The Portrait of Sonoma County highlights the critical role that early childhood education plays in a person’s later success in school, career, and overall health and well-being. At Community Foundation Sonoma County we’ve taken a leadership role with a countywide initiative, Cradle to Career, which is working to ensure that every child is successful throughout the educational pipeline. As part of our commitment to this effort, we’ve launched a three-year initiative to support families in building their children’s early literacy skills so that they enter kindergarten ready to succeed.
As this recent article in the New Yorker discusses, the amount and quality of words that young children are exposed to has a dramatic impact on a child’s readiness for kindergarten, and children of low-income parents start school at a major disadvantage. “The Talking Cure” dives into the ‘word gap’ between low- and high-income families, and what parents can do about it.
