Below are resources for early childhood professionals and those serving the early childhood community.
Job Opportunity Teach Plus is looking to hire an Illinois Policy Manager to help launch their new Early Childhood Educator Policy Fellowship. Ideally, this would be a person with an early childhood teaching background who has experience doing policy work as well. The job description and application can be found here.
Detailed New National Maps Show How Neighborhoods Shape Children for Life They’re hoping it can help crack open a problem, the persistence of neighborhood disadvantage, that has been resistant to government interventions and good intentions for years. (New York Times)
Increased coordination between the home visiting and early education fields can support a higher-quality workforce A new blog post highlights strategies that researchers and policymakers can use to better align professional development opportunities across the home visiting and early care and education fields. Because these fields often serve the same children and families, they could benefit by developing a shared set of core competencies, expanding post-secondary programs to include home visiting staff, and developing comprehensive career pathways for staff in both fields.
New case studies feature superintendents leading early-childhood efforts The case studies discuss a superintendent’s role in focusing on young children’s needs, the responsibilities of other key district officials and some of the decisions that had to be made to help more children be successful once they entered school. The superintendents — Jeanice Kerr Swift in Ann Arbor, Mike Brophy in the Washington district and Michael Kuhrt in Wichita Falls — are also part of AASA’s Early Learning cohort, an effort to help more superintendents strengthen their knowledge and leadership in the area of early childhood.
Federal Support for Early Learning & Care Opportunities in Illinois High-quality early childhood education is proven to dramatically improve a child’s opportunities for a better future—particularly children from low-income families. If we, as a nation, want to ensure all children have access to high-quality early learning, there must be strong support and partnerships from the federal government to extend the reach or fill in the gaps of state efforts and innovation. This fact sheet provides an abbreviated overview of state- and federally-funded early childhood opportunities in Illinois, which serve more than 400,000 children and families.
