Family & Children

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on New America's Early Education Initiative blog. Conor Williams recently joined the Early Education Initiative as a Senior Researcher. He's just completed a PhD in Government at Georgetown University, a degree he pursued after teaching first grade in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Conor's research addresses the challenges immigrant families face in the American education system, educational equity as a means to increased social mobility, and the history of education in the United States.

In an era of Washington gridlock, there’s almost nothing quite as gratifying as seeing big policy changes that echo one’s recent arguments. Along those lines, Thursday was a great day for advocates of more and higher-quality child care in the United States. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a new Obama administration proposal to raise the federal baseline for subsidized child care centers across the country. 

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on New America's In The Tank blog.

The average childcare worker in the U.S. earns less than a janitor. Sure, some daycare centers pay well, but the average parent can’t afford those high-end centers that can cost as much as public university tuition.

Piling on to that: The daycare industry is largely unregulated with low standards on quality of care. At an event this week based off of a recent New Republic article, The Hell of American Daycare, panelists showed how that painful reality -- a broken system full of tales of toddler deaths and injuries – can also have dire consequences for our economy.

The Asset Building Program and New America’s Early Education Initiative co-hosted an event yesterday on “The Hell of American Daycare,” so titled after a recent piece by Jonathan Cohn for The New Republic. Cohn and a panel of experts explored this controversial issue at the intersection between early education and the American workforce. Asset Building Program director Reid Cramer introduced the subject of child care as an “issue at the heart of the social contract.” The event made clear that today’s workforce cannot succeed without adequate, affordable child care to which it can entrust its children; that those children cannot succeed without safe, stimulating experiences in their earliest years; and that tomorrow’s workforce will not thrive without the formative educational experiences only pre-kindergarten learning can provide.

The Asset Building Program is hosting an event Monday to feature Jonathan Cohn’s recent article for The New Republic "The Hell of American Day Care." A great panel will help us piece together the complicated picture of day care systems (or lack thereof) in America and offer ideas that address the issue from multiple angles. RSVP to come Monday at 12:15pm or tune in online to watch live.

The Asset Building Program hosted an event last week to examine the rise of suburban homelessness and the broader impact of the Great Recession on homeownership and the American middle class. We invited Monica Potts, senior writer for The American Prospect, to discuss her new piece “The Weeklies,” which takes an intimate look at a cohort of newly homeless families living in hotels in suburban areas. Janis Bowdler, Economic Policy Director with the National Council of La Raza, weighed in on the interplay of the foreclosure and housing crisis with family wealth, community resilience, and the social safety net. Reid Cramer framed and moderated the conversation.

Reniqua Allen and Hannah Emple explain how and why America's racial wealth gap became a gulf. Tara Maller reveals what makes sanctions a success - or failure - and what she expects from the ones targeting North Korea and Iran. Elizabeth Weingarten hosts.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include the household balance sheet, cash and payments, higher education, housing, and public benefits.

As President Obama gave his second inaugural address yesterday, many of us couldn’t help but linger over these words:  “We are true to our creed,” Obama said, “when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.” 

Each January, Early Ed Watch predicts where we will see the most action, innovation and consternation in the year ahead. Here are the hot spots we see for 2013. Notable is the absence of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act, otherwise known as No Child Left Behind. Prognosticators don’t give the bill much chance of making progress this year, given stalemates between the two houses of Congress.

The Child Care Development Block Grant, on the other hand, could see some action on Capitol Hill.  Debates on how to evaluate teachers will likely continue to dominate, as they did in 2011 and 2012. And at least one topic has popped up consistently since 2010 when we started this exercise: Head Start reform via the new "re-competition” process.

From the Gaza war and the upgrading of Palestine at the U.N. to Israel’s announcement that it will likely build new settlements, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is spiraling out of control. We as coauthors disagree on the Palestinian U.N. bid, as on other important aspects of Middle Eastern politics. But on this we profoundly agree: negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority must resume, and fast.