Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

Building on the Promise: State Initiatives to Expand Access to Early Head Start for Young Children and Their Families

A new joint report by CLASP and ZERO TO THREE - Building on the Promise: State Initiatives to Expand Access to Early Head Start for Young Children and Their Families – examines actions states have taken to build on Early Head Start. Less than 3 percent of babies and toddlers who are eligible for Early Head Start (EHS) - a federal program with promising results - are reached at current federal funding levels. CLASP and ZERO TO THREE found 20 states use mostly one of four main approaches:

• Extending the day or year of existing EHS services. 
• Expanding the capacity of existing EHS and Head Start programs to increase the number of children and pregnant women served.
• Providing resources and assistance to child care providers to help them deliver services meeting EHS standards. 
• Supporting partnerships between EHS and center-based and family child care providers to improve the quality of care. 

The paper also discusses opportunities and challenges facing state policymakers and provides recommendations for state leaders interested in promoting better futures for at-risk children through building on Early Head Start. Click to read state profiles of Iowa's and Kansas' EHS initiatives. Coming soon - profiles of the other 8 states interviewed in the paper. For more information on the federal EHS program, see Supporting Families, Nurturing Young Children: Early Head Start Programs in 2006.

ZERO TO THREE Policy Center hosted a webinar on Tuesday, April 22, with a presentation on the study as well as presentations by state policymakers in Iowa and Kansas about their EHS initiatives. All three presentations are currently available online, or click here to view a recording of the webinar.

Upcoming Webinar: How states are Building on the Promise of Early Head Start to expand access for babies and their families

Less than 3 percent of babies and toddlers who are eligible for Early Head Start (EHS) - a federal program with promising results - are reached at current federal funding levels.  Some states have stepped into the breach but more can be done.  The federal Early Head Start program was created to help minimize the disparities caused by poverty by supporting the healthy development of expectant mothers and low-income infants and toddlers in the context of their families and communities. 

A forthcoming joint report by CLASP and ZERO TO THREE - Building on the Promise: State Initiatives to Expand Access to Early Head Start for Young Children and their Families – finds a number of states using one of four main approaches:

• Extending the day or year of existing EHS services. 
• Expanding the capacity of existing EHS and Head Start programs to increase the number of children and pregnant women served.
• Providing resources and assistance to child care providers to help them deliver services meeting EHS standards. 
• Supporting partnerships between EHS and center-based and family child care providers to improve the quality of care. 

You can find out more about the study and hear from state policymakers in Iowa and Kansas about their initiatives in a webinar hosted by the ZERO TO THREE Policy Center on Tuesday, April 22, at 2:00 pm eastern (1:00 pm central, 12:00 pm mountain, and 11:00 am pacific).

Click here to register! 

New language access resource for states

All agencies that receive federal funds are required to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  to take reasonable steps to provide limited English proficient (LEP) individuals with meaningful access to their programs, activities, and services. This includes most agencies that administer child care and early education programs, including school districts, state government agencies, and Head Start programs. Yet, inadequate language access remains a significant barrier to accessing programs for many families with young children.

Ensuring language access may include the use of competent interpreters, hiring of bilingual staff, translation of materials, and the use of telephone language line services. Agencies may conduct assessments to review their language access policies and to create plans for improving service delivery to LEP individuals.

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has created a language access portal, which is a digital library of hundreds of resources for state and local social service agencies. The portal includes federal and state laws and guidelines, service models, and related research on language access and LEP populations. It also includes information on policies such as bilingual pay differentials, contracting for translation services, and best practices for interpreters. Finally, the portal includes a searchable database of state and local documents that can be used to find examples of translated materials and applications, policy guidance, and other resources. The database is searchable by state, service area, and languages.

President’s budget: Young children don’t count

February 4 began a new budget process, the last of President Bush’s presidency. Every Administration uses the budget to send a signal about its priorities for the coming year.  In this period of economic downturn, when our most vulnerable children and families need access to comprehensive supports, the message of this budget is simple and stark: children in low-income working families don’t matter.  The President proposes flat funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant that will cause 200,000 children to lose access to child care assistance by 2009.  This loss is in addition to thousands of children who may already have lost services due to years of flat funding.

The Administration also acknowledges that fewer children will be served in Head Start under their proposal.  While the budget provides for a small increase, the amount is barely enough to cover inflation, let alone the costs needed to implement changes in the program required by the recent Head Start reauthorization, including provisions to expand access to Head Start, strengthen and expand Early Head Start, and important quality improvements.

For an analysis of the President’s budget proposal’s impact on child care and early education programs, see President’s Budget Disregards Sound Investments for Young Children.

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.

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.

Head Start children more likely to receive recommended immunizations

Child Trends Data Bank has released new 2006 estimates on child immunizations, noting that, "The proportion of children ages 19 to 35 months receiving the combined series (4:3:1:3) vaccines increased from 69 percent to 83 percent between 1994 and 2004. Since this time, however, progress towards full immunization of all children ages 19 to 35 months has stalled, standing at 82 percent in 2006." 

The 2006 data did not show significant differences by race and ethnicity, but did show significant differences by poverty status, with 78 percent of children living below the poverty level having their recommended vaccinations, compared to 84 percent for children not living in poverty.

Yet not all poor children are falling behind: in 2006, 93 percent of young children enrolled in Early Head Start had received all immunizations appropriate or possible by the end of the program year.  Working with families to ensure access to medical services, including immunizations, is a legal requirement of all Head Start programs. This comprehensive focus on all aspects of child development makes a difference, yet only about 3 percent of eligible infants and toddlers, and about half of eligible preschool age children, get access to Head Start. 

Children living in poverty face many risk factors to healthy development.  Staying on schedule for immunizations helps to prevent illness and potential delays to development.  Head Start and Early Head Start help these children stay on schedule, and provide other needed supports, such as identifying disabilities, linking families with a medical home, and finding dental services.  Yet current funding levels limit the reach of these important programs; without substantial increases in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start, the data will continue to show that poor children are falling behind.

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.

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.