Stanford University professor Philip Fisher leads RAPID, and a National Advisory Council chaired by Joan Lombardi guides the initiative.

Its latest project, , has the RAPID team zeroing in on community-based surveys in Chicago, several counties across Michigan, in Dallas and Harris County, Texas, and in California. RAPID and community-based organizations are co-creating survey questions, partnering with trusted organizations to connect the survey to parents and to share the findings.

The voices of parents and caregivers are so central to the project that, for all intents and purposes, they are leading it. “Community leaders were approaching us, looking for data for their counties, cities or states. They share a demand for what RAPID’s been doing nationally: gathering parent voices and timely, ongoing information about families’ experiences,” says Cristi Carman, RAPID’s director. RAPID is now adapting their survey and process to meet that demand.

Nara Topp, program officer at W.K. Kellogg Foundation, says, “It is important for communities to have access to timely data that allows them to identify problems and craft their own solutions to achieve lasting, transformational change for children. The RAPID survey is a tool designed to provide this insight, which is especially needed as communities and families continue to feel the effects of the pandemic. At the Kellogg Foundation, we strongly believe in the power of listening to communities most affected by a problem to shape the solutions.”

Tuning the Instrument

Megan Streng of First Steps Kent in Kent County, Michigan, says that her organization originally attempted to launch a survey of its own. “We started doing our own parent listening sessions, but we just weren’t getting the response we wanted. RAPID was offering exactly what we wanted to hear from parents, and it was already working.” The partnership has generated five rounds of surveys, with more than 2,000 responses from parents, from demographic categories broadly representative of the county.

When you’re approaching community members, Streng notes, trust is your most valuable asset, and she appreciated the way RAPID followed the guidance of local parent leader Anthony Queen. “We planned on 15-minute surveys,” she recalls, “and he told us, ‘Well, that’s too long,’ so we shortened it to five minutes and made sure that the first touch was just providing information.” A describes the project for community members, and detailed and engaging show participants that their voices have been heard and how the local picture compares to the national.

First Steps Kent’s president Jennifer Headley-Nordman, who started after the collaboration launched, says that the county-specific information will help ensure that funding generated through the is distributed where it will have the greatest impact. It will also support efforts to renew the millage in 2024. “County commissioners repeatedly ask us, ‘What is the return on investment?’ This is one of the ways we show we’re being responsible as the administrator of the millage, making sure that we have an accountable process with robust quality indicators,” she says.

Further, the RAPID data is more personal and granular than the U.S. Census Bureau’s y statistics—exploring, for example, the economic choices families are making about whether to sign children up for extracurricular activities.

“Stanford’s diverse and knowledgeable team meshed well with who we are as an organization and a community,” Headley-Nordman says. “They’re always wanting to be reflective, especially when it comes to parent participation and how they can improve the process, improve the instrument.”

Trusted Networks

Alan Cohen, president and CEO of Dallas’s (CPAL), describes his organization as the research and development laboratory for the city’s safety net for children. Data has untapped potential for economic mobility, he says, and that’s why he approached RAPID about participating in Community Voices.

“It’s a tool for narrowing down the problem statement,” he says. “We already know many of the structural issues that exist, but there are many local issues that still need to be uncovered.” Cohen says that Dallas has its fair share of “professional advocates” who regularly show up at public meetings, and he praises their outspokenness and commitment, but it’s the experience of everyday residents that leads to solutions. For example, upon identifying an administrative logjam at , CPAL began working with the program staff to whittle down the time it takes a mom to apply for receiving benefits from three hours to closer to 30 minutes.

RAPID has been extremely helpful, he adds, at identifying which community organizations families have the ear of Dallas families. “Those are the trusted networks we need to activate,” he says.

Bearing Witness

In her previous roles with the City and County of San Francisco, Abigail Stewart-Kahn led efforts to serve families with children and people without housing. “I became an admirer of RAPID and used the national data to inform the City’s policies and plans,” she says, “As a social worker and policy maker, I never again wanted to be in the position of making decisions that had significant impacts on my fellow community members without a mechanism to quickly, directly and equitably listen to those community members.” She ended up joining the team and now serves as managing director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood (which administers RAPID).

Throughout her career, Stewart-Kahn explains, she has been consumed with the question of  â€œHow do we bear witness and listen to the community, and pull researchers and policymakers closer together to actually start doing things for kids? As a clinical social worker, I know the greatest assets are my clients’ and families’ own solutions, and I have been striving to figure out what that looks like at scale: the communities’ own solutions and experiences driving policy.”

It starts with data, but it doesn’t end there. “When I worked in government, I loved data and we know it’s a critical pathway to equity, but not all governments have the staffing capacity to look at actual spreadsheets and run the numbers. We need somebody to help us translate.” That’s what RAPID does so effectively.

“Community leaders want to hear about and understand the dynamic circumstances and needs of the families they are serving,” Carman adds. RAPID is a tool to help them listen and use that data to inform and drive action.

RAPID will take a new step this summer when it launches a Learning Network to connect Community Voices sites to one another, facilitating shared learning among partnering communities across the country. “We’re in the early stages of this community-based work,” Carman notes, but RAPID is learning, building and refining their approach in collaboration with their partners.

Beyond the families and children who stand to benefit, the survey process could have an additional perk — reinforcing and rebuilding parents’ trust in the systems they interact with. “If you listen to community and respond,” she says, they’ll start to trust again.”

It’s a lofty ambition, but don’t underestimate RAPID as it enters its fourth year.

“The whole field is trying to listen more,” says Joan Lombardi, chair of the project’s national advisory team. “We’re going for what [RAPID director] Philip Fisher calls ‘surround-sound context.’” This means, she says, listening to the adults in children’s lives: parents and providers. Twelve thousand families have completed the survey at least once. A monthly newsletter goes out to participants, feeding their data back to them and sending the message: We hear you. You’re not alone.

The most recent set of RAPID-EC survey questions uncovers the lives of the child care workforce during a period of widespread economic and emotional stress. Top-line findings include:

• Nearly 1 in 5 parents who use center- or home-based child care report experiencing disruptions in care for their children. Staff shortages are causing most of these disruptions. A Virginia parent reports, “Day care staff shortages have caused them to cancel day care at short notice.”
• 18% of child care providers report that they are considering leaving their child care job or closing their programs in the next year. A center director in Indiana says, “Lack of staffing and the ability to pay a livable wage is the main challenge at the moment. Our area is having a huge crisis finding qualified staff and retaining the ones we currently have.”
• Another 20% of providers are considering leaving the child care field entirely. “I just had to completely close a center because all of the staff left for other, better- paying or less stressful jobs,” says a Michigan center director. “Hiring new staff is proving impossible.”

A center director in Washington sums it up: “Everyone is stressed and turnover is high.”

As the mother of a 7-year-old and twin 3-year-olds, Cristi Carman, project manager of RAPID-EC, is living the crisis while collecting, cleaning and analyzing the data. “Lack of child care affects everything,” she says. “When the adults in kids’ lives feel stress, you can bet the kids are feeling it too.”

The very rapidity of the RAPID-EC means that decisions can be made on the basis of what’s happening right now. The findings — some expected, some surprising, some alarming — are regularly cited in media outlets and in congressional staff briefings. Advocates for child care and other family support measures use the data to engage policymakers, businesses and other stakeholders, but its use goes beyond this week’s policy debates. Carrie Masten, Nat Kendall-Taylor and Natalie Renew’s declares that U.S. needs to shift its thinking — child care is not “a small logistic that parents are expected to sort out” but rather “a fundamental prerequisite for American families to function.”

Along the way, Lombardi notes, the project has listened to researchers, providers and representatives from various policy groups such as the Center for the Study of Social Policy, ZERO TO THREE, the First Five Years Fund and the Alliance for Early Success, among others, for input on the survey questions.

Brenda Jones Harden of the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work and the president of the ZERO TO THREE Board of Directors, is on the RAPID advisory board. “Since the beginning of the pandemic,” she says, “RAPID-EC has been the voice of America’s parents of young children. It has chronicled their financial and psychological challenges, and highlighted the burden of parenting while trying to keep their children safe, healthy, happy and provided for.” She says the evidence gathered by the project is informing strategies for supporting parents to contend with the stressors that the pandemic has wrought, adding, “I have consistently been amazed at the quantity and quality of the data coming from this regular survey, how the evidence is framed to inform the public and the engagement of the advisory group in ensuring that the research is conducted in a rigorous and impactful manner.”

Later this year, Fisher and RAPID-EC are moving from the Center for Translational Neuroscience at the University Oregon to Stanford University, where he will be leading a new Center on Early Childhood. Along with the national survey, the project will undertake in-depth surveys of 2-4 specific communities, with the goal of informing policy and reflecting the needs of parents.

“Our goal,” says Lombardi, “is to bear witness to families.”

Why did you originally get involved in organizing domestic workers, including nannies, in New York City?

Living in New York City, it’s impossible not to see that the city is really powered by a workforce of women, mostly women of color, who provide essential services for families and especially care that families need. There were just upwards of 200,000 mostly immigrant women of color who were working, pushing babies in strollers to the parks and picking them up from play dates and story hours. When we think about the workforce that makes everything else possible, it’s impossible in New York City not to see this incredible workforce of women of color who do that work. It’s also really stark how undervalued their work is and how largely unseen it’s been in our culture and in our economy.

And these are women who also have families of their own. Really early on when I was still in school, I was volunteering at a domestic violence shelter for Asian immigrant women. I worked the hotline at nights and a lot of the calls that would come into the hotline were about the economic stressors that survivors of violence face and the fact that many of them work in these low-wage service jobs like nannying and caregiving. While they’re incredibly dedicated to that work, they just can’t pay the bills or make ends meet on the income that they earn. And without access to a safety net, they just really didn’t have the ability to provide the care that their own families needed. It seemed like a really important place to dive in if we wanted to really create economic opportunity in our community.

You’ve been working on this project for a long time now. How has the issue of rights for domestic workers and caregivers evolved over the years that you’ve been working on it?

I first started organizing domestic workers in 1998. At the time, even through the early 2000s, when you would say the words “domestic worker,” legislators would ask, “What are you talking about? Is this about domestic violence, what is this about really?” We’ve literally had to bring nannies to the state legislature and to the city council to share their experiences and tell their stories. Then, there slowly became a recognition of just how large and important this work is and just how vulnerable the work is.

In the 1930s, when Congress was debating the New Deal labor laws that would become our core foundational labor law framework, Southern members of Congress would not support those laws if they included equal protections for farm workers and domestic workers, who were mostly Black at the time. That racial exclusion has really shaped how this workforce has been treated under the law and in our culture. The organizing that we’ve done has really tried to bring attention to that and to address it for the 21^st century. The question of how race and gender has shaped what kind of work we value and protect in our economy — that conversation has really evolved thanks to movements for social change over the years.

Now that we have a reality where most working age adults work outside of the home and they rely upon caregivers and professional care workers to support their families, there is an increasing understanding of just how important this work is. But our policies haven’t really caught up. I would say that for the most part in our country’s history, we’ve always treated caring for our families as an individual personal responsibility. If you’re a parent and you can’t afford child care, it’s because of some failure on your part, or if you’re a daughter of a parent with Alzheimer’s and you can’t afford the home care that they need, it’s because you didn’t save or you did something wrong.

What the Covid pandemic has revealed is that our lack of a caregiving infrastructure and adequate support for working families to meet their caregiving needs is actually a huge liability and a huge risk in our public health and in our economy. Now there’s starting to be more of an awareness that care is a public policy priority and need and that care infrastructure is fundamental infrastructure for our economic wellbeing in the 21^st century.

Do you think Americans have become more inclined to support better rights for domestic workers and caregivers, public responses to caregiving needs, in the pandemic?

I would say yes. There’s been a huge consciousness and awareness shift in terms of what work is essential. This pandemic has created this situation where all of these workers who are working in our service economy — who by the way are mostly women and people of color who worked in jobs that were almost invisible to us, everyone from the farmworker to the grocery worker and the delivery worker to the child care worker and the home care worker — suddenly people started to understand that this work is essential to our health and our safety and our wellbeing. I think people do understand that childcare workers, early educators and home care workers are essential.

The other piece of it is the caregiving challenges. We’ve been reading these horrific numbers about women who are being forced out of the workforce because of a lack of choices around caregiving, whether it’s child care or elder care. And it’s disproportionately affected women of color in particular. There has been a real shift in consciousness, both in terms of the workforce and how essential the work is and in terms of just what working families need in the way of a caregiving infrastructure and policy support.

What has the pandemic meant for your organizing — has it impacted it or changed it? The pandemic will someday ebb and end, how do you carry that consciousness forward and what does it look like on the other side of the crisis?

We never stopped organizing, especially in the peak of the pandemic because we have so many care workers and nannies and house cleaners who worked through the pandemic providing essential services to families who needed them. They did so without access to health care, sometimes without access to proper PPE [personal protective equipment], and certainly without access to child care for their own kids who were home from school.

We’ve been organizing throughout, and we’ve had more engagement than ever before from caregivers and domestic workers around the country, signing up to call their members of Congress, to participate in legislative meetings and town halls and online rallies.

There is a real sense [that] now is our time. So we’re working together with unions who represent care workers, with family caregivers and family caregiver advocates, we’re working with early childhood advocates, paid leave advocates, to push together to build the care economy that we’ve always needed. We think that this is a once in several generations opportunity to really reset how our economy functions to better support families. So everything is super charged at this moment in terms of our organizing.

During the pandemic and even before that, have you seen parents getting more involved? I’m often asked why there isn’t a parents’ movement for child care, and there’s lots of reasons for that. But are parents getting turned onto this, are they getting involved and mobilized?

Yes absolutely. The voters who turned out to vote in unprecedented numbers in 2020 and even in Georgia in the Senate runoffs are parents, many of them. The care workers themselves are parents. I think everywhere we turn people are activated because the stakes have never been more clear. Despite all the challenges with the pandemic and otherwise, I do see renewed passion about the fact that it is up to us. It’s the voters who will decide and communities in motion who can really make change happen.

We have good champions in the legislature, and I think the stars are beginning to align in that way.

Joe Biden made his caregiving platform a central part of his presidential campaign. With that and with champions in the legislature, do you think now is the time? Are you optimistic that policy will change?

I’m going to quote Stacey Abrams here and say I’m neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but I am determined. I say that because these are issues that families have been raising for decades now. We have really seen a big breakthrough moment in the public awareness around the essential nature of the care economy and we have a really good mandate on the part of voters to move real change forward. It is going to be up to us collectively to make it happen. It’s going to take a very broad, wide and deep movement of families and workers together to realize the possibility or the potential of this moment.

The Biden caregiving agenda was a significant marker for three reasons. One being that it was the first time a presidential candidate made caregiving a core part of their economic agenda. Not the women’s agenda, not the family agenda — the economic agenda.

The second piece was that it really understood that family care is about meeting the needs of families that are intergenerational units. There is a need for child care and early educators, there’s a need for paid leave so that families can take care of the people that they love and themselves at different times, and that there’s a need for long-term care, elder care, and support for people with disabilities, especially in the home and community. While those issues have been siloed in the past, people are starting to understand how they’re interconnected and interdependent and that families experience the need for these policy solutions in ways that are fundamentally connected. That was another big breakthrough.

The third big breakthrough was really recognizing the importance of the caregiving workforce. We need to be investing in our childcare providers, in our early educators. We need to be making sure that home care jobs, that all of the jobs in the care economy, are living wage jobs with benefits and a path to a union and, I would add, a path to citizenship for the immigrant caregiving workforce.

The fact that the Biden care agenda planted those three stakes in the ground is a really significant indicator of how far we’ve come on these issues and what’s possible. Which I think is about building the kind of care infrastructure that really does meet families where they are at this time in our history.

For someone who is interested in organizing their neighborhood and organizing their community to advocate for more resources for children, for better working conditions for caregivers, what advice would you give? Where should people start? What are your tricks of the trade?

There are lots of great organizations to get involved with and support. is one, is organizing parents around the country around childcare issues. is another. Now is definitely the time.

Because of the timely nature with which all of these policies are being discussed in the context of federal relief, I would just say to pick up the phone and call your members of Congress and urge that supporting caregivers and caregiving is a core component of any Covid relief and recovery effort. And if you can set up a meeting with your member of Congress and gather your neighbors, friends and family to do the same, that actually could make all the difference right now.

Our traditional approaches to economic recovery have really evolved. Short-term investments in public infrastructure like roads, bridges, and tunnels and broadband — those are absolutely essential. And child care, home care, these kinds of policies and programs are also essential infrastructure at this time. In order to make sure that we build an economy that actually works better and keeps us safer and is more resilient coming out of this pandemic, we really have to see our caregiving programs in that way and our care workforce as essential infrastructure. It’s different because it’s human infrastructure. But it is just as essential and fundamental to a healthy economy. Any parent out there reading this will get that.

• Rebecca Gomez of the , which aims to close the opportunity gap by 2044, the year that the U.S. becomes majority-minority.
• Dr. Jacqueline Jones of the , which connects research, policy and practice.
• Dr. Michael Weinberg of the , which focuses on New Mexico’s early child workforce and system for educating the youngest New Mexicans.

Here are our takeaways from the conversation:

1. Context is everything. All of the panelists agreed that this is no time for business as usual in philanthropic giving. The interweaving of the pandemic, the continuing relevance of the Black Lives Matter movement and a divisive political landscape deny foundations the luxury of making grants according to pre-established guidelines. Program officers have to acknowledge the systems buffeting their area of focus. Weinberg cited the fluctuation of oil prices that determine the state’s early education budget as a reason for establishing the . Grassroots activism and public financing also come into the picture. The eligibility of Medicaid funding for home visitation and the psychosocial implications of a stepped-up deportation policy were among the many complexities informing the work of foundation professionals.

2. Foundations are adapting alongside their grantees. Like many foundations, COVID has pushed Heising-Simons to switch many of their program-specific grants to general support, and they are waiving such requirements as final reports. It’s part of a general shift to what Gomez called “trust-based philanthropy,” acknowledging that the sector “has a lot of work to do on itself.” Picking up on these remarks, Weinberg wondered aloud whether “some of the changes might stick,” forever altering the dynamic between foundations and grantees. He referred to the new paradigm as “adaptive grant making.” The Thornburg Foundation made more than 60 emergency grants in the first months of the crisis and discovered, “We aren’t great at getting money directly to child care providers.” Intermediary organizations have proved invaluable. Jones indicated that the pandemic has caused her organization to look “both inward and outward.” Noting the 40-year age range on her staff, she said a virtual book club has sparked fresh dialogue. (The reading list has included Cornel West’s Race Matters, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.) Regular communication with the board of directors has also been essential for steadying the organizational ship in turbulent times.

3. Research is a lever. In the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Heising-Simons in supporting a Yale University Child Care Center study to better understand and evaluate infection rates in child care centers. Jones stressed that her organization had no interest in “research for research’s sake,” but rather in knowledge that could be applied in the real world. “We ask policy people, ‘What do you need to know in order to make decisions?’” she noted. Incorporating the voices of educators and families helps to bridge the gap between research and policy and can contribute to continuous quality improvement. The Foundation for Child Development also sponsors a for early career researchers.

4. The sector is focusing more on the child care workforce. In the 1990s and early 2000s, philanthropists and foundations relentlessly deployed metrics to establish whether they were getting sufficient return on their financial investments. Student testing increased (even among very young children), and teachers and schools struggled to get good “grades” from their benefactors. The lives of the workforce—mostly female, mostly people of color—generally did not enter into the equation. Gomez recalled her time as an early childhood teacher, living with her parents to make it on $8 an hour. She sees the philanthropic sector playing a larger part in advocating for a living wage or even parity with K-12 teachers. Impact still matters of course, but the recognition is growing that it cannot be attained without the workforce that makes it happen.

Foundation officers not only see the importance of expediting support to children whose households are at greatest risk of the health and economic fallout—they also recognize that even the foundations with largest coffers will achieve greater impact through collaboration. This is no time to go it alone.

On Sept. 1, the Hunt Institute presented the third in a series of conversations on this topic, featuring:

• Dr. Marquita Davis, deputy director for early learning at the
• Isabelle Hau, partner at
• Dr. Elizabeth Pungello Bruno of the

Dan Wuori, The Hunt Institute’s director of early learning, moderated the conversation. He set the scene by reminding the participants of steep declines in state revenues and the resulting reductions in pre-K funding. Here are our takeaways from the conversation.

1. The emergency continues. Davis said she makes a point of showing up and engaging with the communities her grants are intended to help. She reported, “They’re dealing with food deserts, inadequate housing and poorly funded schools. All this puts pressure on families and is driving abuse and neglect.” Hau added, “Quality early child experience is a human right. It’s not just about parents getting to work.”

2. Trauma endures. Hau noted that research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters unmistakably points to the long-term consequences of trauma. Philanthropy can and should help build the infrastructure for ongoing support. Aside from the inevitable rise in inequities, she said that “young girls are affected more, as well as children who were already vulnerable owing to prior experiences.”

3. Inclusion and equity are more than buzzwords. Citing Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum What you do for me, without me, you do against me, Davis urged her fellow grant makers to welcome people to the table who are part of the solution. “We can’t abandon this equity charge,” she said. “It is a moral imperative.” For Bruno, embracing the strengths of diverse communities has become increasingly urgent, as opposed to clinging to what she called the “deficit models” of the past.

4. Data matters. While Davis underscored the importance of data by saying, “Without benchmarking, we can’t measure progress,” it’s safe to say that nobody on the panel appreciated data quite like Dr. Bruno. Her organization makes grants for research and program evaluation rather than operational support, and at first she felt sidelined by the pandemic, but then it hit her: We need data today more than ever, so we know what works and what doesn’t. “Research,” she said, “allows and forces us to hold ourselves accountable.” Referring to the troubling history of social science, she admitted, “The early seminal studies we all cite were racist. I know—I took part.” To rectify this situation, she called for putting researchers of color on leadership teams.

5. Solutions abound. “Philanthropy is risk capital,” Hau said. “We can demonstrate what’s possible so public dollars can scale up.” She said she was pleased to see collaboration among unusual suspects during the pandemic, citing the private sector’s support of child care for essential workers as an example, which she called “infrastructure investment that’s here to stay.” Collaboration with other sectors enables foundations to think bigger and more ambitiously.

The headache-inducing debate about children and COVID is a sharp example: there are enough studies to make theoretical arguments that kids are either relatively shielded from the virus or just as infectious as adults. Bizarrely, though, the national conversation has sidelined the real-world experience of U.S. child care programs, which have encouragingly seen few outbreaks.

While public schools are just starting back up or preparing to begin after Labor Day, child care programs have been operating en masse since May or June, albeit with reduced enrollment. Several states have been issuing regular updates on COVID cases in child care, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of Rhode Island’s child care programs during June and July. All told, we can now draw on the experience of tens of thousands of open programs across the nation, collectively serving well over a million children.

Yet these hard-earned data points are getting little notice compared to laboratory studies purporting to show that “” or that “.” These studies — which are at best, — are rarely put in context of what’s happening in communities every day. It’s one thing to know that some children have high levels of viral RNA in their noses; it’s another to see what’s actually happening to children and their educators in group settings.

So what is state data telling us? Broadly, it shows while child care programs are not zero-risk, they are low risk — and young children certainly do not seem to be major drivers of COVID spread.

Here are some examples, and keep in mind these are out of thousands of open programs in most states (also note these are not single cases but outbreaks, multiple cases within a program that can be reasonably linked; all data was pulled on 8/21/20):

• Since June, three outbreaks among child care programs in the entire state
• Since June, fifteen outbreaks
• Since March, six outbreaks (in Arizona, child care programs are not currently , so it’s likely the true number is moderately higher)
• Since May, twenty-two outbreaks (and, tragically, one death of a staff person)
• Since June, thirteen outbreaks

Texas poses perhaps the most interesting case study, because the state had in child care cases during the first part of summer amid questionable regulation and sky-high community spread. shows that since May, 1,885 of the over 13,000 open programs had at least one case. Importantly, however, only 693 had more than one case (and not all of these necessarily linked). Put another way, in at least two-thirds of Texas programs where we know COVID came inside, there was no spread.

The on Rhode Island backs this up. Among the 666 child care programs open in June and July, just 29 had COVID cases, and 20 of these had only a single incidence. Among the nine with more than one case, five were found to not have linked cases, meaning that secondary transmission (outbreaks) only occurred in four programs. In Rhode Island, as in other states like Colorado, this strikingly low spread occurred even as group sizes were increased up to a maximum of 20 individuals per class.

Put simply, between 95 to 99 percent of U.S. child care programs appear to be operating with no outbreaks. This fact in no way invalidates the suffering of individuals who do catch the virus in an outbreak, but it puts the risk in context. The relative risk to any specific area is of course dictated by its local rate of community spread: the worst Texas child care flare mirrored the statewide flare, and all four of the Rhode Island outbreaks happened, per the CDC, “in the last 2 weeks of July, when community transmission in Rhode Island increased.”

For what it’s worth, a out of England is in full concordance. In June, there were only five outbreaks among more than 28,000 open English “early years” programs, with a “strong correlation” between local community spread and outbreak likelihood. Staff members were “not more likely than the general population as a whole” to become infected.

It’s worth noting a few provisos. These outbreak counts likely represent a lower bound due to poor testing access, programs choosing not to report cases, and because, as the CDC study says, “case ascertainment among children is challenging, given high rates of asymptomatic infection or mild disease.” Additionally, each state has different reporting requirements and compiles its data differently; an “outbreak” in Colorado is two or more linked cases, while in North Carolina it is five or more. A more conducted by researchers at Yale University is due to release results in the coming weeks.

Still, even if one went so far as to double the reported outbreak counts, this data paints a rare promising picture in a bleak era. Young children in small-group congregate settings that follow public health guidelines are fairly safe. While young children can and do transmit the virus, they are not major vectors. We would know by now if that was false, just as a few weeks of college have the danger older teens and young adults pose in their groupings.

(By the way, none of this excuses the reality that the U.S. child care sector has been heroically caring for children of essential workers and other working parents — many sites never closed — with vanishingly little government support. Congress continues to twiddle its thumbs instead of passing . Child care could be 100 percent safe and it still wouldn’t change the fact that programs are every week because of our leaders’ inaction.)

The young-child experience has major implications on everything from lifting the remaining group size restrictions on child care programs — the — to lifting developmentally inappropriate guidance that is, as Jackie Mader of the Hechinger Report , “discouraging some of the basic elements of early childhood, like experiencing the world through physical touch and learning to share toys with friends.”

With regards to schools, the empirical evidence supports Columbia University Professor that when it comes to in-person instruction, if community spread rates get low enough, “there’s one clear conclusion: little kids first.”

Applying child care lessons to schools should be done with high caution, of course. A child care program with 80 children in self-contained rooms has a different scope than an 800-person school with shared bathrooms.

Age matters enormously — older kids, especially teenagers, appear far to transmit the virus — as does insistence on precautions like universal masking of adults and strict symptom screening. Nevertheless, there’s no reason to think small groups of five-year-old pre-K or Kindergarten students pose more risk than small groups of three- and four-year-olds.

And the benefits can be astronomical. Millions of parents are currently able to maintain their livelihoods because child care programs are open, and millions of children are benefiting from high-quality care, learning and social interactions.

If nothing else, the child care experience should guide popular and media narratives. COVID and kids is a complex and confusing topic, but the risks hardening and ginning up unnecessary fear, particularly now that the issue has .

As economist Emily Oster , “Because of the overwhelming bias in what gets reported about COVID-19, the public lacks essential context for making reasoned, well-informed decisions … In the absence of complete information on risks, our overreactions can have serious consequences.” The British pediatric infectious disease specialist Alasdair Munro out these sage principles which, if kept front of mind, can help cut through the noise: “Children absolutely CAN transmit, and they do; The risk CANNOT be ignored and must be mitigated against; But selling them as drivers of the pandemic, or exaggerating the risks to their health is damaging, and making the situation worse; Please think about how you communicate.”

Indeed, for once, we don’t have to drive blind. We don’t have to rely on computer models or unclear laboratory evidence or tiny sample sizes or even comparisons to other nations. We have evidence about young children and COVID right here at home — and it tells us that done right, with an eye on community spread, group settings for little kids and their caregivers can be pretty darn safe.

• Elliot Haspel, of the and Early Learning Nation contributor
• Eva Roberts of the
• Elliot Steinberg of the , which produced two upcoming documentaries on early childhood, Tomorrow’s Hope and Starting with Zero

Here’s what we heard during the webinar:

1. We have our work cut out for us. “It’s remarkable,” Haspel deadpanned, “to have achieved a system that works for literally nobody.” He pinpointed the power dynamic in early learning, compared to what’s happening in public education with teachers and teachers’ unions standing up for their right to a safe workplace, as a central concern.

Steinberg worried, “If the children facing the greatest circumstances of risk don’t get quality educations, the gaps we’re seeing will only persist.”

2. The narrative is evolving. Initially, according to Roberts, child care educators overwhelmed the listserv of in search of reliable information about coronavirus. These days, she said, the narrative is shifting from how can we get back to work? to how can we get back to work without compromising the quality of early-childhood education? Or even improving it—building back better, to invoke a motto that many policymakers and social entrepreneurs have adopted.

Trailer for Tomorrow’s Hope, produced by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation

3. Foundations are listening to their grantees. Many of the field’s major philanthropies are supplementing their long-term funding priorities with emergency responses to the pandemic.

Roberts said the leaders receiving funds from her organization have asked for more flexibility with how they deploy their grant dollars. They’re also asking for technical assistance with things like obtaining paycheck protection program (PPP) loans, as very few early childhood education providers have solid relationships with banks.

4. We aren’t going to grant our way out of the crisis. Roberts said the philanthropic sector’s combined funding to support early childhood education is “a drop in the bucket” compared to what government can do.

Haspel mentioned to improve the quality and availability of early-childhood education and .

He also pointed to a that found, “Voters overwhelmingly support specific federal financial assistance for the child care industry, with eight in ten voters saying the child care industry should receive ‘targeted financial assistance from the federal government.’”

Trailer for Starting at Zero: Reimagining Education in America, produced by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation in partnership with Harvard Graduate School of Education and Firestarter Interactive

5. Public-private partnerships offer reason for optimism. This is an ideal moment to bring foundations, governments, chambers of commerce and corporations together to achieve impact.

“People have never appreciated early childhood more,” said Roberts. “We can really democratize the issue.”

For an example of what such partnerships can bring about, Steinberg pointed to Alabama, citing a noting the state’s progress: “Support for preschool is strong among state leaders, their preschool program meets all 10 of NIEER’s quality standards benchmarks, and enrollment has expanded by 28 percentage points since 2002.”

Educare is a national early learning network that provides education and family support in 21 U.S. cities. In the first months of the pandemic, while schools were closed, the organization provided resources and relief to the families and communities it serves. Its Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships supported families in different ways. documents this work.

• Montes said the partnership in her city, Miami, facilitated an assembly of care packages of diapers, formula and more, for 520 families. Additional support went to the migrant workers of Homestead, Florida, and their families.
• Lydia Reaves, director of child care partnerships at Next Door Milwaukee, reported that supply drive-throughs provided book-filled backpacks and other supplies.
• According to Talia Newman, director of Early Head Start partnerships at Educare, Washington D.C., 144 families received groceries and more, through a collaboration with the and other partners. Educare staff paid socially distant visits to enroll families in their program.

Syritha Robinson, Educare DC’s director of Advocacy, concisely summarized the present moment: “Families are on the brink. Right now, services have to be comprehensive, and funding has to be predictable.”

featured Dr. Danny Avula, director of the Richmond City Health Department, Jenna Conway from the Virginia Department of Education Department of School Readiness, Dr. Bergen B. Nelson, a pediatrician, John Richardson-Lauve from and J. David Young from , among others. Chanel Bea of the Virginia Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond moderated the conversation, which conveyed a mood best captured by Avula when he said he felt “cautious confidence about expanding use of child care.” Here are five takeaways from .

1. Over-communicate. In normal times, officials and administrators might assume a single reminder email will suffice, but these are not normal times. Communicating more than is generally considered necessary is a way to underscore the importance of the information. Conway said, “Health care professionals who are regularly exposed to COVID-19 emphasize communication as the key to helping people understand how serious this is.”

One example of a message that bears repeating: vaccinations still count. Pediatricians and families have been taking advantage of telemedicine during the pandemic, but Nelson says not to delay in-person visits, especially for regularly scheduled vaccination. “Measles and other non-COVID diseases are extremely serious,” Conway reminded the participants.

2. Good habits flatten the curve. Although children have lower infection and contagion rates, habits like hand washing and mask wearing still matter. (An added bonus of all the hand washing, reports Conway, is that they have seen much less strep throat and other common illnesses.) If children are old enough to put a mask on by themselves, they are old enough to wear masks. Don’t assume they will be able to stick with it at first. “Before you go to the store or to school,” advised Richardson-Lauve, “practice at home. Play dress-up with the mask to normalize the experience and to set expectations.”

3. Lean into the honor system. Even with contact tracing and other measures to reduce risk, we’ll never have a complete picture of where every child and teacher has been and who they’ve come in contact with, so we have to trust each other—and earn that trust. Teachers will have to remember physical distancing when socializing with one another. “The old days where your kid had a little fever and you sent her anyway?” said Conway. “That’s not going to fly anymore.” The same goes for staff. “There’s no honor in coming to work sick,” she added.

4. Guidelines are there to inform, not replace, judgment. Context-specific judgment works better than blanket rules that don’t account for variables like the size of the facility and pre-existing health conditions that exacerbate risk. As Conway put it, “Ask yourself, what is the least worst option?” Avula reminded participants that child care centers can “consult directly with your local health departments to operationalize guidelines.”

5. Early child educators are showing how to adapt and innovate. In Young’s facility, each child has a separate bin of supplies and only gets toys that can be quickly and easily disinfected. Deciding that having his staff take public transportation wasn’t worth the risk, Young made arrangements to have vans pick them up.

These cases are undoubtedly newsworthy. But we’re thinking about them all wrong.

The question that parents and practitioners really want to know is this: How safe are child cares? Or, put another way, how likely is my child (or am I) to catch COVID-19 from a child care center? In order to know that, we need to be able to answer how much transmission is occurring WITHIN child care centers? Until we ask the right questions and demand the right data, we’ll be stumbling in the dark.

Think about two scenarios.

In scenario A, a child care teacher unknowingly becomes infected with COVID-19 on a Saturday while at the gym. She goes to work on Monday. On Tuesday she begins to feel unwell and calls out sick. By Friday she has a positive COVID-19 test in hand. No one else in the center becomes infected.

In scenario B, a child care teacher unknowingly becomes infected with COVID-19 on a Saturday while at the gym. She goes to work on Monday. On Tuesday she begins to feel unwell and calls out sick. By Friday she has a positive COVID-19 test in hand, but on Monday she had infected two other teachers and three students, who in turn infected others before the initial positive test came back.

In both scenarios, there was a positive COVID-19 case in a child care facility that would need to be reported to the authorities. In one scenario, no transmission occurred. In the other, a cluster formed. To accurately assess risk, we have to be able to understand whether most cases fall closer to scenario A or scenario B.

As Steven Barnett, Senior Co-Director of the , put it in an interview, we can figure this out by using context most journalists currently aren’t using. For instance, it’s instructive to compare the percentage of infected children and staff in child cares against the infected percentage in those age populations generally.

Take Texas. There are hundreds of thousands of young children back in Texas child care centers. The 441 reported infections among children represent a tiny fraction. If that fraction was significantly higher than the infection rate of all same-aged Texas children (including those not in child care centers), that suggests the centers are playing a role — and vice versa.

Economist and author Emily Oster expanded on this idea . Oster writes that taking into account a full suite of factors — the denominator (how many total children and staff are in the open centers), relative risk, amount of clustering, and rate of increasing cases — may paint a different picture. While no one wants to see any cases in child care, Oster notes that particularly when it comes to the rate of increase in Texas, “it doesn’t look like [child cares] are outpacing the general population,” suggesting the viral activity may be primarily driven by Texas’ overarching public health crisis (Oster provided the below table, created by Ashley Kubisyzn).

Moreover, it’s critical to understand if there are similarities among centers that are reporting cases. Even though mathematically, Texas clearly doesn’t have many clusters (894 infected staff members and 441 children spread out among 883 centers suggests the vast majority had one to two cases), it’s difficult to imagine the state’s didn’t let in more infection than necessary.

As Barnett explains, not all mitigation precautions are created equal, and we need to drill down on which ones are the most important. For instance, if nearly all centers with cases didn’t have strict exclusion policies for staff that were feeling unwell, or if they didn’t modify drop-off and pick-up procedures to limit the number of congregating adults, that would suggest a correlation.

On the other hand, if centers with mandatory temperature checks were equally as likely to end up with a case as those without, that might suggest such checks are a less impactful intervention. We have, unfortunately, created a massive natural experiment. Absurd as that choice was, we should at least take advantage of the opportunity to hone our strategies.

It’s also incumbent on child care advocates to keep a level head. While there are a ton of wonderful journalists out there, on some level, ‘the media’s gonna media.’ Or, as Barnett puts it, there is “very little incentive in reporting to cover solutions as opposed to problems.”

North Carolina provides a good illustration. North Carolina has started twice-weekly updating a public report on outbreaks of five or more cases in child care and schools. Despite an overall rising case count, as of July 7th there are only seven in child care centers.

You won’t see any articles with the headline, “99 Percent of North Carolina’s Open Child Cares Have No Clusters,” though.

Similarly, there has been little to no reporting noting the continuation of encouraging news about young children themselves. For instance, the fact that so many more staff than children are showing infection — despite centers having many multiples more children than staff — is yet further evidence of young kids’ relative protection from the virus (as well as the need to vigilantly limit adult-to-adult contact). Moreover, outbreaks are rarely starting with children, and child cares overall aren’t hotbeds, especially compared to other settings.

As Dr. Sean O’Leary, one of the authors of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recent guidelines for school reopening, said with The New York Times: “Here in Colorado, I’ve been following our state health department website very closely. They update data every day and include the outbreaks in the state they are investigating. As you can imagine, there are lots and lots in long-term care facilities and skilled nursing homes, some in restaurants and grocery stores. There have been a total of four in child care centers, and we do have a lot of child care centers open. In almost every one of those cases, transmission was between two adults. The kids in the centers are not spreading Covid-19. I’m hearing the same thing from other states, as well.”

States aren’t doing journalists or advocates any favors, of course. Data collection is variable, to say the least. Some states produce regular public reports, others produce none. The threshold for reporting an “outbreak” varies: North Carolina says five or more (that can be reasonably linked), Colorado says two or more. Detail levels vary widely.

While Yale University is running the one of COVID-19 spread in child care and will release data soon, even that study is insufficient on its own. The researchers did their data collection between May 22nd and June 8th, and so the results won’t reflect the real-time and ever-changing conditions on the ground, particularly the spiking community transmission in many southern states. Economist and author Emily Oster has resorted to cross-state data.

If the early learning sector is going to respond to these bitterly-learned lessons and maximize our risk reduction, we have to insist on centralization of case data and common definitions of terms. Without good data, we’re left trying to piece together a story out of smeared page fragments. Ideally, governors and their relevant cabinet secretaries would step up and work together. If not, Barnett suggests this may be a place where Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies can play a role.

The cold reality is that there are going to continue to be COVID-19 cases in child care settings, and there will even continue to be the occasional outbreak. Undoubtedly, the breathless headlines will continue. That doesn’t mean child cares are unsafe, it means we’re living through a pandemic. But we can’t figure out what actions to take to reduce the incidence — and, at the extreme end, whether we need to close centers in areas with raging local epidemics — without better questions, better data and better context.

(P.S. None of this matters much if half of the child care centers close and the other half can’t afford to put effective precautions in place. Congress needs to fully fund child care!)

• Megan Wyatt, managing director of programs and strategy at the (The Bezos Family Foundation provides financial support to Early Learning Nation.)
• Gerry Cobb, director of
• Marica Cox Mitchell, early learning director at

All respondents were clear that their respective missions have not shifted. Instead, each organization has pivoted its approach in response to the needs of their constituents. They expressed the importance of using this transformative time as a learning opportunity and are working to gather insights on which changes have worked well, which haven’t and how they can use these insights to inform future initiatives.

Here are three takeaways from the discussion:

Dan Wuori: Megan, recent closures, limited classroom capacity with reopening and decreased budgets are all impacting pre-K and early childhood care. Are there solutions to preserve access in a way that is equitable?

Megan Wyatt: This is a time of major disruption. We have to be optimistic and focused on building the system back better. We need more and better data about the needs and gaps in the market. The burden has been on the early childhood sector, and we all see now that it is the backbone of the economy, but the solutions require investments from other sectors as well.

We’ve learned that mobilizing locally is important as well as incorporating a strong social justice component, with parents and other stakeholders involved. Small business providers are at risk so policy and system levers are also important. We are learning a lot but are not quite at solutions yet.

Dan Wuori: Gerry, you are laser focused on prenatal to three. In conversations with your partners, what are unique challenges for families with children in this age group? Are there innovations you would point to as successes during this unusual time?

Gerry Cobb: The University of Oregon created the (RAPID-EC), which is a resource that we are funding to inform states, families and policy makers. That information is released weekly online. In addition to research, we’ve had to pivot to virtual home visits to reach families. We’ve been able to reach some of those who weren’t reachable before. Still, we’re noticing a decrease in healthy child visits and vaccines. Our is focused on improving the quality of and access to home-based child care. As things transition, we don’t want to disregard regulations and quality of the care. We are seeing the importance of community networks as we focus on reconstruction and coordination of care. Medical and pediatric professionals are struggling, so there is a need to sustain providers as well.

Dan Wuori: Marica, you’re an authority on the early childcare workforce, being in the nation’s capital and monitoring it nationally. How are things on that front?

Marica Cox Mitchell: There is a recognition that early childcare providers are essential and hold speciality knowledge. Black and brown providers are often excluded from the conversations and resource distribution. Centers and home providers are also needed at the table to drive recommendations with reopening. It is clear that each sector needs its own strategy, but as far as the workforce there are some things that are non-negotiable for returning.

Compensation, recruitment and retention will be important, especially since some providers started receiving unemployment. If that payment is higher than salary, that will be a hindrance for returning. In addition, the mental well-being and safety of providers are front of mind. Especially the aging population of the workforce has brought out concerns on whether it is healthy to return. If places are opening the way they were before, people may not return.

When discussing opportunities for future funding, Mitchell highlighted the need for flexible dollars, allowing grantees to use the funds to address their greatest need. Wyatt shared a similar view, saying that they have expanded grant making recognizing that this is a time of economic uncertainty for all. Each organization is still focused on making the early childhood education landscape more just and equitable for children, families and providers.

“Summer is a great time for parents and caregivers to do fun activities with children that can also promote learning. For example, cooking together and talking about measurement can connect math concepts for children. Helping children do art projects that involve marking out shapes with tape and then coloring them in with chalk is a good way to talk about geometry and shapes. Planting seeds with children is a great way to talk about science and how things grow. Finally, writing a children’s guide to summer fun together is a great way to promote writing and literacy and have fun together.”

—Megan McClelland, director of Oregon State University’s

“For young children, the most important skills that parents can build all come packaged in playful learning. Building with blocks and doing puzzles promotes spatial reasoning, a critical component of math. Playing games like Simon Says and engaging in pretend play fosters executive function skills (e.g., planning, self-control, memory). And talking about emotions and other mental states when watching movies or reading books can help boost social-emotional skills such as empathy and altruism.”

—Helen Shwe Hadani, fellow at Metropolitan Policy Program, , The Brookings Institution

“There’s a well-documented antidote to slow and reverse the summer slide: kids who read, beat the summer slide! When kids don’t read over the summer, they fall further behind. The best thing that parents and caregivers can do is to let kids select books that interest them. And adults need to get involved, too, by modeling the behavior. So set aside family reading time. There is nothing better than ending your day by sharing stories with a child you love; it will change their lives—and yours, too!”

—Kyle Zimmer, president, CEO and co-founder of

“Parents can prevent their child’s summer learning loss by reading a book every day. They can reread a child’s favorites often and add different storybook genres, such as fairy tales, folktales, fantasy and fables. Families can also engage in book talk during and after reading, act out the most exciting parts, make silly character voices, and discuss reasons why the book should become a new favorite. All these activities will build comprehension and vocabulary.”

—Kathy Hollowell-Makle, executive director of

“There are three simple activities parents and caregivers of young children can do to slow and reverse the effects of summer slide: (1) Talk together and use words to describe the things you do and see around you; (2) read books every day and take time to discuss the stories and characters; and (3) sing your favorite songs. Children are naturally curious and love to play, so parents can follow their child’s interests to spark new conversations, stories, songs and games to enjoy together!”

—Jane Park, director of , the early learning program of the

“Young children learn through play. Seize the teachable moments that arise through your day together to read street signs, talk about the emotions they are feeling and measure out ingredients. Let children guide the learning you encourage so it is a joy, not a chore, for them.”

—David Lawrence Jr., Chair of

“Investigate programming options in your area; we’re hearing about many districts and non-profits across the country planning special programs this summer. Don’t forget your local library’s programs, and be sure your child is checking out books and you’re talking with them about the books. If you’re not sure, a librarian can help you choose age-appropriate titles. And always, always, always, talk with your children about anything and everything.”

—Claudia Miner, executive director & co-founder of

“Parents should make sure they approach reading as fun reading, meaning let kids pick any type of book they want about any topic they are interested in and letting them choose the genre—graphic novels, chapter books, picture books, etc. The other thing that can help with the summer slide in terms of math is playing more board games at home, particularly those that involve counting money. But there are also board games that are specifically focused on math activities. Another important thing to remember is that having family conversations about world events and history are important ways to foster children’s critical thinking skills and language expression.”

—Stephanie Currenton-Jolly, director of

The latest evidence comes from the Nordic nations. Denmark, now with five weeks of data under its belt, as a result of reopening those settings for young children. Finland, two weeks into where a spike would have become visible, . Norway’s Prime Minister Enra Solberg even last week, “’Was it necessary to close schools? Maybe not. But at the same time, I think it was the right thing to do at the time.”

And indeed, it was. Back in March, shutting down schools and most child care programs was not only a wise precaution, to keep them open would have been reckless bordering on malpractice. We didn’t yet know anything about COVID-19 and kids.

Now we do. While the scientific community is , there is strongly suggestive evidence that children rarely get COVID-19, and, when they do, rarely transmit it to others.

As the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, : “Children are less capable of spreading it even if they get the infection, and certainly are at very low risk of getting ill from the disease,” adding that, “there have not been many cases described of children transmitting it to others, particularly within school settings.” (The strange inflammatory syndrome that has been making headlines, while scary-sounding, a truly tiny percentage of children).

Confirming Swaminathan’s remark, an Australian study, one of the first to focus specifically on transmission within school settings, “looked at 18 infected teachers and students in 15 schools and found that despite them coming into contact with 863 people at the schools, only two had been infected.”

The good news only continues from there. Twenty-two European Union member states have now re-opened child cares and schools in some capacity, as a result. In fact, no nation in the entire world reports child cares or elementary schools as significant sources of transmission. (The elementary school component is particularly relevant for early learning because of how many school-based pre-K and Head Start programs are currently shut down as the result of broader school closures).

As someone who works daily partnering with the early care & education community, I realize this is not necessarily a popular opinion. Parents are understandably scared for the safety of their children and for what happens if their children bring COVID-19 home. Providers — most of whom are badly underpaid and may have little access to PPE or cleaning supplies — understandably have no interest in being guinea pigs. Staff who have underlying medical conditions are understandably terrified for their own health. But we cannot keep pretending the stack of encouraging research and empirical evidence about young children isn’t growing higher and higher.

The stakes, too, are high. COVID-19 restrictions are pushing many child care programs into insolvency, and it is not just providers who are suffering. from the University of Oregon reveals that “Parents and other caregivers who have lost childcare reported significantly higher rates of stress and anxiety, compared to those who have been able to continue using the same form of childcare.”

Further, “caregivers who have lost childcare report that their children are significantly more fearful and fussy than those who have not lost childcare.” Yet despite this, “over 70% said that they were worried or uncomfortable about returning to the prior arrangement,” with fully one-third concerned that external child care is “not safe.” This concern, as we can now see, is likely overblown.

A common objection is that the U.S. is simply not comparable to other nations. Our testing and tracing regime is worse, our citizens less likely to abide by commonsense precautions like masking, our health care system struggling. Yet while apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult, each passing week and each new country that reports exactly the same result starts to knock down these alternative explanations. This is no longer a small sample size, no longer an ultra-early data point.

We actually have evidence right here in the U.S., since most states kept at least some of their child care centers open to serve the children of essential personnel, even in COVID-19 hotspots like New Jersey. As , “We called [New Jersey’s] Department of Health to see if COVID-19 had been spreading within the child care centers that had opened April 1 to serve children of essential workers. There have been no reports of outbreaks of two or more cases, an official said.”

The variable, quite simply, seems to be children.

There are cogent scientific explanations for why young children are such poor COVID-19 transmitters. Though nothing has been conclusively proven, children’s relative shield from some combination of immature ACE2 receptors that the virus uses to bind onto, and a better-calibrated immune system already primed to fight COVID-19 because of exposure to other common childhood viruses.

University of North Carolina epidemiologist Daniel T. Halperin in a Washington Post op-ed that even when children do contract the virus: “Many children with covid-19 are asymptomatic; in the absence of coughing and sneezing, they emit fewer infectious droplets. Remarkably, contact tracing studies in China, Iceland, Britain and the Netherlands failed to locate a single case of child-to-adult infection out of thousands of transmission events analyzed.”

At this point, it takes significantly more effort to look at the evidence board and conclude that child cares and elementary schools should remain empty, rather than conclude the U.S. should be preparing to safely return its young children en masse. (Note that by the same token, this evidence base does not yet exist at the same level for teenagers, so little can be concluded about middle and high schools).

Of course, re-opening child cares and elementary schools — even with precautions — is not zero risk. Children are far less susceptible to the virus, but hardly invulnerable. France 70 cases of COVID-19 among their 1.4 million children who returned to child cares and primary schools. In Texas, in 60 of its 11,000 open licensed child cares. Still, one way of thinking about these numbers is that more than 99 percent of settings have operated with no cases. Those ratios are pretty darn good.

Precautions certainly must be taken. None of these nations are going pell-mell back to the pre-COVID days. All are taking to lower the risk as much as possible. Moreover, there is no humane way to argue that medically fragile staff should be dragooned back in front of classrooms. Nor does the emerging reality of young children’s special status change the need to and fully fund providers and schools to implement risk mitigation plans.

But the emerging reality does beg certain questions. If young children barely transmit the virus, then what is the logic behind stringent group size restrictions, much less refusing to open at all? Why the concern that young children will get in each other’s faces while playing or doing a group project? There is a real chance that some overzealous if well-intentioned measures cross the threshold into doing more harm than good.

As one Vermont in describing the steps her reopening program has had to take, “This is going to be an emotional nightmare. Curriculum as we knew it, for a little while, is going to be by the wayside.”

It does not have to be so awful. Science tells us that it is a false binary to balance turning these facilities into locked-down wards against the health of staff or the community. The most important precautions should be for adults so that they are largely isolated from one another. Keeping groups of children together rather than rotating teachers, staggered drop-off and pick-up times, physically spreading out adult-led groups, vigilant sanitation, ensuring the ability to rapidly test-and-trace when rare cases do emerge: these are all examples of wholly reasonable and necessary steps.

So it is time for the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the world, acknowledge that young children are at very low risk for catching or spreading COVID-19, and act accordingly. Particularly since there is a very from keeping children away from their early care and education settings, this new understanding should drive all manner of policy and communication decisions.

As early childhood expert Erika Christakis in The Atlantic, “The effects of remote learning are the worst for young children, whose brains grow rapidly from in-person relationships and active, hands-on exploration. Their boisterous physical play strengthens not only gross and fine motor skills but also interpersonal relationships, problem-solving, visual-spatial thinking, confidence building and stamina. Babies and toddlers are still learning to read social-emotional cues and need to see and feel unobstructed faces. The known adverse effects of screen time on the developing brain are clearly more damaging to young children, whose emerging language and literacy skills depend on plentiful, meaningful conversations with teachers whose mouths are unobstructed by masks.” (Or who have .)

We must therefore shake off the paralysis of fear, embrace the evidence and begin moving forward in a way that simultaneously honors the needs of children, early childhood practitioners and parents. For a disease whose hallmark is respiratory distress, the state of our young children is one place we can start breathing easier.

Dr. Phil Fisher studies the brains of young children in real life, not the laboratory. “Brains develop in the context of the world they grow up in,” he says. And that world has been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic.

Initially, pandemic stress was an equal-opportunity phenomenon, afflicting virtually all Americans up and down the socioeconomic ladder. What concerns Fisher—Philip H. Knight Chair and professor of psychology at the University of Oregon—is that while parents and caregivers in middle- and upper-income households are generally regaining their equilibrium, mental health difficulties in lower-income households’ persist and, indeed, continue to rise.

Fisher’s concern derives from data based on voices of households with children five years and younger. “They’re telling us directly,” Fisher says.

A partnership with , an online community and news source for parents, enables Fisher’s team to reach a thousand households per week who live at 150% of the federal poverty level or below. Each week, a survey goes out to potential new participants, and a follow-up survey goes to participants who indicated interest in continuing to respond.

Families are grateful to take part, he says. “They recognize that this is an opportunity for them to share their voice and their story.”

The data point to an ever-widening gap in well-being between lower-income households and others, which Fisher says may stem from a lack of food and a loss of school meals. He also sees alarming deficits in health care, child care and social supports. “For the youngest kids, direct in-person services in home or at a center have become impossible,” he says. The short- and long-term hazards are not hard to envision.

Zeroing in on households that include young children with disabilities, the data show significantly higher rates of stress, depression and anxiety in adults and children alike.

“We need more adequate supports,” Fisher summarizes, “and they need to be targeted and precise. The data show us who needs what, in order to increase prosperity for us all.”

True to its acronym, the Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact on Development (RAPID) came together rapidly, with funders and researchers acting with urgency appropriate to the crisis. “Our nation wasn’t prepared,” Fisher says. “We didn’t have actionable scientific data.” RAPID is making up for lost time.

Whereas much of the research in his field is “siloed, technical and inaccessible,” Fisher and team designed this project to generate recommendations that shared widely to inform local, state and national decisions. Stay tuned for the policy briefs, which will start coming out in a few weeks.

He wants policy makers to feel his urgency. “If young children get off track,” he says, “It’s hard to get them back on.” He describes the stress that’s going around as a disease not just of the brain but the whole body. Long-term chronic stress can overwhelm the immune system and other functions.

We face a danger of what Fisher calls an extended second curve—that is, a pandemic of mental health crises over and above the COVID-19 infection rates, charting closely with associated variables such as inadequate nutrition.

He points out that harm can be mitigated if action is taken swiftly. “The presence of supportive, responsive adults brings systems back into balance,” he says. Social supports for parents and caregivers benefit those young brains.

He believes that RAPID exemplifies how his field can have an impact on decision making during this crisis and in the future. “This is the best of what science and data can do—amplifying issues that aren’t receiving enough attention.”

Yet the U.S. is not the only nation facing this predicament, and there are major lessons to be learned from our international peers. While there is much to be learned about how these countries are managing the technical re-opening of their early learning systems, the most poignant lessons are structural, almost philosophical in nature. Here are three that scream out for attention here at home:

1. Governments are capable of scrapping existing funding schemes and taking over most parent fees — meaning bold reforms are feasible.

One of the great tensions today is that parents, millions of whom are facing financial uncertainty, are having to pay for child care they can’t use or give up their slots, while many child care providers face permanent closure absent parent payments. This, of course, has huge implications for early learning. Nations such as Australia and Ireland have resolved this tension by stepping into the role of parent-payer.

, the Australian government disbanded the preexisting subsidy system, eliminated parent fees and began paying providers at their pre-pandemic enrollment numbers. (Australia also teaches that such bold maneuvers must be carefully designed, as paying at only 50% the usual fee hasn’t worked , and has had for other forms of care.)

Ireland took a slightly different approach, with the government for early childhood educator wages. The Irish Times recently reported that “almost 80 percent of childcare providers have signed up to the enhanced wage subsidy scheme. Under the terms of the scheme, the State will pay 100 per cent of a wage, up to a limit of €586 [$643] per week. Services signing up for the scheme must give an undertaking not to charge parents any fees, and that their child’s place will be secure once [child cares] reopen.” Ireland — a nation that historically has extremely low public investment in early learning, but for which child care was recently a , is now discussing ways to make permanent this shift toward more public funding. Australia looks .

2. We don’t really need parent fees at all — and publicly-funded systems are resilient systems.

Several Nordic nations, such as Finland and Norway, already have what is essentially a universal publicly-funded early learning system. Those systems have not been thrust into chaos at all, much as the U.S. public school system has not. While U.S. public schools are facing budget crunches, no one is worried about whether schools will be financially able to reopen when it’s time, nor whether we are going to lose 1/3 of the teaching workforce. Similarly, in Finland and Norway, young children bear a legal right to child care, and parent fees are either nonexistent or very modest depending on age and the type of care.

In fact, I can’t link to articles about the child care crises the Nordic countries are now facing, because there aren’t any. Instead, you’ll find articles like this one from the World Economic Forum: “.” That article notes that among other things, “Functionality in Helsinki grows from an emphasis on equal opportunity for all. This includes ability to live, work, play and express oneself in a safe environment. Education is one of the cornerstones
” Helsinki is also those modest child care fees if they’re not using external care due to the pandemic. Put simply, robust, healthy, functional systems are able to weather these storms.

3. Families with children face unique financial burdens, so they need targeted financial assistance.

The U.S. is already bizarrely behind the rest of the developed world in not offering a ‘child allowance,’ or direct, unconditional monthly cash transfers to families with children (these are sometimes alternately known as a ‘child benefit’). Some of the many nations with child allowances include Austria, Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The logic behind these allowances is quite simple: adding a child increases a family’s expenses and financial stress without increasing its income, yet societies need healthy children and healthy families. As the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) recently noted in a brief aptly titled, “Economic Security in Good Times and Bad: COVID-19 Demonstrates Why We Need a Child Allowance”:

“A landmark report from [the] National Academy of Sciences in 2019 found that if a child allowance were adopted in the United States, it would do more than any other policy to reduce child poverty … Because child allowances are dispersed on a regular basis, they would provide a ready mechanism to increase support for families as circumstances change, and boost consumer spending during economic downturns.” And as we know, family financial security is to the flourishing and early learning of young children.

Several nations are applying exactly this logic by boosting their child allowances in face of the pandemic. For instance, Canada is providing a one-time to their allowance, while Japan is boosting their monthly benefit by nearly $100 a month. Their parents and young children are better off for it.

Taken in total, these lessons make one thing very clear: We don’t have to be content with our broken system, and we don’t have to wait until the pandemic has passed to start taking significant steps to fix the failures. We can act and plan and advocate and change things here in the present. Our peers around the globe are, right now, showing us the way.

“Have you talked to him about the coronavirus?” Lieberman asked.

“No, I don’t want to frighten him,” the mother replied.

“Mom was wearing a mask,” Lieberman told me later. “How could her son not notice that?”

Of course, the boy already knew, on some level, about the virus. When his mother did talk to him after the telemedicine call, explaining what she knew, admitting that the virus is scary, and describing to him in a reassuring tone of voice what she was doing to keep him and the family safe, he had questions. How can something be so small you can’t even see it? How can something that small kill you? She answered to the best of her ability, and shortly thereafter he seemed calmer and stopped playing dead.

As director of the at the University of California, San Francisco,  Lieberman helps practitioners, parents and advocates to help traumatized young children. “The first five years are the most dangerous, epidemiologically speaking,” she explains. This time also provides the greatest opportunities to promote children’s and families’ strengths.

Lieberman is the developer of Child-Parent Psychotherapy, an approach that involves seeing both together and helping them understand each other’s conflicting feelings and points of view. She is a disciple of Selma Fraiberg, author of the groundbreaking article Ghosts in the Nursery (1975), the title of which Lieberman describes as “the suppressed parts of our lives where we feel unresolvable fear, which can get turned into anger.”

Another influence on Lieberman’s thinking was Stanley Greenberg, pioneer of the “,” which literally meant getting down on the same level as young children.

“Trauma,” explains Lieberman, “will be transmitted from generation to generation unless it is addressed and processed. We have to be willing to speak the unspeakable. We have to be authentic. Children need us to take them seriously.”

Studies by Duke University’s Michael De Bellis and others have found evidence of chronically elevated levels of stress hormones, leading to structural differences in the parts of the brain that control memory and planning. These problems can be remediated, but first they need to be understood.

Asked whether babies can register trauma, Lieberman explains that 4-month-olds who are removed from abusive parents and put in foster care will, when re-introduced to their abusers, might turn their heads away and scream—expressing themselves with the the only language they have.

Even if it doesn’t strike anybody we know, the coronavirus pandemic must be viewed as a trauma. She compares it to a tsunami: “Whether we are safe on high ground or in a cabin in the coastline, we are all affected.”

It should come as no surprise that in the midst of this traumatic pandemic, children have been waking up crying more often and throwing more tantrums. Her advice for parents and caregivers:

• Be honest. Translate reality for even the youngest children. “Kids are smart,” she says. “They can tell if you’re lying or sugarcoating.”
• Be understanding. Now is not the time for expecting children to “tough it out.” Lieberman does not agree with a and a popular columnist who have railed against “coddling” children. “They are talking about families with an abundance of wealth and resources, she explains. (And even with these families it is more complex). Lieberman says, “Children thrive when adults acknowledge and support their developmental needs. They rely on the adults they trust to manage their fear and move toward self-confidence, age-appropriate autonomy, and secure relationships.”
• Take care of yourself. Stress is contagious and children are highly responsive to how their parents feel. Lieberman invokes the metaphor of the oxygen mask on the plane. “It’s like the flight attendant always says, put on your own mask first.”

Recognizing that the trauma is real and ongoing, Lieberman says she’s been consistently impressed with the resourcefulness of parents as they attempt to manage their careers and simultaneously attend to their children. “They’re being present for their children,” she says, “and that’s more important than being perfect.” None of us every can be perfect!

That’s why, despite government and philanthropic interventions, education for the pre-kindergarten set will take a hard hit in the wake of this crisis. The impact is compounded for children in need, says Betsy Zorio, vice president of U.S. programs and advocacy at Save the Children. “Summer 2020 is shaping up to be the longest summer of their young lives,” she warns.

Save the Children, a national leader in protecting children in emergencies and disasters, operates in more than 200 rural communities in 12 states. Its team of nearly 1,500 early childhood education staffers delivers early childhood education and family engagement programs, as well as training and employing local educators and staff. It has created a signature .

­­­Here are three facets of the organization’s multidimensional COVID-19 response:

1. Nutrition: An alliance with No Kid Hungry is ensuring that school districts, community organizations and government agencies can get nutrition assistance. Simply contact No Kid Hungry at their . Organizations eligible for funding will be contacted directly to submit an application.

2. #SAVEWITHSTORIES: Besides being gifted actors, Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams have stepped up for kids with their Instagram #SAVEWITHSTORIES campaign. It’s a great way to keep learning going while millions of Americans are home. #SAVEWITHSTORIES benefits Save the Children and No Kid Hungry. Here are a few:

• by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Loren Long. Gorman is the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States.
• by Arree Chung
• by Jamie Lee Curtis, illustrated by Laura Cornell
• by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts
• , illustrated by Phyllis Harris, along with husband Chris Pratt

3. Maintaining Contact: Schools and libraries are closed. There’s a wealth of resources online, but not everybody can get online. Save the Children’s Lindsey Lockman Dougherty says, “We’re adapting our program models to maintain contact and provide support to families during this pandemic. And when necessary, we’re relying on 20th-century solutions to serve children in rural communities,” such as printing and distributing educational materials within schools’ food distribution programs and calling families directly to share information and resources.

Save the Children also raises awareness about , a platform for boosting the brain-building power of parent-child interactions. Lockman Dougherty, Save the Children’s Vroom specialist, says that while the digital divide always factors into their attempts to help home-bound kids to learn, many families without broadband do have smartphones and appreciate the Vroom app and Vroom by Text. “This is how to turn any moment into a brain-building moment,” she says.

“Coronavirus is going to change all of our lives,” says Zorio. “We are looking at the impacts wide-scale learning loss will have on our nation’s kids, but we also see solutions and the chance to set lasting positive change into motion.”

Disclosure: Vroom was created by Bezos Family Foundation. This story was originally published on Early Learning Nation, which was also an initiative of the Bezos Family Foundation.

Tracking each individual state’s child care actions during this time can prove just as dizzying, but a new resource from The Hunt Institute provides a comprehensive list of state directives all in one place and updated in real time.

Last week, the North Carolina-based nonprofit launched a , which includes a comprehensive Policy Playbook featuring issue briefs on topics from early childhood to K-12 and postsecondary education, links to state guidance, and more.

Child care is prominently featured across this resource, with both the Institute’s compendium of child care policy actions and a growing collection of briefs providing state policymakers with timely information on early childhood education during the coronavirus pandemic. The page will be continually updated throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Rather than keeping state policymakers and school superintendents insulated, The Institute’s resources aim to connect state governments by keeping them informed with the latest closures, analysis and cutting-edge initiatives.

“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback because people have really found The Institute to be a one-stop shop,” says The Hunt Institute President Javaid Siddiqi. “It’s being updated in real time. Everything in this COVID world is changing minute by minute.”

The child care resource page illustrates how state policies for early childhood care in the midst of coronavirus have run the gamut from far-reaching closures to more lenient measures. On March 26, the Maryland Department of Education announced that child care providers must close, with the exception of those serving essential personnel. In California, the first state to issue a shelter-in-place order, the Department of Social Services left the decision to close day care centers to the discretion of the licensee, unless ordered by local, state or federal authorities with emergency jurisdiction to do so. Other states have given child care facilities the option to remain open. In Louisiana, state officials issued stay-at-home orders in March but exempted childcare.

who has provided a blueprint for state governments responding to the virus. In a series of Tweets on March 15, DeWine signaled that daycares would eventually close and healthcare facilities would soon create their own daycares to fill the gaps. The Republican governor’s measured tone and slow rollout of child care closures also won praise from The Hunt Institute’s Director of Early Learning Dan Wuori.

“I would single Ohio out for a particularly orderly and thoughtful process,” Wuori said. “Governor Dewine stands out as having had a forward-thinking, organized process, where he signaled this was coming, gave parents time and gave providers time.”

On March 26, the state of Ohio closed childcare facilities unless they operate under a temporary pandemic child care license. The state further restricted child care facilities to no more than six children per class with one teacher. Those population restrictions are necessary for preschoolers who aren’t able to adhere to social distancing guidelines themselves. In addition to a trend in limiting the number of children per room, Wuori has noticed language in emergency licenses that addresses the stability of those groups.

“They don’t want kids filtering in and out of that group,” he said. “You keep kids together from the same family as much as possible.”

Ohio’s temporary license for providers mirrors similar processes across the country. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a stay-at-home order on March 20, which closed child care centers except those granted an emergency license to provide care for essential staff. North Carolina followed suit on March 25, issuing guidance that must be .

“The lines are blurring between open and closed,” Wuori said, noting that several states have closed child care facilities while giving the option to apply as emergency care providers.

Many of the temporary licenses are being issued on site at hospitals and facilities where essential staff are working, he adds. States are also waiving or suspending traditional regulatory processes.

“Typically these licenses are pretty simple, at least compared to regular child care licensing,” he said. “States are offering increased flexibility for these emergency centers with the expectation that they’re open for two months or something to that effect.”

Beyond closures, The Hunt Institute is tracking other innovations in education policy brewing at the state level. New Mexico has added infected child care workers to the state’s high risk insurance pool, pledging to pay premiums for the infected worker, and their immediate household members, until they recover.

“It’s been important for the field to see child care rightfully lumped into the category of first responders,” Wuori said. “They’re such an essential part of the nation’s infrastructure right now because without them the essential staff, the medical staff responding to the pandemic, wouldn’t be able to do that job.”

Even as states attempt to keep child care facilities open for essential workers and limit the number of children per class, providers have expressed apprehension over keeping open a potential breeding ground for carriers.

“That’s why I was so interested to see what New Mexico is doing in terms of the health insurance piece of this,” Siddiqi said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that becomes a bigger part of the conversation because in some ways, it is a hazardous duty that they’re taking on. They’re providing this essential care and may be working daily with children who may not be symptomatic but may be capable of spreading the virus.”

North Carolina’s policies also caught Wuori’s eye. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services is providing several forms of financial assistance through May for facilities and their families, including bonus payments to full-time child care employees and child care homes. The department will pay providers $300 per month for teaching staff and $200 per month for all non-teaching staff. The state will also pay subsidies so that providers aren’t penalized for decreases in attendance through May.

“Lots of states are issuing payments based on the number of kids enrolled, as opposed to the number of kids physically showing up at school that week, so as to keep those important dollars flowing to the childcare centers,” Siddiqi says.

Looking ahead, Siddiqi says he’s interested in how states will choose to expend money granted to them from the federal stimulus package. to prevent child care providers from going out of business and closing their doors to parents working essential jobs during the pandemic.

“Some states clearly, like New Mexico or North Carolina, have already figured out the funding streams that are within the state’s discretion,” he says. “But now all states will have this infusion of funding through the stimulus that’s aimed to support the child care industry.”

That infusion of federal dollars may not be enough to assuage the anxiety that many small providers feel throughout the pandemic.

“To me the biggest thing that maybe we haven’t talked about yet is how this is exposing the precarious financial child care model,” Wuori said. “There’s a very serious question right now and a lot of anxiety in the child care industry about how all these small businesses will ultimately be able to weather this without significant support. There certainly will be centers that will close for this purpose that will never reopen.”