Our partner school’s principal Anneliese Johnson will lead a session, “Family Engagement is Family Empowerment in Early Childhood,” this morning at the Ohio Family Engagement Leadership Summit. 

Quotable & Notable

Fact of the Week

While only 19 states plus D.C. require children to attend kindergarten, New America discusses three states (Idaho, Utah, and California) who made progress towards expanding to full-day kindergarten in 2022. 

Policy Radar

Child poverty and the Child Tax Credit

This piece published (and updated to reflect new data) in The Conversation confirms that the national 2021 child poverty level reached a record-low, based on data released earlier this week. According to a U.S. Census release, “The SPM [Supplemental Poverty Measure] child poverty rate fell 46 percent in 2021, from 9.7 percent in 2020 to 5.2 percent in 2021, a 4.5 percentage-point decline. This is the lowest SPM child poverty rate on record. In 2021, SPM rates for non-Hispanic White (2.7 percent), Black (8.1 percent), and Hispanic (8.4 percent) children were also the lowest rates on record, falling from 2020.” Despite these decreases, it’s worth noting that overall income inequality increased at the same time.  

One key driver of lowering the child poverty rate is the Child Tax Credit, which was expanded in 2021 but expired by the year’s end due to Congressional inaction. Democrats may make one last push for the CTC this year, as Axios describes here.

Events & Happenings 

Join Researchers Investigating Sociocultural Equity and Race (RISER) for a virtual conference on “Conducting Policy-Relevant Research to Promote Black Children’s Optimal Development” from September 28-29th. Register here. 

New from Crane

Registration for Crane’s 9th Annual Symposium on Children is now open. Join us on Friday, October 28th from 12:30-4:30 pm for conversations focused around this year’s theme: “Invest Early in Children: Policies, practices, and ideas for action”, featuring Dr. Kirabo Jackson as the keynote speaker. Register here.  

Beyond the Buckeye State

Multnomah County, Oregon has just launched its Preschool for All universal program, funded by a voter tax passed in 2020. On this topic, the Crane annual Symposium on Children on October 28 will feature Preschool for All’s director Leslee Barnes during the policy panel portion of the day’s event.

Here is a worthwhile case study of New Mexico describing its recent efforts to invest “massive resources” in early care and education and how “philanthropists, advocates, and policy makers joined forces” to make it possible.

What We're Reading

New America has updated its toolkit on transitions for children (from early care into kindergarten and early elementary grades), with new sections on lessons learned from states as well as ideas for spending federal COVID dollars toward these efforts.

Also from New America, here’s a look at the state of full-day kindergarten in the U.S., which is not required (or funded) by most states, including Ohio.

Hechinger Report covers a federally-commissioned study on the amount of physical activity children get in child care centers. Encouraging more time for children to be physically active, the report suggests child care staff get involved with play, as it leads to more active play time for children. 

Research Round-Up

A new article published in the Children and Youth Services Review examined a body of research to assess whether early care and education had an impact on family violence. Researchers reviewed peer-reviewed studies published between 1996 and 2021 to gauge whether any showed a relationship between three early childhood policies/programs - subsidies for child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, and universal pre-K – and family violence outcomes (child maltreatment and intimate partner violence). The researchers noted that very few studies have examined these relationships, though did note that there is “promising evidence to support some of the early childhood education and care policies as a strategy for preventing family violence.” In particular, child care subsidies and Head Start were associated with lower child maltreatment risks.