For years, Hartford (CT) has been recognized as a leading city in early childhood learning. As Mayor Luke Bronin describes, the results come from a committed community, dedicated civic resources, including a Department of Families, Children, Youth and Recreation, with a division specifically focused on early child development – and the willingness to accelerate good ideas no matter where they come from. It starts, he says, by “working closely with families.”
Every city-dweller has lived or witnessed some version of it: the mom on a bus struggling to fold a stroller...
Vermont Makes Child Care History with a Bipartisan Veto Override
Success Credited to a Decade of Advocacy, Lobbying Efforts, Coalition Building
On Tuesday, June 20, Vermont’s state legislature met in a special legislative session to consider a bipartisan veto override of...
Quality Journalism Needed to Shift Attitudes on Child Care
Takeaways from the Better Life Lab Child Care Innovation Reporting Grants
It began with Build Back Better. Well, truthfully, it has been a decades-long push for many advocacy organizations to put...
In an era of Congressional gridlock, states are increasingly lighting the path forward around early care and education. I have been immensely impressed by the progress Massachusetts has made in recent years.
In flipping the script, Banks writes that birth is immense, that birth has existential, moral and theological significance at least as great as death.
Building community in a COVID-19 world is tough. But Brooklynites are nothing if not creative, industrious and hard-wired for...
While Helen Russell’s clever, well-researched exploration of the parenting culture of Denmark and other Nordic countries might not fully map onto the experience of most families in the U.S. or U.K. (Russell’s original home), it offers refreshing insights that can help parents relax a bit, give themselves heaps of grace and have much more fun raising their family.
OPINION: Federal Programs and Data Demonstrate the Value of Relative and Neighbor Child Care Providers
It's Time for Federal Policy to Do the Same
Family, friend and neighbor child care (FFN)—child care that is offered informally in families and communities by trusted family members...
If you’ve been following my work at all, you know I bristle at many “incremental” solutions to child care challenges.
Universal Child Care May be Coming to Vermont
Could Provide a Blueprint for Success in Other States
In a nation where patchwork child care infrastructure has been wrecked by 18 months of pandemic, the state of Vermont...
With experience from around the world, the President of BCDI-Carolinas compellingly synthesizes what she sees as the root challenge to early childhood learning: Mindset. Dr. Devonya Govan-Hunt outlines the five ways she and her colleagues have set out to tackle that obstacle, with special focus on excessive disciplinary actions in preschools.