Our New Online Forum on Early Ed: Come Visit and Post

Last week, the Early Education Initiative hosted a forum on education policy connections across the “birth-through-third-grade” spectrum. The forum inspired rich discussion and cross-pollination of ideas across several sectors. Though it was a long day, participants didn’t want the conversation to end.

It doesn’t have to. We have created an online discussion space that is open to anyone interested in discussing how to improve policies and create more cohesive and high-quality learning opportunities for children all the way up through the early grades of elementary school. It’s an online forum organized around topics like funding, teacher quality, family engagement, and more. We hope it can become a useful resource and gathering spot for interested parties at the local, state and federal level. Those who would like to join the discussion can create their own login at http://earlyedforum.newamerica.net/forum. (If you attended last Wednesday’s event, you should have received an email message yesterday with your customized login.)

Don’t worry, we’ll continue covering news of policy and research developments here at Early Ed Watch, but we’ll also be on the lookout for good ideas that appear within the new online discussion space. Think of the online forum as yet another way to stay in touch, not just with us here at New America, but with the many smart and thoughtful people around the country who are working to improve education for young children every day.

Speaking of smart and thoughtful: The roundtable discussions that took place in the afternoon session of the forum last Wednesday were great. So don’t miss our next post, in which we’ll take a quick moment to recap the discussion for the many people who could not attend. (We had to limit seats to 70.)

Hope to see you over at the online forum!