Child Care and Early Education at CLASP

What do we know about state preschool standards for ELLs?

Last month, the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) released its annual state preschool yearbook. New this year was information on the enrollment of English Language Learners (ELLs) in pre-kindergarten and support services available for them and their families. According to NIEER, 16 states include ELLs among their targeted at-risk populations. CLASP has identified additional states that use ELL status to prioritize enrollment in some way among eligible children. According to NIEER's survey results:

• Twenty-one states, and the District of Columbia permit bilingual pre-kindergarten classes or monolingual pre-kindergarten classes in languages other than English.
• Sixteen states, and the District of Columbia, require information to be given to parents in their primary language.
• Nine states require interpreters or bilingual staff to be available at all times for ELLs. 
• Thirteen states have no state policies related to the provision of support services to ELLs.

The fact that many states are considering the needs of ELLs in their preschool standards is encouraging. Yet, CLASP has found that many policies related to ELLs are vague or contain few details related to their implementation. For example, requirements for interpretation or translation often do not specify the use of qualified, paid, translators and interpreters. Policies also may lack information about implementation when multiple languages are spoken in a classroom or when there is not a majority minority language.

Strong program standards are essential to promote quality early learning experiences for linguistically and culturally diverse young children; and the implementation of quality standards requires ongoing training and technical assistance for state pre-kindergarten administrators, directors, and teachers. As more states develop and expand upon their pre-kindergarten standards related to ELLs, they may want to consider the following:

• Include representatives of immigrant, ethnic, and language minority groups in the design and development of standards and collaborate with diverse organizations to conduct outreach.
• Ensure that research on second language learning and multiculturalism informs the development of standards.
• Ensure attention to cultural and linguistic diversity in the core competencies for pre-kindergarten teachers by including competencies such as fluency in a language other English, understanding of second language acquisition strategies and experience working with diverse families.
• Require that all pre-kindergarten staff have meaningful training in second-language acquisition strategies and cultural competency to effectively work with all children and their families.
• Provide information for parents in accessible formats including translated materials and face-to-face communication with qualified interpreters.
• Fund cultural mediators to serve as a bridge to support services for families.

States increase child care and early education appropriations

State appropriations for child care and early education programs increased over $1 billion from FY 2007 to 2008, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ first-ever survey of state child care and early education state appropriations. The survey asked state fiscal staff to report state appropriations in the areas of child care, pre-kindergarten, parent education/home visiting, and other early learning strategies.  The survey found increases in all four areas:

• Child care appropriations increased by over $672 million ($400 million of which was reported in California) with a total of 47 states reporting increased funding. NCSL notes that the increases in child care appropriations in actuality may not have outpaced the funding challenges that have daunted states for years. 
• Pre-kindergarten appropriations increased by nearly $510 million with a total of 30 reporting increased funding.
• Parent education appropriations increased by over $20 million with a total of 17 states reporting increased funding.
• Appropriations for other early learning, including Head Start/Early Head Start, infant and toddler initiatives, and early childhood mental health programs, increased by $26 million with a total of 19 states reporting increased funding.

Eight states—Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington—reported increased funding in all four areas.

While state pre-kindergarten programs have been increasingly popular in recent years, growing in popularity, size and funding, this survey shows that states are funding a wide range of early education programs vital for young children from birth to school entry and their families. In particular, increasing state appropriations for child care is ever important with stagnant federal funding in recent years.  CLASP's analysis shows that state child care spending (including federal and state funds) decreased in 2004 and in 2005, the most recent years data are available.  States can't do it alone; and federal funding should also demonstrate a recognition of the vital importance of early childhood programs that help families work and help children prepare for school and life.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Title I and Early Childhood Programs

CLASP's new paper explores the wide range of ways in which school districts are using funds from Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for early education through kindergarten and examines how the implementation of NCLB has impacted those investments. It also makes recommendations for local educational agencies interested in creating Title I-funded early education programs or thinking about how to sustain these types of investments in the face of policy and funding challenges.

Education Week focuses on federal early childhood proposals

An article in this week's edition of Education Week (free registration required) discusses three preschool bills that have been put forward in Congress. Legislation proposed separately by Sen. Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Casey (D-PA), and Rep. Hirono (D-Hawaii), would authorize varying sums of money to expand state pre-kindergarten programs, the vast majority of which serve primarily 4-year-olds.

CLASP is concerned that a federal preschool bill would draw attention and resources away from the full range of birth to five early childhood programs that many states are currently investing in, as well as away from existing federal early childhood programs, including Head Start and child care subsidies, that have been severely underfunded for years. Quoted from the article:

“We have a federal preschool program, and it’s called Head Start,” said Danielle Ewen, the director of child-care and early-education policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy, based in Washington. “And Head Start only serves half of the eligible kids.”

She added that she was disappointed that following Speaker Pelosi’s May summit meeting—which Ms. Ewen described as a “wonderful day of science” that focused on the comprehensive needs of children from birth through age 5—most of the proposals being offered focus only on preschoolers.

“The message from the summit was invest early,” Ms. Ewen said. “A 4-year-old program doesn’t do that.”

The preschool debate at the federal level is being linked to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). CLASP's research in this area, however, reveals that school districts already have the ability to fund preschool programs through Title I of NCLB and districts are taking advantage of that flexibility:

Ms. Ewen of the Center for Law and Social Policy pointed to school districts’ existing option to use Title I money to serve young children, either in classroom-based pre-K programs or through other approaches, such as home visits or health screenings. Integrating preschool into the NCLB law, she warned, could imply that those funds should be used only for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Reauthorization of NCLB is moving forward

During this Congress, the nation’s federal education bill, known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), will be renewed.  There are many issues being addressed through this process including early childhood issues. An initial draft of the new legislation from the House Committee on Education and Labor has some focus and will include more as the process moves forward.

Many school districts have used Title I of NCLB for early childhood programs including one of the nation’s premier early childhood programs, the Chicago Child-Parent Centers. While nationally only about 3% of children served by Title I are younger than kindergarten age, studies suggest there are a number of high-quality early childhood programs that use Title I funds to provide direct services, salaries for degreed teachers, comprehensive supports, and other services.

As reauthorization NCLB moves forward, it appears that it will include some new provisions around early childhood. CLASP has made a number of recommendations in this area and we hope that any language included in the final bill will maintain the ability of school districts to use Title I, or other NCLB funds, to support children birth through the age of school entry and will expand funding so that school districts and states do not have to choose between funding early childhood programs and funding other priorities for school improvement.

Pre-kindergarten: A key support for low-income working families

Governor Tim Kaine (D-VA) announced recently that he will propose that the state expand its existing preschool initiative to serve all four-year-olds in the state who qualify for free and reduced price lunch (up to $38,000 for a family of four).  This is good news for low-income families who would like their children to participate in pre-school.

Of critical importance, but less prominent in the announcement, is the Governor's vision that child care centers meeting high quality standards are included in the pre-school program.  CLASP's research has found that this "diverse delivery model" presents an important opportunity to bring together the dual goals of promoting early learning and supporting working families.   Yet, this research also shows that implementation matters, and without several key policies in place, community-based child care providers--and the working families they serve--can be left out of the pre-school program.  Key policy recommendations for states like Virginia moving to expand pre-school include:

• Require that a minimum proportion of pre-kindergarten be delivered in non-school settings and require that a proportion of settings have the capacity to provide fullworkday and -year services.
• Identify and eliminate state child care subsidy policies that may prevent participation of community-based providers in the pre-kindergarten program.
• Allow pre-kindergarten funding to augment other child care funding without reducing existing resources to assure full workday coverage for low-income families in a setting that maintains consistent pre-kindergarten quality all day.
• Conduct thorough outreach and disseminate information to all potential communitybased providers.
• Set pre-kindergarten payments and provide dedicated funds that cover the cost of providing a high-quality early education program.
• Invest in the communitybased child care teacher workforce by providing targeted resources to help teachers meet pre-kindergarten teacher education standards—and receive comparable wages to similarly educated school teachers.