From the whole Start Early team (formerly known as the Ounce), our sincere gratitude for joining us for our Annual Luncheon. We were honored to share “Tomorrow’s Hope,” which was generously created and produced by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. Thank you to our event’s presenting sponsor Peoples Gas, our many other generous sponsors and the Zaentz Foundation for helping make our in-person event possible during these uncertain times.

We hope the film provided inspiration and reassurance as you witnessed how unwavering resilience, parent engagement and early learning experiences can make a difference for every child, especially in times of adversity.

Thank you to our 2020 Annual Luncheon
Presenting, Champion and Premier-level Sponsors!

Presenting Sponsor

Champion Sponsors

Nancy & Steven Crown
The Crown Family
Diana & Bruce Rauner

Premier Sponsors

Leslie Bluhm & David Helfand
The Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation
Anne & Don Edwards
The Hasten Foundation
Cari & Michael J. Sacks
Catherine Siegel
Zell Family Foundation

Fast Facts

Sine Die
Under somber conditions, the Legislature adjourned “sine die” on Day 60, March 13. The increasing COVID-19 crisis dominated the Capitol campus, as expected. When the budget conference committee released the details of the operating budget on Wednesday, budget writers expressed concern for all Washingtonians, noting the ending fund balance was increased over the previous Senate and House budgets in recognition that the budget impacts of COVID-19 will likely exceed the $200 million allocated from the Budget Stabilization Account (otherwise known as the Rainy Day Fund) for the state’s response. Typically Sine Die is a celebratory event. This year, the Capitol campus emptied quickly upon conclusion of legislative business.

Status of Early Learning Bills

The bills listed below are on their way to the Governor’s desk for action. Each represents a great deal of work and compromise—congratulations to those who worked on them and a huge thanks to the legislative champions.

• ESHB 2455 related to eligibility for Working Connections Child Care for teenage mothers pursuing their high school diploma or GED.
• SHB 2456 related to extending the grace period to meet work requirements for families experiencing homelessness from four to twelve months.
• SHB 2556 related to developing community-based pathways for child care provider educational requirements.
• HB 2619 related to increasing child care access in rural communities.
• ESSB 6540 related to Working Connections Child Care 12-month authorization timing.

Supplemental Operating and Capital Budgets Adopted

Probably the most significant charge facing the Legislature was adoption of the supplemental budgets. There are three budgets—operating, capital and transportation.

In reviewing these investments, It is important to recognize the level of uncertainty we face given COVID-19. When presenting the conference report, Senate Ways and Means Chair Christine Rolfes commented about returning in January “or sooner.” Read the summary below of the early learning related items.

Read Summary

In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school to serve children and families on the South Side of Chicago. At the time, the community was rebuilding after the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest public housing developments in the country.

Since then, we’ve partnered with diverse communities and early childhood champions to build a national network of 25 birth-through-age 5 Educare schools and improve access to quality early education across the country. Our shared goal is to help our most vulnerable children enter kindergarten ready to learn. Start Early serves as the national coordinating office of the Educare Learning Network, providing strategic alignment and functional support to the Network and our partners.

To achieve our goal, the Educare Learning Network builds strong public-private partnerships across the country to create strong schools and longtime champions who will amplify our call for change. We collaborate as a Network to advocate at the local, state and federal levels for policies and programs that advance our mission and support quality improvement and supports for our youngest learners and their families in communities that are under-resourced.

Through our work on the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships) program — created by Congress in 2014 — reaches across policy, practice and research to improve early education nationwide. Through the program, grantees are able to provide local child care programs that agree to meet Head Start Program Performance Standards with a range of supports (e.g., infrastructure improvements, higher teacher pay). Partnerships grantees partner with local center-based and family child care programs and leverage community resources to expand access to high-quality early care and learning for families who are working but earning wages below the federal poverty level.

Currently, 13 Educare organizations in 12 states and the District of Columbia administer Partnership grants with a variety of partners including local child care centers, family child care homes, school districts, nonprofit organizations, homeless shelters, and other community organizations. The number and type of community partners vary by grantee, as do the number of infants and toddlers served (from 60 to over 600), geographic distances covered and the role of the Educare organization in the Partnership.

In addition to Educare organizations administering grants, the Educare Learning Network advocates to protect and expand this program at the state and federal levels and shares our best practices and policy recommendations with the field. In 2019, we partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the First Five Years Fund to put forth a policy recommendation, titled “The Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships: Flexibility With Accountability,” summarizing our shared Partnerships work across the country and program recommendations. In 2020, we launched an article series called “A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships,” featuring stories from Educare organizations’ Partnerships across the country and highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on Partnerships grantees, their child care partners and the families they serve. The series and offers our unique policy recommendations to maintain, improve, and grow our nation’s supply of quality infant toddler child care.

Visit EducareSchools.org

In this blog, Kristin Bernhard, Start Early senior vice president of policy and advocacy, identifies an innovative policy solution that is addressing our nation’s child care crisis. This approach, Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, raises the bar for quality infant-toddler care. 

Our nation is in a child care crisis — particularly for infant and toddler care — and this issue is finally hitting the mainstream. Rarely a week goes by without a new article, report, or shocking statistic drawing attention to the sad fact that in its current form, the financing for child care in America is broken. The quality of services is inconsistent at best and most state- and federally-funded programs serve only a fraction of eligible families. This broken system is failing to promote the healthy development of our youngest learners and failing to support their parents, especially those who need child care so that they can work or go to school.

What’s more, child care providers in every state make near-poverty wages, while parents, especially those earning low wages, cannot afford to pay what it costs to deliver the high-quality early care and learning that research tells us sets the foundation for academic achievement, health, and well-being later in life.

However, this crisis is not purely a money issue. Current cries for additional funding for “child care for all” are shortsighted if they do not take into account the limitations of our current market-based system and the time and effort needed to make the necessary improvements in quality in order to truly realize the two-generation impacts of early childhood education. Access to child care alone is not sufficient if attention – and funding – is not also paid to improving the quality of the care provided and reshaping the way these services interact with families.

While the federally-funded, locally-run Early Head Start model was created in 1994 to address the comprehensive needs of children under age 3, the seemingly high costs per child, consistently low levels of federal funding, and increasing rates of child poverty have limited the program’s impact. As of 2017, less than 10% of eligible children nationwide were served by Early Head Start.

That is why the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships) are one promising policy solution that should merit serious consideration by those tackling the child care crisis across the country. The Partnerships launched in 2014 as a new approach to delivering the Early Head Start model by supporting traditional early childhood centers and family providers in meeting and delivering early education and wrap around supports at Early Head Start standards.

This innovative approach allowed Early Head Start to extend beyond a limited number of centers and expand to community-based providers. As part of this effort, children enrolled in a community-based program received the wrap-around supports and comprehensive services, regardless of the funding stream paying their slot. Teachers in such programs also received enhanced professional development and coaching, resources to complete postsecondary education, and support in implementing research-based curricula — all while being paid a worthy wage.

Start Early has been involved with the Partnerships since the first funding was authorized. Six years later, it is important to tell the story of the Partnerships’ effectiveness; not just their influence on families and child care providers, but also their impact on state early childhood systems that adapted and innovated to support the success of the program. To tell this story, we interviewed a variety of state leaders to understand the impact the Partnerships had in reshaping infant-toddler child care in their states.

We found that the Partnerships raised the bar for high-quality infant and toddler care, as expected, but that they also served as an important impetus for systems-level change. The full story can be found in our report, Expanding High-Quality Child Care for Infants & Toddlers: Lessons from Implementation of Early Head Start — Child Care Partnerships in States.

So what do these findings mean for our current child care crisis? There is growing momentum around finding new and innovative solutions to this problem, which is certainly cause for optimism. However, as our nation pulls together to put new solutions for child care on the table, the lessons learned from the implementation of the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships should be at the center of the conversation.

The Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) was launched in 2017 to learn together with states about how to build quality, equitable pre-K systems that ensure children succeed in school and in life. The initiative’s unique approach fosters partnerships across program, advocacy, and research organizations in support of a common vision for pre-K systems improvement.

Through the initiative, three states — Washington, Oregon and Tennessee — are partnering to strengthen the program policies, infrastructure, and resources necessary for high-quality pre-K that will result in improved classroom quality and outcomes for children.

State partners are supported by the following organizations, who work together and in concert with other national and state program, advocacy and research partners. Start Early acts as the backbone organization, facilitating collaboration.

• Start Early engages state government leaders to create strategic plans to build the system capacity and infrastructure needed for continuous improvement of quality pre-K.
• The Alliance for Early Success supports advocacy organizations to build advocacy capacity to ensure the policies and resources essential to quality pre-K are in place.
• Cultivate Learning at the University of Washington engages local researchers to build research-practice partnerships with states and generate data for continuous quality improvement of pre-K.

Leaders in each state have made meaningful improvements to their systems, including data, professional learning, and instructional leadership infrastructure that contribute to continuous improvement of pre-K. Additionally, local organizations in each state have built strong partnerships across program, advocacy and research to sustain pre-K systems improvements long into the future.

Based on this learning, PPI partners are collaboratively creating tools and generating knowledge to help other states and communities apply this program, advocacy, research approach and thereby continue improvement beyond the life of the project.

In this blog post, Start Early vice president of translational research, Debra Pacchiano, highlights her recently published research on the importance of providing strong and nurturing leadership to early childhood teachers in order to improve child outcomes.

Recent early childhood research has confirmed that— if we want teachers to nourish children, we must first nourish teachers.

When a child begins their life-long learning journey, parents and families expect they will be cared for and taught in safe, positive, and effective environments. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. The quality of early learning programs varies tremendously with the highest quality programs disproportionately serving children from the most advantaged homes. By contrast, lower quality and less effective programs disproportionately serve children from under-resourced communities—the very children who stand to benefit most from top-notch early childhood education (Valentino 2017).

Teaching is complex work. In early childhood, teachers work with young children, often from vulnerable populations, who are in critical developmental stages. Variations in children’s early learning outcomes are often attributed to under-engaged teachers and low-quality teaching. Yet, all too often teachers face their complex work without needed sustained supports from leadership and their peers.

Start Early has worked at the intersection of research, practice, and policy for more than three decades, spearheading innovation and quality improvement in early childhood education. We activate creativity to design solutions rooted in research and applied science to address chronic issues in the field.

As part of this work, we spent time observing early childhood education programs, some that were high functioning and some that were not. We talked with leaders, teachers, staff, and families about what supports and what hinders their effectiveness advancing young children’s learning. Differences in their organizational mindsets and practices were unmistakable. Simply put, high-performing programs had organizational environments far more supportive of teaching, learning, and family engagement than lower-performing programs. In response, we built The Essential 0-5 Survey (formerly known as the Early Education Essentials), an organizationwide measurement system that elevates the voices of teachers, staff, and families in early childhood settings and empowers collective action towards improvement.

A recent Education Week study found substantial gaps between the perceived and real impacts of leadership on teachers. By highlighting teacher and staff perspectives on organizational strengths and weaknesses in key areas of climate and culture, The Essential 0-5 Survey can help close those gaps between the impacts leaders believe they have, and the impacts teachers and staff actually feel.

In a Young Children journal article, published by myself and other Start Early researchers, we highlight the positive impacts The Early Education Essentials can have on early childhood environments and teachers’ experiences. The article features the clear differences that were identified, through The Early Education Essentials, between organizations strong in the areas of effective instructional leaders, collaborative teachers, involved families, supportive environment, and ambitious instruction, and those that were weak in those areas. Listen to what one teacher in a strongly organized program had to say about her organizational culture:

I feel like it’s empowering [here]—it’s not just from the top down. It’s right here, and we believe in this stuff and I have something to share and it’s valued by our administrator. Then your co-teachers and your colleagues also buy in too, and you have that energy and you have that love. Then you have an administrator that pushes you in that way and supports you and guides you and nudges you a bit farther. I think it’s kind of what we try to do with our students too, now, even when they’re only 3. I think [the principal/ director] leads by example, for sure.

Strong organizational environments in early childhood education empower leaders, teachers and families to aspire to and realize higher-quality practices and better outcomes for young children.

In this blog post, home visiting expert and former Start Early vice president for training, Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, explains the importance of bridging the gap between systems in the home visiting sector through the use of professional development.

Intensive, long-term home visiting services are proven to produce the best outcomes for families and help prepare children for school. Understanding the factors that keep families engaged in these services has given rise to research, training and evolved program requirements. And yet, sustaining family engagement is still often regarded as the primary responsibility of the home visitor. Family engagement is an impossible task alone for even the most highly skilled a home visitor. Strong partnerships at the systems, community and practitioner levels all impact what happens between a family and their home visitor.

At this year’s National Home Visiting Summit, I’ll be sharing a case study of two state leaders that are partnering across systems to strengthen the outcomes of each of their programs. In my session – Bridge Gaps between Systems with Professional Development – I’ll explore how this strategic collaboration can be replicated with other state and system leaders, to improve outcomes across the sector.

Some of the factors impacting family engagement include reliable program funding, competitive salaries for home visitors and supervisors, and access to professional development. With the turnover rate of home visitors exceeding 20% annually, it is critical that system leaders construct a professional development framework to support and retain home visitors and supervisors. In the example shared during the session, we will explore how the two state leaders leveraged a professional development resource – The Essentials of Home Visiting – to develop and implement a PD framework for their home visitors and supervisors. The Essentials of Home Visiting, an online professional development program with unique learning experiences created specifically for home visitors and supervisors, includes self-paced courses, webinars, and tools for supervisors to increase their impact on home visitors, and improve their outcomes with families.

Ensuring that home visiting practitioners have the organizational, supervisory and professional development supports to keep them engaged in the field, are essential factors in promoting family engagement between home visitor and parent.

Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, was the vice president for training at Start Early during her twenty-seven year tenure. She continues in a consulting capacity to facilitate a national community of practice for professional development in home visiting, cultivate strategic partnerships and provide state and regional leaders with technical assistance in the use of The Essentials of Home Visiting.

This Giving Tuesday, we partnered with KPMG’s Family for Literacy program who matched funds raised during the day with $10,000 worth of books for children at 26 early childhood programs. We are so grateful to have such a dedicated partner like KPMG who believe in our mission to ensure our earliest learners have the best start in school and life.

Recently, we sat down with Kerri Neis, associate director at KPMG, to discuss why fighting illiteracy and supporting Start Early is important to the company.

1. Why are literacy and early education essential parts of KPMG’s Corporate Citizenship initiatives?
   KPMG’s Citizenship efforts are centered on lifelong learning, which is essential to unlocking the potential in people, building economies, and above all, improving lives. Literacy is at the foundation of lifelong learning, and access to books is necessary to build strong reading skills. Specifically, the need is profound in Chicago. We know that by fourth grade, only about 27 percent of Chicago’s students are considered proficient in reading–there is a literacy crisis we can’t ignore. And in Chicago’s low-income neighborhoods, there is only one book for every 300 children, whereas in middle-class neighborhoods, there are 13 books per child on average. The statistics are so motivating for all of our leaders, partners, and employees—who have enjoyed an education and want to give back to the communities they love.
2. What is KPMG’s Family for Literacy (KFFL) program?
   KFFL is the firm’s flagship Citizenship program with a mission to eradicate childhood illiteracy by putting new books into the hands of children in need and developing the next generation of young leaders through reading. This unique program is particularly effective because it harnesses the energy and enthusiasm of KPMG’s extended family—not only partners and employees, but also spouses, children, interns, retirees, alumni, professional golfers, and KPMG Brand Ambassadors Phil Mickelson, Stacy Lewis, Mariah Stackhouse, Maverick McNealy and Olympic gold medalist Laurie Hernandez.

   Since its inception in 2008, KFFL has distributed over 5 million new books to low-income children in 100+ communities across the United States. KFFL also translates across borders having spread through KPMG’s global network to India, Mexico, South Africa, Zambia, the U.K., Kenya, Canada and China.

3. How does partnering with an organization like Start Early help KFFL support its mission of eradicating childhood illiteracy?
   Our organization and networks allow us to raise the funds to buy books, source volunteers to pack and deliver books, visit schools and libraries, and fuel the enthusiasm to share the importance of our mission. But we count on partners in the community to connect us with the right communities in the right way, which allows us to bring the books into the communities we most want to serve. Our core competencies lie in providing Advisory, Tax, and Audit services to our clients—our KFFL partners’ core competencies lie in serving constituents in communities. Those partnerships are so valuable to us as they provide the network, trust, and connectivity to carry out our mission.

   We have been so impressed with the holistic and critical services Start Early provides to their communities, that is why we were thrilled to be able to provide books to the schools, children, and families in their network. We hope that in addition to literacy skills, these books bring families together for quality time, spark the imaginations of young readers, and inspires their children to learn more. Because that is what we are all about at KPMG—lifelong learning!