This framework was developed in partnership with Mile High Early Learning to support staff in developing essential knowledge, skills, and awareness to participate in ongoing conversations and critical reflection around race and equity within the MHEL learning community and beyond.

SRC conducted a national landscape to illuminate gaps, inconsistencies, and opportunities for which philanthropic investment could catalyze equitable improvements in K-2 practices at scale and aligned to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s existing strategy. In partnership with the foundation’s Early Learning Team, SRC identified and workshopped the highest opportunity approaches to shape a proposed equity-centered investment strategy.

The Michigan Racial Equity Leadership Cohort Experience aimed to build up the capacity of leaders to make systems change at the community level and scale knowledge about and actions to improve racial equity across the state of Michigan. To best take advantage of this short-term, limited-funding situation, the effort emphasized equipping leaders to move equity work forward at the community level as a way to support sustainability and begin to impact the system.

This Strategic Refresh represents updates to Minnesota's 2020 strategic plan. Updates are more representative of the needs of the community as the state has reinvigorated, reshuffled, and reshaped the system’s priorities.

This report presents findings regarding the implementation of local community resource hubs, an approach piloted by 13 Minnesota organizations and dozens of designated partner agencies, with the support of federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) funds, along with considerations to promote the expansion of similar family and community resource hub models through a supportive state-local infrastructure.

This report presents findings regarding the implementation of local community resource hubs, an approach piloted by 13 Minnesota organizations and dozens of designated partner agencies, with the support of federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) funds, along with considerations to promote the expansion of similar family and community resource hub models through a supportive state-local infrastructure.

This toolkit was primarily designed to support the regional teams participating in the PDG B-5 Sustainability Community of Practice facilitated by SRC. This toolkit may also be a useful tool for a wide range of stakeholders in Michigan’s early childhood system who are interested in sustainability.

When we say “equity in the early childhood system,” what do we mean? In partnership with Vanguard Strong Start for Kids, this effort aimed to explore this question. By leading with voices of the early childhood community, the Side by Side Playbook was created as an accessible, interactive resource to provide community-informed solutions toward meaningful change within the current structures that govern and define the early childhood system.

The National Association of State Leaders in Early Education's strategic plan serves as a road map to guide the work of the organization over the next 5 years and define the leadership role of the Executive Committee as catalysts and facilitators of the work.

Michigan’s Collective Early Childhood Action Plan provides a comprehensive overview and approach to meeting the state's four early childhood outcomes. This effort is a culmination of a 2-year needs assessment and action planning process and builds on and aligns with previous strategic planning efforts across the state.

This validation study evaluates the Hope Starts Here (HSH) imperative metrics for success and examines the early implementation of the HSH initiative (2020 and beyond) to inform future evaluation efforts. The research questions that guided the validation study were designed to help explore the face validity and the content validity of HSH metrics and were determined based on HSH's priorities.

This implementation study focuses on the experiences (including successes and challenges) of different stakeholders in the early stages of implementation of the Hope Starts Here initiative.

This report provides an overview of key findings and considerations as Michigan considers ways to strengthen its approach to Family Child Care Networks across the state.

This equity-focused rubric was developed for reviewing Minnesota's Preschool Development Grant (PDG)–related documents. The equity rubric, designed under the Minnesota PDG Guiding Principles, assesses indicators of best practices for advancing equity within each document that focus on the experiences of children, families, and communities facing racial, geographic, and economic inequities.

The city of Seattle has a history of investing in its youth and has funded education-based initiatives since 1990. In response to the growing understanding of the benefits of preschool for children and communities, the Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) launched a demonstration phase of the Seattle Preschool Program (SPP). This initiative aimed to meet three goals: (1) increase access to full-time preschool for three- and four-year-old children across the city; (2) ensure that the preschool program is one of high quality by using a research-based curriculum and offering culturally responsive, engaging, and nurturing adult-child interactions; and (3) eliminate the racially disproportionate kindergarten readiness gap. DEEL contracted with SRC on two occasions to conduct process evaluations of the SPP. Efforts informed a series of case studies and reports (2019 and 2021) that were developed to share findings and recommendations focused on improving SPP and advancing early learning opportunities for all children in Seattle.

In order to better understand the landscape of the ECE workforce, the state’s Child Development Division (CDD) and the Vermont Head Start Collaboration Office (VHSCO) contracted School Readiness Consulting (SRC) to conduct the Vermont Early Childhood Wage and Fringe Benefit Study. The intent of the study was to define key positions in Vermont’s early childhood workforce and examine wages and fringe benefits of the workforce across program types and funding streams, including center-based (Head Start, universal pre-K, and private), home-based (universal pre-K), after-school, and Children’s Integrated Services (CIS) programs. This work culminated in a report describing the current state of ECE workforce compensation and outlining recommendations for maintaining workforce data and considerations for developing meaningful compensation packages across the early childhood workforce.

This Coordinated Eligibility and Enrollment (CEE) Landscape seeks to provide an overview of coordinated eligibility and enrollment and how it is being successfully implemented in local communities in Michigan, as well as in other states. The report focuses on key principles and elements of CEE and provides examples that show how these can be applied on the ground in communities, as well as key considerations both for the state and for communities as they work to advance coordinated eligibility and enrollment.

The guidebook draws on the lessons learned during the Early Learning Division's first year of experience implementing coordinated enrollment strategies through Preschool Promise. Each section of the guidebook details a part of Oregon’s coordinated enrollment vision and includes examples and resources that Early Learning Hubs can use to inform their work as they move forward in implementing coordinated enrollment.