Businesses merge all the time. Nonprofit mergers are more rare, but experts have long pointed to the potential advantages of joining forces. In a recent article, Early Learning Nation shares how the recent merger of Start Early and the Early Learning Lab is a great study in how to capitalize on the strengths of both organization to amplify their effectiveness.

The article explores how Early Learning Lab’s human-centered design approach combined with Start Early’s consulting work will strengthen the human capacity and infrastructure states and communities need to build strong and equitable systems. As Rebecca Berlin, chief learning officer at Start Early sums it up, “We’re better together than apart.”

Start Early is excited to partner with Noggin, Sparkler Learning and more than a dozen other partner organizations on Big Heart World, a new social and emotional learning initiative for families and educators.

Social and emotional learning is at the heart of children’s early development. The first five years of life are a period of developing communication, collaboration and self-regulation skills through interaction with a supportive, stimulating environment. The initiative seeks to support educators and families with free and publicly available resources to help their children develop these critical skills and reach their highest potential.

Each month, the initiative will share new content, in English and Spanish, focused on three core areas of emotional learning:

• Learning About Me: Awareness of self: identity & belonging, feelings and self-regulation
• Learning About You: Awareness of others: empathy, appreciation of diversity
• Learning About Us: Relationships with others: interpersonal strategies

Content will include monthly guides for Educators and Parent & Caregivers, as well as play-based learning activities, videos, songs and games designed to help children develop self-confidence, self-awareness, an appreciation of others and strong relationships. Or as our partners like to say, everything children need to “build a big heart.”

We’ll also be sharing resources from Start Early experts as part of the initiative and look forward to the shared learning with families and educators across the country as we together work to address our youngest learners’ pressing social and emotional needs.

Tonight, President Joe Biden unveiled the American Families Plan, which includes sweeping federal investments in national child care, prekindergarten and paid family leave, among other priorities. In response, Start Early leaders issued the following statements:

Transformative Investments in Our Youngest Learners Nationwide

“The American Families Plan contains transformative investments in our youngest learners, their families, and the workforce that represent a quantum leap towards a comprehensive early learning system where every family and child has the opportunity to thrive.

The experiences children have during their first five years shape their brains in a profound way, setting them up for lifelong success. We are excited to see our education system expanded to include preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, supports for families to access high-quality learning and child care, and paid family leave that will help all families begin their journey on a strong foundation of caring, responsive relationships.

Start Early will continue to leverage our expertise in program, policy and research, as well as our decades of work with children, families, the workforce and systems leaders and our efforts to advance equity to help maximize the impact of these historic investments.”

– Diana Rauner, president of Start Early

An Opportunity to Accelerate a Bold Vision for Early Learning in Illinois

“The American Families Plan contains historic investments in our youngest learners, their families and the workforce that create an opportunity to transform our nation’s approach to a prenatal-to-age 5 early learning system.

The Plan will build on the equitable foundations Illinois is already laying through a sweeping package of legislation led by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus earlier this year. It also offers an opportunity to greatly accelerate the realization of a bold vision for our state’s early learning system, laid out in the recommendations from Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Early Childhood Funding Commission.

Start Early looks forward to bringing these federal opportunities to bear on our work here in Illinois to transform our state’s early learning and care system, beginning in the earliest days of life.”

– Ireta Gasner, vice president of Illinois advocacy & policy at Start Early

Moving Washington State One Step Closer Towards a Comprehensive Prenatal-to-Age 5 Early Learning System

“The American Families Plan contains transformative investments in our youngest learners, their families and the workforce that will move Washington state one step closer towards a comprehensive prenatal-to-age 5 early learning system where every family and child has the opportunity to thrive.

These investments will support the implementation of the Fair Start Act, an historic piece of legislation in Washington state that will advance our early care and education system, making high-quality child care more available and affordable, and provide critical supports to families with young children.

“Start Early will continue to leverage our expertise, our decades of direct work and our efforts to advance equity to inform positive changes for our state’s early learning and care system.”

– Valisa Smith, executive director of Start Early’s Washington State Office

About Start Early
Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce of Prevention) is a nonprofit public-private partnership advancing quality early learning and care for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For nearly 40 years, Start Early has delivered best-in-class doula, home visiting, and Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Bringing expertise in program delivery, research and evaluation, professional development, and policy and advocacy, Start Early works in partnership with communities and other experts to drive systemic change so millions more children, families and educators can thrive.

Start Early is pleased to announce the merger of Start Early and the Early Learning Lab (ELL), a nonprofit with expertise in human-centered design, systems thinking and technology solutions. As part of the merger, ELL will join Start Early as a new division operating under chief learning officer Rebecca Berlin.

The merger will uniquely position Start Early to develop new ways of working that draw upon the collective experience of both organizations in elevating parent voice, systems change, and knowledge transfer and network building. By integrating ELL’s human-centered design capacities with Start Early’s deep expertise across program, policy and research, Start Early will drive stronger, more equitable solutions, programs and policies that are better informed by community voices to improve early childhood systems across the country.

“We are excited to build on the culture of innovation that has always been at the heart of Start Early,” said Diana Rauner, president of Start Early. “The merger will extend and deepen our capabilities to innovate as we seek to elevate parent and family voice and improve early childhood programs and systems at scale.”

Start Early has long believed engaging families and elevating the voices of parents and caregivers are critical to create high-quality, equitable and effective early learning programs and systems.

The merger comes at a key juncture for the early childhood field, as COVID-19 underscored the need for a more equitable, comprehensive and sustainable early childhood system that proactively addresses existing disparities and ensures that programs meet the needs of all children and families, especially those from under-resourced communities.

ELL’s reputation for elevating parent, caregiver and teacher voice will build upon Start Early’s work to create programs and systems that are grounded in parent and provider voice through its Early Head Start & Head Start Network, Home Visiting & Doula Network, Educare Learning Network and solutions and engagement work.

“Providing services that are truly equitable and beneficial begins with understanding what families want and need,” said Sheetal Singh, executive director of the ELL. “We’re excited to join Start Early and continue our work to flip the narrative so that families and caregivers are partners in co-learning and co-designing programs and systems.”

Through the merger, Singh and five additional ELL staff will join Start Early. Additionally, Start Early will gain current ELL assets and intellectual property, including applications and online platforms.

In FY 22, ELL will continue its previous commitments funded by the Packard Foundation, the William Penn Foundation-funded Philadelphia Parent Institute and its partnership within the National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) to lead innovation in resource and product development and field testing.

As a part of Start Early, ELL will help advance the organization’s goal to transform the early childhood field’s ability to deliver quality at scale by generating knowledge, deploying solutions and expertise, maturing systems, and navigating the field toward a cohesive vision.

About Start Early

Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce of Prevention) is a nonprofit public-private partnership advancing quality early learning and care for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For nearly 40 years, Start Early has delivered best-in-class doula, home visiting, and Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Bringing expertise in program delivery, research and evaluation, professional development, and policy and advocacy, Start Early works in partnership with communities and other experts to drive systemic change so millions more children, families and educators can thrive.

About the Early Learning Lab (ELL)

The Early Learning Lab (ELL) was founded in 2015 to bring new methods and tools from the social innovation sector to the early childhood field to catalyze the design, implementation, and scaling of high-impact programs. ELL’s approach is based on rapid-cycle learning, human-centered design, and behavioral science, and leverages technology and data for impact and scale. ELL has deployed innovative technology and solutions in education arenas and achieved recognition for the effectiveness of their approach and tools. ELL has also brought their human-centered design work to communities through their Parent Innovation Institute programs in Oakland and Philadelphia and as an advisor for the California Department of Education (CDE), PBS SoCal, and others.

• Extend Early Intervention (EI) services to three-year olds until their next school year begins. This allows children receiving Early Intervention (EI) services prior to their third birthday and are found eligible for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) in preschool to remain in the EI program until the beginning of the school year following their third birthday. (Their third birthday must fall between May 1^st and August 31^st.) This change will minimize gaps in services, ensure better continuity of care, and align practices for enrollment of preschool children with special needs to the enrollment practices of typically developing preschool children.
• Establish the Early Education Act, which contains legislative findings that Early Intervention services are cost-effective. The Act encourages the IDHS to prepare and submit a report to the ILGA on the use of the “at-risk” category for eligibility of EI services and an affirmative outreach plan for dissemination of information about the category. The Act also encourages the development of specialized teams to address the complex needs that sometimes arise in the provision of services and to launch a demonstration project with the goal of better coordination and timely connections between neonatal intensive care units and Early Intervention services.
• Establish in state law a kindergarten readiness assessment, an observational tool designed to help teachers, administrators, families, and policymakers better understand the developmental readiness of children entering kindergarten. Illinois began requiring the administration of its kindergarten readiness assessment several years ago, but unlike other state education assessments, there is no current reference to it in law. This formalizes the State Board’s current policy in statute, allowing schools, districts, and the state to understand better where our young learners need support to be successful in kindergarten and beyond.
• Establish the Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultations Act, which encourages the state to increase the availability of Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (I/ECMHC) services through increased funding, encourages relevant state agencies to develop and promote improved materials for families and providers, and encourages relevant state agencies to provide more data on early childhood expulsions, among other things.
• Require behavioral health services providers for children under 5 to use a developmentally appropriate diagnostic assessment and billing system. Previously, state law required that Medicaid diagnosis codes for behavioral health services in young children must be coded by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the International Classification of Diseases, which are not developmentally appropriate for young children. The new legislation requires the use of DC 0-5 diagnostic codes for children under 5 and publicize the existing crosswalk to the ICD-10 codes for billing purposes.
• Establish the Early Childhood Workforce Act, which recognizes the critical role of the early childhood workforce. It encourages IDHS to offer targeted outreach and financial support to those seeking to increase their credentials while prioritizing diversity and communities with the greatest shortages. It provides annual reports on those receiving scholarships and encourages agencies to prioritize reaching compensation parity between early childhood and its K-12 peers.
• Establish the Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Act, which recognizes the role that high-quality early childhood experiences have on children’s short and long-term outcomes. The act also demonstrates support of the Illinois General Assembly for the goals of the Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding and encourages the state to create an implementation planning process and timeline with a designated body accountable for implementing the Commission’s recommendations.

Racial inequities embedded in our current health care system make prenatal and maternal health care less accessible and less responsive to Black mothers regardless of their socio-economic status.

In a recent Block Club Chicago article exploring how doulas can help even the playing field in maternal health for women of color, Denise Cain — a mother in Start Early’s (formerly known as the Ounce) Healthy Parents & Babies program — spoke about how she benefitted from having a doula guide her through her second pregnancy and postpartum care.

“Support from a doula — who is trained to advise and offer emotional and physical support to mothers before and after birth — can make a big difference in the unequal health outcomes women of color face,” Diana McClarien, vice president of Start Early’s Early Head Start & Head Start Network shared in the piece.

In the piece, Start Early doula Patricia Ceja-Muhsen explains how doulas help inform women about all the different choices they can make, empowering them to have more control over their pregnancy and birthing process. She also adds that doulas can make sure doctors listen, address all of an expecting mom’s concerns and fully inform women about their options and the care they are receiving.

Start Early’s direct-service programs provide critical supports to young parents for building strong relationships with their baby and creating a safe and stimulating home environment. It is programs like these that can ensure all new moms and babies, including Black moms and babies, receive the quality physical and emotional care they need and deserve.

Read the full article at Block Club Chicago.

Empowering parents in their role as their child’s first and most important teacher is an essential component of quality early learning and care.

A recent piece in “Early Learning Nation” looks at the benefits of intensive family engagement, a key component of the Educare model featured in a new documentary, “Tomorrow’s Hope.” One of the educators featured in the film is Brenda Eiland-Williford, director of early childhood quality and impact at Start Early. She shares how partnering with parents — building a foundation of support, bonding and relationships — can help communities undergoing transitions and give children and families “the problem-solving, conflict-management and self-regulation skills to thrive.”

Family engagement will also be critical to the success of cities, states and communities as they reckon with how to rebuild early childhood systems back better in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and caregivers have the clearest perspective of what their family needs, and family voices — like those featured in “Tomorrow’s Hope” — must be included in the planning, implementation, oversight and evaluation of all programs serving children from birth to age 5 and their families.

Rebecca Berlin, chief learning officer at Start Early and principal investigator of the National Center for Parent, Family and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) why lifting up family voices is so important in another “Early Learning Nation” piece: “We know this will lead to early learning programs that truly support family well-being, effective family and community engagement and children’s school readiness so that every child has the opportunity to thrive.”

Start Early is pleased to announce it has been awarded the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (NCPFCE) by the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Head Start, in partnership with the Office of Child Care. The NCPFCE is one of four National Centers that develop evidence-based best practices for Early Head Start and Head Start programs across the country, as part of a comprehensive Office of Head Start Training and Technical Assistance System.

This award provides up to $5.9 million annually ($29.5 million over 5 years) to Start Early and a consortium of partners — Child Trends, LIFT, Early Learning Lab, Fred Rogers Center, and the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute — to support family well-being, effective family and community engagement, and children’s school readiness, including transitions to kindergarten. These partnerships will integrate the research-practice knowledge of family and community engagement, human services, early childhood, social work, mental health, parenting, leadership, and family economic mobility into the NCPFCE content and activities. Start Early will focus on creating high-quality responsive training and technical assistance, rooted in equity and cultural and linguistic responsiveness, to support staff, families and communities nationwide.

“We are honored to work with an incredible group of partners as we continue building upon Head Start’s commitment to parents as their child’s first teachers,” said Start Early president Diana Rauner. “Together we will further bring family engagement, parent voice and community engagement to the forefront of early childhood education over the next five years.”

The NCPFCE identifies, develops and disseminates evidence-based best practices to support the growth and development of young children and strengthen families and communities. Its work includes providing training and technical assistance on staff-family relationship building practices that are culturally and linguistically responsive; integrated and systemic family engagement strategies that are outcomes-based; and consumer education, family leadership, family economic stability, and individualized support for families facing adversity.

The NCPFCE will have a strong equity focus and will partner with schools in the Educare Learning Network and other Early Head Start/Head Start (EHS/HS) grantees across the country to create, pilot and field test innovations in parent, family and community engagement. This will ensure that training and technical assistance (TTA) activities result in high-quality comprehensive services that bring diverse family, community and program voices to the center of the work.

Start Early brings nearly 40 years of expertise delivering best-in-class doula, home visiting and Early Head Start and Head Start programs and advocating for thoughtful policies and adequate funding at the local, state, and federal levels. From roots directly serving families and children on Chicago’s South Side and in rural Illinois, Start Early has expanded to impact early childhood programs and policies nationwide, with partnerships in 25 states.

Dr. Rebecca Berlin, senior vice president of quality, solutions and impact and Dr. Mallary Swartz, director of family engagement research at Start Early will serve as principal investigators for the NCPFCE. Berlin has more than 25 years of experience in strategic visioning in the early childhood field, including assessment and professional development initiatives. Swartz brings 20 years of experience as an applied researcher in family engagement and relationships-based professional development in early childhood education, particularly EHS/HS programs.

Start Early has also hired Brandi Black Thacker, director of TTA and integrated services and Manda Lopez Klein, director of the NCPFCE to lead the NCPFCE. Together, the two early childhood professionals bring a combined 40 years of experience as Head Start leaders and advocates to the work.

Throughout her career, Thacker has served communities as an educator, case manager, advocate, Head Start director, TTA specialist and served as the director of TTA for the NCPFCE for the past nine years. Klein is a former Head Start director and the founding executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association (MSHS), and is an expert in curriculum development, family engagement material development, and professional development, including services for monolingual and bilingual families.

“As national Head Start leaders and advocates, Brandi and Manda bring decades of experience collaborating with families and community partners to the new NCPFCE,” said Rebecca Berlin, senior vice president of quality, solutions and impact. “Under their leadership, the NCPFCE will continue to elevate diverse voices that strengthen the work and ensure better outcomes for children and families across the country.”

As a first step, Start Early will sign the cooperative agreement later this month and launch the center by the end of November.

About Start Early

Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce of Prevention) is a nonprofit public-private partnership advancing quality early learning and care for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For nearly 40 years, Start Early has delivered best-in-class doula, home visiting, and Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Bringing expertise in program delivery, research and evaluation, professional development, and policy and advocacy, Start Early works in partnership with communities and other experts to drive systemic change so millions more children, families and educators can thrive.

Policy changes to Chicago’s school-based pre-K system enabled greater equity in both access to and enrollment in full-day, school-based pre-K, according to a new study by education researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago, Start Early (formerly  known as the Ounce of Prevention), and UChicago Consortium on School Research. The study, Closer to Home: More Equitable Pre-K Access and Enrollment in Chicago, analyzes access to (distance and number of classrooms) and enrollment in pre-K from 2010-2016, both before and after policy changes occurred. Post-policy, high-priority student groups were up to three times more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K.

“Shifting where seats were located was a primary lever in the district’s policy strategy,” said Stacy Ehrlich, principal investigator and senior research scientist, NORC. “The concentration of full-day pre-K seats increased most on the West and South Sides of Chicago in neighborhoods where children have historically been under-enrolled in pre-K.”

Beginning in 2013, the City of Chicago launched major policy efforts to create more equitable enrollment in pre-K programs. The policies, including increasing the number of full-day pre-K classrooms and reallocating classrooms throughout the city, aimed to enroll more students from “high-priority” groups to help them better prepare for success in kindergarten and beyond. High-priority groups included students of color, students speaking a language other than English, and students living in neighborhoods with lower income and higher unemployment.

Pre-policy, the students most likely to enroll in the small number of full-day Chicago Public Schools (CPS) pre-K options (many of which required families to pay tuition) were White students, students living in highest-income neighborhoods, and students living in mostly-White neighborhoods. Post-policy, full-day pre-K opportunities expanded, and the students most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K were Black students, students living in lowest-income neighborhoods, and students living in mostly-Black neighborhoods.

“While Chicago significantly expanded enrollment in full-day, school-based pre-K, our study shows that there are still many age-eligible students who are not being served in full-day pre-K,” said Maia Connors, director, Research and Policy Initiatives at Start Early. “For example, the enrollment rate is only about 3 percent for Latinx students, so more work is needed to increase full-day pre-K opportunities for these families.”

“As school districts nationwide grapple with limited budget and capacity to expand full-day pre-K, this study offers an example of how to make evidence-based policy decisions to create more equitable and accessible enrollment opportunities for those students who are most likely to benefit,” said John Q. Easton, senior fellow, UChicago Consortium on School Research and former director of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. “The next step in our research will be to examine the relationship between increased pre-K access and enrollment and student outcomes in second and third grade.”

This study demonstrates that increased access was linked to increased enrollment, but access is just one policy lever that districts can use. Chicago implemented other policy changes simultaneously, including: a centralized pre-K application and enrollment process; prioritization of eligibility and placement of students with certain characteristics or experiences (e.g., lowest income); online information about pre-K options and quality; and local outreach efforts with families. “Policymakers may want to explore whether and how similar strategies may be effective in their districts,” said Ehrlich.

Research Questions and Key Findings

Question: Prior to policy changes, what was the association between students’ likelihood of enrollment and 1) their distance to the closest school with any pre-K/full day pre-K, and 2) the number of any pre-K/full-day pre-K classrooms close to their home?

Key Findings

• Pre-policy, enrollment rates in any CPS pre-K were higher for students who lived closer to schools with pre-K and had more pre-K classrooms near where they lived.
• Pre-policy, the associations of likelihood of enrollment in full-day pre-K with 1) distance to a school with a full-day pre-K classroom, and 2) number of full-day pre-k classrooms close to home were strongest for Black students and students living in lowest-income neighborhoods.
• Pre-policy, the students most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K were white students and students living in highest-income neighborhoods.

Question: Post-policy, did access to any pre-K/full-day pre-K change for some or all students?

Key Findings

• For most student groups, distance to a school with any CPS pre-K did not change substantially, and the number of pre-K classrooms available went down slightly.
• In contrast to any pre-K, access to full-day pre-K increased following policy changes for nearly all student groups.
• The portion of CPS elementary schools offering full-day pre-K quadrupled, from 10 percent to 41 percent.
• The concentration of full-day pre-K seats increased most on the West and South Sides of Chicago in primarily Black neighborhoods and neighborhoods with lower income.

Question: Post-policy, when access changed, did enrollment change in corresponding ways?

• Full-day pre-K enrollment rates grew nearly four-fold from 3.2 percent in 2010-2011 to 11.6 percent in 2015-2016.
• Black students and students living in lowest-income neighborhoods were three times more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K following policy changes.
• Latinx students were also more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K following policy changes, but at rates much lower than the city average (2.6 percent for Latinx students compared to 7.2 percent for all students).

Question: Following the policy shift, was access still related to enrollment in the same direction and with the same magnitude as it had been before?

Key Finding

• Post-policy, access continued to predict enrollment in full-day pre-K. However, the association became stronger for Black students, lowest-income students, and for students living in mostly Black neighborhoods.

Cite as: Ehrlich, S.B., Connors, M.C., Stein, A.G., Francis, J., Easton, J.Q., Kabourek, S.E., & Farrar, I.C. (2020). Closer to home: More equitable pre-k access and enrollment in Chicago (Research Snapshot). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, NORC at the University of Chicago, and Start Early.

About NORC at the University of Chicago

NORC at the University of Chicago is an objective, non-partisan research institution that delivers reliable data and rigorous analysis to guide critical programmatic, business, and policy decisions. Since 1941, NORC has conducted groundbreaking studies, created and applied innovative methods and tools, and advanced principles of scientific integrity and collaboration. Today, government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world partner with NORC to transform increasingly complex information into useful knowledge.

About Start Early

Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce of Prevention) is a nonprofit public-private partnership advancing quality early learning and care for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For nearly 40 years, Start Early has delivered best-in-class doula, home visiting and Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Bringing expertise in program delivery, research and evaluation, professional development and policy and advocacy, Start Early works in partnership with communities and other experts to drive systemic change so that millions more children, families and educators can thrive. Learn more at  StartEarly.org.

About the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research

\With the goal of supporting stronger and more equitable educational outcomes for students, the UChicago Consortium conducts research of high technical quality that informs and assesses policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. We seek to expand communication among researchers, policymakers, practitioners, families, and communities as we support the search for solutions to the challenges of school improvement. The UChicago Consortium encourages the use of research in policy action and practice but does not advocate for particular policies or programs. Rather, we help to build capacity for school improvement by identifying what matters most for student success, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.

Maia Connors, director of research and policy initiatives at Start Early recently spoke to WTTW about findings from “Closer to Home,” a report by education researchers at Start Early, NORC at the University of Chicago and the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

Overall, the report found policy changes launched in 2013 enabled greater equity in both access to and enrollment in Chicago Public Schools’ full-day, school-based pre-K.

“After these policy changes, these full-day opportunities were expanded greatly and Black students and students living in the lowest-income neighborhoods were the most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K,” Maia Connors, director of research and policy initiatives at Start Early, told WTTW News. “So I think that’s really a drastic change that shows that Chicago really was able to achieve greater equity.”

Connors also spoke to how this additional access to pre-K education can have a lasting impact on students’ lives.

“Prior research really shows that enrolling in high-quality pre-K is really critical for young children’s learning and that children really benefit a lot,” she said. “It can set them on a trajectory to greater academic achievement (and) longer-term positive outcomes as adults.”

Read the full story.