Welcome to Birth to Thrive Online, a blog where you will find the latest news, developments and debates in early learning.

We are launching this site at a critical time for those in early childhood education. Research continues to mount on the importance of quality child care, preschools and kindergartens, and our president and governor have made early learning a top priority. Yet the recession is stripping state budgets bare.

What does it all mean?

Our blog will help make sense of all this with daily posts and links to research, news, commentary and videos. On Fridays we will publish a weekly roundup of the biggest early learning news of the week.

In my two decades as a journalist, I’ve become adept at wading through news, trends and reports to find what matters, reporting on everything from the Federal Reserve and Congress to entrenched family poverty and economics.

On my last assignment as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s family reporter, I started covering the debate over early learning and realized that building quality, affordable childcare is among the most important issues facing this country — right up there with the budget deficit and bank bailouts. In the modern economy, it is a basic need, an anti-poverty tool and the subject of much debate.

I am also a parent, as challenged as many of you by the rewarding and exhausting job of raising three children — my new baby son, four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son. Periodically, I will drop my journalistic view and offer the latest parenting news.

Today, early learning is no longer just the territory of teachers, interest groups and academics. Parents, business leaders and now the White House are taking bigger roles, ensuring this debate will get louder and broader in the coming years.

Birth to Thrive Online will offer grist for the debate. Grab a cup of coffee, read, comment, exchange ideas, even argue and help us grow.