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The development of an early childhood system, both in states and communities, is an exciting venture, requiring coordination among people and programs from many disciplines and organizations, including community stakeholders who do not have a professional role related to children and families. Supporting Children Through Community-Based Coalitions is a guide to support newly forming community coalitions in their work. The guide explores: why coalitions are important to impacting change; what coalitions need to be successful; how to get started; and…

The Departments of Health and Human Services and Education have partnered to launch Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive!, a coordinated effort to encourage developmental and behavioral screening and support for children, families, and the providers who care for them.  Birth to Five: Watch Me Thrive! will bring communities together around four core missions: Celebrating developmental milestones Promoting universal developmental and behavioral screening Identifying possible delays early Enhancing developmental support for families The Importance of Developmental and Behavioral Screening As…

Available in either English or Spanish, Healthy HomeStyles helps parents you work with raise happier, healthier, and safer kids.

Published in March 2014 with support from the Heising-Simons Foundation, this policy report explores the perspectives of nationally recognized experts in the field of mathematics and early care and education about three main issues: The knowledge and competencies that practitioners need in order to teach mathematics to young children; Effective strategies for educating practitioners to support young children’s mathematical development; and The challenges and successes that these experts have experienced in math-related ECE workforce development efforts Read the report here.

This article, published in Early Childhood Research and Practice, examines the challenges experienced and supports received of early care and education practitioners who return to school to earn their bachelor’s degree. Students assessed the cohort structure of their B.A. program, financial assistance, the schedule and location of classes, as well as academic and technological challenges and supports over time. The study concludes with suggestions for those who design and implement programs on how to best allocate resources to support degree…

“Good quality care requires an environment that values adults as well as children.”– National Child Care Staffing Study, 1989The National Child Care Staffing Study (NCCSS) released in 1989, brought national attention for the first time to poverty-level wages and high turnover among early childhood teaching staff, and to the adverse consequences for children. In the succeeding 25 years, combined developments in science, practice, and policy have dramatically shifted the context for discussions about the status of early childhood teaching jobs,…

Across the K-12 and early care and education (ECE) communities, similar conversations are underway about how to recruit teachers and strengthen their preparation, how to provide ongoing learning experiences for new and veteran teachers, and how to organize school environments to ensure that all teachers can best address the needs of an increasingly diverse child population. But these conversations are also widely divergent, given that the histories of the two sectors have led to distinct personnel and service delivery systems.In…

CSCCE Announces Commitment to Action at the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) MeetingOn June 25th, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) announced our Commitment to Action, Assessing What Teachers Need to Help Children Succeed, at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America Meeting. This represents a two-year commitment to expand the use of, and scale up our online tool, Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) and accompanying services and training resources.SEQUAL plays a critical…

In this article, which appeared in the July/August 2014 edition of Exchange Magazine, Marcy Whitebook and co-author Dan Bellm, discuss three aspects of mentoring – mentors as teachers, mentors and learners, and mentors as leaders – that are essential for developing a skilled corps of mentors who are responsible for helping early childhood teachers improve their practice. The article includes a discussion of the supports that mentors need to help them develop and improve their effectiveness as mentors, as well…

The Early Childhood Bulletin is now available online. Enjoy!