Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/persist-reform-transform-reframe-four-next-level-advocacy-strategies-for-early-childhood-education/5027014/
The pandemic created adaptive challenges for many professions, with early childhood education being particularly impacted (Sullivan, 2021). Conducting business as usual became impossible, as standard ways of implementing early childhood education services proved ineffective in meeting community needs. Designing new solutions in rapid response cycles required extraordinary openness to new learning, operational adaptability, and change in complex, unpredictable situations.
As 2023 begins, challenges that preceded, and have been accelerated by, the COVID-19 pandemic remain numerous, significant, and well-known: fragmentation within the profession, unaligned regulatory systems, workforce shortages, and business models unable to offer either living wages or consistently high program quality (Gibbs, 2022). Demonstrating exceptional strength, optimism, and resiliency, ECE communities joined together (Washington, 2021) to support two major pieces of federal legislation: the Build Back Better Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. In what felt like a crushing defeat to many ECE advocates, BBB failed to pass Congress, and the Inflation Reduction Act did not include ECE (Waters, 2022).
Nevertheless, as the field seeks pandemic recovery, stabilization, and growth, ECE advocates continually focus on solutions and embrace the responsibility to create sustainable change. In one such effort, The CAYL Institute convened its network to ask what next-level strategies for professional ...