The American Recovery and Reinvest-ment Plan provides an important opportunity to help the United States get back on its feet by creating new jobs and supporting programs which provide essential services to young children and their families, while contributing to the economy of the country.

This transforming moment needs thoughtful planning. Community and statewide planning groups must assess needs and create a vision of what they want to accomplish, detailing expected outcomes. The good news is that states have been serving as laboratories of innovation over the past few years so new ideas are emerging everyday. The bad news is that state budgets have been stretched and quality and expansion seriously threatened.

Working across levels of government and funding streams, a plan of action should be put into place with input from a wide range of stakeholders. Investments should be tailored to the needs of children and families most affected by the economic slowdown and in ways that provide long-term and sustained impact.

A new era calls for a set of guiding principles that can result in a new way of thinking about early childhood. For example, we should:

• move to common standards and supports across early childhood programs
• recognize that low-income children need more intensive and comprehensive services that start earlier to prevent the achievement gap
• provide expanded support for teaching staff
• reach out to parents as a core component of all early childhood services
• design services to meet the needs of working families
• assure continuity across programs serving children 0-8
• link health services to early childhood programs.

Recommendations

Early childhood funding is expected through various federal programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, Child Care and Development Funds, Title I, IDEA, and other education, health, and housing resources. Below are three concrete recommendations for states and communities to consider:

• Develop stronger infrastructure across early childhood programs. Just as the country needs to build transportation and energy infrastructure, now is the time to invest in better early childhood jobs, improved standards and monitoring, more coordinated data, and improved facilities.

— Better Jobs. To create better early childhood jobs we need improvements in the higher education delivery system, tuition support, improved compensation, and new ways to provide mentoring and coaching to teaching staff. Special efforts should be made to improve the ability of early childhood teachers to work with second language learners and to promote family literacy.

— Quality Standards. With regards to quality improvements, states need to choose or develop a set of common standards that can be used across early childhood programs regardless of funding stream. These standards can be drawn from quality rating systems, state Pre-K standards, and/or Head Start and Early Head Start Standards. However, standards alone are not enough; additional resources are needed to meet the standards, to provide technical assistance, and to assure monitoring.

— Improved facilities. Good facilities help assure high-quality programs, yet all across the country there is a lack of well-designed spaces for young children. New mechanisms should be created to help programs finance the construction and renovation of buildings and to assure the greening of early childhood programs — from better spaces indoors and outside and to 'nature-friendly' curriculum.

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