News

15 Mar

Posted at 17:33h in News, Zaentz Initiative by

Early Learning Nation
By Mark Swartz
March 15, 2023
Early education advocates cheered when President Biden’s State of the Union address noted that children who attend preschool are nearly 50% more likely to finish high school and go on to earn a two- or four-year degree, no matter their background. Shortly after the speech, Early Learning Nation magazine (ELN) spoke to Nonie K. Lesaux, co-director of the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, about seizing this momentum and informing policy through research....

09 Mar

Posted at 17:49h in News by

Business Insider
By Juliana Kaplan and Ayelet Sheffey
March 9, 2023
Right now, the US is one of just six countries without paid leave. President Joe Biden wants to change that with his next budget through mandating time off — and making childcare cheaper across the country. In his budget for fiscal year 2024, Biden is proposing establishing a national paid family and medical leave program, which would give workers up to 12 weeks off to tend for a newborn, recover, or care for a family...

09 Mar

Posted at 17:45h in News by

Education Week
By Libby Stanford
March 9, 2023
President Joe Biden hopes to expand funding for high-need schools, early childhood education, and students with disabilities in the next fiscal year. The president released his 2024 budget proposal Thursday, requesting $90 billion to fund education, a $10.8 billion increase from the Education Department’s budget for fiscal 2023, which started last fall. In a March 9 speech about his spending priorities, Biden focused on preschool, including a proposed program that aims to provide all 4-year-olds with...

09 Mar

Posted at 17:40h in News by

Ed Source
By Karen D'Souza
March 9, 2023
President Biden’s 2024 budget plan aims to boost childcare and early childhood education funding by billions of dollars, as Reuters reported. The proposal, which Biden will deliver to Congress today, revisits key items from the president’s 2023 budget proposal that were later removed during negotiations with Congress. However, prospects may well be even slimmer this year, as Reuters noted, given the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The White House argues that lack of access to childcare is...

08 Mar

Posted at 17:53h in News by

NPR WFYI
By Sydney Dauphinais
March 8, 2023
Early Learning Indiana announced a new initiative Wednesday to expand early childhood education across the state. The Early Years Initiative is a grant program for organizations that serve children from ages zero to three. The program makes $50 million available for eligible social service providers, child care providers, and nonprofits across the state that serve young children’s developmental needs. “We have a real opportunity to help children get started on the right foundation,” said Maureen Weber, CEO...

08 Mar

Posted at 16:57h in News by

EdSource
By Karen D'Souza
March 8, 2023
Toddlers are famous for throwing tantrums, stomping their feet and screaming as tears roll down their chubby cheeks. It’s par for the course of life as a preschool teacher, child care worker or parent that you will have to cope with your fair share of developmentally-appropriate misbehavior, including hitting and biting. And yet not all small children get the benefit of the doubt when they act up in class or on the playground. Some of them...

06 Mar

Posted at 16:59h in News by

EdSource
By Karen D'Souza
March 8, 2023
Toddlers are famous for throwing tantrums, stomping their feet and screaming as tears roll down their chubby cheeks. It’s par for the course of life as a preschool teacher, child care worker or parent that you will have to cope with your fair share of developmentally-appropriate misbehavior, including hitting and biting. And yet not all small children get the benefit of the doubt when they act up in class or on the playground. Some of them...

27 Feb

Posted at 23:56h in News by

New America
By Aaron Loewenberg
February 27, 2023
While child care and early learning have been underfunded in this country for decades, the pandemic took a major problem and turned it into a full-blown crisis. Even prior to the pandemic, parents were paying more than they could afford for child care and early educators were earning poverty-level wages. The pandemic only worsened many of these trends: According to Child Care Aware of America, about 9,000 child care centers and 7,000 family child care programs...

27 Feb

Posted at 23:55h in News by

World Health Organization
Department News
February 27, 2023
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a new package of measures, the Global Scales for Early Development (GSED), to monitor the development of young children at population level up to three years of age. The new GSED methodology allows for a comprehensive assessment of the development of young children up to 36 months of age, capturing cognitive, socio-emotional, language and motor skills. The GSED provides a developmental score (D-score), a new common unit to measure...

27 Feb

Posted at 19:51h in News by

The New York Times
By Jim Tankersley
February 27, 2023
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to leverage the federal government’s expansive investment in the semiconductor industry to make progress on another goal: affordable child care. On Tuesday, the Commerce Department will announce that any semiconductor manufacturer seeking a slice of nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies will need to essentially guarantee affordable, high-quality child care for workers who build or operate a plant. Last year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed the CHIPS...

23 Feb

Posted at 00:01h in News by

KRWG
By Amber Wallin, MPA
February 23, 2023
The year was 1940. As the U.S. was entering World War II, women were being recruited to fill factory jobs that men were leaving so they could enlist. “Rosie the Riveter” was born and Congress passed the Lanham Act, which took care of an issue that was central to getting women into the workforce: providing care for their children. That was the first time – and the last – the federal government made a concerted...

21 Feb

Posted at 21:10h in News by

Ed Surge By Emily Tate Sullivan
February 21, 2023
While the national labor force has long since rebounded from the pandemic, the child care sector has lagged behind, experiencing a slow recovery that continues to this day. In the three years since the arrival of COVID-19, families have struggled to find high-quality, affordable child care for their children. Child care providers have been hard-pressed to find qualified workers to fill their open positions, often because retail and service industry employers have emerged as better-paying competitors. And...

20 Feb

Posted at 00:06h in News by

The Colorado Sun
By Erica Breunlin
February 20, 2023
Colorado’s rollout of expanded preschool has community-based providers across the state fearful they will lose critical revenue and struggle to keep their doors open as more children shift to free school-based programs. Operators of community-based preschools worry that 3-year-olds who leave their centers to attend a school district program won’t come back once they turn 4 to continue preschool before they enter kindergarten. Colorado currently has 3,405 providers licensed to educate preschoolers, and they need...

19 Feb

Posted at 21:06h in News by

Mass Live
By Carolyn Robbins
February 19, 2023
After a decade of planning, the Springfield Public Schools have achieved the goal of making free universal pre-kindergarten education available to every 3 and 4 year old in the city - becoming the sole school district in commonwealth to do so. The city believes providing early education opportunities to urban students – many of whom are disadvantaged compared to their suburban counterparts - is a proven way to help level the academic playing field, says Patrick...

16 Feb

Posted at 20:58h in News by

CBS News Chicago
By The Associated Press
February 15, 2023
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called Wednesday for making preschool available to every 3- and 4-year-old in the state within four years, starting with a $440 million investment to bring 5,000 additional children into the program this fall. Details about the "Smart Start Illinois" program dominated the fifth annual State of the State and budget address by the Democratic governor, who easily won reelection in November and has hinted at an eventual...

15 Feb

Posted at 17:29h in News by

Crain's Chicago Business
By Greg Hinz
February 15, 2023
Declaring that investing in the next generation is “the most important thing we can do,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker today will call for the state to spend another nearly half-billion dollars a year on much-expanded early childhood education, child care and related activities. The plan to do more will be the centerpiece of the proposed fiscal 2024 budget Pritzker is to introduce in a Springfield speech at noon today. It follows promises from the governor...

09 Feb

Posted at 19:21h in News by

The Hill
By Lexi Lonas
February 7, 2023
President Biden in his State of the Union address on Tuesday made the case for universal preschool and teacher raises to help create the “best-educated workforce” in the world. During his speech before a joint session of Congress, Biden said universal K-12 education helped create “the best-educated, best-paid nation in the world” in the past century, “but the world has caught up.” Biden gave a node to his wife, Jill Biden, who teaches at a community college,...

09 Feb

Posted at 18:59h in News, Press by

We Are The Mighty
By Joel Searls
February 7, 2023
Saul Zaentz started out in the music industry post his service in the Army during World War II. He worked with the Jazz at the Philharmonic which included him managing tours for such musicians as Duke Ellington and Stan Getz. He joined Fantasy Records in the mid-1950s and stayed there through the 1960s having discovered Creedence Clearwater Revival. Although CCR and Zaentz didn’t end on the best terms they did find a lot...

08 Feb

Posted at 22:47h in News by

CBS Colorado
By Karen Morfitt
February 7, 2023
When Colorado's Universal Preschool program starts in the fall, Monica Staffieri is hoping her son Miles will be among the first to take part.
"I would love for him to be in preschool. I know it's really important that they get that first taste, and that learning is really important especially pre-5, so I never understood why we didn't (always have it)," she said.
But until just a few days ago, she wasn't entirely sure her family...

07 Feb

Posted at 22:59h in News by

NBC Connecticut
By Jane Caffrey
February 7, 2023
Advocates for early childhood education from Connecticut shared ideas on how to improve programs for young kids on the state and national level Tuesday.
A lack of affordable childcare is costing the country $122 billion a year, according to a new report from Readynation. The report indicates that figure has more than doubled since 2018. It states that policy inaction combined with the pandemic is costing businesses, parents and taxpayers billions of dollars in lost productivity,...