High-quality early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, which benefit not only children and their families but society at large.
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Early care and education, despite the great promise, has been financed in the United States in a way that high-quality early care and education is only available to a fraction of families and does little to further develop the early care and education (ECE) workforce.
It is neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning that children and families need—a shortfall that further perpetuates and drives inequality.
Early childhood is a time when developmental changes are happening that can have profound and lasting consequences for a child’s future. Studies have shown that much more is going on cognitively, socially, and emotionally in young children than previously known. Development proceeds in ways that are both rapid and cumulative, with early progress laying the foundation for future learning.
Two reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine—Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (2018) and Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (2015)—explore the science of early childhood development, identify ways to strengthen the competencies of professionals who care for and educate young children, and recommend approaches for financing early childhood care and education in a way that is of high quality, affordable, and accessible.
Click on a principle for more information.
The current ECE system fails to meet principle 1 in that:
The current early care and education system fails to meet principle 2 in that:
The current ECE system fails to meet principles 3-6 in that:
The current ECE system fails to meet principles 3-6 in that:
The current ECE system fails to meet principles 3-6 in that:
The current ECE system fails to meet principles 3-6 in that:
Given what science shows regarding the benefits of quality early learning experiences for positive childhood development and a lack of systemic progress to improve the quality of early care and education offered in the United States, an effective financing structure is needed to address these persistent problems.
Based on the research, the committee made recommendations for implementing such a system. Click on a recommendation for more information.
Federal and state governments should establish consistent standards for high quality across all ECE programs. Receipt of funding should be linked to attaining and maintaining these quality standards. State and federal financing mechanisms should ensure that providers receive payments that are sufficient to cover the total cost of high-quality ECE.
Read moreAll children and families should have access to affordable, high-quality early care and education. Access should not be contingent on the characteristics of their parents, such as family income or work status.
a. ECE programs and financing mechanisms (with the exception of employer-based programs) should not set eligibility standards that require parental employment, job training, education, or other activities.
b. Federal and state governments should set uniform family payment standards that increase progressively across income groups and are applied if the ECE program requires a family contribution (payment).
c. The share of total ECE system costs that are not covered by family payments should be covered by a combination of institutional support to providers who meet quality standards and assistance directly to families that is based on uniform income eligibility standards.
Read moreIn states that have demonstrated a readiness to implement a financing structure that advances principles for a high-quality ECE system and includes adequate funding, state governments or other state-level entities should act as coordinators for the various federal and state financing mechanisms that support early care and education, with the exception of federal and state tax preferences that flow directly to families.
Read moreTo provide adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding for a unified, high-quality system of early care and education for all children from birth to kindergarten entry, federal and state governments should increase funding levels and revise tax preferences to ensure adequate funding.
Read moreFamily payments for families at the lowest income level should be reduced to zero, and if a family contribution is required by a program, that contribution, as a share of family income, should progressively increase as income rises.
Read moreA coalition of public and private funders should support the development and implementation of a first round of local-, state-, and national-level strategic business plans to guide transitions toward a reformed financing structure for high-quality early care and education.
Read moreBecause compensation for the ECE workforce is not currently commensurate with desired qualifications, the ECE workforce should be provided with financial assistance to increase practitioners’ knowledge and competencies and to achieve required qualifications through higher-education programs, credentialing programs, and other forms of professional learning. The incumbent ECE workforce should bear no cost for increasing practitioners’ knowledge base, competencies, and qualifications, and the entering workforce should be assisted to limit costs to a reasonable proportion of postgraduate earnings, with a goal of maintaining and further promoting diversity in the pipeline of ECE professionals.
a. Existing grant-based resources should be leveraged, and states and localities, along with colleges and universities, should work together to provide additional resources and supports to the incumbent workforce as practitioners further their qualifications as professionals in the ECE field.
b. States and the federal government should provide financial and other appropriate supports to limit to a reasonable proportion of expected postgraduate earnings any tuition and fee expenses that are incurred by prospective ECE professionals and are not covered by existing financial aid programs.
Read moreStates and the federal government should provide grants to institutions and systems of postsecondary education to develop faculty and ECE programs and to align ECE curricula with the science of child development and early learning and with principles of high-quality professional practice. Federal funding should be leveraged through grants that provide incentives to states, colleges, and universities to ensure higher-education programs are of high quality and aligned with workforce needs, including evaluating and monitoring student outcomes, curricula, and processes.
Read moreThe federal and state governments, as well as other funders, should provide sustained funding for research and evaluation on early childhood education, particularly during the transition period to ensure efforts to improve the ECE system are resulting in positive outcomes for children and in the recruitment and retention of a highly qualified workforce.
Read moreThe federal government should align its data collection requirements across all federal ECE funding streams to collect comprehensive information about the entire ECE sector and sustain investments in regular, national, data collection efforts from state and nationally representative samples that track changes in the ECE landscape over time, to better understand the experiences of ECE programs, the ECE workforce, and the developmental outcomes of children who participate in ECE programs.
Read moreThe flaws in the current financing structure are exacerbated by overall low levels of funding that are not sufficient to enable families at all income levels to access high-quality services. Drawing from existing literature on the costs of various elements of a high-quality ECE system, the committee produced a national, aggregate estimate of the total cost of providing high-quality ECE for all children, as well as an estimate of the costs of transitioning to this high-quality system over four phases of implementation.
Based on these estimates, the committee presented an illustrative example of the share of funding that could be required from public or non-family private sources as well as family payments across the four phases of implementation. If the new system included no fees for families, the family contribution would be zero and funding from public or private sources would be required to cover the total cost of the system.
In this presentation, committee member Lynn A. Karoly (RAND Corporation) explains how the committee developed an estimate of the annual cost of ensuring access to a high-quality and ECE system.
The full webinar can be viewed here.
The private sector, including businesses/employers, corporate foundations, and philanthropic organizations have the potential to play a critical role advocating for policies and leveraging available dollars to support high-quality ECE services and systems, particularly as we move from the current fragmented and failing system to an effective, high-quality ECE system.
— Read Business Sector Brief
The following videos show presentations and discussions from the Committee on Financing Early Care and Education with a Highly Qualified Workforce:
