A moment for early learning in North Carolina

'Any system has to shift as the context shifts.'

I spent the last couple of months getting back on the road, traveling to classrooms and community organizations and reporting on local early childhood issues. Along the way, I also asked educators and local leaders their biggest hopes and concerns for young children in North Carolina.

Then I reached out to statewide and national experts in early childhood policy, advocacy, and research. There were many pandemic lessons learned and issues exposed across learning environments in the first eight years of children’s lives. The last year will inform how we address major challenges ahead — teacher shortages, drops in enrollment, longstanding financing issues, and inequities in access and quality.

How will the pandemic shape early learning in North Carolina?

“Any system has to shift as the context shifts,” said Henrietta Zalkind, executive director of the Down East Partnership for Children, the local Smart Start partnership serving children and families in Edgecombe and Nash counties. This is an important moment for the state, Zalkind said, with many moving pieces: federal relief funds and early childhood proposals, early childhood recommendations in the Leandro lawsuit, and state efforts to create a learning continuum that boosts stagnant reading proficiency.

“We have to look at those pieces of the puzzle,” she said, “but we have to look at it through an equity lens — and not on a really academic conversation — we have to look at it through a lens that a parent looks at it through: ‘What do I need to have my child be successful?'”

Increasing pay, benefits, and respect for early childhood teachers is key to answering that question, experts said. The pandemic brought differences in expectations and treatment of early educators in different settings and age groups, said Iheoma Iruka, research professor of public policy and the founding director of the Equity Research Action Coalition at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“We need to create a unified workforce system that recognizes that early education teachers can work in whatever settings, and can teach whatever age group, but at the minimum, we should expect a level of a wage and benefit that is commensurate with how we believe that early childhood education matters,” Iruka said. “If you believe that the first 1,000 days is so important, but then you pay a teacher basically $10 an hour, that tells me you don’t believe that.”

The past year underscored the importance of early care and education, experts said, for children’s learning, families’ economic participation and health, and the state’s pandemic recovery. Read on for stories and insights from Polk to Pitt counties.

And go here for EdNC’s entire special report, “2020-21 Lesson/Plan,” with deep dives into trends along the state’s educational continuum.

Below, I’ve got legislative updates, engaging perspectives, and lots of national early childhood news. Thanks for reading and for all you do for our youngest learners.