One way to improve education: communication. For Pinecrest (FL) Vice Mayor Katie Abbott, that means not only regularly connecting with the school board, but also with students. Abbott co-coordinates the Pinecrest Youth Advisory Council, a group of 24 students in grades 8-12 across public and private schools who engage in government, volunteering and education, tackling issues from the environment to preparing for college.
As part of what’s called “cradle to career,” Arlington (TX), like many communities, is working to ensure its approach to learning leads to a well-educated workforce. As Mayor Pro Tem Victoria Farrar-Myers explains, that discipline starts with early learning, as young as zero to three, and the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation.
April Fournier is not just a Portland (ME) Councilmember, she’s also an early childhood support specialist within an outpatient pediatric clinic. After the child’s medical health visit, Fournier checks in with the parents to provide support on the “social determinants of health”: housing, food and other areas critical to a child’s development.
One of “Aesop’s Fables” goes like this: “A group of pigeons, terrified by the appearance of a Kite, called upon...
As a professor, nurse, mom and policymaker, access to efficient, effective and equitable early childhood education is and has been an ongoing top priority of mine.
Elliot’s Provocations unpacks current events in the early learning world and explores how we can chart a path to a...
Does putting young children in a preschool setting harm them? Opponents of publicly funded child care and early education have...
Within a notoriously underpaid workforce, Louisiana’s child care teachers receive some of the lowest wages—making on average $9.77 an hour...
Some companies are responding to the child care crisis in a somewhat predictable way: they’re looking after their own. Stories have been emerging about a proliferation of on-site child care programs; an NPR article a few weeks ago noted that
When Jack Shonkoff speaks, the early childhood field listens. Shonkoff, a pediatrician who leads Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child,...
It’s long been clear that children who grow up in poverty struggle later in their lives, experiencing everything from increased...
2021 was a momentous year for early childhood care & education. The field suffered blow after blow from COVID and then a knock-on staffing crisis; received nearly $50 billion in rescue funds to temporarily patch the gaping leaks; and is ending the year on the precipice of receiving enough public funds through the Build Back Better Act to finally become a stable and healthy sector.
