New America is kicking off a blog series about supporting young children with disabilities and their families.

Quotable & Notable

“When ECE is high-quality — meaning that it provides enrichment beyond minimal health and safety requirements — it is much more likely to benefit children’s cognitive and social-emotional skills than lower-quality care. Quality has various facets, including the quality of educator-child relationships, instruction and curricula, and educator preparation and professional support.”

Who:

Annie D. Schoch, Cassie S. Gerson, Tamara Halle and Meg Bredeson

Where: “Children’s Learning and Development Benefits from High-Quality Early Care and Education: A Summary of the Evidence,” published by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families

Fact of the Week

An interactive map developed by the National Women’s Law Center allows users to see how much states would gain if Congress were to pass $16 billion in emergency funding to support child care. In Ohio, over 400,000 children and nearly 6,300 providers would be served by such an infusion of emergency federal funds.

FYI

Our partners at Ohio State’s Early Head Start Partnership Program just published their annual report outlining the impacts of the program on early learning in Central Ohio throughout 2023.

Crane in the News

Crane Faculty Associate Dr. Tzu-Jung Lin writes for The Conversation describing an innovative way of teaching social issues to elementary school students. Dr. Lin’s research group is finding that using immersive storytelling and group discussion is helping students become more likely to consider multiple perspectives and become more emotionally engaged with learning history.

Beyond the Buckeye State

Parents are often bogged down with administrative hoops to access services for a child. South Carolina’s First Five Portal is a model demonstration of an accessible platform for parents to obtain services for their children. Its creators developed a screener for parents to determine eligibility, and they produced a common application for more than 40 types of services. The First Five SC group also provides a toolkit to help other states implement this type of resource for families.

The Early Educator Investment Collaborative recently awarded grants to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and Louisiana Policy Institute for Children to support partnerships that promote long-term salary increases and benefits to early childhood educators.

What We’re Reading

New America looks ahead in this blog post, asking “What will 2024 hold for early care and education?” The post highlights possible impacts from the 2024 elections, continued effects from the 2023 expiration of federal child care funds, federal rulemaking around increasing Head Start teacher pay, and other possible state actions. 

Groundwork Ohio’s Lynanne Gutierrez pens an op-ed for The Columbus Dispatch about Ohio’s comparatively low threshold for eligibility for families when it comes to accessing subsidized child care.

Research Round-Up

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined whether the learning gains associated with participation in full-day, district-run preschool in Chicago could be observed in third grade — in other words, did the effects last? Researchers found that children who attended the full-day preschool program scored higher in third-grade reading and math and had lower grade retention compared to peers who had attended part-day preschool. Note, the preschool under study was the Child-Parent Center (CPC) Education Program, an evidence-based program that dates back to the 1960s that provides an intensive model that may not be typical of most preschool programs. CPC implements small class sizes, collaborative leadership, strong parental involvement, and strong integration between early childhood and K-12 schooling. It also offers wraparound supports for children and families in health and social services.

The study is behind a paywall but you can read about it in Education Week or Parents Magazine.

This edition written by: Jamie O'Leary and Janelle Williamson

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