Alignment. Quality. Access.
OECD leads the state's initiatives to create an integrated system of quality, early learning and development programs to help give all Illinois children a strong educational foundation before they begin kindergarten.
Learn more.
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Kelley Washington Executive Director
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Greetings All and Happy New Year! My name is Kelley Washington and I'm excited to serve as the new Executive Director for the Governor's Office of Early Childhood Development.
Although I'm originally from Virginia, I spent five years in Michigan and Minnesota, so I am ready and well prepared to tackle the Chicago winter! I'm looking forward to working with the OECD team and key partners in our state agencies and private organizations to drive meaningful change in Illinois' early childhood system. Our teams have accomplished a lot in the past several years, and we're eager to continue working to sustain this great work and strengthen early childhood development in Illinois for children and families in the year ahead.
I most recently served as Chief-of-Staff to Secretary of Education, Beth Purvis, where I assisted with strategic planning initiatives for our cradle-to-career education system. Prior to that, I transitioned from the private sector to pursue my passion for education and improving outcomes for children- more details on my work experience, as well as key policies and research impacting our early childhood system, are shared below in this newsletter.
Here's to a great, productive year ahead!
Warmest Regards,
Kelley Washington
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Mourning the Passing of Vanessa Rich -- Chicago's Champion for Children
 We are mourning Vanessa Rich, Deputy Commissioner to the Department of Family and Support Services in the City of Chicago, who passed away on December 27th. Vanessa was well-known as a dedicated public servant within Head Start and Early Head Start. She was also a kind and generous person, a fierce advocate for children and families, and driven by her strong commitment to justice and opportunity. With her death, the city of Chicago and Illinois has lost one of our most stalwart champions for children and families. We will miss Vanessa. Please take a moment to read Mayor Rahm Emmanual's statement about our extraordinary friend.
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Kelley Washington Brings New Perspective to the Office of Early Childhood Development
The OECD is excited to welcome Kelley Washington to the team as Executive Director.
In this role, Kelley will leverage her unique professional background to move forward the current work of the OECD towards a stronger early childhood system.
Kelley's career began with Accenture as a business and systems integration analyst where she worked on a variety of systems development and integration efforts, developing her knowledge of client services, organizational challenges, and customer needs. After earning her MBA from the University of Michigan, she joined General Mills as a Human Resources Manager where she led a number of talent management, change management, and organization redesign initiatives. Much of her work revolved around systems change - transitioning to more efficient ways work could be done, role clarity, and managing the change itself - so that the company was better positioned to meet its strategic objectives and deliver value to shareholders. Considering the opportunities of the early childhood system - systems efficiency and effectiveness, robust alignment, and communication - Kelley's background and knowledge of key partners will serve as a great asset while working together and moving forward.
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ExceleRate Incorporates Family Child Care
 For more than a year, the OECD and its public and private partners have been working to bring licensed family child care into the ExceleRate system. A large, open process that included family child care providers, CCR&R's, Head Start, policy organizations, SEIU as well as IDHS, ISBE, and DCFS, resulted in the construction of quality benchmarks for family child care within ExceleRate. To ensure robust participation of family child care providers, meetings to get input into standards were also held on weekends. Using research analysis, relevant resources, and comprehensive tools, the team determined which important aspects of family child care could be captured in a tiered quality rating and improvement system. The result was a list of 17 standards in four domains- Teaching and Learning, Family and Community Engagement, Leadership and Management, and Qualification & Continuous Education.
Family Child Care ExceleRate rolled out in the Summer of 2015 and more than 300 providers have received provisional ratings. Learn more about ExceleRate for family child care
here.
Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge is also funding a unique initiative at Erikson for family child care providers. Scroll down to the Fast Fact section below to learn a little bit more about their initiative, Town Square.
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The Office of Early Childhood Development Partners with Snugs and Hugs Daycare to Serve Families In Need
In continuing our annual tradition of donating baby items to families in need during the holidays, the OECD partnered with Hugs and Snugs Day Care this year. Founded over ten years ago, Hugs and Snugs Day Care Academy serves at-risk children and families in the communities of Harvey and Calumet City. Their two sites serve children from infancy through school age, promoting learning through play and healthy physical and emotional development for all children. Additionally, the program partners with Illinois Action for Children to offer a Prevention Initiative program, ensuring a comprehensive infant and toddler curriculum and empowering parents through visits and monthly group sessions led by a parent educator. With all the great work Hugs and Snugs is doing, the OECD was excited to contribute to the cause with this year's donations.
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The "No Child Left Behind" Overhaul Could Lift Early Childhood Education
On December 11, President Obama signed the rewrite of No Child Left Behind into law as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. This revision will increase the role of the state in education policy implementation in an attempt to close the achievement gap and increase school performance. ESSA includes unprecedented support for early childhood education by linking early education and K-12 efforts more closely and making the Preschool Development Grant permanent. See the whole
story
by Edsource for more information on ESSA.
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Congress Passes 2016 Omnibus Bill with Increases to
Early Childhood Budgets
On December 18
th, 2015 the Federal government passed a $1.1 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill including $1 billion in new funds that will aid in early childhood education. The Child Care and Development Block Grants saw an increase of $326 million in funding to receive an allocation of $2.8 billion, while Head Start increased by $570 million to receive $9.2 billion. Additionally, MIECHV (Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting) was extended for the next fiscal year with a budget of $800 million. For the states like Illinois that are leading the way in early childhood development with the Preschool Development Grants, $250 million was allocated to sustain this work. First Five Year Fund Director, Kris Perry, commented on the omnibus bill saying, "The passage of this spending bill solidifies that early childhood education is a top priority for this Congress". With these additional funds enacted by Congress, Illinois will be able to sustain and expand its work in early childhood development.
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U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education Produce Policy Statement on Family Engagement
 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education released a draft policy statement on family engagement in December. The document provides resources, research, and recommendations on how to best involve families in children's development, learning, and well-being.
To see the full policy draft, click here.
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Data, Research, and Evaluation Committee of the ELC
The Illinois Early Learning Council research
agenda articulates research needs for policy and practice in our state that will inform the early childhood community. It includes an inventory of questions drawn from conversation with leaders in the Illinois early learning research and policy fields, including each of the Early Learning Council's committees. The Data, Research, and Evaluation Committee has highlighted a number of questions that it considers particular high priorities for researchers.
The research agenda is a dynamic, living document meant to be updated and revised periodically. Accordingly, the DRE welcomes suggestions for additional research questions, or additional prioritized research questions. The DRE also encourages the submission of any available links to sources and points of contact to assist researchers in accessing data and other information relevant to particular research questions. Suggestions for consideration can be submitted electronically to the DRE staffer at
[email protected].
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Seeking Applications from Early Childhood Local Collaborations: Join the ABLe Change Framework Pilot!
The Consortium for Community Systems Development is announcing the expansion of the ABLe Change Framework pilot trainings and coaching! Launched in 2015, seven local community collaborations participated in the ABLe Change process in their community. Starting February 2016, we will expand the ABLe Change Framework to include more local collaborations and their community leaders that are interested in effectively addressing social issues affecting young children and families.
Interested in applying? Eligible communities must be engaged in community systems development approaches and submit a 'team application' by the local collaboration.
Click here to learn more about how to apply as a local collaboration.
Deadline: Applications are due January 22, 2016 and the first training will be held February 25-26, 2016.
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The Building Blocks of Development
Despite the advancement of technology and copious educational apps being produced for young children each year, wooden blocks have been a staple in the early learning classroom for over a century. Although they are quite simple, "Several early childhood studies have shown that children who play with blocks have better language and cognition skills than control groups" according to a recent NPR article on the profound educational impact of the block. See the full
article
to learn how after a hundred years, blocks are still the best tool for teaching mathematical foundations, creativity, and team work to young children.
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Japan Invests In Early Childhood Care to Help Boost Economy
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| Photo from NPR courtesy of Hato Poppo Nursery School |
With Japan's aging population- 26% of the population is over the age of 65- the nation is in need of more women entering the workforce. While many Japanese women say they would like to continue working after having children, Japan is struggling with a lack of daycares and kindergartens resulting in many women staying home.
Japan is tackling its child care issues with government subsidies to help create 400,000 slots in daycares by 2018 as well as providing parents with "child allowances" based on family size and income.
Read the entire
article from NPR for more information.
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Launch of Town Square
Town Square has launched this month! This online destination provides family child care professionals in Illinois with access to instructive video clips, children's activity ideas, business insights, education opportunities and more. Click the
link
to explore the website.
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