Community – First 10

The First 10 Network is Underway: Our First Community of Practice Webinar

A community of practice brings together people around a common interest to share best practices and create new actionable knowledge. We launched our community of practice with a webinar that brought together representatives from our six First 10 states to hear from two groups that are successfully building partnership systems to support young children.

Our first speaker, Secretary Barbara Cooper from Alabama’s Department of Early Childhood Education, is working with EDC to establish First 10 partnerships in Alabama. Alabama is building a comprehensive approach to kindergarten readiness and school success. In addition to expanding its highly regarded First Class Prekindergarten program, Alabama is working to align all pre-natal to age 8 services in the state and is building partnerships within communities to create environments in which all students can succeed.

As part of this work and in collaboration with EDC, Alabama has published a Transition to Kindergarten Toolkit that includes guidance, resources, and strategies to support local communities in implementing effective transition to Kindergarten plans.

We also heard from Cris Lopez Anderson and Amy Schmidtke from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. Their work in Metro Omaha, Nebraska was an inspiration for First 10. Cris and Amy shared their extensive experience implementing the Superintendents’ Early Childhood Plan: A Birth Through Grade 3 Approach. This approach is centered on three pillars:

Quality (what children and families experience in terms of practices),
Continuity (how children and families experience services over time and ensuring that services are aligned and coordinated), and
Equity (who experiences quality and continuity).

The Superintendents’ Plan brings together home visiting (birth to age 3), family supports, and coaching for teachers in elementary schools that serve as hubs for children and families. The Plan started by testing this full implementation model in six districts seven years ago.

While showing many signs of success, over the years, the Buffett Institute has identified a key challenge to the Plan’s current implementation model: their work in schools has been siloed and not adequately connected to district goals and initiatives. To tackle this challenge, the Superintendents’ Plan is taking a systems-approach and creating an action plan with district leaders focused on how district goals for early childhood education are being supported and tackled at each level of the system. The goal is to be transparent with all community members—children, family, school staff, and school leaders—about what the goals are and what each member’s role is.

These two presentations led to small breakout group discussions to give attendees time to meet one another and to discuss what they had heard and how they could apply aspects of these approaches to their own First 10 partnerships.

It was a full agenda! We’ll be pausing community of practice meetings for the summer but are looking forward to our September meeting, where we will be sure to include lots of time for attendees to meet, network, and learn about one another’s work!

Inaugural First 10 Newsletter

With the launch of our new National First 10 Network in March, we have created a newsletter for First 10 colleagues and friends. We will share resources and news of interest via the newsletter. In our inaugural issue sent April 5, we spotlight the work that East Providence (RI) is doing to share its progress with community leaders, highlight an article on the vital role Head Start Programs can play in First 10 communities, and feature EDC’s announcement of our W.K. Kellogg Foundation funding.

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If you missed the newsletter in your inbox, please check your spam folder! For those of you who would like to stay connected with First 10’s work, you can subscribe here to the newsletter.

How Head Start Programs Can Drive Change in their Communities

All across the country, Head Start, school, and community organizations are working to address the fundamental fragmentation that characterizes our mixed-delivery early childhood systems. In my work leading First 10 school-community partnerships, I’ve witnessed the vital role that Head Start and Early Head Start programs play in supporting the whole child and promoting family well-being. Head Start leaders are part of innovative First 10 initiatives across the country that are successfully reinventing school-community partnerships focused on young children and their families. Now more than ever, Head Start agencies have an opportunity to extend their influence, drive change, and improve outcomes for all children and families in their communities.

See my recent blog post for the National Head Start Association, “Head Start School-Community Partnerships Create Change.” It was really a pleasure collaborating with Dr. Deborah Bergeron and NHSA on this article.

Taking Action for Children and Families: Learning from the First 40 Communities (Post #1)

“The ultimate goal of a stronger, more seamless care and education continuum is to initiate and sustain a strong foundation for future success by providing effective learning opportunities across the infant-toddler years, preschool ages, and early grades in all settings.” (National Research Council, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation).[1]

“The broader lesson of our analysis is that social mobility should be tackled at a local level by improving childhood environments.” (Chetty and Hendron, The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility)[2]

The United States is on the cusp of making a historic investment in early care and education (ECE).[3] This investment comes at a moment in time when the pandemic has exposed the fragmented and siloed nature of our early childhood systems in both urban and rural communities. Widespread racial protests have launched a national reckoning with pervasive racial inequities. Also, during the past two years, an important development has been taking place in the ECE world that can help inform our response to these challenges. Twenty-eight states across the United States have been hard at work improving state and local ECE systems, supported by $275 million of Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B–5) funds. The aim of these efforts is to improve the quality of early childhood programs and services, including how programs and services work together in a coordinated fashion to best meet the needs of children and families. I suggest that state and local system-building efforts like those supported by PDG B–5 are essential to how we address learning loss in the aftermath of the pandemic, and how, as we expand access to ECE programs, we rebuild better, more equitable systems of care and education.

A Game-Changing Opportunity for Early Childhood (Yale School of Medicine)

As we rebuild after the pandemic, we have an enormous opportunity to reinvent early education and care in the United States in ways that dramatically improve outcomes for children and families, strengthen communities, and advance equity for all.

In this post, I share three core principles for rethinking how communities serve children and families and make the most of this opportunity. Thanks to the Partnership for Early Education Research at the Yale University School of Medicine for inviting me to blog.

How to Fix America: Think of Education as More Than Just School

The New York Times business reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, asked experts and industry leaders to name one thing we should do right now to “fix America.” Harlem Children Zone leaders Kwame Owusu-Kesse and Geoffrey Canada argue that we must, “We must broaden the focus of education to encompass the communities around the school building.” An excerpt:

“How do we make schools actually work for all children?

The nation has been pondering this question for decades, with answers that have fallen woefully short for poor students. But we think this is the wrong question. What the country should be asking is, how do we change the neighborhoods around schools to make them places where young people can find success — in school and beyond?

If we are going to break the cycle of poverty, we must reimagine education in America. We can no longer view education as simply the things that go on inside that building we call “school.” Such a narrow-minded focus has proved inadequate to the task of moving large populations out of poverty. We must broaden the focus of education to encompass the communities around the school building…

An emerging field of practice centered on “place” (i.e., where a child grows up) has championed the providing of comprehensive services to neighborhoods to effectively combat poverty. These services include high quality education and cradle-to-career youth programming, physical and mental health support, work force development, affordable housing and community leadership development.”

See: Think of Education as More Than Just School

The Way Forward: Reinventing Early Childhood Education After COVID-19

COVID-19 has exposed a fundamental truth about our systems of education, health, and social services: They are fragmented and siloed, thwarting efforts to improve the quality of learning and care for children. Nowhere is this clearer than in the schools, preschools, and community programs that serve the 44% of U.S. children under 9 identified as low-income. The lack of collaboration and shared vision among these systems means that the extraordinary efforts of people who work on the frontlines are severely handicapped in meeting the needs of children and families.

As we rethink national and state education policies, and as we rebuild schooling and caregiving, we must ensure that the schools and programs that serve children and their families work together at the local level where it matters most.

For over a decade, I’ve studied the work of innovative communities nationwide where just this sort of collaboration is in full force. Preschools, elementary schools, and community health and social service organizations join forces to create and carry out a clear equity agenda that focuses on improving the quality of life for low-income children and their families and children of color and their families. Their successes provide a road map to reinventing early childhood education that begins with three core design principles:

Connect Early Years and Early Grades. When early childhood and K–12 educators collaborate, they can ensure high-quality learning for children. Yet this seldom happens. Instead, we have created two systems with very different philosophies and practices for children of similar ages. The innovative communities that I’ve studied bring early childhood programs together with elementary schools to align curricula, work on how best to teach young children, and develop common approaches to supporting families. As a result, children’s learning can proceed smoothly, consistently, and successfully.

Deepen Partnerships with Families. It’s time to move beyond “random acts of family engagement” like occasional back-to-school nights. Research shows that families play a vital role in children’s success in school, and schools and communities must make two major shifts to support families in this role. The first shift is one of mindset: begin with respect for families and their contributions, be responsive to families’ cultural traditions, invite families to participate as full partners in school affairs, and promote families’ development as leaders. These changes must be coupled with new structures to support families with comprehensive services such as family liaison positions, family resource centers, and well-thought-out partnerships with health and social service agencies.

Strengthen Communities. Harvard’s Opportunity Insights project has shown that of all government policies, investments in low-income children have the highest returns and pay for themselves. The project’s researchers have also demonstrated that the neighborhoods where children grow up have enormous impacts on children’s future social mobility. They conclude that, “The broader lesson of our analysis is that social mobility should be tackled at a local level by improving childhood environments.” Here the first two design principles come together with a third: the most powerful way to improve childhood environments is to implement comprehensive strategies across the elementary schools, early childhood programs, and health and social service agencies that serve children and families in the same community.

Translating principles into action: How does life change for children in these communities? Communities in Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, and Pennsylvania are improving home visiting, family childcare, preschool, and Head Start programs. They are finding new, more effective ways to help children acquire key literacy, math, and social-emotional skills. Families are receiving the health, mental health, and social service support they need to build on their strengths and overcome challenges. Schools, preschools, and community agencies are coordinating their work: sharing data, aligning curricula, supporting children and families through the transition to kindergarten, and leading community-wide campaigns on parenting, school attendance, and early literacy. They are sustaining this work during COVID-19. These communities are demonstrating how to create coherent systems. They are showing us the way forward to better futures for children and families.

“How to Play Our Way to a Better Democracy”

Initiative aimed at helping children get a better start in life offers real promise

A strong editorial statement on P-3 by the Lancaster County newspaper, the Lancaster LNP:

“It’s devastating to think that as early as infancy, a child might be deemed to be “at-risk” — that is, at risk of failing in school, of being trapped in poverty, of even facing a diminished life expectancy.

‘The achievement gap exists in kindergarten,’ Andrea Heberlein, a United Way of Lancaster County staffer and P-3 advocate who oversees an education task force for the Coalition to Combat Poverty, told Hawkes.

And that achievement gap opens up very early in a child’s life.

As a National Association of Elementary School Principals publication noted in 2013, ‘Data from a nationally representative sample of children, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study — Birth Cohort 2001, reveal that gaps in what children know and are able to do appear as early as 9 months of age. Not surprisingly, these gaps only grow over time.’

And sadly, those gaps — if not addressed — can doom a child’s lifelong opportunities before he learns to tie his shoes.

It is a monumental challenge, but it is critical to free children from the life sentence that the ‘at-risk’ designation can be. So we laud those who are working to launch prenatal-to-third-grade, or P-3, programs in Lancaster County.

…

We’ve repeatedly advocated for quality prekindergarten education, which also is championed by everyone from district attorneys to academics to military leaders because it benefits all of us when children are prepared for school and lifelong learning. It benefits employers (who need skilled workers), the armed forces (which need educated recruits) and taxpayers (prekindergarten education is far cheaper than building prisons).

Now, we are excited by the prospects for P-3 education in Lancaster County. We hope state lawmakers and county officials are excited, too, by this promising new front in the quest to stem intergenerational poverty.”

You can find the article here.