Within and Across All Early Childhood National Centers 2021–2025
Equity means fair and just treatment to all children, families, and those who support them. Equity enables everyone to achieve their full potential.
Equity promotes consistent, systemic, and equitable access to comprehensive services and systems for everyone, including people who are African American, Black, Latino, Hispanic, Indigenous, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or other people of color; members of religious minorities; people who are LGBTQ+; people with disabilities; people who live in rural areas; and people adversely affected by persistent poverty or other forms of inequality.
Equity means ensuring:
- An anti-bias and nurturing environment where children, families, and staff feel seen, heard, and acknowledged, and where they have a sense of belonging and a connection to their community.
- Resources, opportunities, systems, policies, and supports that enable each child to reach their highest level of learning and life potential and that enable all providers, staff, and families to reach their highest level of life potential.
- Program-level protective, promotive, and supportive factors, including effective and inclusive program leadership and governance practices that operate with a social justice lens; culturally sensitive parent and family engagement; developmentally, culturally and linguistically appropriate teaching and learning practices; and facilitated access to high-quality health and behavioral health services for children, families, and staff.
- A commitment to meaningfully engage the voices of the communities that have been historically marginalized and that are served across early childhood and school-age care systems. These systems include local Early Head Start; Head Start; Migrant and Seasonal Head Start; American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start; child care in all systems, including state, territory, and tribal systems; and child care in all settings, including family child care homes and family, friend, and neighbor care.
Last Updated: August 23, 2021