>Home >State Partners >Pennsylvania >Pennsylvania's Synopsis

Pennsylvania’s leadership is committed to creating a meaningful early learning system for the youngest children in the state. Governor Ed Rendell’s priorities for early care and education in Pennsylvania provide a focus for the work. They are:

• Establish and support early learning programs.
• Improve capacity of early learning programs.
• Assure access.
• Engage and educate.
• Achieve systems coordination and integration.

The fiscal sponsor in Pennsylvania is the Berks County Intermediate Unity, and the lead contact person is affiliated with the both the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare. An Early Learning Team of public agency representatives implements the Governor’s agenda. The focus of the Early Learning Team is to strengthen capacity-building across agencies to deliver services. Community forums have been used to gather input on various topics, and representatives of key stakeholder groups are involved in workgroups to address the outcome areas.

The five desired outcomes and 2006 goals of Pennsylvania’s Build work are:

• Coordinated leadership: Coordinate the Commonwealth’s work on early learning by expanding membership on the state interdisciplinary team, and establish additional leadership for the work that will be undertaken through Build Pennsylvania.
• Standards: Complete K – 2 learning standards and assessment recommendations, develop infant and toddler learning standards, and review and revise systems for program quality improvements.
• Professional development: Coordinate, link and improve the various early education and care professional preparation and development systems.
• Finance: Quantify the cost and units of service of the Commonwealth’s early care and education programs necessary to achieve standards for all populations of children and families in order to create an integrated financial structure.
• Public engagement: Utilize cross-sector teams to publicly engage community and business agencies and their leaders, parents, and early childhood program practitioners.