How to Approach Your First Early Care and Education Story

Within the education beat, the early years make up just a sliver of overall coverage. Most newsrooms focus their resources and attention first on K-12 education, followed by higher education. 

It’s still rare, these days, for newsrooms to have a reporter dedicated to covering early childhood — a period generally defined as birth to age 8. However, in recent years, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought greater public awareness to the brain development of this age group and the significance of the field that encompasses it, that has begun to change. Some outlets — such as The Baltimore Banner, the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press — have opted to hire standalone early childhood reporters. Others have encouraged their education reporters to pick up a few early childhood assignments here and there. 

As a result, more journalists are looking into and learning about the patchwork system of early care and education in America, sometimes starting with no prior knowledge. 

To help those just getting acclimated to early learning, the Education Writers Association asked several seasoned early childhood reporters what advice they’d give other education journalists who are ready to tackle that first ECE story — and some tips for where to look for story ideas. 

Tips for Getting Started

Go Inside Early Childhood Education Programs

Early childhood education is a wildly different beat than K-12 or higher ed, as anyone who’s made the leap will attest. The field uses different terminology. It follows a different funding structure. The scene inside an early learning program is often quite different from a school.

The quickest, richest way to bridge that gap is to get inside early care and education programs, reporters said. 

“Visit as many early learning programs as you can,” said Jackie Mader, senior early childhood reporter at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom covering innovation and inequality in education. “Sit in and watch and ask questions. Getting in and talking to actual providers and seeing what their days are like can give you so much context about what’s happening and everything you’re writing about.”

This should not be limited to center-based early learning environments, added Mader, who has been covering early childhood for more than a decade. It’s important for reporters to also see — and include in their reporting — children served by licensed home-based child care providers, informal care providers (such as relatives, friends and neighbors) and school-based pre-K. 

Daisy Nguyen, the early childhood education and care reporter at KQED, a nonprofit public media outlet based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, found that to be very valuable when she was starting out. 

“I knew nothing about home-based child care, but I spent time with one in Oakland. It really opened my eyes,” she said. “For some of these kids, that home-based child care is basically their second home.”

For reporters who are comfortable visiting schools but not early learning environments, it’s OK to start in lower elementary grades and work your way down in ages, said Liz Bell, who has been the early childhood reporter at EdNC, a nonprofit covering education news and policy across North Carolina, since 2019. 

Bell covered K-12 before her newsroom received funding to expand into ECE. While getting started, she spent a lot of time in kindergarten classrooms before visiting settings serving children from birth to age 5. 

Ask to Pick People’s Brains

The early care and education system in the U.S. is fragmented and fragile. Many call it a “non-system” or describe it as a broken market. It is not treated — or funded — like a public good, the way K-12 education is. With some limited exceptions for local, state and federal programs, families have to pay out of pocket for early care and education, and because it costs so much to provide high-quality care and education to young children, many families cannot afford the expense. Markers of “quality” in early learning settings are quite different from those in K-12. Educators in early childhood earn far less than their counterparts in K-12. 

Because of these myriad complexities, it can feel daunting to sit down to write that first ECE story. Luckily, many people are willing to help demystify the field for reporters. 

Bell remembers vividly some of the early conversations she had with early childhood experts in North Carolina. She can recall who she was with and where she was sitting as the pieces began to click into place for her. 

“I remember having those key conversations that felt like a crash course,” she said. “It was really just picking the brains of those who had been around for a while.”

She urged other reporters to talk to as many folks as they can — ask them for a phone call or a coffee meeting to aid in your understanding. And don’t be afraid, she added, to interrupt someone to ask, “What does that mean? What is that acronym? Where does that funding come from?” (After all, she noted, those are just regular parts of being a journalist.)

Don’t limit your conversations to “expert” types, though. Nguyen recommended talking with parents and families, too, to understand what issues they are facing. And Mader emphasized that while research and policy specialists are very helpful, it’s just as important — if not more so — to speak with early childhood educators and providers directly since they are the ones on the ground, living out this reality every day. 

Read Other Reporters’ Coverage  

When Mader and Bell were starting out on the early ed beat, there was precious little other reporting for them to read and reference as they got acclimated. Today, that is not the case. 

“Take advantage of the breadth of coverage out there at this point,” Bell said, noting that the dozen or more dedicated early childhood education reporters who exist today are putting out really strong work about the field. 

Bell also suggested journalists consider reading a book or two about the early years. (She recommended Crawling Behind by Elliot Haspel.)

Approach the ECE Beat With Humility

Don’t only visit programs when you’re getting started, Bell said. Get inside them as often as you can. 

“I always feel like showing up in person matters,” Bell said. 

It helps to build trust, which can go a long way, since many early childhood educators are not used to media attention and can be skeptical of a reporter’s motives. 

Plus, program visits can help reporters re-create scenes in their stories, drawing readers into a revealing moment, exchange or lesson. 

Also, pay attention to language nuances in the field. Most early care and education settings would be called “programs” or “centers,” not schools (and definitely not day cares). Their staff are “early childhood educators” or “teachers,” not “day care workers.” The field is “early childhood education,” “early learning,” or “early care and education,” as opposed to “child care” or “day care.”

These distinctions can be hard to pin down at first — and clunky to include in stories. But when possible, use the appropriate language; it matters. 

“A lot of early childhood providers see ‘day care’ as a pejorative term. It’s demeaning,” Mader said. “We all have editors and SEO, and people are going to make us change things sometimes. But it’s important to be aware of the way we talk about early learning compared to elementary school.”

Lastly, don’t assume your reader knows anything about early childhood education. Explain basic realities of the field, such as why the early years are so important, its private-pay model and the low pay of its workforce, in every story to avoid losing readers who might otherwise have been interested. 

Story Ideas: Where to Start?

Data-Rich Research and Reports

Now that you know how to get started, where should you look for story ideas?

Many national research and advocacy organizations put out regular reports on early care and education. These can be a treasure trove of story ideas, reporters said. 

“You can get so many story ideas just looking at the data,” Nguyen said. 

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, is one good place to look, Nguyen said. So is the RAPID Survey Project at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. 

Mader suggested a similar approach, noting that she often looks at reports from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Institute for Early Education Research, and the National Women’s Law Center for research-heavy reports. 

Though many of these reports are from national groups, journalists who cover local, state or regional education can usually come up with plenty of stories from the findings, Nguyen said. Some reports, such as the annual State of Preschool Yearbook from NIEER, break out the data state by state. RAPID conducts surveys across a range of localities.  

Once you have a story idea from the data, many of these same organizations can help connect you with families or educators who can speak to the issues at hand. But Nguyen recommended going through local grassroots organizations for sources. 

“Ask them for an introduction to someone affected,” she said. “It’s really important to humanize these stories.”

Legislation and Other ECE Intersections

Reporters can also look at proposed legislation for more story ideas, Mader said. Review comments on legislation pertaining to children and education or letters written to legislators for a sense of how early education advocates are responding (and a starting point on sources). 

Bell suggested that reporters try to narrow their focus as much as possible. 

“The more specific you go with your coverage,” she said, “the more the world opens up.”

Or consider the intersection of early care and education with other fields and issues, Bell and Nguyen advised: physical health, mental and behavioral health, family well-being, the economy, science, gender and immigration. 

“There are so many ways to take a big story and see how it affects young children and families,” said Nguyen, who was a general assignment reporter before taking the KQED position two years ago. “It helps to wear different hats when it comes to covering this beat.”

Ongoing Effects of the Pandemic

Many journalists may be tired of reporting on the effects of the pandemic, but it’s still a topic rife with untold stories in early care and education, reporters said. 

That includes story ideas about providers that are now having to adapt to the end of pandemic-era child care stabilization grants, and those about young learners. 

Solutions-Based Stories

Finally, journalists should consider mixing in solutions-oriented stories. 

“There are efforts everywhere,” Bell said. “Even if they are limited, or underfunded, there are people trying to do really great things — too many to write about, too many to investigate.”

In trying to determine which of these efforts are worth covering, she said, always ask about outcomes: Is there evidence to show that a certain intervention is working? 

Although early care and education has plenty of inequities and instability, Nguyen echoed, there is a lot of good work happening that deserves attention too.

“It’s really important to amplify attempts to solve these problems,” she noted. “Solutions-oriented stories are really important.”