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Recommendations for Key Stakeholders

The Purpose of the Leadership Forum

The Leadership Forum is one important mechanism that the Child Care Bureau uses to develop policy and research recommendations and provide technical assistance to State, Territorial, and Tribal child care grantees and others on emerging and pivotal issues. Since 1995, Leadership Forums have focused attention on critical topic areas such as rural services, inclusion, mental health, infants and toddlers, child care issues of the Hispanic community, and, most recently, Literacy in Early Care and Education Settings.

Each Leadership Forum is a one-day meeting of leaders in the child care field who share information, develop recommendations, and serve as catalysts for sustained action toward identified goals. Publications and other products are developed to capture information shared at the meeting. Past Forums have resulted in a variety of Federal technical assistance activities, including the MAP to Inclusive Child Care Project, the Child Care Research Collaboration and Archive, and a focus on child care resource and referral services.

The 2002 Leadership Forum on Literacy

An opening address on the importance of early literacy set the stage for the keynote presentation by Dr. Susan Landry, who provided an overview of recent research on early literacy and its links to practice. Next, a panel highlighted State and community efforts to support early literacy development. In the afternoon, facilitated workgroup sessions focused on specific areas related to literacy. These topics included:

  • child care delivery systems;
  • professional development;
  • family literacy;
  • culture and language;
  • infants and toddlers; and
  • kith and kin.

The participants were charged with:

  • identifying key issues and challenges on the intersect between early literacy and the workgroup topic;
  • developing specific recommendations for practitioners, administrators, and policy-makers;
  • increasing awareness of innovative practices; and
  • identifying available resources to support Federal, State, and local action on the issues.

The Forum closed with a summation of key issues raised during the day.

The recommendations listed below are highlights of those offered by participants in the Child Care Bureau's National Leadership Forum on Literacy in Early Care and Education Settings in February 2002.

Parents and Relatives

  • Read with your child daily
  • Surround your child with language experiences (e.g., conversation, songs, storytelling, books, and magazines)
  • Provide writing materials for pre-writing practice
  • Limit TV viewing
  • Visit libraries and bookstores
  • Choose a quality child care provider who incorporates early literacy in daily routines

Child Care Providers

  • Provide opportunities for rich language experiences for children from birth on through play, exploration, and routines that emphasize talking, speaking, using sounds and vocabulary, singing, and other "fun" pre-literacy activities
  • Link with local libraries to expand access to books, audiotapes, and other materials and resources
  • Incorporate "explicit teaching" in language and pre-writing skills
  • Provide books that children can "read" with parents at home
  • Provide books in children's home language and set in culturally and linguistically appropriate settings

Early Childhood Teacher Educators

  • Improve the translation of research into practice, so that programs and teachers can make better use of existing research
  • Integrate social and emotional development, early literacy, early numeracy, and school readiness in educational discussions at every opportunity
  • Identify effective models of integrated curricula
  • Create culturally and linguistically relevant training
  • Provide college-level classes in participants' home languages
  • Examine models for mentoring, coaching, and apprenticeship
  • Use distance-learning and other technology to deliver training
  • Align training with a defined educational outcome (e.g., CEUs, CDA, BA, or MA)

Local Agencies and Community Organizations

  • Fund child care resource and referral agencies to stimulate community partnerships and training on early literacy
  • Disseminate information on the neurological benefits of bilingual or dual language immersion
  • Provide "literacy kits" in hospitals for the parents of newborns
  • Build community partnerships, especially with health agencies, employers, faith-based organizations, libraries, youth mentors, and senior volunteers
  • Involve minority communities in identifying effective means of outreach

Researchers

  • Create core areas of agreement regarding research on literacy
  • Clarify the definition of "evidence-based practice" and the links between the research and the recommended practice
  • Measure effectiveness of literacy initiatives
  • Create assessment tools that are linguistically and culturally appropriate and standardized for children's home languages
  • Compare the effectiveness of various professional development delivery methods

Policy-makers, Administrators, and Funders

  • Create public awareness campaigns on the impact of quality child care on school readiness and early literacy
  • Add to the CCDF core purposes children's early development, including literacy
  • Build literacy standards into licensing standards and into tiered reimbursement
  • Link compensation with teacher training, thereby reducing the disruptiveness of provider turnover on literacy efforts
  • Define the skill sets and outcomes for children related to literacy and school readiness
  • Promote the benefits for children of bilingual competence
  • Create incentives for business involvement in literacy initiatives
  • Develop a financing framework modeled after the higher education system

Child Care Bureau

  • Showcase States progressing toward funding a child care system that promotes quality
  • Promote best State practices for consistency and quality of care (e.g., reimbursement rates, family eligibility, licensing, and resources)
  • Incorporate incentives in CCDF for State literacy standards
  • Appoint representatives from minority communities to advise the Bureau on priorities for cultural and linguistic issues
  • Establish a network or institute to address professional development and licensing issues from minority perspectives
  • Encourage Head Start to include child care providers in training
  • Publish blended funding guidelines to promote acceptance of partnerships by program auditors
  • Encourage the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to disseminate literacy information to providers

Continue
on to Good Start, Grow Smart: The Bush Administration's Early Childhood Initiative

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of Literacy in Early Care and Education Settings: National Leadership Forum Summary Materials

 
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