We have all heard the phrase “built to last.” It evokes images of strength and durability. It means taking the time to lay a solid foundation, whether we are building a house, onboarding new team members or tilling fields in preparation for a crop. The same principle of building a strong base should guide how Arkansas structures its support for students, families and educators.
At the recent annual Arkansas Department of Education Summit in Hot Springs, Deputy Commissioner Stacy Smith challenged attendees to think differently about our state’s education system. As she noted, far too often, we take a remediation-first approach, working to help students catch up after they have already fallen behind. Instead, she urged the crowd to think in terms of acceleration. How can we collectively create the conditions that allow every student in our state to progress and achieve?
At the Center for Early Learning Solutions at Forward Arkansas, we firmly believe the most effective acceleration strategy is one that provides children and educators with a sturdy foundation. It is a viewpoint backed by decades of scientific research showing that the greatest opportunity to shape a child’s future does not begin in kindergarten but in the years before.
According to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University in Massachusetts, nearly 90 percent of brain development occurs before age 5. During those early years, responsive interactions with parents, caregivers and educators expand the neural connections that inform children’s future learning, behavior and health. Those experiences are the building blocks of school readiness and beyond, boosting language development, executive functioning, problem-solving and social-emotional skills. In short, early learning sets the stage for lifelong learning, workforce readiness and economic prosperity.
Leaders across Arkansas’ mixed-delivery early childhood system understand that reality firsthand. Public school districts, Head Start programs, nonprofits, faith-based programs, family child-care homes, and community and private providers all play essential roles in meeting the varied needs of children and families. Many sustain these crucial services despite persistent staffing, administrative and financial pressures because they see the difference early learning makes for children and their communities. They know that when students begin kindergarten with robust language, literacy, executive functioning and social-emotional skills, teachers can spend more time building on those strengths to extend learning from day one.
How can we help ensure children and families across our state have access to high-quality early childhood care and education that set them up for lasting success? Just as crucially, how can we equip early childhood providers with the operational tools and infrastructure necessary to deliver these experiences sustainably? Those are the urgent questions driving our efforts at the Center for Early Learning Solutions.
Last fall, Forward Arkansas conducted a landscape analysis to examine access, affordability, quality and workforce conditions within our state’s early childhood field. We found significant barriers for both families and providers, from long waitlists and limited seats to operational inefficiencies, but we also uncovered latent opportunities for improvement, such as expanding providers’ access to high-quality instructional materials and shared services and modernizing their tools and data systems.
Today, working alongside early childhood providers, local leaders, state agencies and other partners, the Center for Early Learning Solutions is addressing these areas of impact by piloting practical solutions to help the mixed-delivery system operate more effectively and sustainably. That includes testing technology-enabled business supports that can reduce administrative burdens, improve compliance and reporting, and strengthen subsidy-payment tracking and revenue capture — all to give providers better, clearer information for more strategic decision-making.
In partnership with early childhood local leads, we are also helping elevate best practices to enhance peer learning and complement, rather than duplicate, assistance already available across the state. By helping providers spend less time navigating fragmented systems and more time supporting children and families, our goal is to strengthen quality and preserve access.
Historically, early childhood and K-12 have been positioned as either/or investments, but it should be a both/and strategy. Since 2015, Forward Arkansas has focused on strengthening education across our state by ensuring students have access to high-quality learning opportunities and educators have the necessary support to help kids thrive in their classrooms.
Expanding our efforts to the foundational years that shape school readiness is a natural progression of that commitment. By strengthening the early childhood system, we can accelerate our progress to deliver better outcomes for students, communities and our state.
Jamie Rayford is the executive director of the Center for Early Learning Solutions at Forward Arkansas, which is focused on strengthening access to high-quality, sustainable early childhood care and education.
