Our 2022 early childhood must-reads

See you in the new year.

Our Early Bird team doubled this year (!!) as EdNC welcomed Katie Dukes, 11-year high school teacher turned early childhood policy analyst. I tried my best to transfer all the things you all have taught me about North Carolina early care and education to Katie. She offered fresh eyes and new motivating energy to our early childhood research and reporting. And we’re excited for all that is to come in 2023.

First, a look back on the past year.

We’re super proud to write stories about issues affecting our youngest learners and those who support them. Here are some of those pieces we don’t want you to miss:

Katie’s top three

1. EdNC Toolkit: Best practices for supporting students who have experienced the death of a caregiver
   Katie shares strategies and resources for teachers, administrators, families, and communities to help children with the process of grieving, accumulated from months of reporting on best practices across the state.
2. Beaufort Elementary students learn how to grieve
   This powerful story of local leaders proactively guiding elementary students through the experience of losing a beloved music teacher is one of the aforementioned best practices Katie uncovered.
3. Pre-K suspensions and expulsions can have dire effects — but we don’t know how common they are
   Though we know anecdotally that young students are being harmed by exclusionary discipline in early childhood settings, understanding the problem is difficult without solid data. Katie explains why these practices hurt children and why we need a better way to track these incidents.

Liz’s top three

1. Here is child care capacity in North Carolina compared with need, by county
   Check out a county-by-county map that shows licensed programs’ capacity to serve infants and toddlers — and a breakdown of why that capacity is so low.
2. With no action before funds dry up, some child care programs ‘will not be able to survive,’ providers say
   This has been the overarching story of child care in North Carolina since the pandemic. A temporary lifeline has been thrown to an already fragile system without a plan for what’s next. That’s still the case.
3. Can passing a test, instead of a course, boost the number of early childhood teachers without sacrificing quality?
   Legislation this past session gave another option for individuals to work in early childhood classrooms that are struggling to find teachers. But many advocates already thought that bar was too low (one community college course). This story touches on many of the state’s challenges caused by low pay for valuable work and the market failure of child care.

For more on what 2022 meant for early care and education in North Carolina, scroll to the bottom of this newsletter. EdNC will be out until the first week of January. Happy holidays, Early Bird readers! Thank you for reading in 2022. We’ll see you in the new year.