The Alliance for Early Success is a 50-state resource for early-childhood advocates as they pursue the big, sustained impact that will ensure every child in every state, birth through age eight, has an equal chance to grow, learn, and succeed.
After working with Alliance Responsive Support providers at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, advocates uncovered a new funding stream for home visiting, which ultimately nearly doubled the state’s available home visiting funds.
Each year, the Alliance for Early Success surveys early childhood policy advocates representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia to create its annual 50-State Early Childhood Policy Progress and Landscape Report. The 2024 report, released in January, shows that support for state early childhood policies and funding continued to be strong, with policymakers from every region and political landscape acting to improve their early childhood policies.
New York is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, yet nearly one in five children lives in poverty. But recent legislative wins have brought New York closer than ever to solving it. The landmark Child Poverty Reduction Act established the Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council (CPRAC), whose recommendations are coming to life and bringing the state closer to its goal of cutting child poverty in half in ten years.
When a state ally recently brought on its first-ever Statewide Engagement Director, the organization’s leadership reached out for input as they developed an engagement plan. Jacy Montoya Price, the Alliance’s Senior Director of Advocacy and Issue Campaigns shared these tips that are useful grounding for anyone taking on theis work for the first time.
Advocates are celebrating the state legislature’s reinvestment in Oregon’s Employment Related Day Care (ERDC) subsidy program, a successful program that has been a difference-maker for Oregon families for years.
A pilot program in Maryland aimed at reversing the family child care decline, Growing Opportunities for Family Child Care (GOFCC), has seen promising results so far. As of November 2024, the program has facilitated the opening of more than 100 programs across the state and has increased the number of family child care slots available to children by more than 1200.
Child care advocates in Wyoming are celebrating a major legislative victory. After years of setbacks, the state secured the most funding for developmental preschools in over a decade. The passage of SF 19 marks a significant shift. The Wyoming Women’s Foundation, who advocated for the bill’s passage, credits a new messaging approach and strategy to its success.
Alliance state allies from conservative-led states gathered in Salt Lake City last month to think together about how the recent national and state elections will impact their advocacy in the short term and to do some longer-term future forecasting and narrative change work.
Vermont became a national model with the passage of Act 76 in June 2023, which resulted in an annual commitment of about $125 million to the state’s child care system. The win—and a 2024 defense of the funding—was the result of a broad and strong constituency for child care cultivated over a decade by advocates.
The New England Regional Early Childhood Advocate Convening brought together advocates and funders to facilitate cross-state learning, align advocacy and policy goals, and build relationships. Topics included coalition building, family economic security policy, healthy families policy, and case studies of early childhood advocacy by New England states.
