Application Assignment: Early Care and Education in Your State—Gathering Information

Application Assignment: Early Care and Education in Your State—Gathering Information

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So far this week, you have studied issues of equity related to early care and education in three specific ways: you read and analyzed articles about equity barriers experienced by young children and families; you listened to an early childhood specialist’s account of ways in which inequity of access and availability affects children and families; and you used the insights gained to propose solutions to one inequity dilemma.

Besides reading about policy issues and proposed solutions, it is your responsibility as an early childhood professional to be informed about ways such policy suggestions and proposed solutions are applied in practice. What is already being done? Are there initiatives that focus on making equal access to quality care and education a reality? What specific information exists that could help you better understand the practical realities of equitable care and education at the state level? This assignment offers you the resources to find answers to these questions. You will use information from the website “Child Care & Early Education Research Connections,” which includes a large collection of research, policy papers, and data relevant to early childhood professionals, as well as links to early care and education information for every state.

In preparation for this Application Assignment, follow these steps:

• Access the “Child Care & Early Education Research Connections” state information webpage: http://www.researchconnections.org/childcare/states
• Click on the name of your home state (or the state in which you are most interested).
• Once you have accessed that State-specific page, you will note a button, which lets you sort the resources in different ways. Organize them so that the latest information is on top, by choosing the “Pub Date (newest)” option.
• Review the titles of the listed resources for the past 3 years and note any that address access, availability, affordability, or general equity issues related to early care and education. These may be as varied as a report on a state’s child care assistance policy, or a summary of initiatives to support working parents, or a research report comparing access to nonprofit care versus for-profit care in the state.
• Choose three relevant resources and study the full text of each.

Then write:

• A brief overview of each of the three resources
• What you learned from studying these resources, that is, any new information/insights that deepened your understanding of equity issues regarding early care and education