Early Care & Education

Quality early care and education closes the readiness gap for kids entering kindergarten, influencing their trajectory in life.

2018 Washington Region ECE Summit

Posted on by Mercy Chikowore

The Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative and Montgomery College School of Education invite you to join us on January 20, 2018 for a Regional Early Care and Education Summit. The Summit will focus on the impact of diversity and racial stratification on early education systems, including creating a skilled workforce to meet the needs of all children and families and reducing achievement gaps.

>RSVP HERE<

Beyond the Classroom: 

Confirmed speakers and workshop presenters include:

  • Cemere James, National Black Child Development Institute
  • Bweikia Steen, Trinity Washington University
  • Zeporia Smith, Montgomery College

Additional speakers to be announced!

This event is free for early childhood educators and others in the early education field in the DC region, including Washington, DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Alexandria, Arlington County, and Fairfax County. Participation letters will be provided for educators.

A general admission ticket includes lunch.

Space is limited, so reserve your seat today!

Questions? Email Martine Gordon at mgordon@wawf.org

Washington Region Early Care and Education Workforce Network Implementation Plan For Competency-Based Career Pathways

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

ABOUT THIS IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

This plan was prepared by FSG through the generous support of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation and its Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative.

FSG

FSG is a mission-driven consulting firm supporting leaders in creating large-scale, lasting social change. Through strategy, evaluation, and research we help many types of actors — individually and collectively — make progress against the world’s toughest problems. Our teams work across all sectors by partnering with leading foundations, businesses, nonprofits, and governments in every region of the globe.

We seek to reimagine social change by identifying ways to maximize the impact of existing resources, amplifying the work of others to help advance knowledge and practice, and inspiring change agents around the world to achieve greater impact.

Washington Area Women’s Foundation

Washington Area Women’s Foundation is the only public foundation dedicated to increasing resources and opportunities for women and girls in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. We mobilize our community to ensure that economically vulnerable women and girls in the Washington region have the resources they need to thrive.

Washington Area Women’s Foundation established the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative in 2008, as a multi-year, multi-million dollar collective funding effort. The Collaborative is supported and directed by corporate funders and local and national foundations.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In April of 2015, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Research Council released a report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation, that is both ambitious and visionary in its recommendations for how to transform the workforce and systems that serve children from birth through age 8, or third grade.

To catalyze implementation of the report’s recommendations, the National Academy led a national “Implementation Network” of states across the country working to implement recommendations from the report. Our Washington Region Early Care & Education Workforce Network formed as one of the initial state networks, representing different sectors in early care and education (“ECE”) as well as the geographies of Maryland (Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties), Virginia (Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax Counties), and Washington, D.C. Our region decided to form a team based on the unique needs in our region, including better serving our multi-cultural immigrant population with high numbers of dual language learners; embracing that the ECE workforce in our region is highly transient across state lines and thus could benefit from transferable credentials and compensation levels; and counteracting the lack of connectedness to a valued profession and to peers in ECE.

Our project purpose: “Mapping competency-based career pathways that are linked to quality and compensation and can be used across the region” will result in two concrete, connected deliverables:

Deliverable 1: 

Career pathways document

·   Document based on existing ECE professional credential/knowledge/competency frameworks in our region that establishes a practical and common set of quality standards for competencies at different levels, including suggested compensation levels, that are linked to identified competencies.

Deliverable 2:

Blueprint for an implementation mechanism

·   Certification/credential process that assesses and verifies competencies among the region’s ECE professionals according to the competency levels defined in the career pathways document and that establishes suggested compensation levels that correspond to the certification/credential.
Initial feedback on this project has been gathered from dozens of ECE stakeholders in the region and overall this idea has been met with a positive response. Developing the final deliverables, ideally over the course of 12 months, will require a highly collaborative process of further engaging stakeholders in the region. Moreover, research will be conducted to better understand how to create a career pathways document that is clear and user-friendly; what the competencies should be at each level of the pathway; how the competencies can be assessed and verified by a third party; and what the cost and benefit will be of achieving compensation commensurate with demonstrated competencies.In order for these deliverables to be used in practice, the region will need to create supporting infrastructure, for example shared services and practices related to substitutes, mentors, and/or benefits administration. This project will explore the feasibility of this kind of supporting infrastructure.

For the thousands of dedicated ECE professionals in our region, we hope this project will result in greater awareness of where they are on the career pathway; greater ability to engage in continuous improvement of their competencies; increased compensation and compensation alignment among early education and learning settings; and greater connectedness to a valued profession and to peers. This is in service of the ultimate outcome of this work: children in the region benefit from high quality early childhood experiences that foster positive learning and development.

 

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE FULL IMPLEMENTATION PLAN HERE.

Statement on Washington Area Women’s Foundation Leadership in New Regional Effort

Posted on by WAWF

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat’s Statement on

Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s Leadership in New Regional Effort

to Strengthen the Early Care and Education Professional Workforce

 

February 23, 2016 – Today, Washington Area Women’s Foundation President and CEO Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat issued the following statement:

“I’m pleased to announce Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s investment in the Washington Region Early Care & Education Workforce Network, a new effort seeking to drive change in the early care and education professional workforce across the Washington region.

 We know that early education is key to a child’s wellbeing and economic security later in life. To provide these critical building blocks for low-income children in our region, we must ensure that early care and education providers are fully equipped with the supports and skills they need. We also know that, despite its critical impact, early care and education is one of the lowest paying professional fields – and jobs are predominately held by women workers, themselves struggling to support families on low wages. By investing in this regional effort, we can support the advancement of these workers, and children and families will have access to higher quality programs.

The Washington Region Early Care & Education Workforce Network was formed as a unified, collaborative response to the recommendations outlined in the report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation,  released last year by the National Academy of Medicine.  This year, the Network will participate with a handful of states from across the country to develop local plans for implementing the recommendations of that seminal report. Our regional implementation plan will be released in October 2016.”

In addition to Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative, other national sponsors of this project include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, McCormick Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

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About Washington Area Women’s Foundation

Washington Area Women’s Foundation is a DC-based public foundation dedicated to mobilizing our community to ensure that economically vulnerable women and girls in the Washington region have the resources they need to thrive. Learn more about The Women’s Foundation’s mission to transform the lives of women and girls, the Washington region, and the world by visiting us online, on Facebook or on Twitter.

About the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative

Washington Area Women’s Foundation established the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative in 2008, as a multi-year, multi-million dollar collective funding effort. The Collaborative is supported and directed by corporate funders and local and national foundations. Current investors include: Bainum Family Foundation, The Boeing Company, Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, PNC Foundation, Richard E. and Nancy P. Marriott Foundation, Washington Area Women’s Foundation, Weissberg Foundation, and The World Bank Group.

 

To sign up for updates and engagement opportunities from the Washington Region Early Care & Education Workforce Network, click here: http://goo.gl/forms/AvTx1DnmFB

Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative

Posted on by Jessica Zetzman

Managed by The Women’s Foundation, the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative (ECEFC) is a collective of foundation and corporate investors dedicated to supporting systemic approaches that increase quality, capacity and access to early care and education in the Washington region. Learn more about the Collaborative.

Resource – Early Care and Education in the Washington Region

Posted on by Jessica Zetzman

Early care and education investments help prepare low-income children ages zero to five for kindergarten, a critical opportunity to increase readiness and close the achievement gap, provide an important work support for low-income working families and support the professional development and advancement of early care and education providers. In this fact sheet, we explore early care and education in our region. Click here to read the full fact sheet.

ECE Fact Sheet Cover

Proud of You

Posted on by Jessica Zetzman

Editors note:The post below is written by Lauren Hogan, Vice President of Programs and Policy at Grantee Partner National Black Child Development Institute.

“We are so proud of you,” we said to Corliss, on the day she graduated from college. “I am so proud of him,” T.J.’s mom said, on the day her son wrote his first letter. “You should be so proud of yourselves,” Simone said, on the day the early childhood teachers enrolled in their first higher education courses.

Ah, pride. Some might say that it comes before a fall—but at the National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI), we’re willing to take that risk. From our Parent Empowerment Program, to our Good for Me! curriculum, to our T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood DC project, our work intentionally and actively cultivates pride. We want our children to be bursting with it: proud of who they are, proud of their families, proud of their histories and their cultures. We want to see pride shining in the eyes of our T.E.A.C.H. project recipients—showing in the lifting of their chins and the straightening of their shoulders—as they enroll in their first college class, earn their first credits and graduate with their degrees in early care and education.

Our measures of success are concrete. Over the last four years, with support from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and Washington Area Women’s Foundation, T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood DC has awarded over 400 comprehensive higher education scholarships to early childhood educators working with children birth through age five throughout the District of Columbia. We have conducted over 500 information sessions and site visits. Thirty-five women have earned their associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. Importantly, wages have increased by over six percent for those who have been a part of the program for at least one year. But, these are not the only measures that count.

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This month, as Americans of all races focus on celebrating the enormous accomplishments of Black leaders throughout our history, we also continue to count the measures of pride. How much more respected do our early childhood educators feel when they are recognized as professionals charged with the critically important role of supporting our youngest learners? How much better do women feel about their capacity to provide for their families, with increases in educational attainment and compensation? How much more confident do our children feel when they successfully master an early skill? How much bigger can they dream when they see their communities honor leaders who look like them?

The District of Columbia, committed to a voluntary, universal prekindergarten program that begins at age 3, is a great example of where this work is taking shape. As the community collectively looks to increase access to high quality early care and education, especially for infants and toddlers across all 8 wards, we know a strong, supported and well-compensated early childhood workforce is critical. T.E.A.C.H. and NBCDI are dedicated to working with The Women’s Foundation and our partners to increase the quantity, quality, affordability, flexibility and cultural relevance of professional development, training and higher education programs.

Together, we have an opportunity to get this work right, to honor our history and to make our children proud.

 

Foundation Investments Push Early Learning in the Washington Region Forward

Posted on by Lauren Stillwell

The Women’s Foundation’s recently announced investments of $630,000 in economic security efforts across the region included seven grants (totaling $325,000) for organizations working to increase the quality and capacity of, and access to, early care and education. These grants are made through the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative, a collective funding effort led by The Women’s Foundation that brings corporate funders and foundations together to invest in systems-level change in the region’s early care and education. You can learn more about the Collaborative and its partners here.

These investments seek to:

  1. Improve the quality of early care and education for low-income children ages zero to five;
  2. Expand access to affordable early care and education options;
  3. Support professional development for early care and education professionals;
  4. Encourage and strengthen partnerships among stakeholders that support positive changes in the early care and education system.

This year, our early care and education grants continue to support increased advocacy work, an effort that began last year. These investments include Voices for Virginia’s Children, working across Northern Virginia; Prince George’s Child Resource Center, mobilizing in Prince George’s County, Maryland; AppleTree Institute, and a partnership of DC Appleseed and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, focused on the District of Columbia.

The partnership between DC Appleseed and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute is particularly exciting. Together, they are responding to an identified need within DC’s early childhood community: lack of consistent and complete data that captures the cost of quality programs. They will also examine the impending costs facing providers as they adapt to a changing Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), proposed changes in licensing and regulations, the costs of professional development and increased compensation for teachers and the costs of serving children with developmental delays and/or special health care needs. The findings of the study will form the platform for an advocacy agenda, steeped in research data to help advocates rally around a common agenda.

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The Women’s Foundation is proud to be one of many investing in early care and education (with more investors recently, as evidence by the White House Summit on Early Learning). Research shows that young children (ages 0 to 5) need a strong social, emotional and intellectual foundation to succeed in school. Children who enter kindergarten without this foundation for learning are more likely to face significant academic challenges than peers who come prepared. Quality early care and education can successfully close this “preparation gap,” while facilitating the economic security and long-term financial success of low-income families; supporting parents in the workforce; and preparing future workers to meet the needs of the regional business community and become active, contributing members of society.

We look forward to supporting our Grantee Partners as we push these goals forward in our region!

Here’s a full list of this year’s early care and education grants.

2015 Grant Investments in Early Care and Education

  • AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation
    To support AppleTree Institute’s increased communications and advocacy efforts in Washington, DC, aimed at defining quality early education in terms of child outcomes that result in school readiness.
  •  CentroNia
    To support the CentroNía Institute in piloting and testing the Unpacking CLASS Tool Kit, an instructional guide that helps early childhood teachers and center directors improve teacher-child quality interaction in the classroom.
  • DC Appleseed
    To partner with the DC Fiscal Policy Institute to design and produce a study of the District’s child care costs.
  • The Literacy Lab
    To support the Metro DC Reading Corps Pre-K Program, which embeds literacy tutors in DC and Alexandria’s highest-need early childhood classrooms to provide children with daily literacy interventions that prepare them for kindergarten and future educational success.
  • National Black Child Development Institute
    To support the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood DC program, which will invest in the professional development and improved quality of teachers serving children from birth through age five in the District of Columbia.
  • Prince George’s Child Resource Center
    To support Joining Voices, an advocacy project in Prince George’s County that empowers parents and child care providers to articulate the importance of quality child care for family stability, school readiness and economic growth.
  • Voices for Virginia’s Children
    To promote public policies and investments that ensure all children in Northern Virginia, particularly those who are disadvantaged, enter kindergarten ready to succeed.