How to Plan a Site Visit: Inviting Policymakers to See Your Work with Infants, Toddlers & Their Families

Summer is on its way, and that offers infant-toddler advocates a wonderful opportunity to reinvest in building relationships with policymakers while they are not in session. One way to do that is to invite them to your program for a site visit. To help you in inviting, organizing, and hosting the site visit, ZERO TO THREE prepared a handy site visit tool and a sample invitation letter. The letter is written as an invitation to a member of the U.S. Congress, but if you are inviting a state policymaker, the letter can be easily adapted for that use. Check out the site visit tool now, and give your policymakers a real experience with quality infant-toddler services.

Federal Policy Update

Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions turned its attention to early childhood education, as part of their series of hearings on the reauthorization of the Elementary-Secondary Education Act (ESEA). While the hearing was directed more at prekindergarten opportunities for three- and four-year-olds, there was some discussion of infant-toddler development and the importance of reaching children early. Witnesses brought the perspectives of business, research, and program providers and were firm in their recommendations that investments in early learning bring a substantial return. Their testimony can be found here. Now Congress heads into its Memorial Day recess, putting consideration of a Congressional Budget Resolution on hold until they return.

State Policy Update
California Builds an Early Childhood Professional Development Infrastructure

In April, the California Children and Families Commission (First 5 CA) approved an expenditure of $36 million over three years for the Comprehensive Approaches to Raising Educational Standards (CARES) Plus program. This program renews California's commitment to support the education and preparation of an effective, well-compensated, and diverse early learning workforce, with the goal to increase the quality of early learning programs for children birth to 5 and their families. CARES Plus will build on the positive momentum already created by CARES programs throughout the state and will continue to offer stipends to early childhood educators, as well as provide academic support and advising to engage a diverse workforce. Some new elements of CARES Plus that will support the professional development infrastructure include implementing birth-5 Early Childhood Educator Competencies, updating the California Child Development Permit to align with the ECE Competencies, and developing an Early Learning Workforce Registry to support evaluation of the effectiveness of the CARES Plus program and monitor teacher quality in the QRIS system currently under development.

Read the full state policy update now!

Publications & Resources

New Working Paper Shows the Importance of Early Experiences
The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child offers a summary of recent scientific evidence and confirms the importance of early experiences in shaping developing brain architecture in a new working paper, Early Experiences Can Alter Gene Expression and Affect Long-Term Development. This working paper also illustrates the gap between growing scientific research and policy decisions with four examples. It suggests the need for public policies to be informed by science in order to adequately address the needs of young children and generate long-term benefits to society.

Applications for ECLS-B Database Seminar
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is sponsoring a free 3-day advanced studies seminar on the use of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) database on August 3-5, 2010 in Washington, DC. Advanced graduate students, university faculty members, researchers, education practitioners, and policy analysts from federal, state, and local levels are invited to apply. The deadline for applications is June 18, 2010. For more information, click here.

A Link between Early Care and Later Development
A recent press release from the National Institutes of Health highlights a new analysis of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), which is the largest, longest running and most comprehensive study of child care in the United States. The analysis shows that teens enrolled in high-quality child care as young children scored slightly higher on measures of academic and cognitive achievement and were slightly less likely to demonstrate acting-out behaviors than peers who had been enrolled in lower-quality child care arrangements as young children. The results of this research analysis highlight the connection between early care and later development, as well as the importance of the interaction that takes place between young children and their daytime caregivers.