Early Childhood Development
Children's Institute Strategic Plan 2022-2025
In 2022, Children’s Institute enacted a three-year strategic plan focused on strengthening and transforming the state’s early childhood development system. This coincided with a new mission, vision, and values, which guided our strategic planning efforts and resulted in a strategic plan grounded in equity.
Imperative 1
Amplify, develop, strengthen, and transform, the emerging early childhood development system to create a socially just and equitable Oregon for children.
Imperative 2
Strengthen relationship building and engagement practices to support, collaborate with, and empower partners, communities, and families equitably in alignment with our organizational values.
Imperative 3
Imperative 4
Research, design, and develop, innovative approaches to early childhood efforts that reflect the diversity of experiences and world views.
Imperative 5
Establish and implement a sustainable revenue model, inclusive of entrepreneurship opportunities, to align with our values and advance our mission.
Policy & Advocacy
We help lead a coalition of advocates fighting for increased state investments in early childhood development programs and services. Our policy recommendations are research-based and centered on the lived experiences of families and educators.
Early Works
Our Early Works sites in Southeast Portland and rural Yoncalla are learning laboratories demonstrating a new approach to early learning and healthy development. Both sites offer publicly funded high-quality preschool and a range of other supports for children and families.
Early School Success
This initiative will help educators and school leaders better align and embed developmentally appropriate teaching practices from preschool through fifth grade. Working with partner school districts, we hope to demonstrate how the benefits of high-quality preschool can be sustained through the elementary grades.
Health and Learning Initiative
Healthy kids are better able to learn and succeed in school. In partnership with the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership, we are leading Oregon to improve health and learning outcomes for children.
The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
We are a state leader in this national, collaborative effort to improve third-grade reading outcomes. The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading fosters community partnerships and engages families to improve school readiness, school attendance, and summer learning.
Communications
We produce publications, videos, podcasts, and infographics to educate policy makers and voters on early childhood development issues, programs, and services. These materials combine current research with stories from communities across Oregon.
We’re making Oregon the best place to be a kid.
We work to improve the lives of children from prenatal to grade 5 who experience institutional or systemic barriers to opportunity in Oregon:
- children from low-income families
- children of color
- disabled children
- dual language learners
- children in rural areas
Our research, policy and advocacy, learning initiatives, and community partnerships all aim to keep kids healthy and safe and prepare them to be active, engaged learners.
Children’s Institute has always worked passionately to improve outcomes for Oregon’s kids. Since our founding in 2003, we’ve come to know that a brighter future for our state rests on a foundation of love and care for every child and family. Love sometimes requires a reckoning.
We have to grapple with a difficult truth: many policies and practices designed to address economic inequity do not meet the needs of children of color and children living in rural communities.
We’re committed to shifting these systems toward justice. And we invite you to join us.