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?
In preparation for our 6th Annual Summer Institute: Advancing Quality: In Defense of Early Childhood Education and Care, we are conducting a survey to gather insights on quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC).
We seek input from early childhood teachers, directors, providers, and parents to understand their perspectives on quality and how it influences their work and children. We invite participation from individuals across all ECEC settings.
The survey will be open from April 1st to May 4th and will take approximately 20-25 minutes to complete. Your input is invaluable in advancing quality in early childhood education and care.
Please take our survey today and share the recruitment graphic below with your networks!
DAY 1 JUNE 24 4-6 PM EST: TODAY’S QUALITY LANDSCAPE
We begin the 6th Annual Summer Institute on Day 1 by discussing Today’s Quality Landscape. Some of our guest speakers for day 1 include:
Amy O’Leary
Dale Farran
DAY 2 JUNE 25 4-6 PM EST:
ADVANCING QUALITY: POLICY AND PRACTICE
On Day 2, we focus on Advancing Quality: Policy and Practice. We invited three Bankstreet Early Childhood Policy Fellows to share their work on advancing quality.
Danielle Johnson-Offei
Jamie Bonczyk
Suzette Espinoza-Cruz
Stay tuned as we announce our lineup for Day 3 and finalize all 2024 Summer Institute speakers! Read more and register.
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.
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 DEY National Advisor Melinda Marshall sharing the book “Neither” 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!
Neither
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.
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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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