“Our conversations about recovery and rebuilding [are] to not go back
to the way the system was. Really, let’s dismantle it and let’s rebuild a new system
that truly centers the experiences of families and particularly Black and brown families,
so that it becomes a system of healing versus harming.”
– Parent Advocate
Early learning systems were vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also demonstrated remarkable resilience. The immediate effects and longer-term strain on the system are still being felt by children, providers, workers, families, and communities; yet the deep disruption has also offered the possibility of re-inventing and re-imagining this essential system.
Voices from the Field: Building Resilience Capacities in Early Learning is the culmination of Engage R+D and Equal Measure’s literature review and interviews with national, state, and local early learning practitioners, advocates, and system leaders, conducted between the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021. Our findings can inform strategies for rebuilding early learning into a system that is better able to withstand shocks to its operations in a post-pandemic, crisis-prone world.
The report explores the impact of the pandemic on early learning infrastructure, the factors facilitating response and recovery during the crisis, and what it will take to collectively build more resilient early learning systems in the future.
