Something critical is missing from the national conversation about what it will take to improve and support early childhood education. We are not producing enough leaders with the specialized expertise to turn good policy ideas into sustainable, effective systems.
Early childhood policy decisions are made every day by people who care deeply about children, but who are willing to do something else. The consequences manifest in systems that don’t communicate with each other, investments that don’t reach the families who need them most, and reforms that look good on paper but fall apart when programs are designed and implemented.
You will probably be The type of early childhood expertise needed is not found in governors’ offices, state legislatures, the halls of Congress, county health agencies, small and large businesses, or school district central offices.
Infrastructure like power grids and transportation networks are built by experts because we collectively decided these things were too important to leave to chance. Early childhood policy is no different.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks issues.
The systems that determine what the first five years of a child’s life look like—child care, health care, housing, family economic support—are too complex, too large, and too underfunded to be managed by well-meaning but ill-prepared professionals.
The fix is not mysterious. We need to invest in graduate programs that expand this field so they can reach more students and prepare more practitioners to bring the lived experience that effective policy requires.
We also need to create entry points for early childhood policy graduates into national, state, and local governments who are currently unaware of this expertise. And we need to update our expectations of what expertise looks like in this space.
There is reason to hope. Last month, 56 graduate students and faculty from 12 universities across the country – including schools in Washington State, Washington, DC, California, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Massachusetts – gathered in Washington, DC, to begin planning the next generation of early childhood policy in America.
These graduate students are emerging leaders in early childhood policy as a discipline – a distinct field of professional preparation grounded in the belief that the decisions that shape the experiences of tens of millions of children and their families are too important to be made by people who have not been trained to care for them.
These students work at the intersection of science, systems, and equal opportunity. They think big and act strategically. They come from the front lines – from Head Start centers and child care, social work, health care, home visiting and family support programs.
They understand the value of lived experience in making change.
In the meantime, several states have made important and revolutionary decisions. New Mexico recently passed landmark legislation linking investment in early childhood to income stabilization. Connecticut extended its child care subsidy system to serve families it had never reached before.
Related: Lessons Learned from the Nation’s First State to Offer Universal Child Care
Kansas launched a new early childhood initiative with bipartisan support that would have seemed unimaginable five years ago. New York City and New York State funded plans for a universal child care infrastructure that is one of the most ambitious ever designed.
States are outpacing the federal government on early childhood in a way not seen since the 1990s.
All this momentum will not address the need to prepare a new generation of policy professionals who speak the language of both development science and curriculum reform.
This is the problem that Early childhood policy in higher education establishments — ECPIHE — was created to address (ECPIHE is led by the National Center for Children and Families, which is housed at Teachers College at Columbia University; the Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College). ECPIHE leaders have spent approximately a decade helping to create graduate programs at 17 institutions of higher education that will prepare a new generation of policy professionals and emerging leaders who know how to turn evidence into decisions.
They have successfully worked across health care, child care, housing and family support systems – an effort at which other policymakers have traditionally failed. They are trained to see the whole landscape and act with precision to design effective programs that will reap long-term benefits.
So let’s be honest about what has blocked progress nationally in meeting the needs of young families, who admittedly are not a powerful lobby: It’s not just the lack of ideological consensus and the frustrating cycle of gridlock, inaction, and underfunding. It is also a lack of qualified expertise adapted to the complexity of the task.
What we need from policymakers, higher education institutions and the philanthropic community is commitment commensurate with the challenges. That means investing in graduate programs that develop this field – like those represented in Washington, DC, last month – so they can reach more students and prepare practitioners to bring the kind of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that effective policy requires.
These remarkable students are not waiting for the national debate to catch up. They are building a field that their communities need, in states and localities that are taking action.
We need to strengthen national support for an early childhood policy preparation strategy; millions more children and families can benefit from leaders who combine deep expertise and passion.
Michael H. Levine is an expert on child development and policy. He is Director of Communications for ECPIHE, a higher education consortium preparing the next generation of early childhood policy leaders.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story on early childhood policy was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
The article OPINION: Leaders Shaping Early Childhood Education Need Better, More Professional Preparation appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
