Early Learning

Hats off to Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, who announced an impressive plan to invest in strengthening the state’s education system, including not only the K-12 and higher education systems, but early education as well. The Governor recommends that $350 million be targeted over four years to expand and improve the state’s early education and care system. This investment would eliminate the state’s waiting list of nearly 30,000 children who need but cannot currently access child care assistance, expand the state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to help early educators and providers offer higher-quality experiences to children and families, increase educational programs and supports for parents and family members, and strengthen efforts to provide comprehensive support to children and families. In addition, new school finance funding would be used to incentivize school districts to offer prekindergarten for four-year-olds.

In order to raise the revenue necessary to support these fundamental education initiatives, Governor Patrick, in his state of the state address, proposed to increase the state income tax by one percent, to 6.25 percent. He also proposed to double personal exemptions and eliminate certain itemized deductions in an attempt to distribute the burden of the tax increase based on ability to pay.        Read more »

As Republicans and Democrats struggle to reach a compromise before the impending fiscal cliff, some media and policy advisors from across the political spectrum are finding agreement on one issue: the importance of investing in early learning and the need to make the well-being of young children a national priority.

Mark McKinnon, a former advisor for President George W. Bush, recently appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss the importance of early childhood intervention. During the interview, McKinnon was asked to identify a specific investment that can improve the well-being of American children. "Money spent early on has a much greater return on investment," McKinnon responded. Programs that intervene in children's lives during the crucial years from birth to age five, especially children from low-income families, prepare them for future success and must be prioritized.

McKinnon argues that improving child well-being is part of a broader set of issues that transcend party lines. He is currently working with former Obama campaign advisor Jim Margolis to produce a mass media campaign called Too Small to Fail. Launched in November by the Center for the Next Generation, Too Small to Fail attempts to convey the consequences of neglecting the needs of our nation's children and highlight strategies for supporting children. Read more »

Last week, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak on a panel sponsored by the New America Foundation on Child Care Issues and the Presidential Election. I wanted to share some of those remarks. For the full remarks and for a video of the panel, click here.

Throughout my long career in child care advocacy, I have always heard that it is not the right time for children and families and we don’t have enough money to do what is right. That should not be the starting point for this discussion. For more low-income children to be in the high-quality early childhood settings that we know will improve their chances for better life outcomes, there must be increased investments to support children, parents, early childhood educators, and child care programs – and that is not impossible.

Monday evening, a group of children brought home dried bean mosaics. The week before that they brought home animals made from clay. And the week before that they brought home papier maché masks. All this artwork is courtesy of students in the afterschool art club my cousin teaches.

My cousin comes up with super creative projects – puppets, collages, sculptures, and lots of papier maché. The children’s work is colorful and charming and I can only imagine how much fun they have after school with Ms. Liz.

But not every child has access to a fun and educational afterschool program. Last week, the Afterschool Alliance, an organization that advocates for affordable, high-quality afterschool opportunities, released a report (pdf) showing that afterschool programs are struggling to meet community needs in a time of high unemployment and reduced economic security among many families. Read more »

California has approved a budget that rejects drastic cuts proposed by the governor earlier in the year — but that still includes significant funding reductions for child care and early education programs. Under the final budget signed by the governor, child care and development programs will receive a $130 million cut, which could result in an estimated 26,500 fewer children being able to participate in these programs. The legislature had approved slightly smaller cuts in the budget sent to the governor, but at the last minute, the governor used his line item veto to make additional cuts.

In addition to preventing steeper cuts, the legislature turned back the governor’s earlier proposal to restructure the child care program and transfer administration of the program to county welfare agencies. The state also will not place new limits on child care assistance for parents while they attend education programs.

The approved budget does not provide a previously planned cost of living increase for child care programs. However, it does not reduce reimbursement rates for child care providers as the governor proposed, which would have deprived providers of the resources they need to offer high-quality care. Read more »

Three new studies provide additional evidence of the importance of early childhood investments for ensuring children’s successful development and future well-being.

A study published in the journal Child Development found that children whose families received child care assistance were able to attend higher-quality child care than children whose families were eligible for, but did not receive, child care assistance. Given that that higher-quality care can help boost children’s growth and learning, this new study shows the importance of helping more low-income families pay for child care so they can afford good options. However, the study also found that the quality of care used by families receiving child care assistance was not as high as the quality of care for families using Head Start and public prekindergarten programs, suggesting that even more can be done to improve families’ access to high-quality care. Read more »

This week, we had a small piece of good news about federal investments in child care and early education. On June 12, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee approved a fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill that included increased funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), Head Start, and early intervention services and provided new funding for Race to the Top, with a portion set aside for the Early Learning Challenge.

The bill would increase Child Care and Development Block Grant discretionary funding by $160 million, to $2.438 billion. (Discretionary funding is set each year; there is also $2.917 billion in mandatory CCDBG funding.) The increase includes $90 million to support training, education, and other professional development opportunities for the early care and education workforce, which is key to improving the overall quality of early care and education, and $70 million to help more families pay for care and raise reimbursement rates for child care providers. By providing funding to expand the availability of child care assistance as well as to enhance the quality of the workforce, the Senate Subcommittee is signaling that it recognizes investments in both areas are essential in giving families access to higher-quality child care options. Read more »

Three child care center directors spoke about the benefits and challenges of quality rating and improvement systems during a conference call held last week by the National Women’s Law Center and the Center for Law and Social Policy. Quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) assess the quality of child care programs, offer incentives and assistance to programs to improve their ratings, and give information to parents about the quality of child care. To gain an inside perspective on these systems and develop recommendations for strengthening them, CLASP and NWLC interviewed a number of child care directors from across the country and produced a report, A Count for Quality, based on their experiences and insights. Participants in last week’s conference call had a chance to hear first-hand from three of the directors interviewed for that report.

The directors, who were from Maine, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, praised QRIS for giving high-quality providers validation, setting a bar for quality, establishing high expectations, providing a rallying point and mutual goal for staff, and engaging parents. The directors also appreciated the financial benefits provided by QRIS, including higher reimbursements for higher-quality programs serving children receiving child care assistance, scholarships for staff to receive additional education, and grants for materials, as well as the technical assistance they received. The director from Maine highlighted the fact that parents using highly rated care receive double the standard amount for the state’s child care tax credit. Read more »

Child care and early education issues are gaining increased attention at the federal and state level. Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services announced that of the $550 million appropriated for the Race to the Top education grant competition in 2012, $133 million will be used for a second round of Early Learning Challenge grants to help states strengthen their early care and education systems. (Five states that just missed out on the first round of funding will be eligible to compete for this latest round.) At the state level, nearly half of the governors mentioned early care and education in their state of the state addresses this year, indicating they recognize that giving children get a strong start helps children, and their states, succeed in the future. Read more »

It’s a proven fact that the mere presence of babies can turn normal, functioning adults into blabbering idiots who suddenly feel the need to gesticulate wildly and constantly shift voice intonation while describing something as simple as “that big doggy over there!” But new research suggests that exactly what we blabber may be influenced by the sex of the young child we’re blabbering at – details that could have a long-term impact on child development.

In a new study at the University of Delaware, researchers found that parents talk about “number concepts” twice as much to male toddlers as to female toddlers. According to the study: “For cardinal-numbers speech, in which a number is attached to an obvious noun reference — ‘Here are five raisins’ or ‘Look at those two beds’ — the difference was even larger. Mothers were three times more likely to use such formulations while talking to boys.”

The study was based on observations of parents speaking to their children aged between 22 and 27 months, meaning that girls may be exposed to less math than are boys before they are even able to count to “ten” – imagine the size of the gap that exists by the time they are eighteen and signing up for Calculus! Read more »