FOR IMEDIATE RELEASE!
Message from the Deputy Assistant Secretary Libby Doggett
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Libby with children
Back to the Future
A new year is a time to look forward and backwards. For me this New Year provides an opportunity to reflect on the Administration’s accomplishments. I am honored to have been a part of President Obama’s early learning team. We have so many accomplishments of which we can all be proud. Here are my top 10:
1. President Obama. The President not only hired great leaders who cared deeply about early learning, but he championed the cause as well. Beginning in his first term, he used the bully pulpit to continually make the case for investing more in our youngest children. In his second term, he doubled down with his 2013 Preschool for All proposal to his 2015 promotion of affordable high-quality child care.
2. Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC). The administration’s $1 billion investment to support 20 states in designing and implementing cohesive systems of quality early learning programs and services for young children from birth through age five has been an awesome success. The RTT-ELC states have not only significantly increased the number of programs providing high-quality early learning to our most vulnerable children, but have experimented and succeeded with new ways of reaching families, expanding screening, connecting education and health, collecting and using data and measuring children’s status at kindergarten entry. Most have a more efficient and cohesive governance structure, and all are drastically improving quality. Forty states applied for these grants, and the states not funded continued to advance their planned early learning reforms. A few bold states are moving toward only providing state and federal subsidies to the highest rated programs.
3. The Preschool Development Grants (PDG). Not only are many more children being served in high-quality programs, we were able to establish inclusion of children with disabilities and paying preschool teachers a salary commensurate with K-12 teachers as two of 12 quality standards. While we are proud of ED’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osers/osep/programs.html?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=) programs for young children, we have been eager to draw more schools into early learning. PDG did that. Through PDG, we worked with states as partners, supporting their diverse-delivery models and providing incentives to increase state and local funding for young children.
4. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Our new education law, ESSA, provides more opportunities to expand early learning by reaffirming the use of federal Title I funds to support preschool-aged children and building on the work of the original PDG. Our non-regulatory guidance discusses how states and LEAs must and might leverage ESSA by expanding early learning programs; promoting coordination in early learning among local communities; aligning preschool with early elementary school; and building the capacity of teachers, leaders, and others serving young children. Read the rest of Libby’s list here.
READ, LEARN MORE AND ARCHIVE here!"
http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=cl... #ESSA
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Posted By: agnes levine
Thursday, January 12th 2017 at 5:31PM
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