Harris, 4, sat with her classmates on a rug before a whiteboard. One of her two teachers praised the little girl’s calm, attentive posture: “I love how Leighton is sitting.’’ A year before the start of kindergarten, Leighton is well-prepared, having already practiced not just her letters and numbers, but also subtle skills key for school success, such as breathing through stress and the art of sitting quietly and...
18 Jan Kids’ Behavior Worsened With Remote Learning: Study
January 11, 2022 As the Omicron variant surges and U.S. schools deal with a substitute teacher shortage and related pandemic fallout, don't be surprised if a return to remote or hybrid learning leads your kids to act out, a new study warns....
10 Jan JAMA Pediatrics Study: School Learning Format and Children’s Behavioral Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic
January 10, 2022 Emily C. Hanno, PhD The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the education of more than 1 billion children worldwide, with many experiencing shifts between remote, hybrid, and in-person learning. As the COVID-19 pandemic and interruptions to learning continue, we need to understand their consequences for children’s behavioral health to inform response efforts. We used longitudinal data to examine how children’s behavioral well-being differed by learning format....
05 Jan How can we improve early childhood education? Use public dollars to pay teachers more.
January 5, 2022 High rates of teacher turnover are among the greatest barriers to building high-quality early childhood education (ECE) systems. In the United States, teachers working with the youngest learners turn over at much higher rates than those in the K-12 education system....
08 Dec Pritzker announces $300M in relief grants for childcare providers
December 2, 2021 SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a whopping $300 million in relief grants for childcare providers. Pritzker says the grants are designed to assist the families of 95,000 children by making childcare more affordable....
28 Oct Alabama’s first apprenticeship for early childhood educators established
October 28, 2021 This fall, two apprentices at the Coleman Center for Early Learning will serve as a pilot group. Secretary Barbara Cooper of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education (ADECE) joined leaders from Troy University, Wallace Community College, and the Alabama Office of Apprenticeship to officially sign documents establishing Alabama’s first apprenticeship for Early Childhood Educators on Wednesday, October 27, 2021, at the Coleman Center for Early Learning on the Troy University Dothan Campus, 504 University Dr, Dothan, AL....
12 Oct The New York Times: Is Child Care a Public Responsibility?
October 12, 2021 Many Americans pay more for child care than they do for their mortgages, even though the wages for those who provide the care are among the lowest in the United States. Democrats see the issue as a fundamental market failure and are pushing a plan to bridge the gap with federal subsidies. We went to Greensboro, N.C., to try to understand how big the problem is and to ask whether it is the job of the federal government...
12 Oct PBS Airs Special on Child Care
October 12, 2021 Tonight at 10pm EST, PBS airs an hour-long documentary that takes an in-depth look at how the lack of affordable, quality child care is affecting American families, which has plagued families in the U.S. for more than a century....
06 Oct Governor Jim Hunt | 2021 Dr. Robert E. Bridges Lifetime Achievement Award
October 5, 2021 Governor Hunt received the Dr. Robert E. Bridges Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 at WakeEd Partnership's Stars of Education event....
30 Sep Stanford Social Innovation Review: Investing in Child Care Entrepreneurs
Sep. 30, 2021 By Betsy Biemann & Keith Bisson COVID-19 didn’t just reveal a broken child care system. A confluence of events dramatically worsened the frayed patchwork of child care programs in the US, after significant drops in center enrollment when parents lost jobs, shifts from in-school to at-home learning, and uncertainty about health and safety during a global pandemic. Since a lack of licensed child care options has long correlated with higher rates of unemployment, underemployment, and poverty, these problems only...
18 Sep Yellen, Harris urge childcare investments to boost overall U.S. economy
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday called for urgent action to make affordable childcare available to more families, calling such investments critical to ensuring U.S. growth and global competitiveness....
10 Aug How the Child Tax Credit Provides Parents Peace & Critical Support
Start Early August 10, 2021 Last month, families across the country began receiving the first payments under the Advance Child Tax Credit (ACTA), a part of the American Rescue Plan Act. For many families with young children, like Educare Chicago parent Cheryse Singleton-Nobles, the expanded Child Tax Credit offers integral support that increases their ability to provide a stable environment and experiences for their children to thrive. “A lot of us are struggling. Even though the pandemic is ending, that doesn’t end the...
03 Jul A Path to Equity: From a Expanded Pre-K Access to Success in Elementary School
New research from NORC at the University of Chicago, Start Early, and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research finds that Chicago policies intended to increase access and enrollment to full-day, school-based pre-k were also related to higher kindergarten entry skills and ultimately better academic outcomes in second grade, particularly for high-priority students....
08 Feb NBC News: How play is making a comeback in kindergarten classrooms
February 8, 2020 By Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report This article about play-based kindergarten was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education....
31 Jan This Deep-Red State Decided to Make a Serious Investment in Preschools. It’s Paying Off Big-Time.
Mother Jones By Kiera Butler January/February 2019 How did Alabama, of all places, end up with some of the nation’s most effective preschools? It wasn’t by accident. Much of the credit goes to the program’s key architect, a quiet powerhouse named Jeana Ross. As a young teacher in a poor, rural part of the state during the 1970s, Ross noticed that her students learned better through play and experiences than from a teacher droning on. When she realized most of them had never been...