Early Childhood Archives

Announcing a Regional Agreement to Solve Early Literacy Crisis

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Grand Rapids, MI (February 10, 2025) — An alliance of business, K-12 and teaching-college leaders today announced an unprecedented agreement to increase...

Why We’re Giving All Employers Access to Our Childcare Solutions

Successful business leaders don’t tolerate broken components of their operations. When a department fails to deliver, when costs overrun revenue, when a system breaks down?...

New Low for 3rd Grade Reading Shows Why We’re Taking Action

Six out of 10 fourth graders in Michigan went back to school this year unprepared to read at grade level. In announcing the results from...

Investing in Child Care Pays Dividends to Employers — and All of Us

Child care is one of the biggest expenses facing working parents, often costing more than housing or health care. In Michigan, the average annual cost...

Opinion: Preserve Community-Based Preschool Programs

The following opinion was originally published in The Detroit News on May 21 (subscriber link). By Kevin Stotts For more than a decade, Michigan has...

We Must Fix Legislation Threatening Pre-K Roadmap

A lot of hard work was finally showing progress toward expanding access to high-quality preschool education and addressing the state’s child care crisis. New legislation...

State of State 2024: Beyond Headlines, Focusing on What Works

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s 2024 State of the State address on Jan. 24 generated headlines about two topics that have long been priorities for TalentFirst: improving...

Report proposes solutions to poverty wages driving child care crisis

NEWS RELEASE: Grand Rapids, MI (October 19, 2023) In response to a two-decade decline in Michigan’s child care workforce, a new report lays the groundwork...

Employers go all-in on student success as investment in our future

In our efforts to make to make Michigan a leader for talent, we know exactly where to find the group with the greatest potential to...

Exploring the ROI of Pre-K in Michigan

Extensive research has long established that investing in Early Childhood Education pays long-term dividends in academics and life. This has been the foundation for Talent...