Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

No country for young children

On Sunday, January 27, The Washington Post featured a story on the economic opportunities and struggles of retirees and the aging baby boomers. The article focused on the need for new careers, additional education and training, and help in making transitions to second or third careers for this population.  Government policies that support adults as they age are an important component of our country’s social safety net, but, what about the children? While an agenda that looks at the career prospects for our oldest citizens is interesting—and gets a prime position in the Washington Post—it does raise the question of whether our youngest citizens are being supported with opportunities that ensure their future success.  Is this really a country for young children? Multiple indicators of child well-being suggest that it’s not.

Many children living in low-income households are at risk despite their parents’ best efforts to work and support their families. Over half of young children in low-income households have a parent who works full-time throughout the year and an additional 27 percent have a parent who works either part-time or for part of the year. We need public policies that help these families so that that their children have all that they need to thrive—help with health insurance, food security, quality early care and education and other supports. Read more.

Reauthorization of Head Start: Key changes in the new law

The federal Head Start program was reauthorized in December 2007. The new legislation made substantial changes to the program, including provisions to expand access to Head Start programs, strengthen and expand Early Head Start, increase the quality of the program, and improve collaboration between early childhood programs at the state and local levels. This PowerPoint presentation from CLASP, presented at the 2008 Head Start Johnson & Johnson Advanced Management Institute, provides an overview of key changes in the new law.

Do babies rate in Quality Rating Systems?

Many states either have statewide systems to rate the quality of child care (14 states) or are exploring them (31 states), hoping to encourage providers to exceed state licensing standards and help parents find good care. But are the unique needs of babies and toddlers addressed in these systems? A new resource developed by the National Infant and Toddler Child Care Initiative (NITCCI) provides suggestions for state policymakers to ensure an intentional focus on babies and toddlers in state quality rating systems. Only six of the 14 states who have implemented such systems have quality standards specific to babies and toddlers.

Designing Quality Rating Systems Inclusive of Babies and Toddlers recommends that states weave provisions specific to babies and toddlers through each of the five common elements of state quality rating systems: 1) standards, 2) accountability measures, 3) program and practitioner outreach and support, 4) financial incentives, and 5) parent/consumer education. For example, states should require training and education standards that ensure providers caring for children under three have a credential or coursework specifically addressing the knowledge and skills needed to care for babies, such as how to be responsive to babies’ cues, and safe sleep practices to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). They can also require better adult-child ratios and continuity of care practices in order for providers to receive higher ratings. NITCCI also recommends that standards are inclusive of all legally operating care systems, including family, friend and neighbor care, given that a significant proportion of babies and toddlers are in this type of care. Recommendations include providing training and mentoring, as well as quality enhancement contracts to providers that are linked to attaining higher standards.

Building the supply of high quality infant and toddler care, especially in low-income and high immigrant population areas, is one of the top recommendations CLASP makes for state policymakers to chart progress for babies in child care. The NITCCI tool can help states work toward this recommendation. The tool also points to the importance of including supports and financial incentives for providers and practitioners to meet higher standards encouraged by these systems. Quality rating systems are not likely to be effective without financial resources and supports to help child care providers, especially those caring for low-income children, move toward higher standards.

Preschool expulsions speak to need for comprehensive services

Why are 3- and 4-year old children expelled from state pre-kindergarten programs at extremely high rates—more than three times the rates of expulsion for children in grades K-12? A report released last week, Implementing Policies to Reduce the Likelihood of Preschool Expulsion identified several classroom characteristics associated with preschool expulsion—large class sizes and high teacher-child ratios, long hours of operation, and high levels of teacher job stress—that indicate that our children and our teachers need more support than is currently available.

Children with severe behavioral problems are most likely to be expelled from preschools, yet they are the very children who most need high-quality early learning experiences that can support their positive, healthy development and prepare them for school and for life. The report makes a series of recommendations that support teachers and positive teacher-child relationships, including ensuring the presence of early childhood mental health consultants in preschool classrooms to assist teachers in managing challenging behavior and to support children and their families. Early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) can improve children's behavior and decrease hyperactivity. Yet, fewer than a quarter of state pre-kindergarten teachers report access to this key support.

States can support mental health in all early childhood settings. An example, the Michigan Child Care Expulsion Prevention Program provides mental health consultants to child care centers, serving children birth to five, in 31 counties in the state. Funded through the infant/toddler set-aside in the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the program provides child- and family-centered interventions, which include linking families to community resources as needed, and provider training on working with children with mental health needs.

High-quality child care and early education can help young children with behavioral and other mental health needs but only if interventions provide comprehensive services and supports for them and their families. High rates of preschool expulsion confirm that we need to continue to pay attention to the socio-emotional needs of children to effectively prepare them for school and beyond. 

Supporting Families, Nurturing Young Children: Early Head Start Programs in 2006

CLASP's new policy brief analyzes the 2006 Program Information Reports (PIR) data for the Early Head Start program, which serves children under age 3 and pregnant women. In 2006, Early Head Start supported families with working parents from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds through a broad range of services, including medical, dental, and mental health services. Since 2004, more Early Head Start children and pregnant women received dental exams; more pregnant women had health insurance; and more pregnant women received mental health services. As in previous years, teacher education levels increased, but salaries remained stagnant. Also, more Early Head Start children are in informal care outside program hours.

Charting Progress Policy Framework Summary - Now Available!

CLASP’s Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care project is a multi-year effort to highlight state policies that support the healthy growth and development of infants and toddlers in child care settings, and to build an online resource to help states implement these policies. In the first year of this project, CLASP worked with ZERO TO THREE to develop a Policy Framework, drawing on the input of over one hundred experts around the country. The Framework sets forth four key principles that establish the foundation of supports that all babies and toddlers in child care need, as well as 15 recommendations that state child care licensing, quality, and subsidy policies should address.

The Policy Framework Summary is now available online. Check back for future products, including research-based rationales supporting each recommendation, and a new section on this website that will present the full Framework with sets of policies that may help states move towards each recommendation. To learn more about the research base for this project, see: Supporting Growth and Development of Babies in Child Care: What Does the Research Say?

This work is supported by the Birth to Five Policy Alliance, the Irving Harris Foundation, the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and an Anonymous Donor.

Hispanic children show substantial benefits from Tulsa’s pre-kindergarten program

Researchers at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University sought to determine how much Hispanic children benefited from participation in the Oklahoma state pre-kindergarten program. They also set out to understand whether there were demographic characteristics of some Hispanic students that helped them benefit from the program. The results of the study are reported in The Effects of Oklahoma’s Pre-K Program on Hispanic Children. The researchers administered an academic skills assessment test in English and in Spanish to a group of Hispanic students who had attended pre-kindergarten in Tulsa, Oklahoma the previous year and to a group of Hispanic students who were about to enter the same pre-kindergarten program.

Results showed that the group of students that previously completed the program had substantially higher pre-reading, pre-writing, and pre-math skills than the group of students that had yet to experience the program. The analysis also revealed that children whose parents spoke Spanish at home and whose parents were born in Mexico benefited the most from the pre-kindergarten program. These children had higher test score gains in all three areas, compared to other Hispanic children. Hispanic children who were tested in both Spanish and English showed gains in both languages, although stronger gains in English, which suggests the benefits of the program extended beyond English language acquisition alone. Finally, while the Tulsa pre-kindergarten program is an English immersion program, Hispanic children performed better on the test if their teacher spoke some Spanish. Related research shows that pre-kindergarten students’ social and language development benefits from being in classrooms with Spanish-speaking teachers.

This study is part of a growing body of research that shows that children in immigrant families and English Language Learners can benefit from high-quality early childhood education programs that prepare them to learn and succeed as they enter elementary school. While at least 15 states include ELLs among their targeted at-risk populations or use ELL status to prioritize enrollment among eligible children for targeted state pre-kindergarten programs, the reality is that children of immigrants and ELLs remain less likely to participate in all early care and education programs. To further meet the needs of young children from diverse backgrounds, early childhood education programs should be culturally competent and facilitate access to high-quality comprehensive services and family support, and that include opportunities for providers to receive training to support the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of these families.