Childcare & Early Education

Child Watch® Column: Filling in the Stories

Do your children love the books on their summer reading lists? Are your children reading about diverse cultures and books that reflect their experience or history? Children of color are now a majority of all public school students and will soon be a majority of all children in America yet children’s books and the publishing industry have failed to keep up with the rainbow of our children’s faces and cultures and needs. Every summer our Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools® curriculum is focused on a superb collection of diverse books that reflect children’s own images and a wide variety of cultures and experiences. For some children it’s the first time they’ve seen books with characters who look like them. For others the storylines draw them in, teach them about moments in history they may not have studied in school, and allow them to fall in love with reading in a way they’ve never experienced.

An entirely different approach to kids' behavior in the classroom

Last year, I took a job at a no excuses charter school, sight unseen. I hadn’t visited or asked many questions before signing my contract, which left me uneducated about the practices associated with this type of school. In short, a "no excuses" charter school usually enrolls low income and...

Child Watch® Column: How Much Do Black Child Lives Matter?

Four little girls were changing into choir robes and chatting in a church restroom preparing for the Youth Sunday services at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. At 10:22 a.m. a bomb previously hidden under the church steps with its timer deliberately set to go off during Sunday morning services exploded. Three 14-year-olds, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair were killed on that Sunday morning.