Early Childhood Advocacy for Beginners | Part I | McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership

Editor’s Note: This is part 1 of a two-part series. Read Part 2 here.

When I think about advocacy I have images of talking to politicians, trying to convince them to push through or support some policy. It always seems so daunting and formal. But advocacy doesn’t have to be difficult or structured! It can be as simple as talking to friends, family, neighbors, and others in your community.

Sometimes being so immersed in the early childhood community I forget how the knowledge I have about what is best for young children isn’t common knowledge. When I talk to family and friends about what I do or about what is going on with their young children in their child care situation or school, I’m surprised by how something I say which seems like common knowledge to me is really a light bulb moment for them. I’ve also been surprised when people share that my excitement and passion for early childhood is inspiring to them or changes the way they think about an issue.

STARTING WITH YOUR OWN STORY

I like to think of it as my own personal grassroots type of advocacy, where all I have to do is share with others what high quality early childhood education looks like and what it takes to achieve it. Sometimes it’s as simple as sharing articles or listserv posts that I receive.

I’m sure if you asked anyone on the street today if they expect the government to provide elementary and secondary education, they would look at you like you were crazy for asking. “Of course, it should be provided–duh!” would probably be the response you would get. But, if you asked the same thing about early childhood education you would probably get a lot more thoughtful looks and maybe less definitive answers.

By talking about the importance of early childhood education and getting the average citizen–not just politicians–to understand how important it is there is the possibility for significant change. If we can change perceptions to be, “Duh–of course every child from birth to school-age should be able to access free high-quality early childhood education,” we will have made significant progress.

I encourage you to have your own little two to three-minute elevator pitch about early childhood education (whatever aspect you are passionate about) to share when a moment arrives. For me, I’ve been able to see an impact when I can share a personal story or when I seem to get fired up as I talk about an issue that is close to my heart. A lot of advocacy is becoming comfortable talking about the issues you are passionate about with anyone who will listen. The challenge is to talk to those who don’t want to listen. So, whatever it is that you are passionate about make sure that you share that passion to get others on board.

KEEP UP WITH WHAT’S HAPPENING

Keep current on the latest trends that are happening so you can share that information as well. I’d like to leave you with a list of resources that some of the faculty and staff at the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership look to for staying current on issues related to early childhood education. I’ve included the tag line, mission statement, or a brief description of the resource.

American Academy of Pediatrics – “Dedicated to the health of all children.”
Build Initiative – “The BUILD Initiative supports state leaders in their work to develop a comprehensive system of programs, policies and services that serve the needs of young children and their families. This systems building approach effectively prepares our youngest children for a successful future, while carefully using private and public resources.”
Child Care Aware – This organization’s e-newsletter has a good listing of national happenings and research synopsis.
Children and Nature Network – “Together we can create a world where every child can play, learn and grow in nature.”
CLASP – This organization works toward policy solutions that work for low income people. One of their issues is child care and early education.
ECEC (Early Care and Education Consortium) – This organization is a voice for child care providers in Congress.
Education Week – This website (and also print publication) provides a broader picture of education happenings and hot conversations in our country. A special web section on early childhood spotlights national news on our field.
Exchange Everyday “Supporting early childhood education professionals worldwide in their efforts to craft thriving environments for children and adults.”
First Five Years Fund – “Through information, advocacy, and outreach the First Five Years Fund works with policymakers, experts, business leaders and advocates to advance federal investment in quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children from birth to age five.”
Frank Porter Graham – “Advancing knowledge. Enhancing lives. For nearly 50 years, FPG’s research, technical assistance, outreach, and service have shaped how the nation cares for and educates young children.”
Illinois Action for Children – “Illinois Action for Children is a catalyst for organizing, developing and supporting strong families and powerful communities where children matter most.”
Illinois Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development – “Building the capacity of educational leaders to enhance the quality of teaching and learning.”
Illinois Early Learning Project – “A source of evidence-based, reliable information on early care and education for families, caregivers, and teachers of young children in Illinois. Funded by the Illinois State Board of Education.”
Legislator look up – This is one of several sites that allows you to locate your legislators.
McCormick Center Research Notes – These digestible quarterly electronic notes keep you up-to-speed on new research surrounding early childhood leadership.
National Association for the Education of Young Children – “NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse, dynamic early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.”
National Women’s Law Center – “We champion laws and policies that work for women and families.” One of their focuses is on child care and early learning.
Nature Explore – “Working with advocates like you, Nature Explore transforms children’s lives through research-based outdoor classroom design services, educator workshops, and natural products.”
The Ounce – “In Illinois and in states across the country, the Ounce of Prevention Fund advocates for early childhood education programs that are proven to be effective in narrowing the achievement gap and that support the healthy development of vulnerable young children.”
The Whole Child – “Each child, in each school, in each of our communities deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. That’s what a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement really is.”
Twitter #ECE – Search this hashtag for the minute-by-minute pulse of ECE announcements and resources in our field.
World Forum Foundation – “The mission of the World Forum Foundation is to promote an on-going global exchange of ideas on the delivery of quality services for young children in diverse settings.”
Zero to Three – This is a “national, nonprofit organization that provides parents, professionals and policymakers the knowledge and know-how to nurture early development.”

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed. Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.