This resource guide amalgamates the key ideas, policies, and principles that Manny Cantor Center’s Early Childhood program espouses. As community educators, it is imperative to provide care and programming at the highest level we are able. As thought leaders in a space in dire need of better options, it is our responsibility to be a loud voice in this fight.
Child Poverty in New York Exceeds 25%
Poverty Tracker Research Group at Columbia University (2025). The State of Poverty and Disadvantage in New York City, Volume 7. Robin Hood.
This brief documents New York City’s poverty rate, which has risen to 25% (one in four New Yorkers), double the national poverty rate of 13%. For a family of four, the poverty threshold is $47,190 in 2023—a 7.5% increase from 2022. With 2.02 million New Yorkers now living in poverty, including 1.6 million adults and 420,000 children, the city has reached the highest child poverty rate since the Poverty Tracker began in 2017.
Impacts of Poverty on Children
Redd, Z., Thomson, D., & Moore, K.A. (2024). Poverty Matters for Children’s Well-being, but Good Policy Can Help. Child Trends. DOI: 10.56417/3401c1202m.
Poverty significantly impacts children’s development across multiple domains, including health, cognitive abilities, academic performance, and social-emotional well-being, with effects that can persist throughout their lifetime and potentially across generations. Children experiencing poverty face increased risks of negative outcomes, including lower academic achievement, higher rates of chronic health conditions, mental health challenges, and a higher likelihood of experiencing poverty as adults, with these effects being particularly pronounced for children of color. While the impacts of poverty are serious, they are not inevitable. Interventions such as early childhood education, nutrition assistance, income support, and supportive caregiving can help mitigate negative consequences of poverty and support children’s resilience and development.
The First 1,000 Days of Life: The Importance of Infant and Toddler Care
Sharrock, E., & Parkerson, C. (2019). Maximizing Every Child’s Potential in the First 1,000 Days of Life: A Landscape Analysis. Bank Street College of Education.
The early years of childhood are critical for human potential, with brain development creating over 100 trillion synaptic connections in the first three years, making this period both incredibly formative and vulnerable to trauma and stress. Improving children’s developmental outcomes requires a comprehensive, coherent system of support that includes paid parental leave, universal home visiting, high-quality childcare, and understanding the profound impact of nurturing, attuned caregiving.
Early Learning Environments
Trust for Learning. (2022). Evidence Brief: Ideal Learning Environments for Young Children. Trust for Learning.
Children are born learning. How young children develop will shape the course of their social-emotional and cognitive development. This policy brief offers perspective on how to ensure children have access to rich environments that foster learning and development. Creating learning environments can counter-balance the negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences by recognizing that every child possesses unique potential for growth and adaptation.
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2018). “Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context.” Applied Developmental Science, 23 (4), 307–337.
Positive developmental relationships characterized by warmth, consistency, and attunement are fundamental in building brain architecture, supporting foundational skills like self-regulation, and optimizing children’s developmental potential across cognitive, social, and emotional domains.
Meloy, B., Gardner, M., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2019). Untangling the Evidence on Preschool Effectiveness: Insights for Policymakers. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.
Access to high-quality early childhood education is linked to higher outcomes with benefits that last into adulthood, especially for children from low-income households or children who are English learners.
Importance of Integration in Early Childhood Education
Potter, Halley & Stockstill, C. (2024). Early Childhood Programs That Blend and Braid Funding to Achieve Diversity. The Century Foundation.
Most early childhood programs are racially and socioeconomically segregated. But access to diverse learning environments, with peers who come from varied racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds, is one of the key ingredients for high-quality early learning spaces.
Plasencia, S., & Melnick, H. (2024). Strategies to Foster Integration in Early Childhood Education. Learning Policy Institute.
Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic integration in schools is beneficial for student learning, and increasingly, evidence points to the range of benefits of integration in early childhood education settings.
Early Childhood Education is a Key Principle of a Democratic Society
Lawrence, B. J., & Sharrock, E. (2021). Establishing Early Care & Education as a Public Good. Bank Street College of Education.
Policy and advocacy actions support investment in early childhood education as a public good to support all children, families, and society as a whole.
National Center for Children in Poverty. Brief. March 2025
Nationally, children comprise about 28% of all Americans in poverty. Despite the many advantages of early childhood education, young children in low-income households are less likely to attend preschool than children from higher-income families.
