Whole Child – First 10

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.

The Top 10 Takeaways from the ‘School-Community Partnerships for the Whole Child’ Webinar Series

New America’s Elise Franchino has summarized our recent webinar series in 10 takeaways. Check out her post here. She includes great insights from the presenters. Many thanks to all the panelists, moderators, and partner organizations! You can find the webinars and associated resources at these links:

Spotlight on Closing the Achievement Gap for Young Students: Social Justice, Virtual Learning, COVID, and Beyond

Was recently surprised and honored to be included in the Education Week Spotlight. See articles on COVID-related learning loss, advice from Nell Duke, the impact of phonics on math, our national racial reckoning, and First 10.

Spotlight on Closing the Achievement Gap for Young Students

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

COVID and Beyond: A Consensus on Systems-Change in Early Childhood Education and Care

In response to last week’s post on rethinking early education and care in the aftermath of the pandemic, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of the Brookings Institution and Temple University pointed me to a different take on the same topic, An Unprecedented Time in Education Demands Unprecedented Change. Hirsh-Pasek and her colleagues issue a call for a “playful learning and a breadth of skills approach to education” that focuses on the six C’s: collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence.

Likewise, in The 74 Paul Reville makes the case for a Whole Child Paradigm Shift in which community children’s cabinets oversee cradle-to-career systems of opportunity and support. Laura Bornfreund and Lisa Guernsey emphasize the need to design systems that are responsive to trauma, economic distress, and physical and mental health issues in the Hechinger Report. And writing in the New York Times Shantell and Conor P. Williams argue that the pandemic demonstrates the need to build a better child care system, one that prioritizes both children’s and caregivers’ mental health.

Connecting all of these perspectives is a clear throughline: the need to design comprehensive community-wide approaches that address the needs of the whole child. For a practical action guide on comprehensive systems produced by Boston College’s Center for Optimized Student Support, see The Whole Child: Building Systems of Integrated Student Support During and After Covid-19.

And don’t miss the remaining two webinars in our series on School-Community Partnerships for the Whole Child: Partner with Families on December 3 and Lead Strategically and Continuously Improve on December 10.