The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on our already fragile child care system. Providers have closed, others are struggling, and everyone it seems is realizing that without child care, America can’t get back to work. (Yes, child care is infrastructure.) Early Learning Nation is covering the field with rigor and nuance from a historical perspective (Universal Child Care was a great success during WWII), to the latest legislative proposals and to ways that we must transform the way we treat our undervalued and largely unseen child care workforce.
Advocacy requires patience and persistence. And humility. Sometimes, all the organizing, letters to the editor and congressional testimony fall short....
Cast in America as a pay-to-play system with limited public funding, child care has long struggled with issues like difficult budgetary math, low educator pay, and highly variable quality. An unprecedented degree of investor activity is creating a cascade of risks for the sector, risks which threaten the path toward an inclusive child care system which works well for all children, parents, and early educators.