Across the country, leaders often ask the same question: What does it really take to ensure excellence for children and families at scale—and what does it take to make it last?
At the Educare Network, we have been exploring this question alongside executive and senior leaders across 25 schools nationwide. What is emerging reveals clear patterns about what enables meaningful, lasting change.
For us, excellence means more than strong programs—it means creating the conditions where every child, family, and adult in their lives can thrive.
Across communities, systems are investing in curriculum, assessment, and workforce supports.
Yet one question continues to surface: What allows these efforts to truly take hold?
Our experience across Educare points to a consistent answer: leadership.
Not as a role alone, but leadership as a set of conditions that shape how adults learn, collaborate, and improve practice over time.
Leadership is not just a role—it is a set of conditions that shape how adults learn, collaborate, and improve practice over time.
At the same time, conversations across states continue to focus on expanding access to early childhood education—an important and necessary goal. Those in the field know that access and excellence must go hand in hand. Yet too often, expansion moves forward without the conditions needed to ensure excellence for children and families.
We invite you to pause for a moment to reflect with us as we consider five key insights that are helping leaders succeed. These insights are grounded in how this work has taken shape across our national Network.
How This Work Is Taking Shape
In 2025, the Educare Network made an intentional decision to prioritize leadership as a core driver of instructional quality and systems improvement.
The work began with Educare schools’ executive leaders—including CEOs, presidents, executive directors, and senior leaders from partner organizations where Educare schools are embedded—as well as senior leaders within the schools themselves.
Leaders across the Network are no longer working in isolation or experiencing limited moments of collaboration—we are intentionally and consistently learning together, reflecting together, and building a shared vision of excellence.
Through sustained virtual learning and in-person convenings, this work moved from idea to experience. Leaders across Educare began to build something many had not experienced before in our national Network—a sense of connection, shared purpose, and collective responsibility across schools and communities.
These experiences created space for leaders across roles to engage with new information and practices, and to learn alongside colleagues who understand the complexity of their work—affirming successes while working through shared and unique challenges.
This work marked a turning point. Relationships deepened. A shared sense of “we” emerged.
Executive and senior leaders alike are engaging in learning that is continuous, relevant, and grounded in their daily work.
What We Are Learning Together
As this work has unfolded across Educare’s national Network, a clear set of patterns has emerged.
While each insight may feel familiar, together they point to something important: lasting, scalable transformation is not driven by compliance or short-term outcomes—it is driven by investing in the conditions that enable leaders to lead effectively and support adults and children to thrive.
- Relationships are foundational—not optional — yet they are often dismissed as “nice to have.”
Trust, shared responsibility, and collaboration—across executive leaders, senior leaders, and their teams—drive improvement far more than tools alone. - Learning must be continuous—not fragmented or one-time.
Growth happens through cycles of intentional sharing, reflecting, practicing, and implementing—not one-time events. Sustained, real-world learning is what allows deep implementation to take hold. - Shared language makes improvement scalable.
Common ways of seeing and describing practice create a unifying vision that allows excellence to travel across local and national contexts. - Strengths-based leadership creates stability.
When leaders build from existing assets, they reduce reactivity and crisis-driven decision-making and create space for intentional change. A leader’s orientation—toward strengths or deficits—shapes how adults engage and whether individuals and systems can thrive. - Sustainable change requires time, structure, and intentional support.
Lasting improvement is a marathon, supported by systems that make growth possible.
These insights are not quick fixes. They are long-term investments that require alignment, commitment, and clarity of purpose.
They are not theoretical—they are grounded in the day-to-day experiences of leaders across roles and contexts navigating complex, fast-paced environments.
Having a group of leaders to share challenges, reflect, and support one another has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. The importance of this kind of community cannot be overstated.”
— Educare Leader
Leaders describe feeling less isolated, having protected space to reflect and refine their approach, and gaining greater clarity in how they, in turn, support leaders at every level. Over time, these shifts not only positively impact individual practice, but the conditions across entire organizations.
What we are seeing across the Educare Network points to opportunities not only for early learning systems, but for educational and human-centered systems more broadly.
A New View of Leadership
Many leaders have expressed seeing themselves differently—not just as managers of daily demands, but as intentional decision-makers whose words, actions, and presence create ripples across their schools and communities.
As one Educare leader noted, “I’ve been reflecting on what kind of leader I am. I felt heard, appreciated, and safe with other leaders—and I want people at my school to feel that way too.”
Leadership is not confined to moments of decision. It is expressed in the environments leaders create: whether people feel seen, supported, and able to grow; whether learning is continuous; whether excellence is expected and achievable for all.
Like a pebble dropped into calm water, leadership shapes what others see, believe, and do—modeling ways of being that support sustained improvement.
An Educare leader reflected, “I have a better understanding of the ripple effect my leadership can have across our school.”
This shift can be a stretch for leaders operating in fast-paced, unpredictable environments. Yet even small shifts in mindset can open the door to broader transformation—changing not only how leaders lead, but how systems function around them.
An Invitation to Reflect
Ultimately, this work is about more than individual leadership—it is about building the conditions for excellence to take root and spread.
Excellence is not achieved through isolated pockets of success. It takes hold when every adult in a child’s life is supported, aligned, and continuously working toward better outcomes—together.
As you consider these insights, I invite you to reflect on what this might mean in your own context:
- Where are leaders experiencing isolation—and where are they connected?
- How is learning structured: occasional or continuous?
- How do leaders understand their role?
- What conditions support—or constrain—their ability to lead?
What might shift for children and families if leadership were treated not as support, but as the foundation for excellence at scale?
We look forward to continuing this work together—and to advancing excellence for all children and families.
As part of the Educare Network Learning Lab series, we spotlight what is working, make visible the conditions that enable it, and share what it takes to sustain excellence at scale. Through the series we invite reflection, dialogue, and action across the field.