We don’t know much about art, but we know what we like—and that’s seeing young children find ways to express themselves and spark creativity while they’re learning. Whether you have a little Picasso on your hands or you are actively looking for ways to introduce art to your child, we have tips for you!

We asked our Start Early experts for their advice for parents and caregivers on the best ways to use art to support your child’s learning and development. And the teachers of Room 114 at Educare Chicago, a program of Start Early, delivered.

The Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) was launched in 2016 with a vision to develop and sustain high-quality, equitable state pre-K systems. Throughout the 5-year project, we partnered with 3 states – Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington – to learn alongside state education leaders, advocates and researchers about how to systematically improve pre-K quality. Along the way, we focused in on infrastructure and the policies, data, and implementation supports pre-K programs need to succeed.

As a culmination of this project, we created a report to capture lessons learned and recommendations for state early learning agency leaders, researchers and advocates, along with a free toolkit to support pre-K systems improvement.

What We Learned

• Systems change is complex and occurs over a long period of time. Although we saw important improvements during the life of the project, substantial systems change is ongoing and occurs in cycles as states navigate governmental, political, leadership, and funding changes and challenges.
• Practice frameworks can both advance and impede systems change work. While focusing on core elements of teaching and learning seemed that it would yield the greatest impact on quality, states were most successful when focusing on just one or two elements at a time.
• Implementation science is useful at the systems level but does not sufficiently advance equity. While an implementation science framework was very helpful in driving improvements, equity does not automatically follow quality changes. Equity must instead be intentionally centered.
• At the systems level, coordination, alignment, and resource-sharing across programs are necessary when striving to improve pre-K statewide. Quality and equity can only improve when pre-K is seen as a legitimate part of the broader education system.
• Strong, trusting, and stable partnerships between advocates and researchers are key to success of improvement efforts. Specifically, relationships that are pre-existing, intentional in terms of allocating staff and resources, and provide opportunities to learn from each other, are all critical factors in building stable and successful partnerships.

Recommendations

For state systems leaders, advocates and research partners:

• Build meaningful partnerships among systems leaders, advocates, and researchers.
• Think beyond pre-K.
• Recognize that implementation and infrastructure are critical missing pieces of systems change.
• Use intentional strategies for increasing equity and elevating parent and teacher voices.
• Prioritize data infrastructure and your state’s ability to use data for improvement.

For national and local consultants and technical assistance providers:

• Center equity from the beginning of any project.
• Ensure that state and local voices drive systems improvement consultation and technical assistance.
• Throughout this work, keep in mind both long-term vision, and more pressing, daily challenges.
• Provide flexible resources and funding.

By Joan Lombardi

Over the holidays, I heard the term metaverse across multiple media platforms. From TV talk shows and the news to newspaper articles, the concept was everywhere, and I wanted to understand what it means. Meta seems to have several meanings depending on how it is used – as a prefix it sometimes means transformation or transcending.  In the “tech world” the metaverse seems to be referring to some overarching system that would transcend the different parts that make up that world today.

While not totally grasping this emerging concept, these ideas are not completely new to a student of child development. We can relate to the idea of an overarching system evolving beyond its current collection of parts to create an all-encompassing approach to achieving a common goal.

We know health, learning and behavior are connected, and holistic child development requires an integration of these elements that transcends their parts; health affects learning, learning affects health, and social-emotional development affects them both. We also know development begins early, with each stage building on another. Moreover, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory has grounded our thinking: we can’t separate the child from the well-being of the family. They both depend on supportive communities and policies.

As we enter 2022, let’s recommit our energies to creating a system that could be thought of as meta-care. This approach would go beyond a collection of isolated programs and services to an interconnected system supporting the whole developing child. In this community, the parent, childcare provider, physicians, home visitors, teachers, local librarians and housing agencies all matter for a successful start in life.

Last year, I had the opportunity to talk to several parents, providers and local leaders across the country. Each was working to build these connections to make their community “the best place to raise a child.” I recognized four common elements in these initiatives:

• Firm beliefs in centering all actions on family and caregiver voices to improve their living and working conditions
• Commitment to equity
• Processes for data tracking and mapping services
• Continuous improvement mechanisms that include ongoing partnerships across services and sectors

The country’s future depends on how we care for young children and families. In the upcoming year, our hope remains that landmark federal legislation is passed to provide the critical investments we need. When this happens, implementation will move to the states and communities and new opportunities to work together will emerge. We must renew our efforts of support to assure a robust continuum of care: from healthy births to children thriving at age three, at five and beyond.

It doesn’t matter if we use a new term like meta-care; what matters is that we intensify our pursuit of better outcomes for all children. Let’s allow the needs of families and caregivers to guide our actions, transcend old boundaries and make a system of caring a reality for the next generation.

Dr. Joan Lombardi is a national and international thought leader in early childhood. She has been a key collaborator and consultant to Start Early in a variety of ways over the years. 

By Mina Hong and Carrie Gillispie

Amid all the disruption to in-person learning due to the pandemic, it’s time to focus on children with disabilities, which account for 1.2 million young children birth through five. Thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first enacted in 1975, inclusive early care and education (ECE) programs, where children with disabilities learn alongside children without disabilities, is integrated in the federal special education law. Inclusive education has many benefits for all children, regardless of disability status. In fact, inclusion is so essential to child development that it is integrated in federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Under the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) requirement, IDEA calls for young children with developmental delays and disabilities to receive special education and related services alongside typically developing peers in all settings. For young children, LRE includes school-based preschool and community-based settings like Head Start and child care; yet, far too few children with disabilities have had access to these high-quality inclusive options.

Now, Congress has the power to change that with the Build Back Better Act (BBB) and increased IDEA funding in the federal Fiscal Year 2022 (FFY2022) budget. By leveraging these federal investments, states can revolutionize ECE to be truly inclusive and equitable for our nation’s youngest learners with delays and disabilities.

BBB combined with anticipated IDEA funding increases in FFY2022 provides a historic opportunity to expand full inclusion across early childhood settings. BBB significantly invests in expanding equitable access to ECE for families who have been historically underserved — families with lower incomes, families of color, and families of young children with disabilities. Though BBB prioritizes enrollment of young children with delays and disabilities in ECE programs, additional dedicated funding in BBB to support their inclusion is not explicitly defined. Therefore, it is paramount that these expanded early learning opportunities are directed to underserved children with delays and disabilities – particularly children of color – in school and community-based settings that best meet families’ and children’s needs. The anticipated funding increase in the FFY2022 budget will further support the delivery of early intervention, special education and related services to young children under IDEA Part C and IDEA Part B 619. Together, BBB and the IDEA funding proposed in FFY2022 can support the expansion of full inclusion across high quality ECE in all settings.

Despite best efforts, Local Education Agencies (LEAs) face barriers to providing inclusive community-based services outside of school district classrooms including limited guidance, budgetary constraints, and workforce shortages. LEA leaders have expressed the need for guidance and examples of effective service delivery and staffing models to support inclusive special education and related services to all children residing in their districts across ECE settings. Unfortunately, the children who are disproportionately impacted by this are young children from families with lower income, particularly families of color. This group of children are often forced to attend both their community-based program and a school-based program to receive special education services, resulting in multiple bus rides and transitions in a single day. Some families even forego critical special education services to avoid these transitions. Additionally, the workforce crisis that has plagued the early childhood field has led to a staff shortage, which is also acutely felt by the early childhood special education field. While BBB includes provisions to boost compensation for the ECE workforce, funding is also needed to attract and retain special educators. Coupling BBB and FFY2022 funding can support LEAs and their ECE partners as they create equitable systems to ensure programs have the financial resources, workforce capacity, and clear federal guidance needed to support equitable inclusion.

Given this, it is paramount that the U.S. Senate pass the Build Back Better Act in a timely manner while Congress approves the FFY2022 budget with the IDEA Part C and Part B 619 funding increases. Once passed, the federal government should provide clear guidance on how states and communities will ensure children receive special education and related services in all settings. And states, communities, and LEAs should plan how they will collaborate to equitably support young children with disabilities in early childhood settings expanded through new federal dollars. Here’s how:

• Clearly delineating in state plans the ways in which state and local policies and practices will operationalize equitable access and quality in ECE for young children with disabilities and developmental delays across settings. Specifically, plans should prioritize families with low incomes, dual language learners, and from other underserved populations as defined in BBB.
• Prioritizing inclusion in mixed delivery settings, including giving all educators access to resources on high-quality inclusion practices and giving LEAs clear guidance and sufficient funding to do so. This also includes professional development and systems of support for educators to reduce the suspension and expulsion of young children with disabilities and children of color.
• Providing equitable and accessible pathways to obtaining early childhood special education qualifications in order to strengthen the workforce; providing service scholarships and loan forgiveness programs for special education trainees to increase incentives to enter the profession; and most importantly, providing adequate compensation for the entire ECE workforce including special education teachers.
• Collecting and publicly reporting data on district- and program-level adherence to LRE across early childhood settings and disciplinary data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, family income level, gender, dual language learner status, and disability category under IDEA.

Young children with disabilities have always faced systemic barriers to the strong start they deserve. Now is the time for Congress, states, LEAs, and communities to each do their part and collaborate, so that young children with delays and disabilities can access the equitable and inclusive services and supports they need and deserve.

With contributions by Karen Berman, Katie Fisher and Amanda Schwartz

As Congress continues to push historic reforms to early childhood education towards the finish line, Start Early president Diana Rauner joined Drew Furedi, president and CEO of Para Los Niños and Alejandra Barraza, president of HighScope Educational Research Foundation for a conversation about early childhood development moderated by Mark Oppenheim.

All families need support

The panel also spend time talking about how every family needs foundational supports. Discussion included how families have never raised children by themselves—they’ve always relied on friends, supports and family to help them during this exciting and exhausting time.

But not every parent and caregiver has these supports, and children shouldn’t be punished. In our full-employment society, we must find a way for all children to be cared for in quality educational settings regardless of their location — be it a church basement, a child care center, an in-home provider or a preschool — so that parents can choose from developmentally appropriate, affordable and quality options.

Investing in what works

The panel ended with a great sports analogy by Drew Furedi, who shared that sports teams spend millions of dollars on scientific approaches that train and develop individual athletes. If we applied the same approach to develop each young person, we could gain so much—and we’re not talking millions of dollars per child.

We know what works. We have the answers. We just need to do it.

Funders understand it’s past time for the U.S. to create and support a quality early education system. In her latest piece for Inside Philanthropy, reporter Connie Matthiessen takes a look at the Educare Learning Network and Start Early as a model for change, including the Educare model’s focus on parent engagement, the importance of public-private partnerships and providing parents and families with comprehensive, prenatal-to-five supports.

In the piece, Jessie Rasmussen, president of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, calls Educare “an initiative by private and public partners to do two big things: change the life trajectories for the children who come into our care, and change the way America approaches and funds high-quality early care and education. By doing what science tells us we need to do in terms of providing quality, we are narrowing and even closing the achievement gap. By working with peers across the country, we’re showing what it takes to deliver such high quality, including a well-prepared, well-compensated workforce, a reliance on data-driven practice, and care that partners with families and nurtures the healthy growth and development of every child.”

At first glance, the price tag for the transformative investments in early childhood care and education included in the American Families Plan looks steep: $450 billion. And with the significant federal spending, policy scope and potential for tax increases included in President Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic package, we should be having conversations about whether this is where we want to invest our tax dollars.

This June, economists Jorge Luis García, Frederik H. Bennhoff, Duncan Ermini Leaf and Nobel laureate James Heckman released a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper that demonstrates these investments in early learning and care could produce incredible returns.

The paper returns to the Perry Preschool Project, an intervention in the 1960s where a randomized group of students who received two years of preschool sessions on weekdays and weekly teacher home visits, beginning at age 3. Because the study has followed participants into their 50s, economists can now examine the impacts the program had on the siblings and the children of the original participants, who are now well into their adulthoods.

As educators and parents of three young children, Kapria Robinson and her husband know starting early shapes not only a child’s kindergarten experience, but their entire educational journey.

“We wanted to make sure we provided early learning programs for our own children that supported their academic, social and emotional skills. And where they got to experience joy every day at school; a place where they were happy, knew that they were loved, and would thrive,” she recalls.

So when Kapria toured Educare Chicago on the recommendation of their foster care agency five years ago, she knew she has found the right program for her family. She enrolled her two eldest children, Alexander and Catalina, who were just 16-months and 6-months at the time.

“Our case manager said families who had their children at Educare Chicago were thriving and that they were supportive of the blended foster-adoptive family dynamic,” Kapria remembers. “With the foster care process, they were very open to things like working with biological parents. Also, the smaller class sizes and the student-to-teacher ratio is amazing. To have three adults, working with kids when they’re younger just makes all the work of difference.”

An Approach Making a World of Difference

Parent engagement and coaching is at the core of Educare Chicago’s approach, which begins before the first day of school.

“Early on, Educare staff wanted to learn what our kids were interested in and what life was like outside of school. In fact, we met the teachers and had already spoke with the family support specialist in our own home by the time the kids began school,” Kapria reflects.

From Kapria’s perspective, “Educare’s approach is years ahead of most other programs. They make sure to ask a lot of higher order thinking questions. They engage the kids in a lot of discussions, they encourage them to, you know, have their own voice and to have their own throughs — and they positively affirm them.”

“Their team made sure that the kids got what they needed. When my son had challenges with separation anxiety, teachers like Miss Danielle would reach out with different stories we could read with him to make that transition a little easier. It has been a wonderful experience for us,” she continues.

Educare Chicago’s family engagement and parent coaching helped Kapria and her husband stay fully informed about their children’s education and able to reinforce behaviors and learnings at home.

“They would make sure that we understood what our kids were learning. During the parent engagement activities, they really make sure to break down different ways to engage your kids around math, literacy, STEM and art activities,” Kapria shares. “They helped us to truly understand how to engage our children, what questions to ask them, what vocabulary to focus on.

In addition to empowering Kapria and her husband in their role as their children’s first and best teachers, the Educare Chicago community offers a space to meet, engage with and learn from other parents.

“It gave us an opportunity to connect with some of the other parents, which is hugely important in building a community for your children, so that you have other families for them to visit for play dates and that share the same ideas about what is important for their children and their education.”

Ready for Kindergarten and a Lifetime of Learning

Quality early learning and care programs like Educare Chicago help children like Kapria’s enter kindergarten ready to learn. Because early childhood is a time of rapid development in multiple areas — physical, emotional, cognitive and social growth — kindergarten readiness is more than observing a child recite shapes, numbers and colors. A child who is ready for kindergarten is curious, can form relationships and has social interactions with nurturing adults and peers.

Our research has found that more time in Educare programs is associated with higher ratings of social and emotional skills among children, including teacher-rated self-control and initiative. When children leave Educare for elementary school, the majority are academically, socially and emotionally prepared for kindergarten.

Kapria believes Educare Chicago’s approach helped spark an ongoing love for learning within her children that has set them up for a lifetime of success.

“Educare’s approach to involving parents in their children’s education journey and constantly getting feedback has been a huge part of why our children are so successful and driven to keep learning,” she says. “They not only taught the preschool curriculum in ways that were engaging, but they also expanded it to include skills or concepts we were interested in our children learning and based on their assessments of what our kids were ready to learn.”

Today, Kapria’s two oldest children have graduated Educare Chicago and are thriving in Chicago Public Schools. Alexander is in first grade and Catalina is in kindergarten, and both recently tested into gifted and classical programs. Her youngest, a 2-year old, is currently enrolled at Educare Chicago.

“Alexander just completed his first year in a gifted kindergarten program and received straight As, awards for citizenship, being a good friend to his classmates and being helpful. He’s accelerated through the remote learning challenges they provided. I know a lot of that had to do with the competence he had in his skills and the motivation Educare Chicago gave him that if he wanted to do something he could absolutely do it,” Kapria proudly shares.

Given her children’s early education success and her own work in education, Kapria advocates that all children should start early.

“I strongly believe that all children should attend preschool prior to going to an elementary school, just so that they get those beginning foundational skills in a classroom setting. Children just excel when they have the opportunity to interact and communicate with and learn from one another.”

Learn more about Educare Chicago and the Educare Learning Network and their approach to early childhood development and kindergarten readiness.

In-person conferences are back! This August, Start Early president Diana Rauner and I joined leading minds in technology and education from across the country in San Diego for the 2021 ASU+GSV Summit. With awareness of the importance of early childhood education and the care economy at an all-time high, more than a dozen sessions at this year’s conference explored critical issues facing our field, including kindergarten readiness, equity and workforce development.

Chicago is a key part of Start Early’s story and identity. Since our founding in 1982, we are proud to have supported each mayoral administration in their efforts to create an exemplary early childhood system here in our hometown.

In the fall of 2020, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched Every Child Ready Chicago (ECRC), a multiyear, public-private partnership to align the various prenatal-to-five systems and supports serving Chicago’s children and families under a shared vision of success and build the early childhood systems infrastructure needed for thousands more children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.

Through its work, the initiative seeks to create a strong and equitable early childhood system where all parents and children, particularly those in under-resourced communities, have access to quality services. By partnering with parents and communities, the initiative can build a forward-moving plan capable of withstanding changes in leadership throughout the city that are bound to happen.