Our Broken Child Care System and How to Fix It, Part 2: our executive director Dr. Laura Justice examines how child care programs are a key part of the economic infrastructure but are also developing the nation’s brain trust of the future.
Quality
Before Coronavirus, the U.S. Child Care Landscape Was Already in Crisis
In this three-part series, Dr. Laura Justice — executive director of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy and Schoenbaum Family Center at The Ohio State University — surveys the fragmented landscape of child care in the United States, highlighting its vulnerabilities even in the best of times.
Early Child Care Provider Perspectives: What do unrated providers plan to do before the July 2020 Step Up to Quality deadline?
By July 2020, Ohio’s childcare providers who accept publicly funded child care (PFCC) dollars must be star-rated through the state’s quality rating and improvement system, Step Up to Quality. To learn more about these providers’ plans for the future, and to shed light on possible challenges they might be facing, Crane researchers sent out a statewide survey.
SPROUT
Expanding early childhood programming is a global interest given the strong return on investment. Programming is most beneficial when these experiences are high quality, and high-quality experiences are associated with numerous long-term benefits. SPROUT was created to provide a scientifically based framework for identifying high-quality in early education settings.
Child Care Access in 2020: How will pending mandates affect availability in Franklin County, Ohio?
By 2020, any Ohio child care provider accepting Publicly Funded Child Care subsidies must enter into Ohio’s quality rating and improvement system. This paper examines the availability of child care and explores how this landscape may change, examining the locations most at risk for losing child care sites and highlighting possible deserts.
Sit Together and Read (STAR)
STAR Read-Aloud Practices are designed to develop and strengthen young children’s awareness of and knowledge about print. They utilize evidence-based reading techniques developed from years of research.
Assessing Preschool Professionals’ Learning Experiences (APPLE: Ohio)
The APPLE evaluation looks at the extent to which professional development for preschool teachers impacted children's language and literacy outcomes.