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Learning about Teaching: What We Know about Early Ed Professionals

May 8, 2012

Our 2011 State Preschool Yearbook got a lot of attention for sounding the alarm on decreasing per-child funding threatening program quality. Nothing is more important for providing a high-quality early education than highly effective teachers and assistant teachers. NIEER’s research-based quality standards benchmarks credit teacher requirements in five different ways:

· Lead teachers must have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent;

· Lead teachers must have specialized training in early childhood education;

· Assistant teachers must have a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential or equivalent;

· Lead teachers must receive at least 15 clock hours per year (or 6 credit hours per 5 years) of professional development; and,

· Regular site visits are conducted to monitor program implementation.

Of the 39 states offering state-funded pre-K in the 2010-2011 year, only eight states (plus the Louisiana NSECD program) met all five of these benchmarks for lead and assistant teachers. A related issue is teacher pay, which is on average much lower in preschools than in elementary schools. Although 19 states required all lead teachers to have a BA with specialized training, a mere 7 states had this requirement and pay them comparably to kindergarten teacher salary as of 2009-2010.

As can be seen in the graph below, the percent of programs meeting each teacher qualification benchmark has certainly increased over time, though some more so than others. For example, the increase in programs requiring at least 15 hours per year of professional development—from 64 percent to 84 percent—indicates a growing understanding that continued support for teachers is necessary beyond just initial training. The growth in requiring lead teachers to have a BA has been comparatively slow, but is especially laudable considering the economic difficulties of the last decade and the fact that more advanced teacher degrees likely drive up the program costs.

This table displays programs meeting the teacher qualification benchmarks over a 10-year period as a percent, to take into account the changing number of total programs each year. Information on site visits was not collected until the 2004-2005 year.

Where programs still consistently fall short is in the qualifications required of assistant teachers—only 26 percent of programs required assistant teachers to have a CDA in 2001-2002, which increased to only 31 percent of programs in 2010-2011. Only two programs exceeded the benchmark by requiring an AA for assistant teachers in all settings of their preschool programs (i.e., nonpublic and public), while at least four programs had no formal educational requirements for their assistant teachers. It is clear that the focus over the last decade has been strengthening lead teacher requirements, perhaps out of the assumption that these teachers have the bulk of the interaction with children. However, considering that most programs require an assistant teacher in order to meet the 1:10 staff-to-child ratio we look for, assistant teachers have a clear presence in the early childhood classroom. If preschool programs are truly to have effective team teaching, states must provide adequate pay, supports and training for assistant teachers to ensure all staff interactions with children are of high-quality and developmentally appropriate.

The question of how to ensure we have great teachers in pre-K classrooms is not only for program administrators to answer; teacher preparation programs need to step up. A recent study from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment explored higher education programs that prepare early childhood education teachers. As noted by Laura Bornfreund of the New America Foundation, diversity across states makes good data hard to come by:

“…[E]arly childhood preparation programs vary greatly for a few reasons. States lack common education and licensing standards for teachers of children, birth to 5. Some states don’t require student teaching at all. At the institution level, preparation programs are often housed in different departments. Some may be based in the School of Education but often they are located elsewhere, such as Family and Consumer Science Departments, for example. And when early childhood preparation programs say that they are including infants and toddlers in their scope, they may primarily address K-3.”

In educational settings, diversity is a wonderful thing—there’s hardly a loftier educational goal than students and staff from different backgrounds working and learning together. But the current diversity in the requirements and quality of teacher preparation programs has nothing to do with ensuring that the teaching force is diverse and produces a cacophony of bureaucracy and lack of standardization in preparation that serves neither teachers nor students well.

All this comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report on the early child care and education (ECCE) workforce that found the 1.8 million employees in pre-K, child care, and Head Start are still faced with low levels of education and compensation. The report found that preschool teachers, who were the highest paid among these professionals, still only made about $18,000 per year (excluding pre-K teachers in elementary schools). Data from the American Communities Survey indicated that 72 percent of these workers lacked an associate’s degree or higher. Clearly, the preparation, support, and compensation of today’s early childhood workforce is out of sync with what we know is best to provide our children with a high-quality early education. Despite these challenges, ECCE teaching staff do the best they can for our children, understanding that, as Garrison Keillor said, “Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”

So to the 1.8 million ECCE teachers out there—thanks on behalf of the millions of young children you serve everyday!

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

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Investing for Today and Tomorrow: Early Learning in the Federal FY 2013 Budget Proposal

February 15, 2012

Starting the week on an exciting note for elected officials, advocates, and policy wonks, President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 on Monday morning. Education was a clear priority throughout the press conference at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Virginia, particularly on preparing students for 21^st century jobs by focusing on career and technical skills. As readers of this blog can attest, early education is an important building block in preparing students for a life of learning and earning.

Details of the budget are still being fleshed out, but there seems to be good news for early education in the White House’s proposal, as outlined below.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed budget:

Department-wide discretionary budget of $76.4 billion, a $0.3 billion increase over the FY2012 level.
Head Start and Early Head Start: Set to receive more than $8 billion to serve about 962,000 children and families, which would maintain the enrollment expansion seen in the 2009-2010 program year. The proposal acknowledges that it will support the implementation of the new Head Start re-competition regulations.
Child care subsidies: Additional $7 billion over 10 years to support child care subsidies for low-income children.
Child Care Development Block Grant: Additional $300 million to improve the quality of child care facilities.

Department of Education proposed budget:

Department-wide discretionary budget of $69.8 billion, a $1.7 billion increase over FY2012 level.
Race to the Top (RTT): $850 million for another round. According to a Department of Education press release, a “significant portion” of these funds would be allocated for an expansion for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, which would continue under the joint tutelage of the Departments of Education and HHS.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): $472.7 million in Grants for Infants and Families, to provide early intervention services to children birth through age 2 with disabilities and $372.6 million for IDEA Preschool Grants for children ages 3 through 5 with disabilities.
Promise Neighborhoods: Proposed increase of $100 million for this competitive grant program that seeks to help high-need communities develop cooperative strategies to improve outcomes for children through both educational reforms and life outside the classroom. Past winners have focused energies specifically on early education as a tool.
Investing in Innovation Fund (i3): Requests $150 million for the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to build on three previous i3 competitions. The Department’s budget summary only goes so far as to suggest that priority “could be given to projects proposing to improve early learning outcomes.”
Institute for Education Sciences (IES): $30 million in new research and development grants for early learning and elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education.

In addition, the National Women’s Law Center has information on additional federal programs in the FY13 proposal that support families with young children, including the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. Of course, not all child care funding goes to children under 5 (though most does) and early education will only be a modest fraction of such high-profile initiatives such as i3, Promise Neighborhoods, and RTT.

Laura Bornfreund, Maggie Severns, and Clare McCann at Early Ed Watch compiled the helpful table below to track changes since FY2011 in some key programs used for early education.

As noted by the New America Foundation’s Key Questions on the Obama Administration’s 2013 Education Budget Request, there are still a number of questions surrounding the place of early education in this budget, including whether the portion of RTT funds earmarked for early learning would be distributed at the state level or district level. They also note that the budget proposal encourages districts to redesign school schedules to better serve students through the 21^st Century Community Learning program, though it is unclear so far whether states will be encouraged to apply this to the early grades, such as extending half-day kindergarten into full-day services.

It’s worth noting that a presidential budget proposal is, according to Birth to Thrive, just “the first move in a high-stakes game that will be complicated this year by presidential and congressional politics.” Considering the sharp partisan divisions seen in recent legislative battles, the pressure of the Budget Control Act to cut spending by $900 billion over 10 years, and the high-profile politics of an election year, it is hard to say exactly how much of this proposal will ever see funding. The great strength of the budget proposal, though, is to allow the president to lay out his priorities in greater detail than any speech or campaign ad could. Early education is clearly an administration priority, though perhaps not as high a priority as we would like. All of us concerned about the future of America’s youngest learners must ensure that elected officials remember that high-quality early education programs are a good economic investment both short-term and in the future.

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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The Pre-K Debates: What the Research Says About Teacher Quality

February 10, 2012

The body of research on teacher quality is, if nothing else, a mixed bag, in terms of both quality and approach. Studies of the effects of preschool education levels have employed techniques ranging from simple correlations to complex statistical analyses that seek to account for the complexities of interrelated policies and practices that affect teaching and learning. Given just how complex policy and practice are, it may be that the simple correlations are just as informative for policy purposes, but neither approach is particularly satisfactory. Controlled randomized trials that look at teacher quality might get us farther, but even these may not tell us what we really want to know, and they are few and far between in any case. Little wonder, then, that some studies find that teachers with higher levels of education have stronger effects on children’s learning while others do not. A 2007 NIEER quantitative summary (meta-analysis) of the literature found a modest positive effect of teachers with a bachelor’s degree compared to those with less education. A few studies in that analysis deserve extra attention because they have obvious strengths:

1. The Cost, Quality and Outcomes Study of child care found that higher levels of teacher education and pay were associated with higher quality as measured by structured observations, and children’s cognitive test scores. A reanalysis that controlled for location and center found no differences between teachers with bachelor’s degrees and those with associate’s degrees or high school diplomas. However, the reanalysis fails to take into account that programs basically hire all their teachers under the same budget constraint, that teachers within a center are not independent performers, and that centers like to assign difficult-to-teach kids to better teachers.

2. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) study of early care and education has an advantage over most studies because it includes measures of education in the home, thereby more completely modeling the processes that contribute to children’s learning and development. And, it does so over multiple years and not just a few months. Several NICHD studies have found that teacher education contributes to children’s learning and development.

3. Two studies that found no effects of teacher education on children’s learning are a University of Nebraska study of child care centers in four Midwest states and a University of North Carolina study using data from the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) Multi-State Study of Pre-K. The latter involved more than 230 classrooms and 800 children. While both have relatively large samples, nether takes into account teacher assignment, apparently assuming that it is random and they do not measure home learning processes. In the Nebraska study, only about seven teachers out of the hundreds interviewed had salaries above $30,000.

To my mind, the most informative evidence comes from real policy changes such as when the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered high-quality preschool provided to all children in 31 low-income school districts. This “natural experiment” was implemented in a public system wherein most children were served by private providers under contract to the districts. Teachers lacking the necessary credentials received scholarships to attend more schooling so they could meet the new standard of a bachelor’s degree and early childhood certification. Salaries were raised to public school levels. Teachers received coaching on a regular basis. It comes as no surprise to many involved in this dramatic, albeit painful, transition that the quality of teaching as measured by direct observation was transformed, changing from poor-mediocre to good-excellent.

Of course, we can’t pinpoint teacher qualifications as the sole source of success in New Jersey, and I wouldn’t. Raising qualifications requirements without raising pay from its typically abysmal level is a recipe for disaster. Honestly, would the field really be debating whether preschool teachers needed to be well-educated if wages were not at issue? In addition, coaching and a continuous improvement process are certainly important, but it would be equally misguided to conclude that specialized training and professional development alone could produce quality teaching over the long-run with low wages and poorly educated teachers.

Education research rarely provides a basis for certainty and this is particularly true of studies looking at teacher effectiveness where so many variables matter. If policymakers want greater certainty than the existing evidence provides, different sorts of studies will be needed that are based on real policy changes. In the meantime, leading experts in the field provide us with well-reasoned arguments for and sometimes against requiring higher levels of education for preschool teachers than is currently the case in most classrooms across the nation. Their arguments are well represented in The Pre-K Debates, a new book edited by Ed Zigler and Walter Gilliam at Yale and me. If nothing else, it is always interesting to see university professors argue that their students don’t learn anything useful or that minority students can’t make it in higher education. I’m always happy to put forward Rutgers University as a counterexample.

- Steve Barnett, Director, NIEER

Note: This post is part of a series discussing issues of contention from The Pre-K Debates. For my analysis of universal preschool’s role in economic mobility, see this earlier post in the series.

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The Bottom Ten: A Closer Look at No-Program States

June 6, 2011

The State of Preschool 2010 provided some good news regarding two new pilot programs in Alaska and Rhode Island, meaning there is no longer a “dirty dozen” of states without preschool education programs. However, 10 states still have not made preschool a priority and lack such programs for young learners. These “Bottom Ten” states do provide some services to their youngest learners through federal special education and Head Start programs, though enrollment is limited only to those most “at-risk,” whether due to disability or meeting a low-income threshold.

“Preschool-age children in these 10 states are denied the opportunity of early learning experiences that will help them succeed both in school and later in life,” says W. Steven Barnett, NIEER’s co-director and author of the report. “In particular, states in the Mountain West and Upper Midwest with predominantly rural populations need to find a way to provide access to high-quality pre-K.”

In this post, we take a closer look at the bottom 10 states that don’t fund pre-K programs meeting our definition of a state program. For additional information on these and all other states, visit the State Data page.

Ten states don't provide state-funded pre-K programs.

Hawaii

Although Hawaii does not have a state-funded pre-K program that meets the criteria of the report, the state funds several initiatives providing early learning services. The state’s Preschool Open Doors Project provides low-income families with subsidies to purchase preschool education for their 4-year-olds and, in limited cases, 3-year-olds with special needs. Income eligibility is reassessed and children can be removed from the program based on increases in family income, so the Preschool Open Doors Project is best viewed as offering support to working families rather than as a dedicated educational program.

Other prekindergarten initiatives in the state include the Pre-Plus Program, Junior Kindergarten, Keiki First Steps, and Special Education Preschool. In addition, the state is piloting pre-K programs in two elementary schools. Although remarkable progress has been made, the “Youngest State” still has room to grow in serving its youngest learners.

Idaho

Idaho dedicated $1.5 million in TANF funds to supplement the federal Head Start program in the 2009-2010 school year, enrolling an additional 195 children in the program. But, even with these children, Idaho enrolls less than 7 percent of the state’s 3-year-olds and less than 15 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds in special education preschool and Head Start. Only Utah enrolls a smaller proportion of 3-year-olds, and Idaho is in the bottom five states for enrollment of 4-year-olds.

Indiana

Enrollment of 4-year-olds in special education preschool and Head Start in Indiana is just barely at 15 percent, with only five states enrolling fewer 4-year-olds. Earlier this year, pre-K was notably absent from Governor Daniels’s education reform agenda. At that time, the office of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction expressed interest in investing in state-funded pre-K but noted that the state funding for such a program was unlikely to be available in the near future.

Mississippi

In 2008, the state established Mississippi Building Blocks, a public-private program designed to provide effective support to and increase the quality of existing child care centers. In 2010, a special commission of business leaders and education experts began studying the program as a basis for establishing a statewide model.

When accounting for early education access through Head Start and special education preschool, Mississippi is in the top 5 states enrolling 3-year-olds, serving a higher percent of 3-year-olds than most states with state-funded pre-K programs. With nearly 27 percent of 3-year-olds served in these federal programs, Mississippi’s enrollment is topped only by Vermont, Illinois, and New Jersey. These four states are the only ones to serve more than a quarter of their 3-year-old population. In addition, Mississippi enrolls almost 37 percent of 4-year-olds in federal pre-K programs. Despite these advances, Mississippi’s lack of state-funded pre-K makes it an anomaly in the South, where nearby states have committed themselves to universal access.

Montana

Federal special education preschool and Head Start programs in Montana enroll nearly 15 percent of 3-year-olds and 22 percent of 4-year-olds in publicly-funded early learning programs. This places Montana in the top 20 states for 3-year-old program access, but the bottom 20 for 4-year-old access. Relying on these programs limits access for most children in the state, and Montana cannot truly be the “Treasure State” for young children until the state makes available access to high-quality pre-K.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire provides slightly more than $300,000 in state supplemental funds to the federal Head Start program. Rather than using these funds to enroll additional children as most states do, New Hampshire dedicates this funding to enhancing teacher salaries. Less than 9 percent of 3-year-olds are enrolled in a state or federal program in New Hampshire, below the national figure of 14 percent. With only about 11 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds enrolled in special education preschool and Head Start, New Hampshire ties with Nevada for the bottom spot for 4-year-old enrollment in state and/or federal pre-K programs.

North Dakota

North Dakota enrolls 16 percent of its 3-year-olds and nearly 24 percent of its 4-year-olds through federal Head Start and special education preschool. But, the Grand Forks Herald notes that Head Start has a waiting list of more than 800 children throughout the state, indicating that demand outpaces access. State Representative Kathy Hawken told the newspaper, “This particular (legislative) session has not been kind to children. We have pretty much defeated most of the bills that had to do with kids, whether it was health care or prenatal care or CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program). We didn’t fund school nurses. We didn’t fund Head Start.” In addition, earlier this year, the state Senate defeated a bill to fund a $1.5 million pilot preschool program in four school districts. However, a recent law does include expansion statewide of Gearing Up for Kindergarten, a parent education program designed to prepare 4-year-olds for school. North Dakota has weathered the recession better than most states – since 2006, the state has had the smallest increase in the unemployment rate nationwide, as well as the largest increase in per capita income. Investing in the future workforce through pre-K can solidify the state’s path to economic prosperity and maintain this growth for future generations.

South Dakota

Existing special education preschool and Head Start programs enroll 16.5 percent of the state’s 3-year-olds and 24.5 percent of its 4-year-olds. Additionally, the Starting Strong Sioux Falls public-private pre-K pilot program was in its third year during the 2009-2010 school year. In response to positive outcomes from this pilot program, a pre-K pilot is being planned for Rapid City. While these pilot programs are encouraging, state-funded early education is only available in select areas. Statewide, the “Land of Infinite Variety” consistently shoots down any attempts to vary preschool education opportunities with the inclusion of state-funded pre-K.

Utah

Utah enrolls only 6 percent of its 3-year-olds and almost 13 percent of its 4-year-olds in special education preschool and Head Start. This makes the state last in the nation for enrollment of 3-year-olds. For enrollment of 4-year-olds, Utah exceeds only New Hampshire and Nevada. Unfortunately, Utah is not alone in its underinvestment in young children, as it is one of the four Mountain West states that fail to provide state-funded pre-K.

Wyoming

With no state-funded prekindergarten program, Wyoming still enrolls nearly 17 percent of its 3-year-olds and 26 percent of its 4-year-olds in special education preschool and Head Start. But this means only children with special needs or from low-income families have access to high-quality early learning opportunities. The “Equality State” could benefit from heeding U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s comment at The State of Preschool 2010 press conference that educational inequality is the civil rights issue of our time and increased access to quality pre-K and other early learning opportunities is the way to begin addressing disparities.

2009-2010 Enrollment of 3- and 4-Year-Olds in Preschool Special Education & Federal and State Head Start

State	Percent of 3-year-old population (SpEd)	Percent of 4-year-old population (SpEd)	Percent of 3-year-old population (SpEd + HdSt††)	Percent of 4-year-old population (SpEd + HdSt††)
Hawaii	3.8%	5.1%	8.4%	14.5%
Idaho	3.7%	5.6%	6.7%	14.7%
Indiana	5.2%	7.0%	9.7%	14.8%
Mississippi	4.1%	6.9%	26.9%	36.8%
Montana	2.6%	5.0%	14.9%	22.1%
New Hampshire	5.5%	7.1%	8.8%	11.4%
North Dakota	4.8%	7.1%	16.1%	23.7%
South Dakota	5.3%	8.0%	16.5%	24.5%
Utah	3.9%	6.1%	6.5%	12.8%
Wyoming	10.7%	16.7%	16.8%	26.0%

†† This figure includes federally funded and state-funded Head Start enrollment.
Source: The State of Preschool 2010: State Preschool Yearbook

Preschool provides a return on investment these states cannot afford to miss out on. Years of research have demonstrated the benefits of high-quality preschool. Compared to children without high-quality preschool, children who attend are more likely to graduate high school and go on to higher education. They are less likely to require special education or repeat a grade, become teenage parents, or commit crimes as teens or adults, all at great savings to taxpayers. As adults, they are more likely to be qualified to fill the demand for skilled workers that will keep America competitive in the global economy. As revenues begin the return to pre-recession levels, each of these ten states in particular must take a good look at their fiscal house and choose to make investment in their future a priority.

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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This Memorial Day: A Time to Reflect on the Past … and the Future of Armed Forces

May 20, 2011

How Early Education Can Support Our Military

Source: 2nd Infantry Division US Army

As Memorial Day approaches and Americans collectively prepare for the start of summer it is easy to lose track of the purpose of this day — to honor and remember those Americans in uniform who have died in the service of their country. Unfortunately, recent reports indicate that the American education system may be doing too little to honor their sacrifice by failing to adequately prepare the next generation of men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. The military relies on a well-trained force of capable individuals who must meet certain requirements to enter the service. However, a combination of low educational attainment, health concerns, and criminal convictions disqualifies a large number of young adults who wish to enter the service.

A recent study pegs the percentage of men and women between the ages of 18 and 24 who are unqualified for military service at 90 percent in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Statistics released by the Pentagon indicate this figure is 75 percent nationwide. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has responded to these startling figures by calling for changes in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that allow for increased local flexibility and federal incentives to invest in early childhood education. While early education is not the expected response to an armed forces problem, Secretary Duncan is not alone in making the connection between kindergarten preparedness and military preparedness.

The organization Mission: Readiness, working with a coalition of 200 retired military officers, has issued research on the military preparedness (or lack thereof) in each state and concluded that the best intervention is an early one — early childhood education programs that help prepare at-risk students for school so as to help avoid a number of disqualifying problems by the time children are 18. While military brass and preschool students may seem an unlikely partnership to some, it is one that is gaining steam as pre-K programs prove their worth during tough budget times. To find out more about Mission: Readiness, read the Preschool Matters interview with Lieutenant General Norman Seip of this organization.

Meanwhile, a report from the Pew Center on the States also shows that child care and pre-K programs are an important issue for current active duty and reserve military personnel and their families. While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allotted $240 million for additional child development centers on military bases, families often lack access to quality child care and preschool programs on bases or in their areas. As indicated in Figure 1 below, Pew found that child care was a critical daily need for military families, more pressing even than health care services. That need only increased further when a service member deployed.

Figure 1: Day-to-day needs of military families

Source: The Pew Center on the States. (2011). On the home front: Early care and education a top priority for military families.

States could do more to help. The State of Preschool 2010 found that only 12 state-funded programs out of the 54 included in the study require or allow program administrators to make eligibility decisions based on a child’s parent being on active military duty. Young children’s development may particularly be affected by the frequent moves common to military families. Yet the combined resources of military child care and state-funded pre-K fail to adequately provide early education services for these children to aid in their healthy development.

Increased funding for state-funded preschool education programs can expand access and improve quality for those children whose parents currently serve in the military while also improving life outcomes for those who may enlist in the future. In the 2009-2010 school year, both total state funding and per-child spending nationwide fell for these programs, representing a step back for young learners. Combining state, federal, and local sources, $6.2 billion was spent on pre-K programs for the 1,283,890 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled. NIEER estimates that an additional $7.5 billion could expand access to quality pre-K to fully cover the 40 percent of children estimated to start school unready to succeed. Representing only slightly more than 1 percent of the $670.9 billion budget requested by the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2012, this is a small price to pay for improving military readiness in years to come while supporting families of our active duty service members.

Indeed, an April report released by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argue that America is currently channeling too much funding to military operations at the expense of human capital investments that make for a strong military and civil workforce in the future. Investing in pre-K could help strike a balance. As General Seip told NIEER, “It just pains me to think that there are so many young people out there, for whom the job and the service would mean so much — for whom it’s a ticket to the middle class and the American dream — who do not have the skills or the training to qualify.”

So this Memorial Day when you honor the heroic deeds of service members past and present, also take a moment to consider the armed forces in years to come. Are our future heroes getting the education they deserve?

- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER
- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER

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This Week: Thank a Teacher

May 4, 2011

From elementary school students to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, people across the nation are taking time to thank a teacher throughout the week. That’s because this week is Teacher Appreciation Week, a time to not only celebrate our educators but also to learn more about teaching as a profession.

Years of research have found that teachers play an extremely important role in the preschool classroom. Teacher qualifications are often an indicator of a pre-K program’s quality. Better education and training for teachers can improve the interaction between children and teachers, which in turn benefits children’s learning. The most effective preschool educators have at least a bachelor’s degree and specialized training in early childhood. But while this is the norm in kindergarten classrooms, this is not always the case in preschool classrooms.

When we analyzed data from the latest State Preschool Yearbook, we found that 27 of 52 state-funded pre-K initiatives require that pre-K classroom teachers have a bachelor’s degree and 45 require lead teachers to have specialized training in early childhood. Only 16 state-funded programs require assistant teachers to have at least a child development credential or equivalent. While progress has been made in state policies regarding teacher qualifications since we first started analyzing data in 2002, still more can be done. The figure below provides a visual representation of the number of state programs meeting our benchmarks regarding teacher policies over the past eight years.

Since NIEER began tracking teacher qualification requirements, we’ve seen the most improvement in requiring 15 hours of professional development each year for lead teachers as well as more states requiring specialized early childhood training for lead teachers. Progress has been slower in requiring BAs for lead teachers, and fewer than half of all state-funded programs require a CDA for assistant teachers. And, when we moved away from state-funded preschool initiatives and looked at child care, the picture was bleaker. Only 16 of 50 states have any teacher education requirements, and none of those states require a bachelor’s degree.

A newly released policy brief from NIEER and the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, written by Marcy Whitebook and Sharon Ryan, says it’s not just the quantity of teachers’ formal education but also the quality and content of that education. Whitebook and Ryan find a mismatch between the qualifications for the most effective teachers and the supports that these teachers receive to improve upon their work. Indeed, the latest Yearbook shows that only 44 of 52 state-funded pre-K programs have a policy requiring teachers have at least 15 hours of professional development for lead teachers per year; only about half of programs require professional development for assistant teachers. States provide some supports for pre-K teachers to enhance their skills and credentials; notably, almost three quarters of programs provide some scholarships to teachers enrolling in training, though requirements and amounts vary considerably by state. Three programs provide no support to teachers, despite the benefit to students and teachers of keeping up with the latest in the early education field. See the figure below for percents of the 52 state-funded pre-K initiatives offering specific supports for their teachers.

Does the state provide any of the following types of supports to teachers to help them attain credentials or enhance their skills?
Scholarships	73%
Mentors	63%
Other	40%
Loan forgiveness	21%
None	6%

Whitebook and Ryan also note the disconnect between expectations for teachers and compensation policies. When asked if pre-K teachers are required to be paid on the same scale as public school teachers, only 17 of 52 state programs ensured this for all teachers; another 20 programs extended this guarantee only to teachers who classrooms were in public settings. And, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that in 2009, child care workers nationwide had an average salary of $20,940, ranging from only $16,750 in Arkansas to $24,480 in Massachusetts. In a staggering 40 states, the average child care worker salary is below the federal poverty level set by the Department of Health and Human Services for a family of four in 2009.

Research tells us what credentials make for the highest quality early educators, but state policy has a way to go in fully supporting them. State budgets continue to be tight, but states must prioritize a well-educated, well-compensated early childhood workforce to receive all the benefits we know pre-K can yield. As a nation, when it comes to thanking pre-K teachers, we might consider more than a shiny red apple.

- Jen Fitzgerald, Public Information Officer, NIEER
- Megan Carolan, Policy Research Coordinator, NIEER

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First Do No Harm: It’s Time to Address Our Quality Problem

January 6, 2011

In the next several years, those of us who believe government policies can and should help children and families are going to be in a tough fight. We need to be clear that this is not so much a fight for money as it is a fight for learning and development — a fight to ensure that every child has a chance to get in the game and compete on a level playing field in economic, social, and political life. The problem is, we can’t fully meet this challenge as long as we abide, and even seem to endorse, early childhood programs that don’t support learning and development.

In the last several years, a number of studies have found that child care subsidies negatively impact child development. This finding is particularly disturbing because we know that good early care and education enhances child development. So why all the bad news? A quick look at the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort study, commonly called ECLS-B, provides some insights. At age 2, 12 percent of children in poverty were in center-based care. More than twice as many, 27 percent, were in home-based (nonparental) care. Unfortunately, two-thirds of that home-based care was poor quality and virtually none of it was good. Center-based care was much better, relatively speaking. Only 15 percent was poor quality and 20 percent good or better. With those numbers it should come as no surprise that children from low-income families are not benefiting from, and may even be harmed by, home-based care as it is currently provided.

Child care subsidy policy in the United States is designed to get the unemployed, mostly women, into the labor force as cheaply as possible and encourages the use of low-cost home-based care over centers. In other words, federal and state child care policies increase the numbers of children from low-income families in poor quality early learning environments. At the same time, they have little effect on labor force participation. This is the policy equivalent of shooting ourselves in the head, given the importance of early learning and development for later school success and achievement. It also reinforces inequality and the cycle of poverty. We need to turn these policies around now.

The State Early Learning Advisory Councils that have recently been formed provide an opportunity to do just that beginning with three actions.

First, the Councils can collect data on the quality of early learning for infants and toddlers that will reveal just how bad the problem is state by state. This information can help bring the problem to the attention of the general public and elected officials.
Second, the Councils can recommend policy changes that will increase quality and tie public subsidies to quality. Ideally, public subsidies should only go to care providers of good or better quality. This will take some time, but every state should be able to eliminate subsidies for poor quality care entirely within five years. No government should encourage the use of poor quality care.
Third, the Councils should produce estimates of the costs of ensuring that (a) no subsidized care is of poor quality and (b) all subsidized care is good or better.

Given the tough budget decisions facing states and the federal government, the question is, are these recommendations realistic? I believe they are. Frankly, if we accept the view that we can only afford poor quality care, we might as well give up subsidies altogether. We should face the fact that we may do more harm than good by subsidizing poor quality care, and we should stop it. Moreover, we are in a weak position to oppose cutbacks when quality is not “job one.” Some members of Congress already have proposed rolling back spending for child care subsidies and Early Head Start to 2008 levels. Without a floor on care quality, it is much easier to hide the consequences of funding cuts because the amount per child can be cut without reducing the number of children served. In anticipation, each State Advisory Council should have in hand figures for the number of subsidized children who can be supported in adequate care with the current funding and the number who can be supported in adequate care if funding is rolled back to 2008 levels.

If we are willing to condone spending public dollars on poor quality care, we can’t convincingly make our case for additional funding. It is just about the money at that point, and even if we win, our children lose. Let’s take the option of poor quality care off the child care subsidy table.

Steve Barnett,

Co-director, NIEER

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Getting Child Care Right

June 22, 2010

Related Reading

Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone
Penelope Leach
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
New York
350 pp., ISBN 978-1-4000-4256-2
$25.95

Parents in need of child care are faced with many important decisions. To whom are they willing to entrust their children while they are away? How much of the day and what part of the week will children spend in child care? Which type of setting best meets their needs? How much of the family budget can and should be spent? Some parents will select from a broad menu of choices, including in-home care by another family member, enrolling in a child care center, or even hiring a private nanny. Others, due to circumstances such as poverty and geography, will have many fewer options. Regardless of their specific circumstances, many parents will struggle in choosing the right child care option for their families.

Even though child care is a fact of life for most families with young children, Penelope Leach emphasizes that “nothing about child care choices is simple or obvious….” (p. 58). In this book, Leach offers a wide-ranging overview of the current landscape of child care, with a particular emphasis on the United States and the United Kingdom. As a key researcher for the large-scale Families, Children and Child Care (FCCC) study in the U.K. and as author of the well-known Your Baby & Child, she is well qualified to succeed at that ambitious goal. This hefty volume is primarily geared toward making parents and the general public more aware of the nuances of child care and the options that may be possible for today’s families.

Leach organizes her book around four major issues, each represented by its own section: the status of child care today, the types of care that are available, the importance of quality, and how the future of child care might look. Since the sections are reasonably self-contained, readers have the option of focusing on topics that are of greatest interest, although the book as a whole makes for compelling reading.

Leach begins by highlighting societal changes that have shaped our current need for child care. Though parents’ (and especially mothers’) lifestyles and work schedules have evolved over time, children below a certain age will always need constant care. This can lead to complex balancing acts. A parent seeking a return to the workforce must arrange for child care that meets the family’s standards of quality while not costing more than the new job brings in. Grandparents and free or low-cost public options may not be readily available. Families must be comfortable with leaving their children in the care of others – sometimes for significant portions of the day – and be able to accept the tradeoffs between work and home life.

With this context established, Leach offers individual research-based summaries of what is known about different types of child care. These helpful chapters address home care by various types of family members and non-family caregivers, as well as more formalized care in child care centers and schools. She also provides overviews of the critical issue of child care quality from the perspectives of researchers, parents, and children. These perspectives are of course part of the difficult calculus in selecting a child care provider. For example, parents’ real-life child care choices may not reflect the features of child care that parents rate as most important, and types of preferred child care arrangements may differ by the age of the child. Leach wraps up her summary of quality by identifying important features of a high-quality child care setting as well as tips on what to avoid.

This book is particularly relevant because in order to get child care right, there is much more hard work that still needs to be done. Parents, child care providers, and governments all bear responsibility for their part in this work. Leach favors national models that have secure funding and integrate both care and education. One possible model is the “social investment state” in which parental self-sufficiency is key but public funding of early care and education is viewed as an important investment in global competitiveness. Leach concludes with a powerful statement on the status of child care today and a guidepost for the future: “Right now, scarcity of child-friendly attitudes throughout the English-speaking world weighs even more heavily against high-quality child care than scarcity of financial or other resources. We can do better.” (p. 297).

Reviewed by Jason Hustedt
Assistant Research Professor, NIEER

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Anatomy of a Subsidized Child Care Fraud

April 22, 2010

Congratulations are due Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who took home a Pulitzer Prize for her series “Cashing in on Kids” that exposed deception and fraud in the $350 million Wisconsin Shares program. Besides being compelling reading, Rutledge’s series is a cautionary tale for policymakers and administrators of child care programs. That’s because, in addition to outright fraud, Rutledge documents ways in which the program’s system of rules and regulations, along with lax enforcement, enabled some parents and providers to abuse the system in ways that were perfectly legal. One such example is an arrangement by which sisters or other relatives were able to stay home, swap kids, and receive taxpayer dollars.

Most of the tens of millions that Wisconsin overpaid for child care services, however, were due to criminal activity — sometimes committed by those with ties to a prominent crime boss. On the administrative oversight side, Rutledge did her homework, looking at state-level administration but also digging down to the local level where she found that politics ruled the day, those who signed off on bogus child care applications wound up being promoted, and caseworkers were protected from public scrutiny. Another problem: David Edie, an early education policy analyst for the Wisconsin Council of Children and Families told Rutledge that when counties manage child care money and don’t spend it wisely, it “doesn’t really affect county government very much.”

The series led to criminal indictments and legislation aimed at eliminating fraud and keeping criminals out of the child care business. Of course, it will always take diligent enforcement and a watchful press to see that what lawmakers intend really happens. As concerns the latter, we can’t help voicing concern as we see the ranks of reporters covering education shrink alongside the dwindling fortunes of our newspapers. Still, a great many excellent reporters remain who are covering the positives as well as the occasional negative story on the early care and education beat. The entire series and a compelling video from Rutledge on how she went about her investigation are available on the Journal-Sentinel web site.

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Calling All Doctoral Students: Dissertation Funding Available

March 24, 2010

Child Care Research Scholars grants are available to support graduate students as a way of encouraging child care policy research. Eligible applicants include doctoral level graduate students enrolled in accredited public, state-controlled, and private institutions of higher education, including Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), and faith-based institutions of higher education. Applications are due May 3, 2010.

Applicants may apply for project periods up to two years and will be awarded up to $30,000 for the first year and up to $20,000 for the second year of the project. Five individual grants are expected to be awarded. For information about previous Child Care Research Scholars, see http://www.researchconnections.org/childcare/federal/ccb.jsp . Those with questions can email the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation child care research grant review team at ChildcareScholars@icfi.com or call 1-877-301-6977. Visit the HHS Grants Forecast site at https://extranet.acf.hhs.gov/hhsgrantsforecast/index.cfm to learn about upcoming funding opportunities from the OPRE.

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