The purposes and structures of early learning have long been diverse and a point of debate among stakeholders, particularly in the absence of a formal system or consistent funding streams. However, persistent achievement gaps, significant uncertainty about the world that children will encounter and new research on the supportive power of relationships are heightening the urgency of identifying the best approaches to early learning. Some new approaches are aiming to optimize children’s learning experiences with a focus on work and life preparation, while others are seeking to organize early learning programs around concepts of relational health.
» More than 80 percent of teachers believe that children should learn to read in kindergarten, up from 30 percent in 1998,¹⁹ demonstrating a shift toward more skills-based early learning approaches among some stakeholders.
» The Waterford UPSTART program is a kindergarten readiness program that provides free “computer-adaptive instruction at home alongside personalized support from Family Education Liaisons” to low-income families²⁰ and is promoted by some as an alternative to traditional pre-kindergarten.
» El Centro de la Raza provides comprehensive programs and services to Seattle’s Latino community, including a child development center that provides culturally relevant and justice-oriented educational programming for children from 15 months to 12 years of age and a home visiting program for parents.²¹ The organization has been highlighted by Grantmakers in Health as a positive example of supporting early relational health.²²
» The Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has developed a professional learning experience focused on supporting early education leaders, teachers, administrators and coaches in understanding and incorporating the “science of human interactions” in early learning environments.²³
ARTIFACT FROM THE FUTURE
LearnTogether: Digital Preschool on the Rise
Many states now require four-year-olds to engage with LearnTogether, a free, online preschool curriculum. The program requires participants to interact with the platform for at least twenty minutes per day unless they are enrolled in an approved in-person early learning environment. The mandatory curriculum focuses on early literacy and can be completed anywhere on any connected device. Parents, child care providers and other caregivers now use the compulsory curriculum, though some say that they have not received appropriate guidance on how best to support children in using the program. State legislators collaborated to establish this program in an effort to make preschool more accessible to everyone. Although its results have shown gains in literacy and early learning access, its detractors worry that it is of lower quality than many in-person experiences, that its implementation varies widely and that it increases screen exposure for young children.
ARTIFACT FROM THE FUTURE
Code4Tots: Optimized Play
Code4Tots centers provide personalized learning to four-year-old children through playful weekly one-hour experiences that are customized carefully by neuroeducators. Their goal is to systematize the non-linear learning process of young children to improve their economic opportunities in the long term. Every room is equipped with advanced monitoring technology to track a child’s cognitive development. To provide rigorous interpretations of the correlation between Code4Tots’s optimized play curriculum and the brain waves generated, each child is assessed in isolation. While the program has proven to be a success for some participants, it has also been accused of engineering automatons with very poor relational health and of failing to foster secure attachment. Parents who do not fully support this approach have been questioning the use of neuroscience to advance technical skills to the exclusion of social and emotional skills. They have also been questioning the service providers’ claims to be experts in supporting young children’s academic growth.
ARTIFACT FROM THE FUTURE
Flexible Early Learning Systems: Relationships in Context
A neighborhood and family resource center receives daily suggested schedules and resources from the regional consortium to which it belongs. Based on research into the importance of relationships as critical foundations for early literacy, numeracy and other academic and life skills, early learning professionals now use evidence-based approaches to focus many of their efforts on helping young children develop habits and skills related to healthy relationship building. Due to recognition that strong relationships can be built in a variety of settings, flexibility around what counts as an early learning environment has increased, as have funding and professional supports. Government policy has enabled local cohorts of early learning professionals, organizations and communities to design their programs in the context of children’s and communities’ needs. Accountability measures have been streamlined with a wide range of providers in mind, leading some experts and parents to voice concerns about the quality and consistency of implementation.
Issues to Watch
Address disparities in definitions of quality. As both learning environments and children’s needs diversify, debate about what a high-quality early learning environment looks like will continue. Even though play- and relationship-based environments are widely considered to be of superior quality, persistent achievement gaps and anxiety about the future of learning and work can make those priorities feel like luxuries compared to more directly academic and outcome-focused approaches to learning. A focus on school readiness and future preparation can cause some learning experiences for young children – particularly for children of color, children with special needs and low-income children – to be developmentally inappropriate. Stakeholders should carefully consider what they deem to be high-quality early learning environments and whether the definition applies to all children. As they do so, they should surface biases and assumptions that may some children to have lower-quality experiences despite best people’s intentions.
How might stakeholders create dignified and self-affirming early learning experiences for all children?
Balance universal access and flexible approaches. Many barriers stand in the way of achieving the goal of universal access to high-quality early learning. Those include lack of funding, low educator pay and inconsistent policy, among others. The temptation to hope for a standardized federal early learning system is strong. However, as K-12 and other systems demonstrate, the existence of a single system does not ensure positive outcomes or adequate resources and could actually constrain providers’ ability to meet the needs of every child. Stakeholders should consider how to provide universal access to early learning and how to create cultures of quality while also allowing for flexible, responsive and inclusive structures, which are often lacking in large systems.
How might stakeholders extend their imaginations about what a universal early learning system might look like?
Prioritize shared experiences across boundaries. As more early learning models appear and as families become increasingly segregated by race, income and worldviews, the opportunities for children to share experiences and to develop relationships across those boundaries are dwindling. In addition to limiting the richness of children’s interactions, the lack of cross-group encounters and relationships has the potential to affect social cohesion and awareness. Already, political polarization and a lack of shared cultural and lived experiences seem to be wearing away at the social fabric. Because the first eight years of life are foundational to people’s ability to build meaningful relationships and in establishing norms that will influence children into adulthood, early learning environments have a unique opportunity to help children build connections across traditional boundaries.
How might stakeholders cultivate opportunities for equitable, shared experiences for young children and their families within a diversifying early learning landscape?
