What's New

QRIS Stimulus

Maximizing Resources from the Stimulus Package:  Possible Strategies for Funding Quality Rating and Improvement Systems   Anne Mitchell and Louise Stoney, Alliance for Early Childhood Finance.  The federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the “Stimulus Package,” includes a number of appropriations that have relevance for early childhood policy and systems change. Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are increasingly seen as a foundational piece of systems-building strategies, since they enable states to leverage resources and bring other components such as standards and professional development into alignment with one another. This memo discusses potential resources for early childhood under the Stimulus Package, and identifies ways that these funds could be used to support QRIS.

Including Health in a School Readiness Agenda: Lessons from Illinois. Chicago, IL: Ounce of Prevention Fund.
Illinois’ Ounce of Prevention Fund, in partnership with the BUILD Initiative, produced a policy brief identifying Illinois’ strategies in assuring that a strong health system is part of their school readiness conversation and policy agenda.  The brief touches on five health focused strategies (enhancing maternal health through perinatal care; improving access to health care; broadening well-child care; promoting social-emotional health in children; and addressing children’s oral health) and outlines their state efforts to tie those strategies to school readiness. Also outlined are the roles that policy makers, advocates and funders have had in developing a comprehensive school readiness agenda that include the health system as a core partner.

Beyond Either/Or: Resolving Tensions in Systems Building

The 2008 Build Initiative National Meeting, held October 21-23 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, drew more than 70 state, regional and national leaders to learn from their peers, explore cross-cutting early childhood issues, celebrate individual and state accomplishments, and look to future challenges and possibilities. 

The meeting’s theme came from the third annual installment of the Build Book Club.   A discussion of Roger Martin’s book, The Opposable Mind – How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, challenged state leaders to think about the opposable ideas that arise continually as we work to meet the needs of our youngest children and their families through systemic change. Examples of opposable ideas  include quantity vs. quality, desire for collaborative change efforts vs. single program attribution, and sustainability vs. fast results.

Plenary sessions focused on critical issues facing the BUILD states including interconnections between elements of an early childhood system, early childhood systems in a multi-ethnic society, making systems meet the needs of our most vulnerable children and new opportunities for children with the 111th Congress. 

Interactive workshops covered a variety of issues that cut across multiple focus areas including crafting early learning standards for a multi-ethnic society, constructing culturally competent quality rating and improvement systems, increasing teacher qualifications while maintaining workforce diversity, building state-community connections, financing options for early care and education, new roles for child care resource and referral agencies, medical homes and the integration of heath into early childhood systems building.

Resources and Meeting Materials

Meeting Agenda
Document coming soon
2008 Build Book Club Selection, The Opposable Mind, How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking , Roger Martin, Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

It’s About Connections, Charles Bruner, Child and Family Policy Center and Build’s Lead Evaluator, provides an overview of the elements of an early childhood system and their interconnections.
Document coming soon

The Build Initiative’s Commitment to Diversity and Equity, Charles Bruner, Child and Family Policy Center and Build’s Lead Evaluator, provides an overview of the Initiative’s efforts to address issues of diversity and equity.
Document coming soon

Policy Brief – Building Early Childhood Systems in a Multi-Ethnic Society: An Overview of Build’s Brief’s on Diversity and Equity identifies five gaps in early childhood systems building strategies.
Policy Brief – Crafting Early Learning Standards for a Multi-Ethnic Society: Lessons Learned from Washington and Alaska , Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, Charles Bruner and Michelle Stover Wright, provides information about the experiences in Washington and Alaska so that other states can learn from and build upon their pioneering efforts to address language and cultural issues through their early learning standards.

Developing a Diverse and Skilled Workforce: Lessons from the New Jersey Abbott Preschool Experience, Julia Coffman, Evaluation Consultant, Melinda Green, Early Childhood Consultant and Barbara Reisman, The Schumann Fund for New Jersey, examines New Jersey’s experience in responding to the NJ Supreme Court Abbott Case that required preschool teachers in the states 30 poorest districts to obtain a bachelor’s degree and early childhood certification within four years.
Document coming soon
Focusing on Families in Systems Built for Kids , Judy Langford, Center for the Study of Social Policy, introduces the protective factors framework and what research tells us families need to succeed.

Financing Options for Early Care and Education, Louise Stoney, Alliance for Early Childhood Finance and Anne Mitchell, Early Childhood Policy Research, outlines approaches to create complementary early care and education funding strategies to contribute to a diverse portfolio rather than as competing silos.
Document coming soon
Early Childhood and the Federal Investment in Children (25mb) , Bruce Lesley, First Focus, provides funding context from the 2008 children’s budget and lays out the challenges for working with the next Congress and efforts to collaborate, advocate and apply political pressure to increase the investment in children.

Laboratories of Systems Change: Build’s Emerging Role in Knowledge Development 
The role of Build at a national level in knowledge building is the topic of Charles Bruner and Michelle Stover Wright’s July 2007 evaluation essay.  The essay describes how Build’s Learning Community of states and its collaborations with other national consultants and initiatives have helped to identify specific areas where further knowledge development is needed, where Build has taken a leadership role in this work and been able to bring key leaders together to begin to tackle emerging issues.  The essay focuses on work in the following areas:

  • Developing approaches to governance that recognize stages of cross-system planning, governance and management and the needs for both state and community-level structures;
  • Developing a common systems framework across health, early care and education, family support, and special needs;
  • Constructing an evaluation and self-assessment framework appropriate for early childhood systems-building work; and
  • Integrating a focus on ethnicity, language, and culture into early learning systems-building discussions and strategies.

The Role of State Health Policy in the Multi-Sector System and Service Linkage for Young Children 
With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) conducted an exploratory study of the role of state health policy in linking the health sector with other services that support young children’s health and development.  The purpose of the project was to promote the role of state health policy in efforts to assure cross-sector service linkages for young children and their families, with the ultimate goal of better addressing the comprehensive needs of young children as they grow and develop.  NASHP identified and examined policies in 12 leading states.  These states identified a number of success factors, barriers, and opportunities gleaned from their experiences implementing policies to promote the health sector as a key component of multi-sector service linkages for children.

Building Early Childhood Systems in a Multi-Ethnic Society:  An Overview of BUILD's Briefs on Diverity and Equity
The Build Initiative is producing a series of briefs on diversity and equity to help fill a knowledge and communication gap in developing early childhood systems for a multi-ethnic society. The series will describe pioneering efforts within states to address racial/ethnic disparities and promote equity, assess the current state of the field and the research and information available that should undergird state strategies. Building Early Childhood Systems in a Multi-ethnic Socieity provides an overview of BUILD's briefs on diversity and equity.

Crafting Early Learning Standards for a Multi-Ethnic Society: Lessons Learned from Washington and Alaska 
This Build report is the first in a series of briefs on diversity, equity and systems building.  Early learning standards are at the core of society's defining how and what children need to learn, what is expected of them at different developmental stages, and what caregivers and educators are expected to do to help them learn.  Child learning involves cultural learning; it is essential that early learning standards be developed responsively--with diverse cultural and language groups in mind.  This brief provides information about the experiences in Washington and Alaska so that other states can learn from and build upon their pioneering efforts to address language and cultural issues through their early learning standards.