Brain development starts at birth, and 80% of a child’s brain develops by their third birthday.
The first three years are critical, so universal access to quality early care and education is essential to eliminating educational inequality. During this period, developing relationships with responsive, dependable adults – including parents, caregivers, and teachers – is essential to a child’s healthy development.
For communities facing systemic barriers to success, early care and education is a game changer. Research shows that high-quality early childhood education can prevent academic achievement gaps from forming and can set children on a long-term path to higher education, better employment opportunities, and higher earnings.
A lack of access to high-quality early care and education, on the other hand, leaves children unprepared for kindergarten and less likely to graduate from high school.
Additionally, for children with disabilities or special needs, early identification and intervention are critical to best supporting the child’s learning journey. High-quality infant and toddler care and education includes assessing for suspected delays or challenges and supporting families in identifying and addressing special needs early.
While California’s universal transitional kindergarten (UTK) is supporting 4- and 5-year-old children, infants and toddlers aren’t covered by universal education. That means that education during the critical first three years of a child’s brain development will come from childcare centers, family childcare homes, the child’s family, and/or trusted friends and neighbors. Yet LA County has a shortage of qualified infant-toddler teachers as well as a shortage of spaces in childcare centers and family childcare homes, especially in at-promise communities.
How is LAEP addressing this need? Our Early Childhood & Family Engagement work is heavily focused on infants and toddlers.
- Our new Ready2Teach initiative is designed to increase the number of qualified infant/toddler teachers and strengthen the capacity of licensed childcare sites to serve infants and toddlers, all to support growing spaces for more at-promise infants and toddlers to receive high-quality childcare and education.
- LAEP’s Early Head Start program enriches parental skills, supports infant and toddler learning by providing educational activities and wrap-around supports, and empowers parents to be early childhood and educational advocates. Our Early Head Start teachers also ensure that children are reaching developmental milestones and support families with identification and early intervention if there are any suspected disabilities.
- Northeast Valley (NEV) Best Start Community empowers the community to address important issues for local families to support kindergarten readiness, including the needs of infants and toddlers at this critical learning stage.
- LAEP’s new Evaluation, Accountability, and Impact unit will analyze data and report key findings from LAEP’s activities in this area as well as supporting other early childhood education outlets and organizations with analysis of their programs. For example, we are currently working with the LA County Library system to provide recommendations around their early literacy programming.
High-quality infant and toddler education is critical to addressing inequities, and LAEP is committed to supporting work that will improve access to this for at-promise youth.