Decades of research continue to confirm the obvious; poverty is bad for children. As evidenced by a 2015 report from the Urban Institute, the more time children spend living in poverty, the worse their outcomes are across nearly every domain. Compared to their peers who are never poor, the nearly 40 percent of children who experience poverty at some point during their childhood fare worse in educational achievement and employment, teen births, and even involvement with the criminal justice system. When we fail to alleviate generational poverty we prevent our children﹘and our society as a whole﹘from reaching their fullest potential.
Merrill Gay
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Prioritize children and families; defend the Office of Early Childhood
Faced with a projected two-year budget deficit of over $4.6 billion, you and your administration will soon be confronted with many difficult choices. Amidst these challenging decisions, and with an eye toward the future of Connecticut, we offer you one easy answer. To ensure that young children and their families can thrive while contributing to the shared prosperity of our state, preserve the independence, momentum, and power of the Office of Early Childhood.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Office of Early Childhood merger takes us back, not forward
It is troubling that several of the budget proposals floating around the State Capitol call for the merger of the Office of Early Childhood into the State Department of Education. It was just three years ago that we finally brought together services touching families with young children from five different agencies into one stand-alone Office of Early Childhood, under the direction of a commissioner.
Posted inEducation
Op-Ed: Low wages threaten Connecticut’s progress on early learning
It is time for the state to start living up to the standards it has set for early childhood education. It must allocate enough money to pay better wages to attract and keep the best teachers.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Low wages threaten Connecticut’s progress on early learning
It is time for the state to start living up to the standards it has set for early childhood education. It must allocate enough money to pay better wages to attract and keep the best teachers.