Early Childhood Policy and Planning leverages the new investments made by New York State to expand Universal Pre-Kindergarten and improve the quality of early childhood programs. Such expansion will help to better meet the needs of working families.
Children living in poverty face a number of risk factors that jeopardize their well being and life outcomes. Quality early interventions for children demonstrate significant gains in education, health, and development.
Although early childhood programs are funded by a variety of sources including the Federal Head Start program, these funding streams often fail to meet the demand for early childhood education
Experience proves that preschool education, such as Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK), leads to improved academic and social outcomes. It also indicates that for young children, investing in quality preschool education at an early age is the most cost-effective strategy and yields greatest results when targeted to at-risk populations. Furthermore, vigorous evaluations of early childhood education programs demonstrate that investments made in early childhood education result in significant government savings from reduced expenditures on special education, grade retention, public assistance and other benefits.
The Center for Economic Opportunity funded two coordinator positions, one at the Administration for Children Services, and another at the Department of Education. These individuals are conducted gap analyses of early childhood services, developed strategies for implemented common performance standards measure, and coordinated expansion efforts across both agencies.
The City is also working to increase access to early intervention services for at-risk children from low-income families in an effort to identify and address developmental needs at an earlier age. One in particular is the joint effort of Administration for Children's Services and the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene to ensure that all young children involved in preventive services are screened for development delays and referred to appropriate services
Low-income young children whose entering pre-kindergarten.
Expansion of services to 7,000 UPK students.
