Many of us are getting back to the daily grind and setting goals for the new year. Congress is getting back to work, too, and since the First Five Years Fund is in a resolution-making frame of mind, we’ve got a few suggestions.

Early childhood education programs will be spared the prospect of the largest across-the-board cuts in history, but only temporarily, under a bill to avert the "fiscal cliff," approved by Congress earlier this week.

As Congress runs precariously close to the edge of the "fiscal cliff," we have a critical opportunity to educate decision-makers about the very real human cliff faced by millions of disadvantaged children who experience a drop off in achievement caused by gaps in early childhood education.

As Congress grapples with questions about the smartest ways to invest public funds, here's a statement from our favorite Nobel Prize winning economist on the issue.

At a time when Washington seeks solutions to the fiscal cliff, investing in quality early childhood development is the way to accomplish both goals of reducing the debt in a balanced way and strengthening the economy in the short and long term. 

Hold on, everybody: we’re approaching the fiscal cliff, and the threat to early learning funding is very real.

With this week’s release of the final Early Learning Challenge Phase 2 application, teams across Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin can kiss apple picking and Friday night football goodbye and instead look forward to six weeks of  budget spreadsheets, data tables and drafts of federal proposal narratives.

With this week’s release of the final Early Learning Challenge Phase 2 application, teams across Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin can look forward to six weeks of hunkering down with budget spreadsheets and data tables and drafts of federal proposal narratives. Hooray!

If we are going to increase the number of early learning legislative champions, we need a loud chorus. FFYF has developed a full song book of communications tools to make the case during the 2012 election.

Watch this video to learn what's at stake for low-income children this year should the Head Start program face devastating cuts as a result of sequestration early next year.