Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

Education Week examines passage of Head Start reauthorization

An article in this week's edition of Education Week (free registration required) offers insight into how key congressional leaders - including Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-CA), and Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) - perceived the reauthorization process of the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. Quoted from the article:

“This process in working on Head Start has shown Congress at its best,” Rep. Dale E. Kildee, D-Mich., the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees early-childhood education, said during a floor debate this month. “This is one of our better days, [and] one of our better bills. ... We’ve had differences. We resolved those differences.”

Head Start advocates were pleased with the outcome. “The four years of working on this, while they were long and sometimes difficult and sometimes frustrating, [resulted in a bill] that will improve opportunities for young children,” said Danielle Ewen, the director of child-care and early-education policy at the Washington-based Center on Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization that is an advocate for low-income people. “Maybe it takes four years to come up with something that actually works.”

New provisions in the bill were the result of years of bipartisan work, culminating in a bill that passed the House by a vote of 381-36 and the Senate by a vote of 95-0.  The legislation is expected to be sent to the President for his signature soon.

Tutors for toddlers?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, you may have seen extended family members, including young children.  In your visiting, did you ask any toddlers how their tutoring was going?

TIME’s recent article "Tutors for Toddlers" profiles a new trend – parents hiring after-school tutors for their 3 and 4 year olds to help children learn to read and develop math skills earlier using such techniques as letter charts and flash cards. With growing marketing of "educational videos" and the nationwide emphasis on testing in schools, increased parental anxiety about performance of preschool aged children is perhaps not surprising. But it also goes against what science tells us about how children develop.

Young children learn best by exploring and interacting with the world and people around them, not through worksheets and drills. NAEYC’s position statement on Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs emphasizes the multiple domains of young children’s development – physical, social, emotional, and cognitive – and highlights that play is an important method children use to develop in all areas. Early educators and parents who focus on the "whole child" are more likely to help create a lifelong learner who will read when he is ready, and for years to come.  And that would be cause for giving thanks.

Congress passes new Head Start legislation

Last week, both the House and Senate approved a Head Start reauthorization bill that focuses on serving younger children, includes new language to increase the quality of services, and improves collaboration between early childhood programs at the state and local levels. The bipartisan bill, Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 ends years of discussion and debate about the future of Head Start.

However, while the bill authorizes funding levels that would support the positive changes in the bill, these levels must be appropriated each year. In FY 2008, the bill authorizes $7.35 billion, a substantial increase from current year funding, yet the most recent version of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill—vetoed by the President—provides only a $154 million increase for Head Start. For future years, the bill authorizes $7.65 billion for FY 2009, $7.995 billion for FY 2010 and such sums as necessary for FY 2011 and FY 2012. Without funding at these levels, Head Start will be unable to implement the changes in the bill.

The Head Start reauthorization bill includes the following provisions:

Expands Access to Head Start Programs

• Increases funding for both the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program and the Indian Head Start program.
• Allows up to 35 percent of the children served by a grantee to have family incomes between 100 percent and 130 percent of the federal poverty level if the grantee can demonstrate that children with family incomes below 100 percent of poverty are already being fully served.
• Ensures that children with disabilities are promptly identified and served.
• Allows part-day Head Start programs the flexibility to convert to full-day year-round services.

Strengthens and Expands Early Head Start

• Requires that half of all new funds be used for Early Head Start expansion.
• Provides existing Head Start programs the flexibility to convert slots currently used to serve preschoolers to those for infants and toddlers.
• Requires a minimum of at least one full-time infant and toddler specialist in every state.
• Sets new standards for home visitors in Early Head Start programs.
• Increases credentials Early Head Start teachers providing direct services to children and families.

Invests in Quality

• Requires programs that are not meeting high quality standards to recompete for their grant using an application review process developed by an expert panel, which will consider multiple measures of program performance.
• Requires all Head Start teachers to have an Associate’s degree by 2011 and half of all teachers nationally to have at least a Bachelor’s degree in early childhood education or a Bachelor’s degree with coursework equivalent to a major relating to early childhood education and experience teaching preschool-age children by 2013.
• Establishes Centers of Excellence program that will identify high-quality grantees to serve as models for early childhood programs in their communities and states.
• Sets-aside 40 percent of new Head Start funds for quality enhancements in programs, including salary increases for Head Start staff.
• Requires all curriculum specialists to have at least a Bachelor’s degree and all Head Start assistant teachers to have at least a child development associate credential and be working toward completing a degree within two years.
• Requires all Head Start teachers to have at least 15 hours of in-service training every year.

Improves Collaboration

• Requires states to create State Advisory Councils on Early Education and Care in order to determine needs across programs serving children birth to six and to develop recommendations for collaboration between early childhood programs, data collection, review of early learning standards and professional development for educators that cross program auspices.
• Provides new Early Education and Care federal incentive grants (if new funds are available) to states to promote the development and expansion of state early education systems.
• Maintains and expands Head State Collaboration Offices in each state.
• Creates State Training Offices for Head Start.

Edward Zigler reflects on early care and education

In their October edition, Educational Leaders published an interview with Dr. Edward Zigler, research giant and "father of Head Start." Zigler spoke about the importance of the "whole child" approach to children's development and education. This philosophy was behind what Zigler stated as Head Start's greatest achivements - emphasizing social and emotional development, health, comprehensive services, social services to families, and parent participation.  Regarding the multiple evaluations and studies over the years about the value of Head Start, Zigler said, "The positive evidence is overwhelming," and highlighted that evaluations underestimate Head Start's benefit by not including health measures or looking at effects on siblings.

Dr. Zigler also advocated for universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, while emphasizing that development starts before children are born and pre-kindergarten alone is not enough. Programs like Early Head Start that reach out to pregnant mothers, infants, and toddlers are essential: "A child's experiences before age 3 are among the most important factors in healthy development." Due to demographic changes, many young children are in child care, which Zigler described as "hodgepodge" and a "nonsytem," while at the same time "probably the greatest need of U.S. parents."

Dr. Zigler concluded with the following advice: "There are good times, and there are bad times. But you have to stay in the game." A great message for those of us committed to comprehensive early care and education, from a great man in our field.

At age 4: Findings from the ECLS-B study

New analysis from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides a First Look at characteristics of children at 4 years of age. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) is a study of a nationally representative sample of children who were born in 2001 intended to provide detailed information on the country's young children's health, development and well-being through a range of data. This week, NCES released a report with descriptive details on these children's characteristics and development by age 4. Some of the study's key findings are:

• 59 percent of children in the study had a mother who was working full- or part-time.
• The primary child care arrangement for most children (58 percent) was center-based child care, including Head Start settings. Thirteen percent of children were regularly in the care of a relative and 8 percent were regularly in the care of a non-relative in a home-based setting. Twenty percent of children did not have a regular non-parental care arrangement.
• 31 percent of children in the lowest socioeconomic status (SES) families did not have a regular child care arrangement compared to 20 percent of middle SES families and 10 percent of the highest SES families.
• Children in higher SES families scored higher on measures of literacy and mathematic skills compared to children from lower SES families.

These data are extremely useful for understanding the nation's young child population. The data confirm that many young children are cared for outside of the home. By age four, differences in cognitive abilities between children from different socio-economic backgrounds are already present. We also know that the youngest children are most likely to be poor. It is therefore critical that low-income families in particular have access to high-quality early care and education settings that support both their children's healthy development and their parent's work schedules and that parents who cannot afford this care get access to help paying for it.

Minnesota funds community-based supports for family, friend and neighbor caregivers

The Minnesota Legislature has appropriated $750,000 to be used for grants to organizations to provide community-based supports to family, friend, and neighbor caregivers and the children in their care. This funding will allow community-based organizations, nonprofit organizations, libraries and Indian tribes to work with caregivers to promote children’s early literacy, healthy development and school readiness, and to foster community partnerships to promote school readiness. The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) expects to award the first grants by the middle of November.

The state will conduct an evaluation of the effort, as required by the legislation, in conjunction with early childhood experts from the University of  Minnesota.   

In Starting Off Right: Promoting Child Development from Birth in State Child Care and Early Education Initiatives, CLASP recommended that states adopt efforts like Minnesota's.  Many families choose care with family members, friends or neighbors, either as their primary care setting or as a second or third caregiver for their children, especially low-income parents and parents of children under age three.  Including family, friend, and neighbor caregivers in state strategies to improve the quality of child care and to ensure children are ready for school is a critical component of state birth to five strategies.

The state strategy to involve family, friend, and neighbor caregivers in promoting school readiness has included:

• supporting research on the state population of non-licensed family, friend, and neighbor caregivers;
• integrating supports for FFN providers into contracts the department has child care resource and referral programs to develop and implement plans to reach out to family, friend, and neighbor caregivers and offer health and safety training, Play and Learn groups, fun events for caregivers and children with an informational focus, library story-time, clinics for screening or immunization, consultation and home-visiting; and
• addressing the cultural and language diversity of children and family, friend, and neighbor caregivers by partnering with immigrant-serving community resources, translating materials into multiple languages, creating informal social networks for FFN providers in specific cultural communities.