KinderCare is a Business Champion for CED's Early Childhood Education initiative, which collaborates with business leaders and education experts to increase the quality, access, and affordability of early learning opportunities for all children across the country.

Below are some of their thoughts on the importance of early childhood education.

1. Please provide a short paragraph of introduction of KinderCare’s CEO:

Tom Wyatt is Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of KinderCare Education (KCE). KCE is the nation’s leading private provider of high-quality early childhood education and school-age programs, serving more than 185,000 children from six weeks to 12 years old at more than 2,100 locations nationwide. Since becoming CEO in 2012, Tom has guided the company’s transformational turnaround, which has been marked by record-high levels of employee and customer engagement, earning KCE the Gallup Great Workplace Award for the past two years. Tom’s career spans more than 30 years of leading successful consumer brands and previously served as President of Gap Inc.’s Old Navy division from 2008 to 2012.

2. Why did you become a business champion for early education?

Early childhood education has one of the highest returns on investment when you consider the beneficial impacts it can have on children throughout their life. That’s why we work tirelessly to advocate on behalf of the children in our care from testifying on Capitol Hill in support of the Child Care Development Block Grant and tax credits for working parents or uniting with other leaders in our industry as part of the Early Care and Education Consortium, the leading organization of high quality early childhood providers in the country.

We also partner with more than 400 companies around the country to help them find solutions that meet the needs of their employees – providing on-site or near-site childcare centers or utilizing our nationwide network of community-based centers and school-based programs to support working parents no matter where their workplace location.

KinderCare Education is committed to using our voice and platform as the nation’s largest and leading private provider of quality early childhood education to promote policies that help working families find the early care and education they need for their children and that help businesses have the workforce they need to support our nation’s economic growth.

3. Why are the role and quality of teachers so important to early childhood education?

The single most important factor in a child’s success in an early childhood education program is the quality of the child’s teacher. Brain research demonstrates the importance of relationships and the critical role of teachers in building partnerships with families. That’s why our teachers are the foundation of everything we do. They take the great programs our education team creates and turn them into effective learning experiences in their classrooms. They build confidence in children every day and, just as importantly, they build confidence in families that their children are in an environment that supports their healthy growth and development.

4. How does KinderCare help ensure high-quality early education experiences for children?

Every child deserves access to high-quality early childhood education. That’s why KinderCare Education has committed to achieving 100 percent accreditation in addition to meeting state quality rating and improvement standards and child care licensing standards. Nationally accredited centers meet rigorous standards in everything from safety to teacher qualifications to curriculum. Less than 10 percent of centers nationwide are accredited; 97 percent of KinderCare Learning Centers are accredited.

Through our curriculum, we guide children on the road to discovery with our research-based standards and assessments along six developmental domains, all aligned to state early learning standards and educational best practices. We’re the only private early childhood education provider that regularly uses outside standardized assessment tools such as the BRIGANCE Developmental Screen and the TerraNova to ensure that the children we serve show expected or accelerated developmental progress in our programs. These assessments not only help us to determine a child’s preparedness for kindergarten, but also help us to identify areas in which a child may benefit from additional support.

5. How can we ensure that we have the best quality teachers for early education?

Teachers are the heart of KinderCare Education and have the largest impact on our children and families’ experiences in our programs. We look for teachers who are passionate about education, who thrive in the productive chaos of the classroom, and who build great relationships within their school community. We worked with Gallup to design a selection tool that focuses on hiring teachers for their innate talents, and, once hired, we use our teacher rubrics as a framework to support coaching and professional development.

Each of our teachers has opportunities throughout the year to learn and grow. Our Professional Development Days are an opportunity for teachers to be inspired and stay abreast of current best practices that will enrich the experiences our children have in the classroom.

We recognize our most exceptional teachers on both a regional and national level with the KinderCare Education Legacy Awards. Each year recipients are chosen from the more than 30,000 early childhood educators within the KinderCare Education family of brands. These teachers receive company-wide recognition, cash prizes, and are celebrated within their communities. KinderCare Education is the only early childhood education company to offer an award of such significance.

We’re also dedicated to offering all of our teachers the pay, benefits, professional development, and support they deserve. We offer all of our employees an education benefit designed to help cover the cost of continuing their education and training. By treating our teachers like the education professionals they are, we’re able to attract and retain talented educators.

6. KinderCare has some compelling reasons for both the private and public sector to get involved in early education. What are some pieces of research or stories you’d like to highlight?

We know that children who have access to high-quality early childhood education programs are better prepared for school than their peers. According to recent data, children who attend KinderCare Education programs are developmentally ahead of their peers after just one year in the program. Furthermore, children who stay with KinderCare for more than one year are more likely to meet developmental benchmarks for their age and to be categorized as developmentally advanced.

Our teachers are committed to supporting every child, no matter where they are on their developmental journey. That is why we provide individualized consultation that every teacher can access to give them the tools and resources they need to help each child reach their full potential. Our Inclusion Services team, the only one of its kind in the private sector, works with more than 5,000 teachers and center directors each year to ensure that children who are struggling can experience success in the classroom.

Thanks to the work of researchers like Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman and his Heckman Equation outlines the economic benefits of investing in early childhood education, we know that access to high-quality early childhood education is a game-changer for a child, their family, the broader community, and our entire economy. We will work tirelessly to make sure as many children as possible have access and success in our programs.

7. What efforts are KinderCare involved in to help improve the early learning workforce?

KinderCare Education recently partnered with Teachstone, the creators of the highly respected CLASS early childhood assessment and monitoring tool, to offer a 9-hour college credit Child Development Associate (CDA) credential aligned to CLASS.

The CDA with CLASS tool that KinderCare offers online serves as a support to increase teachers’ understanding of the CLASS tool, with an emphasis on positive relationships and interactions in early childhood education environments. Through this unique offering, KinderCare teachers are able observe authentic teacher–student interactions in early childhood classrooms as they learn how the CLASS tool supports high-quality engagement. User-friendly technology makes it easy for our teachers to ask questions, access resources, and follow their own progress in coursework, with an online facilitator supporting our teachers.

In addition to our work with Teachstone, KinderCare Education is committed to using its leadership position in the industry to set the highest bar for quality curriculum, accreditation, professional development for our teachers and center/field leaders, and advocacy to encourage others to follow and uplift the quality of early care and education for all children nationwide.