childcare & early education

February 14, 2011

Whenever I ponder of the excess of technology in today’s society, I think of a posting on my friend’s Facebook page complaining that her kids were driving her crazy as they waited in line for ice cream. It seemed obvious to me why her kids were acting up--they wanted her to stop the constant mobile uploads and pay attention to them. Our children, our partners, our friends, and our community are crying out for us to lift our eyes from our smartphones and unplug the earphones to reconnect with each other off-line. This is why the organization I work for created the National Day of Unplugging in...

Tanya Schevitz

February 10, 2011

Here's the deal: Roses, champagne flutes, glittery gems and jewelry--all great. But these days, I'm all about a different kind of Valentine's Day: Red construction paper hearts, lopsided, and shaped by small hands wielding safety scissors, glue sticks, and glitter. Let's face it. Lopsided glitter glue has the power to melt hearts far and wide. What if we could use the power of Valentine's Day to stand up for kids and get Congress to focus on preschool and quality, affordable childcare? It turns out, we (you) can! *Click this link to see our super cool online valentine-creation-station and...

Sarah Francis

childcare & early education

February 5, 2011

From Your (Wo)manInWashington blog MOTHERS changing the conversation @ www.MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org With an eyebrow firmly raised at all the Tiger Mother brouhaha, I was delighted to find this post from Cameron Macdonald , an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She's written a book, “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs and the Micropolitics of Mothering” which looks as what she calls the "private to public care transfer", meaning childcare moving from the household (and mother) to a paid employee. She is also interested, according to her bio, in "...

Valerie Young

childcare & early education healthcare

February 3, 2011

Getting a child into sports and keeping them there is one of the best decisions a parent will make. While your kids do it for the fun, research on the life-long benefits of a sports experience gives parents even more motivation to schlep kids to those practices. Contrary to the “dumb jock” myth, interscholastic sports participation has a measurable, positive educational impact on both boys and girls from diverse socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Betsey Stevenson, an economist from Wharton, found that it’s not just that kids already destined to do well play sports, but that...

Nancy Hogshead-Makar

childcare & early education

February 2, 2011

The recent House proposal to slash domestic spending to 2008 levels would mean millions lost in funding for early childhood programs. It’s easy to give short shrift to this number when discussing it broadly and in the abstract. After all, there is wide agreement that balance needs to be restored to the federal budget. President Obama has called for a five-year freeze in domestic, non-defense discretionary spending and states are grappling with budget shortfalls and considering across the board cuts, including human services. But when discussing balancing the budget and cutting programs, we...

Hannah Matthews

childcare & early education

February 1, 2011

Inside scoop : I facebooked and tweeted the story about the Ohio mom who became a convicted felon after she used her parents' address to send her daughters to a public school there. According to a very close source, the mother was an employee at the Akron schools district she refused to send her daughter to and while they are supportive of her as "you can imagine what it is doing for their image when a staff member won't send her kids there." The source also provided this inside scoop: "50 other folks were charged with the same offense (sending their child to Copley when they lived somewhere...

Elisa Batista

childcare & early education

January 31, 2011

Have you devoted countless hours of your time at school board meetings, or talking with school officials to help make your school as good as it can be? Do you know a mom who has fought tirelessly to protect your school from budget cuts? Or a parent who stood up to school policy when it didn’t make sense for families? Parenting magazine wants to hear from you today ! Read on... Help us celebrate the achievements of parents who have made a difference in the fight for better schools by nominating them to represent your state at Parenting magazine’s second annual Mom Congress on Education and...

Ana Connery

childcare & early education

January 31, 2011

As you've likely seen in the news, Ohio mom, Kelley Williams-Bolar, recently went to jail for sending her kids to a highly ranked school near where her father lives, which was out of her home school district.[1] She was trying to give her children a better life. Now, as a convicted felon, helping her children will be even harder -- she was studying to become a teacher, but that dream may have ended with the felony conviction as well. Real justice requires that the punishment fit the crime. By any measure, this is cruelly unjust. * Please join us and the national non-profit organization,...

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner

childcare & early education

January 20, 2011

Understanding whether or not children are ready to succeed when they walk through the kindergarten door is one of the most difficult questions to answer. Washington only begins to collect consistent student progress data at the end of 3rd grade. By the time the state reports this data, the students are buying school supplies for 4th grade. Unfortunately we know this is too late.

Bonnie Beukema

childcare & early education

January 20, 2011

Education reform: I fervently believe women who are in the schools every day--as parent volunteers, and as teachers--have a great deal to tell policymakers what works and what doesn't. What we need is a pointilist approach: steady application of dots of information about how schools are working--or not working--that add up to a big picture. We need it from parents, students, and educators themselves.