35 Years of Innovation in Early Learning

Poverty is an entrenched, intergenerational problem in this country. We believe (and research shows) that the years from birth to age five represent our best chance to change the odds. For 35 years, we’ve developed innovative solutions to improve outcomes for our country’s youngest learners.

With successful programs as our foundation, we’re now increasing our impact nationwide through knowledge sharing and field-strengthening tools. We’ve partnered with several state systems to ensure families have access to high-quality home visiting services. Our comprehensive support system for school leaders is now debuting in three states. And we’ve partnered with PBS Kids and the NYU School of Medicine’s Center for Early Childhood Health and Development to create new resources that empower parents as their child’s first teacher.

One of our best examples of innovation is Educare, now a national network of 22 birth-to-five schools that serve as learning labs for best practices and policy improvements. Educare began as an ambitious Ounce initiative to serve families displaced by the loss of public housing on Chicago’s South Side.

In partnership with the Buffet Early Childhood Fund, the Educare Learning Network then grew organically as philanthropists, education leaders and early learning programs expressed a desire to create greater impact in their own communities as well as a collective voice for change on a larger scale.

Educare schools serve children and families in cities, suburbs, rural communities and on an indigenous tribe’s reservation, and they provide innovation to the entire field. By focusing on improving practice based on each community’s needs and available resources, Educare has demonstrated what’s possible in a wide variety of contexts.

As a next wave of innovation, the Educare Best Practices Initiative aims to help other community-based programs achieve greater outcomes for many more children. Local Educare schools are serving as training hubs for their communities and states, helping others to implement high-quality practices that improve classroom experience and family engagement. Together, we will not rest until all young children have equal opportunities to succeed.

20 Years of Helping New Moms in Illinois

Doulas have been an innovative addition to the traditional home visiting program model. They build strong bonds with expecting and new parents, and those parents in turn build strong bonds with their own babies. The belief that “I can do this” is passed from doula to parent, and from parent to child, creating a new, self-perpetuating cycle that helps families make healthy choices for a lifetime. The University of Chicago is currently conducting a randomized control trial evaluating our doula home visiting model. Data collected for this study thus far shows multiple benefits in the first year of life, including use of safe sleep practices, parent encouragement of infants’ learning, and mother persistence in higher education and employment.

The doula program is a perfect example of the work we do: using private support to launch a program rooted in the power of relationships, and scaling it with public funding. Since we piloted our model 20 years ago, we have expanded our doula support to more than 20 locations across Illinois, supporting the births of over 17,000 children. And now we’ve expanded our impact through an online home visiting training program so other states can implement effective programs and services.

10 Years of Advocacy in Washington, DC

With millions of children under 5 living in poverty, the Ounce and a core group of Educare funders recognized that a strong, bipartisan federal advocacy effort would be needed to create tipping-point change on a national scale. Out of this, the First Five Years Fund (FFYF) was born in 2007.

From the beginning, FFYF was designed to be different: rooted in the language of education, and integrating a balanced approach of messaging, policy and advocacy. It was also inclusive, helping unite the advocacy community and ultimately helping to secure cumulative federal funding increases of more than $8 billion for early education.

Voters support making quality early education more affordable for working families to give children a strong start.

Not only have there been steady funding increases to expand the quality of Head Start programs, but for the first time there is now a dedicated funding stream within the nation’s largest education law to support high-quality preschool expansion. With that addition to the Every Student Achieves Act, the Preschool Development Grants have already served more than 130,000 children.

As the country has recently become more divided along political lines, FFYF has successfully navigated these uncertain waters, serving as a trusted, nonpartisan resource and thought partner to the White House, Congress and a growing coalition of advocates in Washington, DC, and states across the country.

According to FFYF polling, 89% of American voters agree that we must make quality early childhood education more accessible and affordable to low-and middle-income families. Having played an integral role in advancing bipartisan victories for America’s youngest learners this past year, FFYF has cemented early childhood education as an issue that can unite a divided government.