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.
Rx Kids, the nation’s first citywide cash assistance program for families, started in Flint and is spreading across Michigan. Proponents across the political spectrum agree the program gives parents choices, builds trust, reduces stigma, and eliminates administrative barriers.
Alliance for Early Success convenings, connections, and community fueled the Bright Start Tennessee Dashboard–Tennessee advocates’ new, highly tailored early childhood data portal. Now that each of the Bright Start regions has access to the regularly updated dashboard, they’re better equipped to measure progress and champion state policies with regional and local data.
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.
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.
Successful advocacy helped Missouri buck a trend among many Republican governors who opted not to participate the federal Summer EBT program—and helped ensure that children who would have otherwise received food benefits through schools or child care programs continue to receive nutritious meals.
EDITORIAL Alliance Executive Director Helene Stebbins shares the findings of the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families—a cross-partisan group of 32 leaders representing different political, ideological, and industry perspectives. Their final report, In This Together: A Cross-Partisan Action Plan to Support Families with Young Children in America, is a blueprint for consensus action.
In our new report, Child Care Policy Roadmap 2023, we highlight policies enacted in states – red, blue, and purple – that serve as building blocks for a transformative child care system. It builds on a policy roadmap released several years ago that laid out the major areas of work that all states need to take on to transform our child care system. It turns out that the ideas included in that report were not pipe dreams, and many states have put them into action.
From a new nation-leading child tax credit that will cut child poverty by a third, to $1.3 billion for expansion of mixed-delivery child care, to continuous medicaid coverage for children to age 6, to a long list of other wins for young children and their families, there were almost too many advancements to count in the 2023 legislative session. The secret to all these wins? A long-standing “of coalition of coalitions” in the state the centers communication, equity, cooperation, and authentic power sharing.
Information about availability, eligibility, and applying for publicly funded state services is often time-consuming to find, and antiquated systems are difficult to navigate. A new federal executive order, however, might just change that with a simple notion: requiring state governments to treat families like customers. Join us as our partners at the New Practice Lab will share their recently released research on complexity in early education programs across the 50 states and will share updates on federal efforts to simplify access to early childhood programs.
We’ll also hear from South Carolina, a state meeting this challenge head-on with their recently unveiled First Five SC portal, which aims to transform the way families access publicly funded early childhood programs and services in the state.
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The Alliance for Early Success does not endorse or advocate for specific legislation or candidates.
