In March 2022, Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2021 and includes several…

Budgets are moral documents, reflecting our priorities as a nation by deciding where to allocate resources. Congress is targeting cuts and policy changes that limit access to health care, nutrition programs, and basic financial stability for millions of children, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the…

Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

Homelessness is a traumatic experience with long-term consequences, particularly for infants and toddlers in their most critical stages of development. Yet homelessness among young children is hidden. Lack of shelter, fear of having children removed from parental custody, and restrictive eligibility criteria for housing programs mean that most…

El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world, with one of the highest homicide rates among children and adolescents (UNODC 2019). Children's experiences have a profound impact on their development, and exposure to violence in their early years can lead to social, behavioral, learning, and emotional impairments. Caregivers play a…

In 2014, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) distributed 250 grants across states and localities in the United States and its territories to establish Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCPs) to expand access to high-quality child care. A cornerstone of Early Head Start (EHS) is the provision of comprehensive services.…

Learning depends on the social, emotional, physical, & mental health of students. This resource shares policy recommendations to transform disjointed resources for children into potent systems of integrated student support. The systems that come together to support young people's learning and development include schools, community…

For children and youth, summertime presents a unique break from the traditional structure, resources, and support systems that exist during the school year. For some students, this time involves opportunities to engage in fun and enriching activities and programs, while others face additional challenges as they lose a variety of supports,…

This report examines how First 5 Alameda can lead efforts to strengthen alignment and coherence across Alameda County's early childhood mixed delivery system. As the agency administering Measure C and partnering on the Oakland Children's Initiative, First 5 Alameda is well positioned to help build a more integrated early care and education system.…

This article examines the outcomes of implementing a trauma-informed home visiting program in a refugee/immigrant-serving mental health program in Chicago, Illinois. The mental health program used the Baby TALK home visiting program model, an evidence-based relational approach to supporting pregnant mothers and families with children less than 3…

Despite an increase in race-related Montessori research over the past decade, the Montessori community lacks a unified framework to examine the Montessori Method and its philosophy through a critical racial lens. Without explicit discussions or universal training about race and whiteness, the Montessori Method can be interpreted through a…

Early childhood education programs, and particularly those designed to reduce gaps in school readiness between children in poverty and their more affluent peers, have increasingly addressed children's self-regulatory abilities -- their ability to manage behaviors, emotions, and cognitive processes. Although self-regulation is typically defined in…

This paper considers varied governmental initiatives in England and their implications for early years education, including: an Office for Standards in Education (2017. "Bold Beginnings: The Reception Curriculum in a Sample of Good and Outstanding Primary Schools." Manchester: Ofsted) report entitled 'Bold beginnings' proposing…

"Children's Budget 2022" finds that the share of federal spending on children climbed to a historic 11.98% of the U.S. budget in FY 2022, producing remarkable declines in child poverty, hunger and the rate of children without health insurance. The report finds that the share of U.S. domestic and international spending on children rose…

As US schools become increasingly diverse, the population of teachers who serve them remains predominantly homogeneous. Teacher preparation programs must prepare pre-service teachers to draw from multicultural perspectives or multiple ways of knowing if they truly intend to cultivate effective culturally responsive educators. This article presents…