Home visiting programs are preschool in its earliest form

Mounting evidence points to an increasing disparity in the educational achievements of those children who attend and complete pre-school, and those who do not. The Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program is a national home visiting initiative for low-income families that is working to bridge the gap. They provide learning curriculum, guidance, and parenting support for disadvantaged families in their homes, so that their children can be equally prepared to succeed in school.

Cincinnati is making efforts to close the achievement gap between poor children and more advantaged students by fighting the effects of poverty. Lower Price Hill’s Oyler School is part of a growing national movement to help poor children succeed by meeting their basic health, social, and nutritional needs at school.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, philanthropist George Kaiser has invested heavily in Educare, a year-round early learning program, and wraparound services, such as prison-diversion and family-based programs, with the belief that early child development can break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and address the opportunity gap before it widens. The Christian Science Monitor is following three mothers with children enrolled in Educare to show how the experiment in philanthropy is playing out on the ground.

In a Buffalo school district where many students from low-income families struggled with trauma, attendance, and the effects of poverty, a nonprofit initiative called Say Yes to Education is implementing drastic change. The program increases graduation rates for minority students, grants scholarships and admissions guidance to colleges, provides medical and mental health care to under-served students, brings in mentors and after-school programs, and even assists students parents with job-readiness workshops and housing assistance.

Community Health Workers in Richmond County work to reduce barriers - including employment, education, smoking, food security or housing - that may contribute to the likelihood of infant mortality. Using the Community HUB Pathways Model to minimize significant sources of stress in a woman’s life, they are helping drive down infant mortality rates in Ohio, particularly for women and babies of color.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.

Youth Villages, a nonprofit started in Tennessee over 30 years ago has helped improve the lives of children who face difficulties in their homes while saving money on the child welfare system. Instead of immediately removing children from their problematic homes, Youth Villages works on building relationships with the parents and providing in-home support services to both the parents and the children to ensure that they have a successful future. Additionally, the organization supports foster kids who age out of the system, and has managed to place many children back with their families securely.

Boulder Valley schools are working with Latino parents to create networks of community support, feedback, and insight about the success of Latino children in the district. Parents are working with the school district to make sure stereotypes and racial bias aren't limiting their children from receiving food services and quality education that fit their needs.

Affordable and flexible child care allows female informal workers to earn more money and frees older children to attend school. One model that works well comes from the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, which operates 13 centers, each caring for 130-400 children. SEWA offers quality care, pays employees living wages, and boasts high parent involvement.

Part 1 of the "Equity or Bust: Are Ontario's Public Schools a Model for Pennsylvania" Series: Ontario has become widely lauded for its education system, celebrated for both high performance and relatively smaller achievement gaps between wealthy and poor students, thanks to the concept of "equity." This manifests, in essence, as more funding per-pupil to the school boards that serve students who face the greatest obstacles. The model contrasts starkly to the school system in Pennsylvania, regarded as "the most inequitable in the nation.”