Instructional Leadership and Organizational Conditions
The research is clear: quality matters when it comes to early learning and care experiences. High-quality early learning services are those that are culturally, linguistically and ability responsive and result in improved child and family outcomes. Start Early believes that federal, state and community standards and funding streams should be leveraged to incentivize professional development for the early childhood workforce, ensure wages and benefits are adequate and equitable, provide specialized coaching for the field, and fund research that will provide new insights into our understanding of quality and how to achieve it.
For early learning and care programs to flourish, federal, state and local systems must create environments that enable providers and professionals to make good use of evidence-based practices that enhance the quality of early childhood interventions, care and education for all children and their families and attend to the well-being of staff. The factors that create these environments — referred to as organizational conditions — have proven necessary to creating and sustaining staff well-being and commitment as well as ongoing improvement that ensures young children and their families reap the promised benefits of high-quality programming.
Our Recommendations
Start Early believes that federal, state and community standards and funding streams should be leveraged to incentivize professional development, ensure wages and benefits are adequate and equitable, provide specialized coaching for the field and fund research that will provide new insights into our understanding of quality and how to achieve it.
