Week of the Young Child: What Early Childhood Education Looks Like
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
By Tanya Krien
Vice President, Early Childhood Education, Administration and Operations
It’s the Week of the Young Child (WOYC), and this year’s observance coincides with a remarkable milestone: the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which sponsors WOYC, is celebrating 100 years of advancing high-quality early learning for all children, and championing the educators who make it possible.
The Child Center of NY shares a similarly deep commitment to young children and the people who care for them—74 years strong. We began as a single children’s counseling center, founded in an era that barely recognized youth mental health. Today, with nearly 80 locations, we’ve grown into a multiservice organization that includes a robust early childhood education (ECE) division with six Early Head Start and Head Start programs.
That evolution reflects what both research and common sense tell us: The earliest years of life are foundational to everything that follows. Our ECE programs serve low-income pregnant people and children from birth to age 5, ensuring they are developmentally on track—academically, socially, and emotionally—while empowering parents with the tools to nurture their children’s growth long after they leave our classrooms.
This year brought especially exciting news. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Head Start awarded The Child Center funding to expand Early Head Start and Head Start center-based services into two additional communities: Woodside and Astoria, Queens. These new centers will complement our existing home-visiting programs, creating a stronger continuum of care. Families receiving home-based services will have a clear, supported pathway into center-based early education—ensuring a seamless transition during some of the most critical years of development.
The Office of Head Start selected The Child Center for this expansion because of our record of excellence. Each year, children in our programs demonstrate significant developmental gains. At our Escalera Head Start in Manhattan, for example, just 2% of 4-year-olds met or exceeded developmental expectations in the fall. By spring, that number had risen to 83%, including 92% of children without a diagnosed disability.
To further strengthen quality and accountability, we recently partnered with the Day Care Council of New York to enhance staff training and assess program quality. With the Day Care Council’s support, we’ve adopted the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), a nationally recognized tool that assesses program quality across areas such as classroom environment, teacher-child interactions, and developmental support. ECERS helps drive continuous improvement, fosters professional growth, and ensures our programs are inclusive, accessible, and responsive to every child’s needs.
We look forward to sharing updated results in our 2026 Head Start annual report (previous findings, using different assessment tools, are available in our 2024 report).
Of course, metrics tell only part of the story. What matters most is how children feel when they leave us—confident, curious, and excited about what comes next. That’s why everything we do is designed to spark a love of learning, whether through book fairs, measuring trees, or our newest collaboration, which leans into children’s natural affinity for animals. Through a partnership with the Nature Company, children meet rabbits, snakes, and lizards in hands-on sessions led by wildlife experts—bringing science, math, and language to life in unforgettable ways. Each classroom participated in three sessions, with the culminating week being the Week of the Young Child.
Because when a child’s first experience of “school” is filled with wonder, belonging, and possibility, it doesn’t just shape their next step—it sets the course for a lifetime.
