Rights & Needs of Young Children
Defending the early years
DEY’s Primary Goals
- To advocate at the grassroots, local, state, regional, and federal levels for education policies based on child development theory and research.
- To mobilize the early childhood community to speak up for age-appropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices that are based on research.
- To promote appropriate practices in early childhood classrooms and to support educators in counteracting policies and practices that undermine whole child health and optimal learning.
DEY’s Mission
approaches to learning informed by child development theory and evidence-based research.
What’s New at DEY?
DEY is excited to announce the expansion of our Advisory Board to a group of 24 National Advisors. These advisors bring a wealth of professional expertise, passion, energy, and ideas to DEY and will be a valuable resource for our organization. With their support and connections to local, national, and international resources, institutions, and colleagues, DEY can enhance our work and better serve our community. We invite you to read more about our National Advisors on our website and stay tuned for brief welcoming videos introducing each of them.
Our mission is to work for just, equitable, and quality early childhood education and care for every young child. Quality has always been an important component in ensuring that all young children have access to early care and education. Nonetheless, defining, measuring, and guaranteeing high quality demonstrates the complexities and difficulty in making high quality for all a reality. What does quality mean to you? How do you demonstrate quality in your program or classroom? How can the systems used to measure quality be improved? What does high quality mean in relation to justice and equity for disadvantaged and marginalized children? The 2024 Sixth Annual DEY Summer Institute will address these questions and many more. We hope you will join us in our work to advance a vision and practice of high-quality early childhood education and care. Register today!
Rethinking Schools, Defending the Early Years, and Black Lives Matter at School partnered for this conversation on Centering Collective Value in the Early Years. This webinar event celebrates the 2024 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.
This year’s Week of Action theme is “Centering and Celebrating Collective Value.” The Black Lives Matter at School guiding principle of Collective Values states, “We are guided by the fact that all Black lives, regardless of sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, economic status, ability, disability, education, location, age, immigration status, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, matter. None of us are free until we are all free.”
Defending the Early Years Executive Director Denisha Jones and Rethinking Schools Executive Director Cierra Kaler-Jones will be in conversation with Makai Kellogg, an early childhood educator and Equity and Diversity Coordinator at School for Friends in Washington, DC; Akiea “Ki” Gross, an early childhood educator, creator, former classroom teacher, instructional coach, and cultural organizer; and Laleña Garcia a Brooklyn kindergarten teacher and member of the NYC Black Lives Matter at School steering committee.
This webinar event celebrates Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. This year’s Week of Action theme is “Centering and Celebrating Collective Value.” The Black Lives Matter at School guiding principle of Collective Values states, “We are guided by the fact that all Black lives, regardless of sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, economic status, ability, disability, education, location, age, immigration status, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, matter. None of us are free until we are all free.”
(Denisha’s opening remarks)
We are excited to announce the formation of six DEY Regional Childhood Defender Working Groups.
We are recruiting early childhood advocates to join local groups that can work together to advance our mission and our campaign on restoring the link between high quality and child development.
DEY Regional Childhood Defender Working Groups allow our community of early childhood educators, advocates, and parents to ensure that the people working in and affected by early childhood policy and practice are the voice of what policy and practice changes need to be enacted.
Together we will document how grassroots groups of early childhood advocates can produce the change we need to protect childhood.
Check out the groups below and apply to join a regional group that serves your area.
No regional group in your area? Stay tuned as we hope to launch new groups in the future!
DEY continues to resist the attempts to censor children’s literature that explores race, gender, sexual orientation, and the truth about our country’s history. In an effort to support early childhood educators, parents, and advocates, we are launching the DEY Banned Book Club. Each month, we will feature a banned early childhood book that we encourage you to read to the children in your life. Reading to children about complex topics is the best way we can build a foundation for their ability to make sense now and work to address them when they are older.
Our recent Banned Book Club features include Ann Ricketts sharing the book “All Are Welcome” and Michele Hemingway Pullen sharing “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness”. Learn more about these amazing books and why we must resist attempts to deny children access to diverse literature.
Are you interested in sharing a banned book? Email denishajones@dey.org to sign up for the DEY Banned Book Club!
In Defense of Early Childhood Education and Care
Restoring the Link Between High Quality and Child Development
Last year, we launched our first advocacy campaign: In Defense of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resorting the Link Between High Quality and Child Development. This campaign aims to reaffirm our commitment as early childhood educators to the principles of child development and resist mandates and policies not based on child development.
Since the launch, we have gained over 100 endorsers, hosted a town hall, and added references to our What We Know About Child Development list. Next week at the NAEYC conference in Nashville, TN, we will continue promoting the campaign by sharing ideas on linking our practices as educators and advocates to what we know about child development.
Our second year of the campaign will include short videos and fact sheets that you can use to advocate for practices that are rooted in child development. Our focus will shift to explore what we mean by high quality. We know quality is a significant issue in early childhood education and care. However, it is often conflated with bureaucratic rules and requirements, making identifying actual high-quality practices in ECEC challenging. We will conduct research and host town halls to develop a high-quality framework based on the knowledge and experiences of educators and providers rooted in what we know about fostering optimal child development. We hope that this work will support you in creating a just and equitable early childhood environment.
We invite you to check out the references for our statement and send us any that you think should be included. If you cannot join us in Nashville, please look for a reflection in the November newsletter. And please share our statement with your networks. Our goal for year 2 is to have 500 endorsers!
Click here to read and endorse our sign on statement.
The bills signed by Governor Whitmer would impact teachers’ unions, pay in Michigan’s largest school district, and could help lure…
In this episode, Kisha Reid talks with Denisha Jones about her new nature-based discovery child care program, her visions for inspiring more teachers to choose the power of play, and her plans to slow down.
Outdoor Hut: We believe that our programme gives a lovely opportunity for children and their parents to experience real play and support children’s development at their own pace.
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Edgar Klugman, a member of DEY’s Advisory Board. Dr….
DEY seeks to rally parents and educators to take action on policies affecting the education of young children, by encouraging them to speak out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices.
DEY provides mini-grants of between $200 and $500 to individuals and organizations to help foster work in communities across the country. DEY’s first mini-grant, awarded in 2014, resulted in a rally for play that took place in Minneapolis.
DEY
Are you concerned about the direction that education policy is going? We are, too!
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