For those who have already created Community Solutions Action Plans (CSAPs), The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading has created an online self-assessment tool that allows you to review the six aspects of your CSAP.
For those who have not, learn more here...
The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is now offering cities, counties and towns the opportunity to join their Communities Network.
"The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and the 140+ communities working with the Campaign are dedicated to narrowing the gap between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers. This video shows why that gap occurs and how we can close it. " - Campaign for Third Grade Reading
From the Anne E Casey Foundation's Campaign for Third Grade Reading:
Growing Healthy Readers: Taking Action to Support the Health Determinants of Early School Success is a full series of resource guides for incorporating Children’s Health and Learning Priorities into action plans for improving school readiness, school attendance and summer learning.
The Growing Healthy Readers series was developed by the Campaign’s Healthy Readers team and will help community- and state-level coalitions determine how to take action on priority issues that affect children’s health and learning. Each guide includes research documenting the effects on learning, strategies for improving outcomes and case studies of effective local programs.
diversitydatakids.org is a comprehensive information system to monitor the state of wellbeing, diversity, opportunity and equity for U.S. children. You can create your own community profiles, analyze data, compare communities and build a case for investments in early life.
With the release of its latest KIDS COUNT policy report -- Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children -- the Annie E. Casey Foundation hosted a national discussion on kids, race and opportunity.
From The Annie E. Casey Foundation :
In this policy report, the Annie E. Casey Foundation explores the intersection of kids, race and opportunity. The report features the new Race for Results index, which compares how children are progressing on key milestones across racial and ethnic groups at the national and state level.
The index is based on 12 indicators that measure a child’s success in each stage of life, from birth to adulthood, in the areas of early childhood; education and early work; family supports; and neighborhood context. The report also makes four policy recommendations to help ensure that all children and their families achieve their full potential.
As covered in the New York Times and elsewhere, this longitudinal report published in Science, details the long-term effects of early-childhood programs.
Investing in children has been demonstrated to improve their lives, both during the school-age years and afterward, as assessed by outcomes such as employment and income; furthermore, these investments often help those in the most need. Campbell et al. (p. 1478) report that these investments can also lead to improved adult health. Results from a randomized and intensive intervention that involved 122 children in four cohorts recruited in the 1970s suggest that full-day child care for the first 5 years of life has produced adults in their 30s with better metabolic and cardiovascular health measures.
Access the full report here. (Membership or one-time fee required.)
From OEIB's website:
OEIB's vision is to advise and support the building, implementation and investment in a unified public education system in Oregon that meets the diverse learning needs of our youngest Oregonians through post-secondary student, and provides boundless opportunities that support success.
By doing so, we ensure 100% high school graduation by 2025 and that Oregon students are college and career ready. Specifically, we believe that by 2025 we can reach the state's 40-40-20 goals: 40% completing 2-year degree; 40% completing 4-year degree; 20% career ready
From the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child and the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs:
A vital and productive society with a prosperous and sustainable future is built on a foundation of healthy child development. Health in the earliest years—beginning with the future mother’s well-being before she becomes pregnant—lays the groundwork for a lifetime of vitality. When developing biological systems are strengthened by positive early experiences, children are more likely to thrive and grow up to be healthy adults. Sound health also provides a foundation for the construction of sturdy brain architecture and the achievement of a broad range of skills and learning capacities.
From The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:
The “fetal origins” hypothesis proposes that alterations in fetal nutrition and endocrine status result in developmental adaptations that permanently change structure, physiology, and metabolism, thereby predisposing individuals to cardiovascular, metabolic, and endocrine disease in adult life.
From Health Affairs:
Many common chronic and mental disorders have modifiable precursors that arise during childhood. The life-course model of how health is produced provides a scientific basis for understanding the continuity between child and adult health. Life-course health policy seeks to promote the well-being of the young, both because of its intrinsic value and because doing so will improve the health of the population at all ages. It mandates increased attention to the promotion of biopsychosocial adaptability and other approaches to preventing the precursors to future disorders. Finally, it requires health policies to foster positive long-term outcomes focused on the individual, family, and community.
From the Ounce of Prevention Fund:
James J. Heckman, Ph.D., was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000, and currently serves as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Interestingly, Dr. Heckman began his research by investigating the economic return of job retraining programs for steelworkers. He realized that those programs were largely ineffective because it was more difficult for the steelworkers to learn new skills at a later age and because there were fewer years to recoup the cost of retraining. Then he made a surprising change in his thinking.
“The real question is how to use the available funds wisely. The best evidence supports the policy prescription: Invest in the Very Young.”
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