GEEARS’ Inaugural Early Childhood Checkup
For over a decade, GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students has been a trusted resource for early childhood data. We are proud of our in-depth community-focused tools like the Readiness Radar, but we are excited to provide a more high-level snapshot of how well our state is meeting the needs of our youngest children and their families.
That’s why we’re launching the Annual Early Childhood Checkup. Following this inaugural report, our progress report on how Georgia supports its children ages birth to five, and their families will be released every January. It will be a quick, digestible reference to help policymakers, community leaders, and others measure progress.
To build the format for the Checkup, we made several considerations:
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We chose indicators within the categories of Early Learning, Health, and Family Supports, reflecting the wide variety of factors that contribute to child and family well-being.
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Young children grow up in the context of their families, communities, and broader systems of supports, so we have included indicators like program access and health and educational outcomes.
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We showed both year-over-year changes and general five-year trends, allowing us to track progress over time.
We hope you’ll use this substantial yet accessible Checkup to fuel your advocacy, refine your services for families with young children, assess the past, and strategize for the future.
And we hope it will be an illuminating annual check-in for all of us in the early childhood space—a chance to collectively celebrate successes, mobilize around our setbacks, and learn from the results.