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Black History Month
February is Black History Month. As a late-stage boomer, I got almost none of this history in school, despite growing up in a majority Black city (Philadelphia) and a big academic focus on American History in my youth. I’ve tried to make up for this appalling lack of knowledge in the past few years by…
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Great Seattle Times Article on Racial Disproportionality in Education
The Seattle Times has a great article in today’s paper on racial disproportionality in outcomes for kids in the Seattle School District. The article talks about efforts to change things and makes a point that well-meaning approaches if not carried out with rigor and consistency over time don’t have much impact. The data series in…
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Children’s Alliance Hiring Early Learning Policy Staff
I just got the following mail from Jon Gould, the Deputy Director at the Children’s Alliance about positions there. Children’s Alliance is hiring an Early Learning Policy Director and a Pre-K Policy Associate. Our early learning policy advocacy focuses on expanding access to high-quality, affordable, culturally responsive early learning and care for Washington’s youngest kids,…
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Hard to imagine…
In the Chronicle of Social Change Jerry Milner, Donald Trump’s appointment to the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees federal child welfare funding and policy, speaks about his priorities in running the agency and improving outcomes for kids. The hard to imagine part is that I agree with almost…
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A new department to better serve children, youth, and families
Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill Thursday to restructure how the state serves at-risk children and youth by creating the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The governor also appointed Ross Hunter, director of the state’s Department of Early Learning, to lead DCYF. The new agency, after a yearlong transition period that begins this month,…
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Dosage Matters for Washington’s Preschool Kids!
Our goal as an agency is to get 90% of Washington’s children to be “ready for kindergarten,” and to have race and family income not be predictors of readiness. About 20% of Washington’s children are in families at or below 110% of the federal poverty level (FPL,) or about $24,000 for a family of four. …
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Mama Yaya meets Governor Inslee and Results Washington
Amelia Cruz, the owner and operator of Mama Yaya’s Child Care in Lacey was our guest at the Results Washington meeting yesterday. Results Washington is responsible for implementing Governor Inslee’s focus on lean management and continuous improvement. We review progress on key indicators of progress in outcomes. In this specific case we were looking at…
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Tranparency Provides Clarity
Sorry for the worst headline ever. Click here for the video above. This article in the Huffington Post from Allan Golston, President of US Programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation touches on an important topic – the power of the right information at the right time to help people make life-changing decisions. In…
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Censorship for Preschoolers?
I got a letter last week from an organization opposed to censorship. They were concerned about some language in one part of our “Early Achievers” rating system for childcare quality that has led some providers to believe that we will deduct points from their score if they have the “wrong” books on their shelves. The…
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Home visiting in Chinese!
And Vietnamese… Frank Ordway (DEL Assistant Director) and I met with a great group of home visitors last week at the Chinese Information and Service Center (CISC) in Seattle. We are the tall guys at the back of the group. They run a program jointly funded by DEL and King County United Way called “Parent-Child…