On Wednsday May 16th, our staff at the Imam Shirazi World Foundation
On Wednsday May 16th, our staff at the Imam Shirazi World Foundation attended a meeting hosted by The New America Foundation regarding the steps to improve quality in child care and early education, titled ‘putting Quality First.’ The discussion of how to overcome any challenges and improve quality in early child care settings were talked about!
Lisa Guernsey director of Early Education Initiative,New America Foundation joined by Linda K. Smith , Deputy Assistant Secretary & Interdepartmental
Liaison for Early Childhood Development atU.S. Department of Health and Human Services;Rolf Grafwallner, Assistant State Superintendent atMaryland Department of Education; Kate Jordan-Downs, Director of the Child Development Center at Easter Seals of Washington, DC talked in depth about the importance of early childhool learning and challanges faced by parents!
To help families succeed and low-income families thrive, quality child care is critical. Yet too many of America’s children are in early care settings that lack well-prepared teachers, lack the infrastructure to do background checks, and lack the ability to offer safe child-to-adult ratios that give children the attention they need to learn and explore. Parents worry about the quality of care their children receive, yet often can’t afford better programs and feel powerless to do anything about it. As research continues to show the importance of the earliest years of life to a person’s future school and career success, figuring out how to provide more families with more access to quality care has become one of the great challenges of social and family policy of the 21st century.