Early Care & Education
Voices Vision for School Readiness
It is the vision of Voices for America’s Children that public policies at all levels of government—local, state and federal—ensure that children and their parents receive the services and supports to enable children to start school prepared for success. Voices supports:
- Parent education and family support programs designed to improve the confidence and competency of all parents and support them in their role as their children’s first and most important teachers.
- Dedicated supports for programs serving infants and toddlers designed to best meet their developmental needs.
- Access to high quality, affordable child care for all children.
- High quality pre-kindergarten for all three and four-year olds.
- A highly qualified and appropriately compensated early childhood workforce.
- Family and medical leave.
- Early intervention (Part C) services that identify and address developmental delays that allow for continued educational development.
- Programs, services and aligned standards to ensure smooth transitions into kindergarten.
Key School Readiness Proposals
Early Learning Challenge Fund
- The Early Learning Challenge Fund is Pres. Obama’s initiative for results-oriented, standards reform of state early learning programs. The initiative would be authorized under pending legislation, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221).
- Voice expressed its support for the legislation in a letter to the members of the House Education and Labor Committee.
School Readiness Research and Publications
Center for Law & Social Policy
Child Trends June/July 2009 Research Review
- In the August 3rd issue of the Legislative E-Brief Speaking Out!, Voices reported on Child Trends’ newest publications concerning school readiness.
Council for Exceptional Children
National Association for the Education of Young Children
National Council of La Raza
Voices for America’s Children
ZERO TO THREE
Early Care & Education Articles
Posted by Bill Bentley on Jul. 29
As Voices advocate Joan Benso says, summer is a carefree time for children, but this summer, some of their parents and guardians have a lot to worry about. The president and CEO of Voices member group Pennsylvannia Partnerships for Children, Benso explained in an op-ed this week that we're running out of time to boost to federal-state programs like Medicaid, and the results could be dire:
"This likely will mean the reduction of basic education funding resulting in the layoffs of thousands of teachers statewide; cuts to child welfare funding and programs that serve children with mental disabilities; and damaging reduced support to early childhood programs, including Pre-K Counts, the state's preschool program for at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds; the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program; Child Care Works, the program that helps low-income working parents pay for child care; Keystone STARS, the state's quality improvement and rating system for child care centers, and Nurse Family Partnerships that provides low-income, first-time moms with the care and support they need to raise safe, healthy babies."
Posted by Terrylynn Tyrell on Jul. 1
A new quality system for child care in Wisconsin scored a legislative victory recently, securing a unanimous vote by that state's Joint Finance Committee. The proposed program, known as YoungStar, would make it easier for parents to choose the best care for their children and would link state provider payments to their quality.
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, the Voices member in that state, has all the details in
a blog post on YoungStar. You can also read more on the proposed program from the
Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
It's important to work toward greater access to child care for families, but often it's just as important to ensure those programs are high-performing. To learn more about child care and children's needs, check out the
Voices Early Care and Education page.
Posted by Voices_staff on Jun. 9
Keeping Track has become an indispensable asset for citizens, elected and appointed officials, academics, foundations, and service providers seeking to understand and improve the lives of New York City's children. With the release of the 9th edition of
Keeping Track, CCC continues to update the
Keeping Track database and expand the types of data collected.
Order the entire report at
Citizens' Committee for Children of New York City website.
Posted by Terrylynn Tyrell on May. 20
Early Ed Watch yesterday provided an excellent
overview of the early learning listening tours being conducted now by the Department of Education. As Congress considers renewing federal education programs, one issue we'd like policymakers to listen to is the significant racial gaps in how we prepare students for 4th grade.
Our recent
summary of 4th grade reading scores shows that racial gaps in performance are significant and persistent. In "The Nation's Report Card" for 2009, non-white students scored 25 points less than their white counterparts in reading. And these gaps appear year after year.
We'll continue to update this blog on our advocacy around early learning; tune in to learn ways you can help.
[caption id="attachment_2903" align="aligncenter" width="299" caption="While all student underperformance is a problem, the persistent racial gaps in scores are particularly troubling."]
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Posted by Casey_Labrack on May. 19
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's comprehensive report, "Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters," this week drew attention to the problem of student underperformance in reading. Now that data has been integrated with the Foundation's website, allowing you to see how your state ranks.
Interestingly, though only around one-third of students are proficient readers according to the Department of Education, states are usually doing well by their own assessments. For example, only 28 percent of Texas students are proficient readers by national standards, but 84 percent passed that state's test. It seems national and state learning standards are not aligned, and we expect this to be an important topic when federal education programs are renewed, possibly this year.
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