Women’s History Month: Celebrating Remarkable Women who Changed the World of Early Childhood Education

March has been officially declared Women’s History Month. The first efforts to distinguish a special time focusing on the contributions of women to a variety of fields date back to President Carter recognizing the Week of March 8^th, 1980, as National Women’s History Week:

Too often, the women were unsung, and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America were as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.

Throughout the years, a series of proclamations were issued to designate the month of March as a national celebration of women. As we take this opportunity to highlight the critical role women played in shaping American history, culture, and society, we must also learn about the contributions women have made and still contribute to the field of early childhood education.

Here are just a few examples of great women who were, and are, dedicated and passionate about child development, early childhood leadership, child advocacy, and social justice. Please take a moment to read and learn about these inspirational professionals and their stories.

Paula Jorde Bloom

“What most people want more than anything is the chance to belong and make a difference in something they value.”

Dr. Paula Jorde Bloom was the founder of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership and a distinguished author. She published several widely read books, including the Director’s Toolbox management book series, as well as assessment tools, namely the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), the Program Administration Scale (PAS), and the Business Administration Scale for Family Child Care (BAS). Dr. Bloom was a professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at National Louis University and the Michael W. Louis Endowed Chair. She spent her early years as a preschool and kindergarten teacher and later as a center director and administrator of a campus laboratory school, quickly realizing the vital role of early childhood leaders. She was a pioneer in developing early childhood leadership training and improving early childhood professional standards. Dr. Bloom’s legacy lives on through the work of the McCormick Center and a scholarship in her name, which supports new leaders who, just like her, are devoted and passionate about building strong early childhood programs and systems.

Marian Wright Edelman

“Service is the rent we pay for being.”

Marian Wright Edelman is a founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). She has used her voice to advocate for civil rights and then honed her focus on disadvantaged children and families. Her career began in the mid-1960s upon graduating from Spelman College and Yale Law School, becoming the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She is also the first woman elected to the board of directors of Yale University. Her public policy efforts have been focused on securing funding for early childhood programs such as Head Start, improving the foster care system, supporting adoption services, or increasing Medicaid coverage. She has received the highest civilian award – the Presidential Medal of Freedom and has also been awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Magda Gerber

“Having respect for the world is when you allow people to be what they are.”

Magda Gerber was a Hungarian early childhood education specializing in infant-toddler development. She is probably best known as a founder of the Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), which introduced a new approach in infant-toddler research and learning practices. The key principle of the RIE method is respect – viewing infants as individuals and unique human beings who are responsible for their own learning. Mrs. Gerber believed that by showing love and respect to infants, parents and caregivers demonstrate trust in their ability to become active learners. By carefully observing babies interacting with other people and their environments, we learn how to understand the infant’s communication and needs. Mrs. Gerber taught early development classes at the University of California, California State University, and Pacific Oaks College. She provided professional training classes at the RIE center in Los Angeles. She was a lecturer at early childhood conferences and an author, best known for her book, Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect.

Frieda Mitchell

“I think one thing that we accomplished was the ability or the opportunity to speak and to be heard.”

Frieda Mitchell has received national and international recognition as a devoted child advocate and civil rights activist. Mrs. Mitchell served as Executive Director of United Communities for Child Development (UCCD), a first-of-its-kind program that advocated for utilizing state and federal funding to support community child care programs. As the UCCD approach was replicated in other states, including Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Mississippi, Mrs. Mitchell became heavily involved in daycare policy discussions. She played a central role in integrating the county’s then racially segregated schools. Her efforts led her to be elected to the Beaufort County School Board, becoming one of its first black school board members. Among her numerous accolades are the prestigious John D. Rockefeller, III, Public Service Award; the Marian Wright Edelman Award for Service to Children; and the Penn Center 1862 Circle. To celebrate Mrs. Mitchell’s achievements, the Frieda R. Mitchell Early Childhood Development Student Award has been established at the Technical College of the Lowcountry (TCL).

Malala Yousafzai

“If we want to achieve our goal, then let us empower ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.”

Malala’s story is truly inspiring – at the age of seventeen, she has become the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate and only the second Pakistani to receive the award. She is a fierce advocate for human rights and has been prized for her fight “against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” At the age of 11, Malala anonymously contributed to a blog on the Urdu language site of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She used that opportunity to write about life under the Taliban’s oppression and advocate for educational opportunities for children, young girls, and women. With the help of her father, she used other media outlets and started a public campaign to allow girls free access to education. She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize and was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize in 2011. That made her a target, and one year later, on the bus home from school, the Taliban attempted to assassinate Malala. She has survived and now resides in the United Kingdom. Along with her father, she has founded Malala Fund, and her work continues.

The field of early childhood education is largely driven by women. Women have led and continue to guide our work – not only as committed early childhood educators but also as inspiring leaders, dedicated researchers, passionate authors, and outspoken advocates. Paula Jorde Bloom, Frieda Mitchell, Magda Gerber, Marian Wright Edelman, and Malala Yousafzai have shown us what determination, hard work, and devotion truly mean. Their impact and legacy are ever-present. As you celebrate Women’s History Month, you show great respect by sharing their stories and stories of other great women with your staff, colleagues, and families in your program.

To learn more, please visit:

Paula Jorde Bloom’s Story

Marian Wright Edelman’s Story

Magda Gerber’s Story

Frieda Mitchell’s Story

Malala Yousafzai’s Story

Daria Rymarzak is a Report Specialist and she is also pursuing a doctoral degree in community psychology at National Louis University’s College of Professional Studies and Advancement. Daria earned a baccalaureate degree in psychology from Roosevelt University and a graduate degree in child development and early childhood administration from Erikson Institute. She is interested in supporting initiatives leading to integrated early learning and child development systems, connecting early childhood practice with policy and research, and the functioning and effectiveness of community-based coalitions addressing the importance of early years.

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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.