Montgomery County Early Care & Education (ECE) Common Agenda
Our shared vision for ECE
What is a Common Agenda?
“A Common Agenda is a vision for change shared by all participants that includes a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving the problem through agreed-upon actions.”
A Common Agenda is a blueprint for change shared by all key stakeholders and is an important component of collective impact. It includes an intentional process of helping everyone to get onto the same page about what it is we are going to do together to improve outcomes for young children in Montgomery County.
What does it mean to be Kindergarten ready?
Generally, Kindergarten readiness takes a multi-dimensional view to focus on both the skills, knowledge and abilities children need for educational success as well as the physical and mental health, social and emotional skills, executive functioning and self-regulation, and broader family and community supports that help children have health approaches to learning.
According to Maryland regulations, “School readiness means the stage of early development that enables an individual child to engage in and benefit from early learning experiences. As a result of family nurturing and interactions with others, a young child in this stage has reached certain levels of social and emotional development, cognition and general knowledge, language development, and physical well-being and motor development. School readiness acknowledges individual approaches toward learning as well as the unique experiences and backgrounds of each child.” -- Md. Code Regs. 13A.06.02.02
Our Role in the Common Agenda Process
The Children’s Opportunity Alliance, as the County’s Early Care and Education Coordinating Entity, has the duty “to create, as a neutral convener, a common early childhood education agenda based on community consensus that all major stakeholders commit to and maintain a 360-degree view of all aspects of the County’s early childhood education sector”. – Bill 42-21
The Alliance functions as the backbone organization, mobilizing, coordinating, and facilitating the process of implementing the Montgomery County ECE Common Agenda.
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Depending on the activity or strategy, the Alliance will play various roles. In some cases, we will be in the driver’s seat, leading the charge to get work done. In other cases, we will be in the passenger seat, partnering closely with stakeholder partners driving the change forward. And lastly, there will be some activities where we are in the backseat, ensuring that the work of other leaders is coordinated to move progress in the same direction on the road toward our desired result.
The partners who will be engaged in this work will be identified as we complete annual work plans throughout implementation of this five-year Agenda. Some partners will be leaders at the neighborhood, city, county, or state levels, depending on the activity. The target for the level of change may be either the County or the State – or it could be a mixture of both or an exploration to see where change is most likely to occur first.
The Alliance recognizes that many partners in the Montgomery County early childhood system have existing action plans or strategic plans that aim to benefit the same young children and the adults who care for them, and many more plans may be developed over the next five years. We intend the Common Agenda to be aligned with and supportive of these existing plans; the Alliance and its team commit to acting to support the successful implementation of these plans. These plans include, but are not limited to:
Montgomery County Government’s Early Care and Education Initiative Action Plan FY 24-27
Montgomery County Strategic Plan to End Childhood Hunger (2023)
Montgomery Moving Forward’s Early Care and Education Workforce Recommendations
This Common Agenda integrates closely with the Alliance’s Foundational Action Plan, which describes the role that the Alliance plays in Montgomery County. Our foundational actions – collaborating with partners, sharing information, boosting resources, leveraging data, supporting research, and driving advocacy – can and will all be engaged as needed to move forward the four strategies of the Common Agenda.
We commit to using an equity lens when implementing the activities that make up the Common Agenda. In alignment with the Alliance’s core values – Equity, Family-Centered, Justice, Accountable, Synergy – we will steer the work of the Common Agenda to center racial equity and social justice, working to dismantle the deep and complex barriers embedded in systems, policies, and practices that have created and sustained profound disparities across communities.
We commit to thoughtfully adjusting this plan as the environment and factors impacting Kindergarten readiness change. As we live in a time of dynamic federal, state, and local policy and budget climates, we understand that new barriers might be created that our community’s young children and the adults who care for them are facing. We will continue to maintain a 360-degree view of the early childhood system in our community, keep close engagement with stakeholders closest to the issue, use data to inform continuous improvement, and adjust course as necessary.
Our Common Agenda for 2025-2030
Result
Children arrive to Kindergarten ready to learn and thrive
Indicator
Kindergarten readiness. Currently, 46% of students demonstrate readiness using the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (Caveat: this assessment has limitations and has been discontinued. There will be no data for SY24-25 and a new assessment will be used in SY25-26 which will establish a new baseline.)
Targets: 75% of children in the county demonstrate readiness for Kindergarten; the 30 schools with the lowest percentage of students demonstrating readiness will have at least 50% of students demonstrating readiness
Population
Primary: Children 0-5 in Montgomery County | Secondary: The adults who care for them
Priority Populations
Our priority will be the populations who have the lowest readiness scores (numbers indicate the percent of children in each subgroup who demonstrated readiness in SY24):
Low-income children (26%), English language learners (12%), students with disabilities (17%)
Hispanic/Latino children (24%), African American children (39%)
Neighborhoods that feed the 30 elementary schools where fewer than 30% of children demonstrate readiness
Priority Factors
These are the priority factors that support or impede our result and that our strategies will address:
Access to high-quality, affordable early care and education (ECE)
Increased retention, pay, and benefits for ECE workforce
Parent/Guardian education and engagement
Public awareness and political will that prioritizes the early childhood system
Strategies & Key Activities
After researching and exploring options to address these priority factors, we identified four strategies that, together, give us the best chance of moving the needle. While our aim is to ultimately impact the full breadth of the early childhood system in Montgomery County, we intend to implement many of the activities by first targeting priority populations and geographic areas that are furthest behind our goal.
Expand affordable access to high-quality early care and education programs by reducing the cost and removing barriers for families
Engage with families about how to ensure their young children are thriving and how to navigate and access early childhood resources
Recognize and advance the early care and education workforce to recruit, retain, and expand the number of high-quality educators
Advocate for systems changes and new public and private funding for the early childhood system to reduce cost for families, raise wages and sustainability for the workforce, and make it easier for parents and providers to access support
Click on each strategy to learn more.
Expand affordable access to high-quality early care and education programs by reducing the cost and removing barriers for families
Targets:
Increase number of children zero to five in publicly subsidized seats to 18,000; increase the number of licensed child care providers at EXCELS Level 3 or higher to 50%
Key Actions:
Support County and system efforts to expand and stabilize seats for priority populations, including infants and toddlers, children with disability and/or medical fragility, and English language learners
Incentivize stabilizing and maintaining infant and toddler care seats while expanding Pre-K
Ensure and stabilize successful expansion of a mixed-delivery Pre-K system (MCPS and community-based) that includes Head Start and serves priority populations that are most in need, particularly by building capacity of community-based child care providers to provide high quality programming; including moving more licensed providers to higher levels in the EXCELS quality rating system
Bolster infrastructure for family child care sustainability improvement efforts, particularly by supporting participation in Pre-K expansion
Expand local child care subsidies to cover unemployed parents while seeking employment and receiving workforce supports
Engage with families about how to ensure their young children are thriving and how to navigate and access early childhood resources
Targets:
Engage 5,000 families through strategic activities; 85% of parents/ guardians engaged report an increased level of awareness about the resources their child needs
Key Actions:
Create a system of local navigators and neighborhood ambassadors in priority neighborhoods who can provide in-person access to early childhood resources, including child care and other resources for child development, that are embedded within communities and provide support in multiple languages
Improve and expand upon existing online portals, such as LOCATE, that compile resources to make navigation easier for families with young children
Support the continued county-wide expansion of free child development resources, including the BASICS parenting resources and text message service and Imagination Library
Conduct outreach to families to improve awareness of Pre-K programs
Engage the health care sector (pediatricians, managed-care organizations, WIC, hospitals & birthing centers, etc.) in sharing early childhood resources with families with young children, particularly with priority populations
Expand models of home visiting to bring resources to families as soon as a baby is born
Recognize and advance the early care and education workforce to recruit, retain, and expand the number of high-quality educators
Targets:
Increase the number of early care and education professionals working in licensed child care providers by 30% (an additional 2,600 workers).
Key Actions:
Advocate to the State of Maryland to adopt a career ladder framework for birth to five educator credentialing, reforming the Maryland Credential Program and aligning Maryland regulatory and quality improvement systems
Advocate to the State of Maryland to create a workforce registry, recognizing the ECE workforce as professionals and better tracking individuals within the profession
Explore opportunities to provide improved access to benefits for the workforce, including affordable health care, discounts at businesses and public services, and child care subsidies
Enhance pipeline development of qualified and trained professionals into the workforce, with a focus on supporting educators who are able to meet the needs of diverse children and their families
Improve sustainability of programs and their ability to retain their employees by supporting the successful implementation of the County’s new Shared Services Alliance
Advocate for systems changes and new public and private funding for the early childhood system to reduce cost for families, raise wages and sustainability for the workforce, and make it easier for families and providers to access support
Targets:
Create a dedicated funding stream that improves access and sustainability of the early childhood system
Key Actions:
Build and lead a campaign for Montgomery County to create a local, public, dedicated funding stream to improve access to child care for families, raise compensation and sustainability of the workforce, and make it easier for parents and providers to access resources
Organize a coalition of champions, stakeholders, and allies to support the new funding stream
Organize stakeholders, including parents and educators, who are trained and supported to advocate for a more equitable early childhood system
Grow and strengthen a business network of employers and business stakeholders engaged in advancing child care as an economic imperative in Montgomery County
Next Steps and Implementation
In spring 2025, the Alliance will create a new steering committee to coordinate and oversee progress on the common agenda; the steering committee will be accountable to the Board of Directors. The Alliance will lead or co-lead six workgroups or advisory groups made up of stakeholders to move the strategies forward.
Affordable Access Work Group: Expand affordable access to high-quality early care and education programs by reducing the cost and removing barriers for families.
Family Navigation Work Group: Engage with families about how to ensure their young children are thriving and how to navigate and access early childhood resources.
Workforce Work Group*: Recognize and advance the early care and education workforce to recruit, retain, and expand the number of high-quality educators.
ECE Funding Campaign: Advocate for systems changes and new public and private funding for the early childhood system to reduce cost for families, raise wages and sustainability for the workforce, and make it easier for families and providers to access support.
Each work group will have a detailed annual workplan that will define the key activities, who will lead them, who will collaborate on them, when they will be done, and how they will be measured to project manage and coordinate our network to achieve these goals.
To express interest in joining a work group:
Planning Process and Participants
With the help of Collective Impact Forum consultants Dominique Samari and Paul Schmitz, we used a Results Based Accountability (RBA) Framework to ensure a data-driven decision-making process that allowed us to get beyond talking about problems to taking action to solve problems.
Planning Timeline:
June – October 2024: Pre-plan, gather data, intensive community engagement
September: Launch Common Agenda Advisory Group and set up Data Advisory Group for input
October: Focus population-level result and conduct factor analysis
November: Map assets and draft strategies
December: Prioritize strategies and set performance measures
January: Finalize plan and devise implementation plans and structure for accountability
February 2025: Alliance Board approval of plan and County Council presentation
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Community Engagement Phase
We used a variety of engagement opportunities to gather the input and ideas of community members most closely affected by issues in the early childhood system, so that their voice was at the center of every decision we made regarding the creation of the Common Agenda.
In our public community conversations, we aimed to gather input from stakeholders about the assets, gaps, and opportunities to support development of a common agenda for improving the lives of children and families 0-5 in Montgomery County.
We began the meetings with a Data Walk (English, Spanish) showcasing a wide set of data that illustrated the current state of young children in Montgomery County – including data related to family conditions, housing, health, access to child care, and educational performance. Participants engaged in a shared sense-making process around the data to inform conversations around the resources and supports that would be most helpful to support healthy child development and growth for young children.
Targeted Community Conversations:
Community engagement consulting group (Parents who participate in SNAP) – conducted in Spanish, Amharic, and Dari.
Early Care and Education Initiative Steering Committee
Family Child Care Association – Montgomery County Chapter
Head Start Policy Council
Montgomery County Commission for Women
Montgomery County Public Schools Community School Resource Coordinators & Parent Resource Coordinators
Organization of Child Care Center Directors
Surveys conducted at various community events, including:
Party in the Park – Montgomery County Head Start & Housing Opportunities Commission
Eviction Court
Councilmember Sayles Community Conversations
Montgomery Housing Partnership Rolling Back to School Pool Party
Montgomery College Family Empowerment Fair
Common Agenda Advisory Group
The following individuals are members of the group:
Allison Schnitzer, Montgomery County Food Council
Angelica DeSoto, Montgomery County Collaboration Council
Carmen Wong*, The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation
Charlene Muhammed, Community Action Agency
Charo Torres, Latino Early Care and Education Coalition
Delianny Brammer, Parent
Doreen Engel, The Arc Montgomery County
Elba Garcia, Montgomery County Public Schools
Enrique Gallego, Parent/Neuroeducator
Glenda Hernandez-Tittle*, Montgomery College
James Montgomery, Montgomery County Public Libraries Board Member
Jeanette Simmons, Black and Brown Coalition/Retired Educator
Jennifer Arnaiz*, Early Care and Education Initiative/Department of Health and Human Services
Jennifer Nicholls, Journey Preschool/Family Child Care Association Montgomery County Chapter
Joanne Hurt, Wonders Early Learning & Expanded Day/Montgomery Moving Forward
Jody Burghardt, Jewish Social Services Agency
Mary Ellen Savarese, Retired Child Care Provider & Specialist
Nichelle Owens, Montgomery County Public Schools
Pilar Olmedo, Action in Montgomery
Sarah Roebuck, The Goddard Schools in Gaithersburg, Silver Spring, & North Bethesda
Taniesha Woods, Parent
Tiffany Jones*, Precious Moments Family Childcare
Alliance staff
*Children’s Opportunity Alliance Board Member
Meeting Timeline
Our Common Agenda Advisory Group met four times to review data and community input, shape our result, identify and prioritize our factors, and build strategies and performance measures. At every step, we conducted additional research, data gathering, and engagement to test what was emerging.
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Funding for this project was provided by Montgomery County, MD Government.