Rights & Needs of Young Children
Defending the Early Years
DEY’s Mission
approaches to learning informed by child development theory and evidence-based research.
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.
What’s New at DEY?
The future is unpredictable, but one thing is sure: the challenges we face today—climate change, water scarcity, natural disasters, gun violence, income inequality, racial injustice, housing unaffordability, food insecurity, and inadequate access to healthcare—will intensify as we move deeper into the 21st century.
What role can early childhood education and care serve in helping us to address an uncertain future? This Summer Institute explores how the core values of our field can guide us in preparing for an unpredictable future. We invite you to join us as we explore how a commitment to values of Equity, Truth, and Care can support our efforts to resist threats of domination, control, power, racism, white supremacy, climate disaster, and environmental terrorism. Now more than ever, we must double down on what we know constitutes high-quality early childhood education care.
After we wrap our Healthy Identity in ECEC course, we will launch our third course in the RPS: In Defense of Quality: A Reflective Course on Whole-Child Development in ECE.
In this course, we bring our In Defense of ECEC campaign into the reflective practitioner space, with practical strategies for aligning care, education, development, and advocacy.
This course will include short videos, reflective workbooks, advocacy strategies, and live Zoom discussions beginning in May and running through September. Check out the course overview and subscribe today!
In this episode Carly Bedard shares her work as a play facilitator for adult early educators and how self-active play can transform your practice. Carly Bedard is a consultant, Master Play Coach, and author.
The DEY Podcast with Kisha Reid is a monthly discussion-styled show featuring educators, advocates and other changemakers about their grassroots projects, innovations in education and reimagining early childhood environments. Our goal is to amplify these voices so we can all learn and work toward a more equitable and playful environment for children. Check out all episodes here.
Check out our latest DEY Dialogue. Denisha talks with Deb Lawrence, President of the International Play Association USA Chapter, about the release of their 50th anniversary white paper and policy briefs.
Moderated by DEY Executive Director Denisha Jones, these dialogues aim to inspire and reaffirm our dedication to protecting and nurturing childhood. Join us in this important mission of defending childhood and advocating for the well-being of society’s youngest members.
Check out our previous dialogues on quality in ECEC, resisting book bans, and concerns about the Science of Reading here.
Author and illustrator Innosanto Nagara features P is for Palestine by Golbarg Bashi. You can find all of our Banned Book Club features here!
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. Each month, we will feature a banned early childhood book that we encourage you to read to the children in your life.
Are you interested in sharing a banned book? Email denishajones@dey.org.
DEY has released a new framework to support early childhood educators, caregivers, and parents in supporting young children’s healthy racial identity development. Fostering Healthy Identity Development in Young Children: Affirming Race, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Early Years is a framework for early childhood educators, caregivers, and parents to understand how racial identity develops and to support healthy development in the early years. Click on the read more button to download the framework.
Did you miss our webinar introducing the framework as part of the 2025 National Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action? You can watch the recording below!
Also check out the DEY 2025 BLMAS Resource List here!
The next phase in our campaign to Restore the Link Between High Quality and Child Development is to publish short campaign statements highlighting what we know supports child development. These brief statements will help you advocate for polices and practices based in supporting optimal whole child development!
Would you like to contribute to a statement? We’d love to include your stories related to our statement. You can share your thoughts by filling out each of these Google Forms that have specific questions for campaign statements 1-5 and6-10. You can also email your thoughts to denishajones@dey.org.
Click here to read and endorse our sign on statement.
SUPPORT FUNDING FOR HEAD START! With the recent release by the White House of initial budget guidelines for Fiscal Year…
Denisha talks with Deb Lawrence, President of the International Play Association USA Chapter, about the release of their 50th anniversary white paper and policy briefs.
Author and illustrator Innosanto Nagara features P is for Palestine by Golbarg Bashi.
In this episode Carly Bedard shares her work as a play facilitator for adult early educators and how self-active play can transform your practice. Carly Bedard is a consultant, Master Play Coach, and author.
Our puppetry collective Hermafrodita is based in the south of Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, and thanks to DEY’s mini-grant, we were able to provide a full arts program for kids in three underprivileged child care centers across the city. Our program’s primary objective was to validate and nurture children’s freedom of self-expression, creativity, and identity by widening the scope of gender roles through the arts.
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!
Help DEY continue its important work advocating for appropriate education for young children. Please Consider Making a Donation.
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