Stay up-to-date on the latest news about early childhood from GEEARS, our early childhood partners across the nation, and from media outlets.
By: WABE For the 2020 Census, 4.5 million children live in areas that are hard-to-count. Georgia is one of the states most at risk for a miscount, according to the Urban Institute. That’s because of the state’s changing demographics. Children under the age of five are especially at risk of being undercounted. In the last Census, one million […]
By: WUGA Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, or GEEARS, making a visit to Athens this week. Organizers are working around state to create a state-wide movement on quality early learning and health development in Georgia. Executive Director Mindy Binderman says the organization visited Athens as part of ongoing plans to gather business partners, […]
By: AJC State lawmakers have long pressed Georgia Lottery officials to plow more ticket sales money into HOPE scholarships and pre-kindergarten classes, and that appears to be happening. An analysis of lottery sales figures by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows the percentage of net sales going to education programs has increased the past five years, from […]
By: The Hill As Congress, states, and communities increasingly invest more in early childhood programs to improve both access and quality for working parents and their children, one piece of the puzzle too often ignored is how to support the workforce. Early care and education professionals provide the next generation of citizens and leaders the […]
By: Education Dive Few states have as much experience with public pre-K as Georgia. The first to create a universal state-funded program — not restricted to low-income families or children facing other risks — the state created a model that has inspired other early education-focused policymakers across the country. “A lot of states look to […]
By: The Washington Post The Democrats recently held two nights of debate, each two hours long, and in both sessions the two words that most American families talk about, worry about and sweat about behind closed doors were barely mentioned. Those two words are “child care.” Finding it is a challenge; paying for it can […]
By: The New York Times FOWLER, Calif. — David Cardenas, a mechanic and the mayor of Fowler, knows families in his town want high-quality and free daylong preschool. But options are thin. A government-subsidized program fills up fast and fits only a small fraction of the town’s 4-year-olds, he said. A private program that closed […]
By: WABE Georgia Medicaid and PeachCare saw a drop of 20,000 kids last year, a recent report found. Food stamp use has fallen in the state as well, continuing a steady drop since 2013. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which aids pregnant women and families with dependent children, hit a six-year low in Georgia […]
By: Center for American Progress Today, the Center for American Progress released a new issue briefanalyzing what families with children under age 5 are spending on child care. The study relies on new data released last month as part of the nationally representative Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which looks both at what families are spending on child […]
By: The Economist America has fewer of its three- and four-year-old children in pre-school than other rich nations. But it is beginning to catch up. Between 2002 and 2017, the proportion of four-year-olds enrolled in state pre-kindergarten programmes rose from 14% to 33%. And a big, bipartisan push is underway to get more children into […]