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.
Maine’s Right from the Start Coalition—a diverse, bipartisan group of organizations working for high-quality and accessible early care and education—helped pass a multi-faceted child care bill and helped defeat proposed budget cuts.
TEAM for West Virginia Children is offering the community advocacy stipends to help partner organizations keep up the pressure and urge legislators to support funding for child care and other early childhood policies. Hundreds of community members and more than 50 policymakers have already participated in local events supported by the community stipends.
In partnership with the Alliance for Early Success, ZERO TO THREE has launched a collaboration community to support Alliance state grantees in elevating family voice and cultivating their leadership in advocacy and policy. A key focus of the community is exploring strategies to shift organizational culture and systems in ways that support meaningful partnership with families from the beginning of policy agenda development through the policy implementation process.
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.
FIELD NOTES | By Jacy Montoya Price | 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.
We talk about centering lived experience and sharing power, but what does that look like in action? The Alliance for Early Success hosted a convening on November 13-14 in Seattle, Washington that showcased how advocates from Child Care Aware of Washington (CCA) “flipped the script” by facilitating a process that puts early childhood educators in the decision-making role.
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.
