The National Center for Children in Poverty

The National Center for Children in Poverty:  http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_1194.html

A focused, multifaceted war has been declared on the "biggest threat to children's healthy development" (NCCP, n. d.).  As one of poverty's most  intentional opponents, the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP)  attacks from an approach that aligns data gathering and analysis with motivation to act in both responsive and proactive manners.  By utilizing patterns found in the Family Resource Simulator  (http://www.nccp.org/tools/frs/ ), and the Young Child at Risk Calculator  (http://www.nccp.org/tools/risk/ ), an external caregiver can assess for current life circumstances that indicate the potential for academic hardship in a child's future (Berger, 2018; NCCP).  Research states the quality of adult interactions, both in guardian and external attachment figure relationships (Gonzalez-Mena, & Eyer, 2015), has a direct correlation with academic outcomes.  Through Expanding Opportunities for Parent Engagement  http://www.nccp.org/projects/parent_engagement.html, the educating team can focus on home-to-school language, materials, and activities that strengthen the student's outlook on school and learning in general (Heroman, 2010).  

As goals are set to reduce toxic stress symptoms in economically challenged families, our early childhood community could take a page of advice from the Projects  http://www.nccp.org/projects/ section of this website.  There, an early childhood poverty problem solver can look to data  from New York ( http://www.nccp.org/projects/nyc_quality_improvement.html,  http://www.nccp.org/projects/preschool.html,  http://www.nccp.org/projects/nyc_preschool.html) for comparative information to alter practice in their educational communities.   The same approach can be applied to parent strategies projects in New Jersey ( http://www.nccp.org/projects/paid_leave.html ) in which attention is given to the benefits of paid leave after childbirth.  

Berger, K. S. (2018). The Developing Person Through Childhood. New York: Worth Publishers.

Gonzalez-Mena, J., & Eyer, D. W. (2015). Infants, toddlers, and caregivers a curriculum of respectful, responsive, relationship-based care and education. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Heroman, C. (2010). Teaching strategies Gold: objectives for development & learning: birth through kindergarten. Washington, DC: Teaching Strategies

National Center for Children in Poverty. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nccp.org/