Alliance for Early Success Senior Policy Director Albert Wat has been selected as one of 13 experts named to a committee convened by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine to study “the causes and consequences of the opportunity gap for young children from birth to age eight.”
The group will work to identify the societal conditions that preclude equal access to high-quality educational and other early childhood opportunities and their relationship with the achievement gap. The study will also explore the economic costs posed by the opportunity gap and the potential economic benefits of investing in strategies, interventions, and policies to address opportunity gap concerns for children from birth to age eight. After a review of evidence on promising federal and state government policy and program interventions that can address opportunity gap concerns for children from birth to age eight, the committee will then develop recommendations for early childhood and education policy, practice, and research to better understand the opportunity gap and promote success for all young children and students.
“We are learning so much about the true causes of the opportunity gap in kids birth through eight, and I am honored to play a role in the important synthesis of where we are and what we know about what works, especially in light of the inequities that have been exposed like never before by the pandemic and racial violence across the country in recent years.”
Albert Wat
Senior Policy Director,
Alliance for Early Success
At the Alliance, Wat leads a portfolio of state and national Alliance partnerships and investments focused on early learning, including pre-k, child care, and the education continuum from birth through third grade. He has deep experience in state policies on literacy and social-emotional development, pre-k access and quality, learning standards and assessments, and alignment between early learning policies and practices and education reform initiatives, especially in the early elementary years.
In 2014, he served on a National Academies committee that released the report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation.
In 2018, he served on another committee that produced the report, Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity.
