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Blog posts by: Julie McConnell

A presidential gift: State of the Union call for investment in early childhood education
By Julie McConnell As an early childhood advocate, I was encouraged to hear President Obama highlight the importance of early learning as a policy priority in his State of the Union Address. Early childhood education, while widely recognized as important for healthy kids, families and communities, has never attracted the political support needed to ensure true “universal access” for all families. The President’s commitment to expand access to high-quality early education is significant, and he...
1 week 3 days ago | more
Want your children to be good learners? Read to them
By Julie McConnell I have written on several occasions about the importance of investing in early childhood education as a community development strategy, one documented and supported by some of the nation’s leading economists. However, it also pays to state the obvious – as pointed out recently by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman asked in a November 19 commentary, “How About Better Parents?” Friedman cites recent research that highlights the power of...
1 year 25 weeks ago | more
Early education should be a shared responsibility
By Julie McConnell This recent blog post by the Castine Advocacy Coalition for Early Education in Maine offers a solid and timely reminder of why states and local communities need to share the responsibility of investing in early care and education. We know from research about the importance of early brain development, and about what can happen when toxic stressors impede that development, that investments in proven early child development strategies nurture healthy, happy children and...
2 years 6 weeks ago | more
Fed economist calls early childhood education a great investment
By Julie McConnell Why would an economist care about early childhood education? Because investment in early childhood education makes economic sense and because it makes business sense. "Early childhood development programs are rarely portrayed as economic development initiatives, and we think that is a mistake. Such programs, if they appear at all, are at the bottom of the economic development lists for state and local governments. "They should be at the top." Rob Grunewald and Art Rolnick...
2 years 11 weeks ago | more
Monitor editorial should be required reading for legislature
By Julie McConnell Kudos to the Concord Monitor for Sunday's editorial highlighting the importance of affordable child care to an economic recovery. The Monitor editorial provides an intelligent and concise description of why access to quality, affordable child care is a crucial component of the state's economy.  The editorial also makes the business case for why the availability of child care is so important to employee productivity, and how it can contribute to the bottom line of any...
2 years 20 weeks ago | more
Toni Ellsworth honored for excellence in child care
By Julie McConnell Early Learning NH announced today that Toni Ellsworth, executive director of Rise… for baby and family in Keene will be among the recipients of its 2010 Excellence in Child Care Awards. Congratulations to Rise and to Toni, a past Community Loan Fund borrower (and recent bus tour host), for being recognized for their excellence in serving children and families! Rise provides early intervention services to families of infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities. The...
1 week 2 days ago | more
Broken promises to working families
By Julie McConnell A recent New York Times article demonstrates that the child care crisis is real and daunting for working families. Government-funded child care assistance programs across the U.S. – including here in New Hampshire – are unable to cover the increasing number of families who cannot afford child care, leading to the creation of waiting lists. The federal Child Care Development Block Grant was created as part of the welfare reform act in 1996, to help people move from welfare to...
2 years 42 weeks ago | more
Heckman Equation: Policy solutions begin at birth
By Julie McConnell I recently referenced an op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Escaping From Poverty,” in which Nicholas Kristof advocated early childhood education as a major tool for fighting poverty. Kristof was influenced by the work of Professor James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Professor Heckman has conducted research on the economic benefits of investing in quality early care and education programs, becoming an “unlikely messenger...
2 years 42 weeks ago | more
Early education as poverty fighter? Yes!
By Julie McConnell Nicholas Kristof's column in the March 24 New York Times offered "the secrets" of fighting poverty with programs and strategies that have proven effective – the two most important being education and jobs. Atop his list of interventions that truly make a difference in altering the cycle of poverty was quality early childhood education. Kristof made the case for what those in the field of early care and education have known for a long time – that solid...
3 years 1 week ago | more
Poor families dig deeper for child care
By Julie McConnell A policy brief from the Carsey Institute at UNH finds that low-income and impoverished families pay disproportionately more for child care services than do families with more resources. In the report Low Income and Impoverished Families Pay More Disproportionately for Child Care, the authors found that “Working families with young children living in poverty pay 32 percent of their monthly family income on child care, nearly five times more than families at 200 percent of...
3 years 1 week ago | more