Early Childhood Education Initiative

Kids in low-income communities start to fall behind academically long before they even walk into an elementary school. In fact, more than 85 percent of the brain is developed before the age of five, making a child's earliest years a pivotal opportunity to build her knowledge.

• According to a study by James Heckman, Nobel Laureate of Economics, half of the achievement gap between white and African American children in twelfth grade is already present among the same children before they reach kindergarten.
• Research shows infants and toddlers in low-income communities are exposed to one-third the number of words as children in more affluent areas. 

Teach For America started the Early Childhood Education (ECE) initiative in 2006 to help prevent the achievement gap from taking hold in the first place. What began with 20 ECE corps members in the D.C. Region has since grown to nearly 300 ECE corps members who together teach more than 8,000 preschool and pre-K students in 22 regions nationwide. By 2015, we hope to double the number of ECE corps members and expand to eight more regions.