Resources

GEEARS Resources

• Check out the GEEARS One Pager to learn more about how we advocate for Georgia’s youngest children.
• Multi-Year Continuous Medicaid Eligibility for Young Children makes the case for ensuring continuity of care during the most pivotal point in a child’s development.
• Serving Georgia’s Youngest Children with Disabilities and Developmental Delays outlines the federal law, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and explains how Georgia supports young children with disabilities.
• Improving TANF Benefits to Support Georgia’s Young Children and Families provides insight into the benefits of TANF and policy recommendations on how Georgia’s leaders can strengthen the program to better support families.  
• Executive Summary: New Poll Finds Georgia’s Families are Struggling provides a snapshot of the findings from a survey commissioned by GEEARS and conducted by Hart Research of Georgia parents with children ages birth to five years old.
• Georgia’s Early Care and Education Landscape provides an overview of our state’s early care and education system, including the key programs and services supporting our youngest learners.
• GEEARS 2022 Voter Guide on Early Care and Learning details how elected officials can influence the state’s early learning landscape and how voters can elevate early childhood issues as a statewide priority.
• Advocacy Guide: How to Speak Up for Georgia’s Infants & Toddlers gives tips on how and why to contact your elected officials on behalf of Georgia’s infants and toddlers.
• What Policymakers in Georgia Need to Know About Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Health is a comprehensive research brief featuring strategies to support the social-emotional and cognitive development of young children.
• Developing the Social-Emotional Health of Georgia’s Youngest Children discusses the social-emotional health of the state’s youngest children and how the Georgia Infant-Toddler Coalition is advocating to help children experiencing emotional difficulties through early prevention and treatment.
• Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS): Helping Working Georgians Afford Child Care (Print Version) gives an overview of the demand for high-quality, affordable child care in Georgia and the role the CAPS Program can play in addressing this problem.
• Child Care in Georgia: Facts & Figures Infographic describes how the Georgia Infant-Toddler Coalition is working to improve access to high-quality child care for the state’s youngest learners.
• Early & Effective Diagnosis and Treatment – DC:0-5 is Key for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Services is an issue brief that explores the importance of using the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC:0-5.)
• Parents’ Guide to Preventing Lead Exposure is an informative guide for parents that outlines how to prevent young children’s exposure to lead.
• Investing in the Well-Being of Georgia’s Infants and Toddlers explores the needs of Georgia’s infants and toddlers, including child care and mental health, and how the state can invest in their future. The resource brief was developed in partnership with Child Trends. 
• Opportunities Lost: How Child Care Challenges Affect Georgia’s Workforce and Economy examines how child care challenges influence parents’ participation in the workforce and can have far-reaching effects for families, employers, and the state’s economy as a whole. In partnership with the Metro Atlanta Chamber, this report found that child care challenges in Georgia are leading to significant disruptions to parental workforce participation—both in the short and long term—and to the state’s economy.
• Advancing Opportunity: Parents’ Solutions to Child Care Challenges details the nature of child care challenges and offers proposed solutions for policymakers, employers, and higher education.
• Women United: Workplace Advancement Business Toolkit offers resources and suggestions for the business community to empower their female employees by supporting the issues that impact working mothers the most. The Toolkit was developed in partnership with the United Way of Greater Atlanta. 
• Georgia First 2000 Days “Why Early Childhood?” Infographic explores how early learning investments are important for Georgia’s economic well-being as a part of our First 2000 Days campaign.
• The Importance of Early Childhood Education outlines the basic case for why early childhood education is a sound investment and how you can get involved with GEEARS to promote the importance early childhood education.
• Build My Brain is a cross-disciplinary online course focused on the science and importance of early childhood development created in partnership with Rollins Center for Language and Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.
• A Framework for School Readiness in Georgia outlines a shared understanding of the construct of readiness to provide common language and context for the internal work of organizations, agencies, and systems and serves as a lever for identifying action steps that support Georgia’s young learners.
• Perceptions of School Readiness in Georgia is a companion report to A Framework for School Readiness in Georgia developed in partnership with the Build Initiative that evaluates perceptions of school readiness among a range of stakeholders across the state.
• Care for Georgia’s Infants and Toddlers: Boosting Young Children and Their Parents in the Peach State looks at the state of infant-toddler care in Georgia in partnership with Child Trends.
• The Impact of COVID-19 on Head Start Programs and Families: Recommendations for Health Care Providers and Policymakers is a research brief, created in collaboration with Voices for Georgia’s Children, the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Georgia Head Start Collaboration Office, detailing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Head Start families and identifying opportunities to strengthen the relationship between Head Start programs, managers, and health care professionals.

Equity in Early Childhood

• Start with Equity: From the Early Years to the Early Grades by the Children’s Equity Project and Bipartisan Policy Center highlights the grave inequities that affect the lives of millions of children from historically marginalized communities, using the lens of three policy areas: disproportionate application of harsh discipline practices; lack of inclusion of students with disabilities; and inadequate access to dual language programming. 
• Start with Equity: 14 Priorities to Dismantle Systemic Racism in Early Care and Education by the Children’s Equity Project outlines critical priorities and actionable policies that federal and state policymakers can immediately and concretely utilize to advance equity in the early care and education system. 
• The Basic Truth About Basic Needs explores how the pandemic has disproportionately affected the income, finances, and material hardship of families with young children based on RAPID-EC, an ongoing national survey of households with children ages 0-5. 
• An Anti-Racist Approach to Supporting Child Care Through COVID-19 and Beyond is a report from CLASP that examines how the pandemic has exacerbated existing racial and ethnic inequities for parents, children, and workers in the child care system. The report offers local, state, and federal policy recommendations for meeting the challenge of the current public health and economic crises while rebuilding a stronger, more equitable system.
• In Child Care and Early Education Equity: A State Action Agenda, CLASP outlines the important role state policymakers can play to ensure equity in their states’ early education efforts.
• Equity Starts Early: Addressing Racial Inequities in Child Care and Early Education Policy from CLASP explores critical racial equity issues in major early childhood programs, policies, and systems, including CCDBG, Head Start, and state pre-kindergarten programs. It provides demographic and historical context for creating racially equitable early childhood policies and analyzes policy issues related to access, quality, and the early childhood workforce. Finally, the report offers state and federal policy strategies that can begin to address inequities.
• Undervalued: A Brief History of Women’s Care Work and Child Care Policy in the United States from the National Women’s Law Center provides a brief overview of the state of child care in the United States and traces how—through the persistent denigration of the care work performed by women, especially women of color, and resulting public policy decisions—we arrived at this point. And it identifies the policy solutions that are needed to move toward a system that works for both families and child care providers.
• Top 10 Things We Know About Young Children and Health Equity…and Three Things We Need to Do with What We Know from the Build Initiative outlines what policymakers should do to equalize health access for young children.
• Eliminating Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Mortality: A Comprehensive Policy Blueprint from the Center for American Progress provides an overview of the causes of racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality and offers comprehensive policy solutions to eliminate racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality.
• Racial Disparities in Maternal Mortality in the United States from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists provides background, recommendations, and resources to help women at a critical time in their lives.

Access & Availability of Early Education

• Inequitable Access to Child Care Subsidies from CLASP looks at access to child care scholarships through the Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) Program finding that only 14.8% of income-eligible children in Georgia receive CAPS.
• ZERO TO THREE publishes an annual State of Babies Yearbook, which provides a snapshot of how infants, toddlers, and their families are faring with respect to these three developmental domains: good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences.
• The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) publishes an annual State of Preschool Yearbook, which provides data on state-funded prekindergarten programs around the country.
• Pay for Success is an emerging strategy for financing early childhood initiatives.
• Developed by the Reinvestment Fund, Childcare Analysis for Metro Atlanta looks at the supply and demand for child care in metro Atlanta.
• This fact sheet from the National Head Start Association (MHSA)’s lays out the scope and demand of Early Head Start.
• Child Care and Early Education Research Connections houses an extensive and frequently updated collection of research on early education. The website provides free access to more than 25,000 resources, including empirical articles, government reports, fact sheets, issue briefs, datasets, and instruments.

Research on Early Care and Learning in Georgia

• Quality Rated Validation Study

The Quality Rated Validation Study reviews the effectiveness of Quality Rated on a number of different measures, including program quality, children’s development over the school year, and work climate.

• Pre-Kindergarten

In 2011, the Georgia General Assembly authorized an evaluation of Georgia’s Pre-K program. Researchers at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been conducting a series of ongoing studies that measure the impact of the program.

In addition to the series of ongoing studies, DECAL worked with Child Trends to compare third-grade scores on the Georgia Milestones End-of-Grade (EOG) standardized achievement test for children who had and had not participated in Georgia’s Pre-K.

• Georgia’s Cross-Agency Child Data System

Georgia’s Cross Agency Child Data System (CACDS) aligns critical data from programs and services across state agencies for children zero to five and their families, including Babies Can’t Wait, Georgia’s Pre-K, Children’s 1st, and Preschool Special Education.

• Economic Impact of Early Care and Education in Georgia

Researchers from the University of Georgia and Georgia State University conducted a study examining the impact of the early care and education industry on Georgia’s economy.

Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) Resources

• DECAL and Georgia State University’s Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health’s research brief, Prioritizing the Mental Health of Infants & Toddlers in Georgia: Why It’s Important and What Comes Next.
• DECAL’s IECMH page has resources for child care providers, families, and policymakers.
• Georgia State University’s Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health’s Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Systems and Supports Developing the Workforce addresses the state of the IECMH workforce in the southeast region and the need for additional workforce development in Georgia.
• Basics of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Briefing Paper from ZERO TO THREE reviews how positive experiences and relationships can make a lifelong difference for young children and provides recommendations to policymakers to improve IECMH.
• SAMHSA’s Center for Excellence on IECMH Consulting provides evidence-based resources and research for implementing a systems-wide approach to infant and early childhood mental health services.
• Developed by ZERO TO THREE, DC: 0-5 Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood was created so medical professionals have the ability to provide early interventions and treatment specific to disorders and social-emotional challenges experienced during children’s earliest years.
• Using Medicaid to Ensure the Healthy Social and Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers from the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University gives a background on Medicaid’s role in IECMH.

Family Supports

• Paid Leave Fact Sheet by ZERO TO THREE explores the importance of providing families with adequate time to welcome a new child without sacrificing their financial security.  
• Time Off to Care: State Actions on Paid Family Leave by the National Conference for State Legislatures explores the landscape of state actions to increase access to family leave
• Paid Family and Medical Leave: An Issue Whose Time Has Come by American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution explores different federal proposals to implement a national paid leave policy. 
• Stimulus Payments Were Essential for Families with Young Children, based on the RAPID-EC national survey, explores how stimulus payments provide important financial relief, particularly for families with young children. 
• Our partners at ZERO TO THREE explore how housing and nutrition assistance are critical to the health and well-being of infants and toddlers. 

National Organizations

• The Alliance for Early Success works to improve state policies for children birth through eight by bringing state, national, and funding partners together.
• Annie E. Casey Foundation is a national thought leader on education issues, particularly on the importance of reading on grade level by the end of third grade.
• The Build Initiative supports states around the nation, including Georgia, as they work to set policy, offer services, and advocate for children birth through age five.
• Child Trends works to improve outcomes for children and youth by conducting high-quality research and sharing results with practitioners and policymakers.
• Georgetown Center for Children and Families is a national leader on health policies, such as Medicaid, EPSDT, and CHIP, that impact children.
• Harvard Center on the Developing Child, GEEARS’ partner in our Frontiers of Innovation–Georgia efforts, works to drive science-based innovation that achieves breakthrough outcomes for young children facing adversity.
• Institute for Child Success is a research and policy organization dedicated to the success of all young children.
• Mission: Readiness is a nonpartisan organization led by senior retired military leaders who advocate for smart investments in our nation’s young children.
• National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is a professional membership organization that works to promote high-quality early learning for all young children, birth through age 8, by connecting early childhood practice, policy, and research.
• National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) uses research to inform policy and practice with the goal of understanding and addressing poverty for the next generation.
• National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducts and shares research to support high-quality effective early education for all young children.
• Ready Nation works to improve business competitiveness by helping children get a good start in life, educating policymakers and the public to advance better policies for children and youth.
• Start Early advocates for quality early learning for children birth to five and is a leader in developing innovative high-quality programs for young children.
• ZERO TO THREE works to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life and houses such initiatives as DC: 0-5 and Think Babies.