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Child Care Crisis

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.

For Young Children, a RAPID Response to the Pandemic

Mark Swartz·June 4, 2020·4 min read

The Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact on Development, or RAPID project, gathers essential information on unmet needs and health-promoting behaviors for...

Digital Inclusion: A Resource Guide for the Early Learning Community

Mark Swartz·June 8, 2020·2 min read

A new report from New America, Pandemic Planning for Distance Learning, laments the failure of school districts across the country...

Opinion: Child Cares Look Safe — It’s Time To Act Like It

Elliot Haspel·June 10, 2020·7 min read

COVID-19 is a bizarre disease that defies easy answers. It impacts the lungs – except when it doesn’t. It brutalizes...

We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About COVID Cases in Child Care

Elliot Haspel·July 9, 2020·6 min read

The question that parents and practitioners really want to know is this: How safe are child cares? Or, put another way, how likely is my child (or am I) to catch COVID-19 from a child care center? In order to know that, we need to be able to answer how much transmission is occurring WITHIN child care centers? Until we ask the right questions and demand the right data, we’ll be stumbling in the dark.

Steps to Sustainability: Fundamental Reforms to Our Systems of Child Care and Early-Learning Programs

Our Broken Child Care System and How to Fix It, Part 3

Laura Justice and Mark Swartz·August 4, 2020·7 min read

In this three-part series, Dr. Laura Justice—executive director of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at The...

Our Child Care Workforce: Three Women Reflect

Mark Swartz·August 20, 2020·4 min read

It’s a simple fact: child care is essential for the return of our workforce and the health of our economy....

The Aunt Bees of America

Natalie Renew·August 27, 2020·3 min read

During her convention speech last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren, sitting in a now closed child care center, spoke about the...

Let’s Talk About the Encouraging COVID Experience of U.S. Child Care Programs

Elliot Haspel·August 28, 2020·7 min read

One of the most frustrating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the need to act with incomplete information, like driving...

Making the Bipartisan Case for Child Care: the Industry that Keeps America Working

Mark Swartz·September 9, 2020·4 min read

Bipartisanship is increasingly rare these days, but even before the pandemic, child care was an issue that could reliably, occasionally,...

5 Top Takeaways from the Conversation: Early Childhood Philanthropic Leaders Discuss Deploying Risk Capital

Mark Swartz·September 15, 2020·3 min read

Because we can’t take our Early Learning Nation Studio on the road during this time, stay tuned as ELN recaps...