“The great reopening and return to pre-pandemic life is a tale of two timelines — and parents are caught in the middle. Offices are itching to get back to normal thanks to the vaccine rollout, but the rest of the world hasn't necessarily caught up. Major companies have made clear they're expecting workers to return to the office this summer. Yet many schools and child care facilities are still partially remote, running shorter hours or fully booked. That means some parents, often mothers, will face a difficult decision about whether they can return to the office — because of care logistics or due to safety concerns as young children aren't set to be vaccinated anytime soon. But some are struggling to make their challenges heard at work... It's a fraught choice after an already challenging year for parents, who in many cases turned into substitute teachers and care workers while also still doing a full-time job as they hunkered down at home.”
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Bank of America's global research team estimates that unpaid care-economy work amounts to $11 trillion per year globally. Women make up 72.6% of this unpaid care work.
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Ohio Gov. DeWine launched a “hero pay” initiative, which will fund up to $300 per quarter (back pay to October 2020, and until September 2021) for child care workers. More info on eligibility can be found here.
The Ready, Set, Soar coalition has a good explanation on why Ohio should enact expanded Medicaid coverage for new mothers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is making headlines for her bold push to spend more on child care. Read coverage about a new report released by her office, which calls for a $700 billion investment in child care, here and here.
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Crane faculty fellow Dr. Shayne Piasta recently co-hosted Circle Time, South Side Early Learning’s podcast. Dr. Piasta discussed phonological awareness - the ability to hear, reflect on, and manipulate sounds and words.
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A Texas initiative aiming to create educational equity will boost the pay of some teachers to more than $100,000 per year. Funded by state funds from the Texas Education Agency’s Teacher Incentive Allotment, it will use a payout structure to reward teachers working in the state’s high-poverty schools where the pandemic has led to sizable learning losses among students.
Here’s an interesting read about Colorado’s largest teacher preparation program, which overhauled its approach to reading instruction after being lambasted by state officials.
Here’s a good read about California’s transitional kindergarten program (TK), which depicts the fraught dynamic between early childhood and school sectors, and possible unintended consequences of expanding TK. “Some preschool and care providers say expanding the program now may undermine the fragile child care sector by taking 4-year-olds out of child care centers and moving them into TK.”
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A Cleveland housing nonprofit received a $1 million federal tax credit to build affordable apartments for college students with children. Expected to be completed in 2023, there will be 40 affordable units within walking distance of Cleveland State University and Cuyahoga Community College with child care available on site. Check out the Crane Center’s work on parenting students.
Also in Cleveland, the school district is launching its “Summer Learning Experience” next month. The eight-week program will aim to help students ease back into school with a combination of learning and activities like music and art.
The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University has a new brief explaining the impact of racism on young children. To reduce the substantial economic and human costs associated with early life adversity, the report authors suggest an “upstream” approach. In other words, in addition to immediate interventions to address and mitigate hardships facing children, including racism and discrimination, there need to be more intentional, committed efforts and policy approaches to “confront and dismantle structural inequities” and to improve education, employment, housing, health, and wealth creation for families.
This article shares research on family stress throughout the pandemic, based on 54 online surveys conducted across all 50 states. The findings showcase the disproportionate burdens facing families whose children have special needs, as well as Black families. Also on the topic of parental stress: The last year has spotlighted just how much working caregivers (mostly women) balance, and how precarious that balance is. This article in the 74 Million rightly points out not just workforce and labor issues facing women, but also the harmful impact that has on children’s learning.
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A Crane Center study examining the preliminary impacts of a virtual kindergarten readiness program found that children showed significant gains on emotional knowledge, patterning, and alphabet knowledge. This study suggests that the combination of educational media and video instruction may be effective for promoting children’s skills. Caregivers who were surveyed also reported satisfaction with the program.
A study on the New Jersey Abbott preschool program found that some positive impacts of the state’s court-manded, large-scale pre-K program lasted until at least tenth grade, adding evidence to the notion that pre-K effects don’t always “fade out.” Here’s a quick recap of the findings, which were published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
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This edition written by: Jamie Davies O'Leary, Associate Director of Policy and Caitlin Lennon, Communications & Policy Specialist |
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