Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (2018) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 17-44
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 17... ...
to promote healthy child development and learning, (2) to provide parents the opportunity to fully participate in the economy, and (3)
|
From page 18... ...
However, despite the great promise of investments in early care and education, its current financing structure only allows it to serve a fraction of the families who need high-quality care and hampers the development of a stable, highly qualified, and high-quality ECE workforce, making the financing structure neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning children and families need. The consequences of this long-standing approach to financing have left many families without access to affordable, high-quality early care and education, perpetuating and driving inequality.
|
From page 19... ...
The ECE workforce comprises nearly 2 million practitioners, almost all of whom are women and many of whom live below the federal poverty level and rely on public subsidies to support themselves and their families. Investments in early care and education serve to promote the professionalization of this workforce and increase wages, reducing the economic strain facing those entering the field.
|
From page 20... ...
CHARGE TO THE COMMITTEE To this end, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine appointed the Committee on Financing Early Care and Education with a Highly Qualified Workforce to prepare a report that would outline a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kinder arten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compen g sated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 I nstitute of Medicine and National Research Council report Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (the Transforming report) ; the committee's complete statement of task BOX 1-1 Statement of Task An ad hoc committee under the auspices of the National Academies of Sci ences, Engineering, and Medicine will study how to fund early care and educa tion for children from birth to kindergarten entry that is accessible, affordable to families, and of high quality, including a well-qualified and adequately supported workforce consistent with the vision outlined in the report Transforming the Work force for Children Birth Through Age 8.
|
From page 21... ...
3. What funding mechanisms at the federal, state and local levels have been effective at creating a strong element of support for the workforce (i.e., higher education; ongoing professional learning system; compensation; degree/credential attainment)
|
From page 22... ...
to inform its analysis and recommendations on how to finance early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry that is accessible, affordable to families, and of high quality. The committee's charge specifically asks it to provide a vision for financing that is consistent with the Transforming report's conclusions and recommendations, which were based on that committee's assessment of the available evidence, in the context of an evolving science and research base as well as an evolving policy and practice landscape in early care and education.
|
From page 23... ...
We also identify and discuss options for raising revenue and the tradeoffs inherent in those options, recognizing that policy and political decisions will affect the feasibility of different options in different contexts. In this report, the committee presents a vision for ECE financing that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education, including a well-qualified and adequately compensated workforce, for young children from birth to kindergarten entry and across settings that include home-based care, center-based care, and prekindergarten classrooms.
|
From page 24... ...
. The most extensive evidence of ECE program impacts and economic returns is for high-quality 1- or 2-year prekindergarten programs, where dozens of rigor ous experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations of model prekindergarten programs and scaled-up "real-world" programs have demonstrated significant favorable impacts from prekindergarten participation relative to no prekindergarten participation on such outcomes as school readiness, educational performance, high school graduation, and adult labor market success (see Karoly and Auger, 2016, for a recent review)
|
From page 25... ...
. While much of the evidence for favorable economic returns is specific to prekindergarten programs serving lower-income children, there are universal prekindergarten programs that have also demonstrated positive economic returns for children across the income spectrum (Bartik, Gormley, and Adelstein, 2012; Cascio and Schanzenbach, 2013)
|
From page 26... ...
. The "financing structure" or "financing system" of early care and education is a subset of this broader ECE system and refers to the policies, regulations, funding streams, and financing mechanisms3 that shape the financing of early care and education in the United States.
|
From page 27... ...
The findings of that report are briefly summarized in Box 1-3. TRANSFORMING THE EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION WORKFORCE According to the Transforming report, the science of child development and early learning underscores the importance and complexity of working with young children.
|
From page 28... ...
These programs are often targeted to families at higher risk of poor child outcomes, and include services such as facilitating positive parent-child interactions, encouraging good parenting practices, and reducing risks of harm. Individual evaluations and systematic reviews of home visiting program models have been performed; these assessments have attempted to deduce whether the programs have a positive, negative, or ambiguous impact on outcomes such as parenting practices, child health, and child development and school readiness.
|
From page 29... ...
. Professional learning and ECE workforce development need to complement each other and build together to lead to quality professional practice.
|
From page 30... ...
The relationship among an ECE professional's level of education, highquality professional practice, and outcomes for children is complex, as are the policy decisions around setting such qualification requirements. The authoring committee of the Transforming report found the empirical evidence about the effects of a bachelor's degree on practitioner performance to be inconclusive and insufficiently informative.
|
From page 31... ...
Finally, the Transforming report emphasized that holding lower educational expectations for ECE practitioners in general than for elementary school educators perpetuates the perception that educating children before kindergarten requires less expertise than educating early e lementary students. Different degree requirements also affect the job market, both between elementary schools and early care and education and within early care and education, as a result of requirements for lead educators in Head Start and publicly funded prekindergarten programs to have a bachelor's degree while lead educators working in center- or home-based settings generally do not have to meet the same requirements.
|
From page 32... ...
; noncontact time for planning and assessments, supportive leadership, and opportunities for collegial sharing that foster ongoing professional learning; facilities and a physical environment conducive to learning; and linkages to interprofessional support to promote the ECE workforce's professional development and mental and emotional well-being. Higher Education and Ongoing Professional Learning The Transforming report found a need for greater consistency in professional learning supports, both in higher education and during ongoing practice.
|
From page 33... ...
These elements of quality professional practice include the systems and processes that contribute directly to the development of knowledge and competencies for the ECE workforce, but they also extend beyond to encompass elements such as the practice environment, policies and regulations affecting professional requirements, staffing structures and career advancement pathways, evaluation systems, and the status and well-being of these professionals. As the Transforming report made clear, ensuring that the ECE workforce is highly qualified and well supported is integral to supporting the positive childhood development of all children.
|
From page 34... ...
34 FIGURE 1-2 Elements that contribute to quality professional practice. SOURCE: Institute of Medicine and National Research Council (2015, p.
|
From page 35... ...
Funds supporting early care and education from other sources are distributed to service delivery providers, families, and the ECE workforce through a number of financing mechanisms, such as tax preferences, vouchers, and contracts or grants.
|
From page 36... ...
It also requires adequate supports to ensure that all ECE professionals are able to perform their duties at a high level, to foster the positive development of children in their care. However, across and within states, the current qualification requirements for regulated home-based and center-based ECE programs and public prekindergarten educators vary.
|
From page 37... ...
ECE professionals are among the country's lowest-paid workers and typically do not receive benefits such as health insurance.6 In the current system, the median hourly wage for center-based ECE practitioners is $10.60. If employed full time, that amounts to about $22,000 per year, which is just slightly above the federal poverty level for a family of three.
|
From page 38... ...
Together, low wages and wage variation within the ECE workforce contribute to stress among staff, relatively high job turnover rates, and instability in the workforce, all of which can decrease the quality and increase the cost of programs. For example, high staff turnover affects continuity of care for children, inhibits quality improvement, disrupts attachment between children and practitioners, and increases program costs (Whitebook, Phillips, and Howes, 2014)
|
From page 39... ...
Moreover, it requires financing that is efficient, easy to navigate, easy to administer, and transparent. As described above, the current financing structure is underfunded, placing a heavy cost burden on families and the ECE workforce.
|
From page 40... ...
This scattershot approach to ECE financing makes it enormously difficult for families to negotiate the complex eligibility criteria, find and access ECE programs, and afford their share of the cost. Furthermore, most providers receive funding through multiple financing mechanisms, each with its own standards and requirements.
|
From page 41... ...
The committee's sixth and final principle states that high-quality early care and education requires systems for ongoing accountability, including learning from feedback, evaluation, and continuous improvement. As discussed in the Transforming report, accountability systems employing several data sources can be used to improve instructional practices, the delivery of services, ECE programs, and ongoing professional learning, as well as to inform the efficient allocation of financial resources (Kauerz and Coffman, 2013; Tout et al., 2013)
|
From page 42... ...
Our review included an analysis of each country's funding structure, including financing mechanisms, funding levels, and cost distributions, as well as regulations and local labor market variations that may influence costs. Of course, early care and education in every country is deeply contextual and reflects the local, political, and cultural/religious traditions of that society, as it does here in the United States.
|
From page 43... ...
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 analyze the current financing of early care and education using the principles described above. Chapter 3 focuses on financing a highly qualified workforce, Chapter 4 focuses on financing for early care and education that is accessible and affordable for all families, and Chapter 5 assesses financing for incentivizing quality.
|
From page 44... ...
44 TRANSFORMING THE FINANCING OF EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION the total cost of a high-quality ECE system. Different policy choices and assumptions would, of course, lead to changes in the estimate, so this appendix is important for moving beyond the example to real-world options and decisions.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.