NAEYC announced today a three-year grant from the Gates Foundation to expand access to high-quality early childhood curriculum and strengthen NAEYC’s presence in the growing landscape of publicly-funded pre-kindergarten.
Early childhood educators do some of the most important work in our communities. Yet despite the skill and expertise the work requires, early childhood educators remain among the most underpaid professionals in the country.
Carlyn Rahynes, founding principal of Learning Through Play Pre-K Center, reflects on lessons learned and the significance of NAEYC's 100th anniversary.
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
Because of intensified pressure on teachers to improve students’ performance and prepare them for standardized tests, educators and children are now navigating a significant increase in the number of formal assessments they experience yearly.
There is a moment every early childhood educator knows. A child is deep in play, completely absorbed, doing something that looks, to an untrained eye, like nothing in particular.
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf 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 early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
Incredible learning unfolds in infant and toddler settings. The period from birth to age 3 represents a time of vast and exciting change as children move from early milestones to more advanced physical achievements.
This issue of Young Children explores what educator agency looks like in action, how it connects to intentional teaching, and how it benefits everyone in the early childhood ecosystem.
Toward Intentional Teaching: The Need for Educator Agency
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
The Spring 2026 issue of Educating Young Children is focused entirely on the preschool-to-kindergarten transition and reading it this week hit me differently than it might have at any other time.
The survey results and accompanying testimonies demonstrate a clear crisis of affordability for the early childhood education field and the children and families they serve.
The transition to kindergarten can be both exciting and challenging for young children and their families: Entering a new school environment means navigating new routines, expectations, social interactions, and approaches to individualized support.
The transition from preschool to kindergarten is an important part of this foundation: Research has shown that it can have lasting effects on a child’s well-being, including both short- and long-term academic impacts.
