Transforming Early Years Policy in the US: A Call to Action
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Description
This timely collection provides an accessible discussion and analysis of some of the most urgent policy issues facing early childhood care and education in the United States: fragmented policy systems; broad disregard for early years professionals exemplified by low pay; standards that fail to increase equity; and overlooking the role community contexts plays in producing or ameliorating social inequalities among children. Contributors draw upon their deep personal experiences with these issues as educators, scholars, and advocates to advance practice-based recommendations for how the nation’s inequitable systems can be transformed. Their call to collective action is supported by an accessible and powerful advocacy toolkit that will grow with readers over time and with practice. The text centers the perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, with a clear focus on the effects of systemic racism, ageism, sexism, classism, and associated oppressions on early years policies and programs in the United States.
Publication Date
2023
Publisher
Teachers College Press
City
New York
Keywords
early childhood education, policy, social justice
Disciplines
Early Childhood Education | Educational Leadership | Education Policy | Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education
Recommended Citation
Nagasawa, M., Peters, L., Bloch, M. N., & Swadener, B. B. (2023). Transforming Early Years Policy in the US: A Call to Action. Teachers College Press. https://educate.bankstreet.edu/sc/19
Comments
“Comprised of dialogues from a range of stakeholders, this groundbreaking volume offers tangible ways to leverage change and transform early years policies. It inspires hope for new possibilities not only to be imagined, but also to be actualized. Anyone concerned about equity and justice for young children should read this book!”
—Michelle Salazar Pérez, Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Education and professor, University of North Texas
“This exciting book brings together the voices of a range of stakeholders engaged in early years education practice, research, and policymaking. As the editors and authors of this book forcefully demonstrate, early care and education in the U.S. is fragmented, marginalized, and a mirror of our society’s most vexing ills—racism, sexism, and classism, to name but a few. The essays in this book call out these problems without apology, but the book goes beyond problematization and critique, presenting practical policy solutions that can and should be taken up by decision-makers at every level from federal and state actors to local and community leaders. The stories in these pages, told by passionate advocates for a transformed early years system who are at once educators, parents, researchers, theorists, thought leaders, organizers, and makers of good trouble, offer vision and hope for a reimagined system of early childhood care and education that is deserving of the children and families whose futures and dreams are held in it.”
—Fabienne Doucet, executive director, Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and associate professor, NYU Steinhardt