Research has shown that the first five years play an enormous role in a child’s ongoing development and future success. Since most kids are in a child care or preschool setting while their parents are at work, it’s critical that we invest in a high-quality early education system that provides the experiences kids need for healthy development.
Economist James Heckman and several colleagues determined that people who had received high-quality early care and education in the 1970s were far healthier thirty years later. The report, The Effects of Two Influential Early Childhood Interventions on Health and Healthy Behaviors from the National Bureau of Economic Research, used...
Research findings from Inequalities at the Starting Gate 2015 reinforce prior findings about unequal starts in Kindergarten. Without improved opportunities for young children and families at or near poverty, the achievement gap is likely to continue and even widen. Here is an excerpt from the report: “This analysis affirms decades of...
Labor Day celebrates contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. The holiday makes me think about the hard-working families with young children in Wisconsin and across the country struggling to make ends meet financially while ensuring that their young children have a good start. This...
The Committee for Economic Development (CED) has issued a report, Child Care in State Economies, in which “the economic role of the industry is examined using three distinct perspectives—the traditional labor force view of child care as a means for parents to work; the child care industry’s macroeconomic role in the U.S. economy; and...
A New York Times blog, Bedtime Stories for Young Brains, provides a fascinating discussion of how reading to young children affects their development. We know reading to children from the start is good for children, but the new research explains why. Dr, John Hutton, the lead author of a recent study, says, “I think that we’ve learned...
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