Amid the challenging and ever-changing circumstances of 2020, Start Early continued to expand its reach and rapidly responded to the changing needs of children and their families across the country. Our work would not be possible without you – our generous and dedicated donors.

I am excited to share with you Start Early’s annual Year In Review. The fiscal year 2020 edition highlights the unyielding resilience of children, families and early learning and care professionals during a devastating global pandemic. It also includes the innovative solutions and supports that early learning champions developed and deployed to address the unprecedented challenges impacting families. I am most humbled by the inspirational stories of strength from the field, especially those of parents and our youngest learners.

2020 Year in Review

I look forward to connecting with you soon and wish you and your family a wonderful and safe holiday season.

All the best,
Diana

The Challenge

In 2018, California passed a bill (AB 2960) to ensure that families have access to timely, accurate information about high-quality Early Learning and Care (ELC) programs, how to enroll their children, and benefits they may be eligible for via an eligibility screener and the development of a public online portal – referred to as the “Parent Portal” – which must be created by June 30, 2022.

The Early Learning Lab (The Lab) was brought on board to provide design recommendations for the portal that would ensure it meets the needs and desires of the parents, providers, and stakeholders who will use the site.

The Results

Through this project, The Lab delivered a set of near-term and longer-term recommendations to develop the Parent Portal as a robust platform that supports all of the stakeholders across the early learning and care sector in California.

These include specific recommendations on:

1. Integrating subsidized child care related services into existing eligibility screeners offered by the State of California
2. Increasing transparency and addressing the complexity of the waitlist process for subsidized child care slots
3. Additional data on child care programs that families would find useful when evaluating program
4. A roadmap and plan for ongoing platform improvements and enhancements for the Parent Portal to ensure it meets the evolving needs of stakeholders
5. A communications strategy to increase awareness of the Parent Portal among various stakeholders

Of the 12 million children under age 3 in the United States, nearly 25 percent live in a family with earnings below the poverty level, with little to no access to quality and affordable child care. To address this problem, Congress appropriated $500 million in 2014 to expand access to Early Head-Start programs, which included the creation of Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships).

In 2019, Start Early conducted interviews with a variety of state leaders regarding Partnerships programs. Interviewees included those who administer a Partnerships grant, and some who supported implementation of Partnerships in their states but did not have a Partnerships grant. As a result of these interviews, Start Early is proud to share our report on the lessons of implementation of the Partnerships across states.

Start Early initiated the Educare Chicago Follow-Up Study in 2005 to determine how well our high-quality, birth-to-five, early care and education program prepared children and their families for elementary school and beyond. This ongoing study is designed as a longitudinal, mixed methods investigation of 12 cohorts of over 300 former Educare Chicago students and their families. Our research team hopes to follow graduates’ achievements throughout their K-12 education and into adulthood.

The study findings help support our early childhood policy and advocacy work and drive continuous quality improvement at Educare Chicago, as well as at the national Educare Learning Network of schools. The study findings also contribute to the body of evidence that confirms the long-lasting, positive outcomes of a high-quality early educational experience.

The Educare Chicago Follow-Up Study continues to provide researchers, policymakers and practitioners valuable insights on how to improve the quality of early learning environments for all children, including those living in often under-resourced communities.

Funders

• W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation
• Alvin H. Baum Family Fund
• Paul M. Angell Family Foundation

This paper shares the importance of including the early years in state accountability systems; those years are of critical importance to achieving long-term educational success but have been largely ignored in previous state accountability efforts. States have the opportunity under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to encourage and support improved practice at the early elementary level — and earlier.

Family engagement is integral to the quality and success of early education and Start Early is always looking for innovative ideas to support children and families both in the classroom and at home. In 2012, we joined researchers at Northwestern University and the educational technology company, Parent University, to test out one of these new ideas.

Through the Pocket Literacy Coach project, parents at three Head Start programs in the Chicago area enrolled in the Parent University texting service. Parents received a daily text message that provided a fun, easy idea for a parent-child activity that focused on literacy, math skills and critical thinking. The idea was simple: could a simple text message, once a day, prompt families to engage in everyday moments of learning? We conducted the first phase of the pilot to test the impact of the content and technology. The findings were overwhelmingly positive.

This paper is intended to help state and local education decision-makers understand how to use kindergarten readiness assessment results appropriately — and how to avoid stretching them too far. This paper describes:

• What kindergarten readiness is and how it is assessed.
• The beneficial uses of kindergarten readiness assessment.
• Why states should not use kindergarten readiness assessment results as part of an accountability system for children, early learning providers or teachers.

This paper is intended to show policymakers, advocates, practitioners, philanthropists and other early childhood stakeholders why data systems represent a great opportunity to come together to improve outcomes for children and families. The authors share why state early childhood data systems matter, how to unify a state’s data systems, how to help ensure data is used in decision-making and considerations related to privacy in early childhood data.

In 2008, in partnership with the Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative, Start Early launched and began the evaluation of the Early Math Initiative at Educare Chicago, a program aimed at improving students’ early numeracy and math reasoning skills through improved teaching and family engagement. Specifically, this initiative provided teachers with intensive, hands-on training and coaching that demonstrated how to integrate early math exploration and problem-solving skills into their lessons, materials and activities. Additionally, family math nights engaged parents in everyday experiences to advance children’s math and language skills at home, including activities such as cooking, laundry, shopping and gardening.

In addition to the Early Math Initiative, we also partnered with the Erikson Institute to conceptualize and develop Math All Around Me (MAAM) — an effort to adapt and apply key math concepts and resources, previously focused for preschool to 3rd grade children, to be applicable for children’s learning and development in the first three years of life. This set the foundation for improved math methods and tools for infant-toddler practitioners. Through MAAM, we partnered with 80 birth-to-three practitioners from 14 home-based and center-based programs in the Chicago area to share and pilot test MAAM content. Math All Around Me holds great promise to transform how we teach foundational math concepts to infants and toddlers.

Funders

• CME Group Foundation
• The Boeing Group
• Louis R. Lurie Foundation
• JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Decades of research have demonstrated that effective leaders are the key drivers of improvements in educational settings, including early childhood programs. With those findings in mind, our research team helped develop The Essential Fellowship, an intensive leadership development program designed to enhance early education program quality and child outcomes by supporting and improving instructional leadership.

Our research on adult learning among early education practitioners resulted in an approach that combines training, coaching and peer learning to drive program improvement. Our focus is on strengthening key organizational supports: effective leaders, collaborative teachers, supportive environment, involved families, and ambitious instruction.

Funders

• Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant
  • U.S. Department of Education
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Alvin H. Baum Family Fund
• James P. and Brenda S. Grusecki Family Foundation
• Pritzker Children’s Initiative
• Prince Charitable Trusts
• Harris Family Foundation
• Northern Trust
• The Oscar G. & Elsa S. Mayer Family Foundation
• The Stranahan Foundation