[Senate Hearing 113-672]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-672
SUPPORTING CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THROUGH
INVESTMENTS IN HIGH-QUALITY EARLY EDUCATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING SUPPORTING CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THROUGH INVESTMENTS IN HIGH-
QUALITY EARLY EDUCATION
__________
FEBRUARY 6, 2014
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
PATTY MURRAY, Washington
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
RAND PAUL, Kentucky
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
MARK KIRK, Illinois
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
Derek Miller, Staff Director
Lauren McFerran, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David P. Cleary, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014
Page
Committee Members
Harkin, Hon. Tom, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Tennessee, opening statement................................... 2
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 5
Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Maryland....................................................... 45
Scott, Hon. Tim, a U.S. Senator from the State of South Carolina. 47
Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota..... 49
Isakson, Hon. Johnny, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia... 51
Murray, Hon. Patty, a U.S. Senator from the State of Washington.. 53
Casey, Hon. Robert P., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 55
Warren, Hon. Elizabeth, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Massachusetts.................................................. 60
Witnesses
Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of
Globalization and Education at the Steinhardt School of
Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University,
New York, NY................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 7
White, John, State Superintendent for Louisiana Department of
Education, Baton Rouge, LA..................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 26
Ewen, Danielle, Director of the Office of Early Childhood
Education, District of Columbia Public Schools, Washington, DC. 29
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Brantley, Charlotte M., President and CEO of Clayton Early
Learning, Denver, CO........................................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 37
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Senator Casey................................................ 65
Senator Baldwin.............................................. 65
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and
National Association of State Child Care Administrators
(NASCCA)................................................... 70
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)................. 72
Matthew E. Melmed, Executive Director, Zero to Three......... 76
Response by Hirokazu Yoshikawa to questions of:
Senator Murray........................................... 81
Senator Casey............................................ 82
Response by John White to questions of:
Senator Murray........................................... 82
Senator Casey............................................ 83
Response by Charlotte Brantley to questions of Senator Murray 84
(iii)
SUPPORTING CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THROUGH INVESTMENTS IN HIGH-QUALITY
EARLY EDUCATION
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in
room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Harkin, Alexander, Mikulski, Murray,
Casey, Franken, Bennet, Murphy, Warren, Isakson, and Scott.
Opening Statement of Senator Harkin
The Chairman. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions will please come to order. I'd like to thank our
committee members, witnesses, and audience members in
attendance today.
This is going to be the kickoff on some hearings we're
having on what I consider to be perhaps one, if not the most,
important issue that we're going to look at and try to move
legislation on this year, and that is early learning. I look
forward to a good, robust discussion today on that topic.
I don't think there's any real disagreement about ensuring
that children who benefit from Federal programs should, if
they're benefiting, be in a high-quality setting that nurtures
their healthy development and growth. I can say factually that
my colleague, Senator Alexander, has a great deal of knowledge
and passion on these issues, because he led the Subcommittee on
Children and Families for many years with Senator Dodd.
Today's hearing will serve as a first in a set of hearings,
focusing on early learning. I'll just mention as an aside that
next week I have a field hearing in Des Moines to explore how
early learning programs have benefited people in Iowa and what
issues Congress should consider in terms of what States are
doing.
In the second week of April, we'll again convene to discuss
early learning with a focus on strengthening the Strong Start
for America's Children Act, legislation which I have
introduced, currently supported by more than 25 percent, a
quarter of the Senate. And as I said, hopefully, we'll have a
markup of that legislation in this committee prior to the
Memorial Day recess.
We'll be devoting a great deal of time and attention to the
subject of early learning. I strongly encourage the members of
this committee on both sides of the aisle to hold roundtables
and have discussions on early learning in their local
communities, because I don't think there is an issue of greater
importance that confronts us today.
I believe access to high-quality early education does
increase the likelihood that children will have positive
outcomes, a view I am sure is shared by my committee members. I
note that 63 percent of respondents to an NBC/Wall Street
Journal poll, released 2 weeks ago, placed an absolute priority
on ensuring access to preschool this year.
The Federal Government supports a variety of programs to
support early education and care, such as the Child Care and
Development Block Grant program, which we've been talking
about, and Head Start. However, I feel these fall short of what
is needed.
According to the most recent data from the Department of
Health and Human Services, only one in six children eligible
for child care assistance received it. Of the preschool kids
eligible for Head Start, fewer than half are served. Among
infants and toddlers eligible for Early Head Start, less than 5
percent of eligible kids are served.
State governments have done much in recent years to expand
preschool offerings to young children. However, according to
the National Institute for Early Education Research, States
reduced their preschool investments by more than half a billion
dollars between 2011 and 2012.
All of this works against a growing awareness that
investing in early education yields lifelong benefits. Research
by Professor James Heckman, a Nobel laureate, suggests that
investment in early education can help reduce the need for
special education in the elementary and secondary school years,
lower crime rates, increase the likelihood of healthier
lifestyles by young people, and prepare these kids for
kindergarten.
This is something that I think is desperately needed in our
society, a national commitment to quality--and I will emphasize
that word, quality--early learning programs, not just sending
kids someplace to play around and watch TV, but with qualified
people who know how to take care of children in their earliest
years, know how to stimulate their thinking, know how to get
those developing minds to really grow and to focus on their
development.
I look forward to today's panel. We have a distinguished
panel. And, as I said, this will be the kickoff in a series of
hearings on this. I look forward to hearing from our panel.
I'll yield to our distinguished Ranking Member, Senator
Alexander, for his opening statement.
Opening Statement of Senator Alexander
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for your
long interest in the subject and for having these hearings.
I was an early learner when it came to early childhood
education. For 35 years, my mother operated a preschool program
in a converted garage in our backyard in Maryville, TN. She and
Mrs. Pesterfield had the only two preschool education programs
in the county at that time. She had 25 3-year-olds and 4-year-
olds in the morning and 25 5-year-olds in the afternoon.
When the State began to license such operations, she threw
the welfare inspector out, saying she knew more about it than
he did. She did that for 35 years and had nowhere else to put
me when I was a child, so I think I'm the only U.S. Senator who
went to kindergarten for 5 years.
In the 1960s, she persuaded my father, a former principal
who was on the school board, to build kindergarten classrooms
in new schools before the State kindergarten program began. In
the early 1970s, the Governor announced that statewide
kindergarten program at my mother's preschool.
In 1987, Bob Keeshan, formerly known as Captain Kangaroo,
and I and my wife started a company that merged with another
one and became the largest provider of worksite daycare in the
world today. So the question for me is not whether but how to
best make early childhood education available to the largest
possible number of children to increase equal opportunity.
In doing this, I have four suggestions. First, preschool
education doesn't produce miracles. Mark Lipsey, psychologist
at Vanderbilt, said,
``Advocates sometimes make preschool sound like you
put them in a pre-K washing machine and scrub them
clean and they come out after that. But effects of
poverty and disadvantaged environments don't work that
way. It's a cumulative process. It's going to take
cumulative efforts to make a big difference. There is
potential here, but we also have to be realistic.''
Second, good parenting is the most important factor, and
good preschool education doesn't always have to be expensive.
For example, one of the most effective programs in Tennessee
was my wife's Healthy Children Initiative, which matched
expectant mothers with pediatricians, giving every new child a
medical home. At least, that was the goal. Helping those
mothers become better parents provided those babies with a real
head start.
Third, Washington can help, but a national effort to expand
effective early education will almost all be State and local
effort and State and local money. Remember that 90 percent of
elementary and secondary education is paid for by State and
local governments.
And, fourth, I believe the best next step for Washington is
to spend more effectively the Federal dollars already being
spent. A 2012 GAO report found that 45 Federal programs provide
some early learning and child care. Twelve of those programs
spend about $15 billion solely on early learning and child care
for children under five.
That's $8.6 billion on Head Start; $5.3 billion on the
Child Care and Development Block Grant, which Senator Mikulski
and Senator Harkin have worked very hard on; $250 million on
Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund; $790 million
under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; another
$3 billion through the Federal Tax Code on early child care
education credits and exclusions for employer-provided care.
That adds up to 18 billion Federal dollars already being spent.
States spend about $5 billion more on preschool, according
to the National Institute for Early Education research. Add to
that private and local spending and it begins to add up.
According to the General Accountability Office, these numerous
efficiencies have created a, ``fragmentation of efforts, some
overlap of goals or activities, and potential confusion among
families and other program users.''
Let me suggest one way I believe we could greatly expand
effective access to preschool and one way we shouldn't. We
should fully implement the 200 Head Start Centers of Excellence
program Congress authorized in 2007. Senator Harkin, Senator
Mikulski, Senator Enzi, and I worked on that. It encourages and
puts the spotlight on those cities and communities already
doing the best job of coordinating the 18 billion Federal
dollars being spent with the billions of other dollars being
spent by States and local entities.
We first proposed this in 2003. It was included in 2007. In
2009, Congress appropriated $2 million for these centers, 10 of
them, for a period of up to 5 years. One of those from Denver
is represented here today. Full funding would cost another $90
million. At the end of 5 years, we could take a look at the
next reauthorization of Head Start and see what we have
learned.
Here's what I believe we should not do--and I'll conclude
with this--and that is to fall back into the familiar
Washington pattern of noble intentions, grand promises, lots of
Federal mandates, and send the bill to the States with
disappointing results. I'm afraid that describes the
president's proposal for preschool for all. To former Governors
like me, it sounds a lot like Medicaid, a program of Federal
promises and mandates that has become a costly burden to the
States.
Here's another grand promise: $75 billion over 10 years to
expand preschool for 4-year-olds that live below 200 percent of
the Federal poverty definition, and then many expensive
Washington requirements concerning teacher qualifications,
class size, child to instructor ratios, teacher salaries, early
learning standards.
A nearly identical plan has been introduced here in the
Senate, and just like Medicaid, both proposals sent huge bills
for all this to the States. States would pay only about 10
percent the first year, but after 10 years, up to 50 percent or
75 percent.
This is the Medicaid model that is burdening States today,
soaking up dollars that States would otherwise spend on
education, including preschool education. When I was Governor
of Tennessee in the 1980s, Medicaid was 8 percent of our State
budget. Today, it's 30 percent.
My recommendation for the best next step toward the goal of
giving access to preschool education for the largest number of
children is to fully implement the 200 Head Start Centers of
Excellence program, enabling States to pool existing funds, try
different approaches, and figure out what works for their
populations and children, rather than forcing upon States from
Washington another set of grand promises, expensive mandates,
and disappointing results.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Alexander.
Again, we welcome our witnesses here. I'd like to start by
welcoming our first witness, Dr. Hirokazu Yoshikawa. I think I
got that right. Dr. Yoshikawa is a tenured professor of
education and psychology and co-director of the Institute for
Globalization and Education at the Steinhardt School of
Culture, Education and Human Development at New York
University.
In 2011, Dr. Yoshikawa was nominated by President Obama and
confirmed by the Senate to serve on the National Board for
Education Sciences. In 2013, he was elected to the National
Academy of Education.
Next is Mr. John White. Mr. White currently serves the
State of Louisiana as its State Superintendent of Education.
Previously, he served as Superintendent of the Recovery School
District in New Orleans. In that capacity, he led efforts to
overhaul failing schools, establish a unified enrollment
system, and expanded the New Orleans school construction
program to ensure that every school building was rebuilt or
renovated. In 2006, Mr. White served as the deputy chancellor
of Talent, Labor, and Innovation for New York City.
Our next witness is Ms. Danielle Ewen. Ms. Ewen is director
of the Office of Early Childhood Education for the District of
Columbia Public Schools, where she oversees programs serving
children ages 3 and 4 in high-quality, comprehensive, preschool
classrooms. Prior to her work for the DC public schools, Ms.
Ewen served as director of the Child Care and Early Education
Team at the Center for Law and Social Policy, where she worked
on Federal and State issues around child care and early
education, particularly the reauthorizations of the Child Care
and Development Block Grant and Head Start.
Ms. Ewen has worked at the Children's Defense Fund as a
Senior Program Associate in the Child Care and Development
Division. She was Assistant Director for the National Child
Care Information Center.
I will turn to Senator Bennet for purposes of our final
introduction.
Statement of Senator Bennet
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
you and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. I
apologize for not being able to stay because I've got a
Colorado delegation meeting that I have to do.
But I did want to come to introduce Ms. Brantley and also
to say that, as you know, I'm an advocate for maximizing
flexibility at the local level and the way the Federal dollars
are spent. As far as I'm concerned, every one of these Federal
dollars could be well-spent on early childhood education. But
that's a topic for another day.
Today, it's my honor to introduce Ms. Charlotte Brantley to
the committee. Ms. Brantley has dedicated her life to early
childhood care and education, and it shows. For the past
several years, she served as president and CEO of Clayton Early
Learning in Denver, CO.
Clayton provides high-quality early childhood care and
education to more than 600 children. The Department of Health
and Human Services has recognized that Clayton is one of the 10
National Centers of Excellence in Early Childhood Education.
Charlotte brings a wealth of knowledge from her varied
experiences in early education. She served as director of Child
Care and Development for the State of Texas. She led the Child
Care Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services,
managing a $4 billion budget, and was a senior director of
PBS's Ready to Learn television service.
At Clayton, she oversees several early childhood programs,
all of which are research-based and results-driven. She also
helps provide statewide coaching and training services to more
than 2,500 educators and leaders. Through these efforts,
Clayton shares innovative teaching practices across the State
and improves the quality of learning for thousands of children.
Charlotte has been an exemplary leader in early childhood
education, both nationally and in Colorado, and we welcome her
here today. I look forward to hearing her testimony and to
working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this
important issue.
It's also good to see Superintendent John White here. I
want to congratulate you for all the amazing work you're doing
in the State of Louisiana.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Bennet.
Again, we welcome you all. We have a very distinguished
panel here to kick off this series of hearings on this
legislation. I might say at the outset that I've tried to scrub
my language a little bit. I used to always refer to it as
preschool until I heard a speaker one time say that, no, there
should be no such thing, because education begins at birth, and
the preparation for education begins before birth.
Therefore, I've tried to change it from preschool to early
learning, because school starts, as he said, even before you're
born. That's just an aside. That's why, even though I sometimes
slip and call it preschool, I still think of it as early
learning programs.
I've read through your statements. They're very good.
They'll each be made a part of the record in their entirety.
I'd like to start with Dr. Yoshikawa, and we'll work down. If
you could just take 5 minutes--that's what the clock says. If
you run over just a little bit, I won't mind. But if you could
give us the highlights so that we can engage in a conversation,
I would appreciate it.
Dr. Yoshikawa, we'll start with you. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF HIROKAZU YOSHIKAWA, COURTNEY SALE ROSS UNIVERSITY
PROFESSOR OF GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION AT THE STEINHARDT
SCHOOL OF CULTURE, EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NY
Mr. Yoshikawa. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,
thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you
today. I teach at New York University in the Steinhardt School
of Culture, Education and Human Development, and I've conducted
research for over 20 years on early childhood programs and
policies.
Proposals on universal preschool education are being
debated across the country. The goal of my testimony is to tell
you what the current science base on preschool evaluations
shows that is useful for this debate.
I'll present evidence from two sources, a meta-analysis of
all the rigorous studies of preschool education, 84 of them,
going back to 1960; and a comprehensive recent review called
Investing in Our Future, where we focus on the most recent 15
years of research. Investing in Our Future was written by
myself and nine leading experts in preschool research with
input from 20 additional experts.
So what does this exciting new wave of evidence tell us? It
shows us a few things we didn't know 10 years ago about
investing in children during the years when the developing
brain is particularly sensitive to the quality of the
environment.
First, high-quality preschool has shown evidence of
substantial impacts on children's learning when implemented at
large scale. Second, quality preschool can produce positive
returns on investment at scale, not just in small demonstration
programs.
Third, the most effective way to improve quality is to
combine evidence-based curricula with weekly or biweekly
coaching and mentoring in the classroom. And, finally, benefits
extend to near poor and moderate-income children as well as the
poor.
I'm going to tell you a little bit more about each of these
four points. First, we know from the meta-analysis, looking
across 84 studies of preschool, that, overall, preschool
education increases children's learning. But these studies have
mostly been in small-scale circumstances.
We now have evidence that large-scale preschool programs,
not just small, can have substantial positive effects on
children. Children in studies on Tulsa's and Boston's universal
pre-K programs showed between a half and a full year of
additional growth in reading and math skills above and beyond
comparison group children.
What's particularly impressive about that is that most of
the comparison group children were in other centers or
preschools. So these are large effects in comparison above and
beyond centers and other preschool settings. Studies on some
State programs like New Jersey are also showing important
benefits for kids.
Second, we have new evidence on the returns to investment
of quality preschool. We've known for a long time that the
Perry Preschool Program implemented in the 1960s saved $7 for
every dollar spent, increased high school graduation and
earnings, and reduced crime.
What's new is a recent study on the citywide Tulsa pre-
kindergarten program by the economist, Tim Bartik. He showed
that the Tulsa program saved over $3 for every dollar invested,
and that's based on projected adult earnings benefits alone,
not other benefits. Preliminary data from Boston suggests a
similar pattern of return on investment. As the Nobel prize-
winning economist James Heckman argues, high-quality preschool,
if implemented nationally, would have societal benefits with
substantial increases in the skills and productivity of the
next generation.
But how can we actually implement high-quality preschool at
scale? An exciting set of over a dozen rigorous, controlled
evaluations that we review shows that the combination of two
important elements, curricula focused on specific aspects of
learning and weekly or biweekly coaching and mentoring in the
classroom, can substantially improve the kind of quality that
matters most, and that is the responsiveness of interactions
and quality of instruction provided by teachers, such as
Senator Alexander's mother.
Why are curricula important? Focused curricula provide a
structured way to promote specific developmental skills in
children. These are not about rote learning or pushing down
second grade instruction into preschool. All of these curricula
have at their core play-based activities that preschoolers and
teachers actually enjoy.
And we have a choice of evidence-based curricula. Among the
dozen studies, some show success with curricula focused on
language and literacy, some with math, and some with social and
emotional development.
Why coaching in the classroom? It's simple. The science of
adult learning tells us that we learn more from supportive
feedback in the workplace than from didactic lectures and
workshops. Yet often, professional development in preschool is
only workshops and lectures. Professional development with
supportive coaching tailored to the teacher's skill levels is
more likely to produce learning impact for both teachers and
children.
This combination of curriculum and coaching has been proven
in these studies, not only in public pre-K systems, but also in
Head Start and also in both home and center-based child care.
So we know now how to improve quality in a variety of delivery
systems and during the critical period of zero to three when
brain development is most rapid. Of course, we can't ignore
also improving kindergarten through third grade quality to
build on the benefits of high-quality preschool.
My final point is that high-quality preschool benefits
moderate-income children as well as poor children, children
with special needs as well as those typically developing, and
dual language learners and children of immigrants as well as
native English speakers. For example, the returns on investment
were robust for both moderate-income and poor children in
Tulsa, and the same for Boston.
When children from different economic classes mix in
preschool classrooms, all children benefit. At the same time,
poorer children benefit more than middle class kids. That's why
these programs have reduced school readiness gaps. The Boston
universal preschool program, for example, completely wiped out
the Latino-white school readiness gap in early reading and math
skills and substantially reduced black-white and income-based
gaps.
Thank you again for this opportunity, and I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yoshikawa follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hirokazu Yoshikawa
summary*
Proposals on preschool education are currently the focus of
national as well as State and city deliberations. The goal of this
testimony is to inform the committee about what the evidence base of
rigorous preschool evaluations shows that may be useful for these
discussions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Adapted from Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, Jeanne
Brooks-Gunn, Margaret Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa, William T. Gormley,
Jens O. Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah A. Phillips, and Martha
J. Zaslow (2013). Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on
Preschool Education. New York: Foundation for Child Development and Ann
Arbor, MI: Society for Research in Child Development.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Large-scale public preschool programs have shown substantial
impacts on children's early learning. Scientific evidence on the
impacts of early childhood education has progressed well beyond the
landmark Perry Preschool and Abecedarian studies. A recent meta-
analysis integrating evaluations of 84 preschool programs concluded
that, on average, children gain about a third of a year of additional
growth across language, reading, and math skills, above and beyond
comparison groups. At-scale preschool programs in Tulsa and Boston have
produced larger gains of between a half and a full year of additional
growth in reading and math, above and beyond comparison groups (most of
whom attended other centers or preschools). Benefits to children's
socio-emotional development have been documented in programs that focus
intensively on these areas.
Quality preschool education provides strong returns on investment.
Available benefit-cost estimates based on older, intensive
interventions, such as the Perry Preschool Program, as well as
contemporary, large-scale public preschool programs, such as the
Chicago Parent Child Centers and Tulsa's preschool program, range from
$3 to $7 saved for every dollar spent.
The combination of curricula focused on specific aspects of
learning and in-person coaching and mentoring has proven successful in
improving quality in public pre-K, Head Start, and child care systems.
Children benefit most when teachers are emotionally supportive and
engage in stimulating interactions that support learning. Interactions
that help children acquire new knowledge and skills provide input to
children, elicit verbal responses and reactions from them, and foster
engagement in and enjoyment of learning. Recent evaluations tell us
that effective use of curricula focused on such specific aspects of
learning as language and literacy, math, or social and emotional
development provide a substantial boost to children's learning.
Guidelines about the number of children in a classroom, the ratio of
teachers and children, and staff qualifications and compensation help
to increase the likelihood of--but do not assure--supportive and
stimulating interactions.
Coaching or mentoring that provides support to the teacher on how
to implement content-rich and engaging curricula shows substantial
promise in helping to assure that such instruction is being provided.
Such coaching or mentoring involves modeling positive instructional
approaches and providing feedback on the teacher's implementation in a
way that sets goals but is also supportive. This feedback and exchange
can occur in the classroom or through web-based video.
Quality preschool education can benefit middle-class children as
well as disadvantaged children; typically developing children as well
as children with special needs; and dual language learners as well as
native speakers. Although early research focused only on programs for
low-income children, more recent research focusing on universal
preschool programs provides the opportunity to ask if preschool can
benefit children from middle-income as well as low-income families. The
evidence is clear that middle-class children can benefit substantially,
and that benefits outweigh costs for children from middle income as
well as those from low-income families. However, children from low-
income backgrounds benefit more. Studies of both Head Start and public
preK programs suggest that dual language learners benefit as much as,
and in some cases more than, their native speaker counterparts.
Finally, two large-scale studies show that children with special needs
benefit from large-scale preschool programs that take an inclusion
approach.
A second year of preschool shows additional benefits. The few
available studies, which focus on disadvantaged children, show further
benefits from a second year of preschool. However, the gains are not
always as large as from the first year of preschool. This may be
because children who attend 2 years of preschool are not experiencing a
sequential building of instruction from the first to the second year.
In addition, quality preschool should be followed by efforts to
implement higher quality in kindergarten through third grade and
beyond.
Long-term benefits can occur despite convergence of test scores. As
children from low-income families in preschool evaluation studies are
followed into elementary school, differences between those who received
preschool and those who did not on tests of academic achievement are
reduced. However, evidence from long-term evaluations of both small-
scale, intensive interventions and Head Start suggest that there are
medium-term impacts on outcomes such as reduced grade repetition and
reduced special education referrals, and long-term effects on societal
outcomes such as high-school graduation, years of education completed,
earnings, and reduced crime and teen pregnancy, even after test-score
effects decline to zero. Research is now underway focusing on why these
long-term effects can occur even when test scores converge.
There are important benefits of comprehensive services when these
added services are carefully chosen and targeted. When early education
provides comprehensive services, it is important that these extensions
of the program aim at services and practices that show benefits to
children and families. Early education programs that have focused in a
targeted way on health outcomes (e.g., facilitating a regular medical
home; integrating comprehensive screening; requiring immunizations)
have shown such benefits as an increase in receipt of primary medical
care and dental care. In addition, a parenting focus can augment the
effects of preschool on children's skill development, but only if it
provides parents with modeling of positive interactions or
opportunities for practice with feedback. Simply providing information
through classes or workshops is not associated with further
improvements in children's skills.
______
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Dr. Hirokazu
Yoshikawa, and I am the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of
Globalization and Education at New York University, in the Steinhardt
School of Culture, Education and Human Development. I have conducted
research since the early 1990s on early childhood development programs
and policies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Testimony is adapted from Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland,
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Margaret Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa, William T.
Gormley, Jens O. Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah A. Phillips,
and Martha J. Zaslow (2013). Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base
on Preschool Education. New York: Foundation for Child Development and
Washington, DC: Society for Research in Child Development. http://
www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/documents/washington/
mb_2013_10_16_investing_in_children.pdf;http://fcd-us.org
/sites/default/files/
Evidence%20Base%20on%20Preschool%20Education%20FINAL.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
National legislation on publicly funded preschool education is
again the focus of prominent debate in the United States. At present,
42 percent of 4-year-olds attend publicly funded preschool (28 percent
attend public pre-Kindergarten programs, 11 percent Head Start, and 3
percent special education preschool programs).\1\ A considerable and
healthy debate about the merits of preschool education is in process.
However, in some of these discussions, the most recent evidence has not
yet been included for consideration. The goal of this testimony is to
provide a non-partisan and thorough review of the current science and
evidence base on early childhood education (ECE) that includes the most
recent research. I represent an interdisciplinary group of early
childhood experts, including Christina Weiland, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn,
Margaret Burchinal, Linda Espinosa, William Gormley, Jens Ludwig,
Katherine Magnuson, Deborah Phillips and Martha Zaslow. We recently
conducted an extensive review of rigorous evidence on why early skills
matter, the short- and long-term effects of preschool programs on
children's school readiness and life outcomes, the importance of
program quality, which children benefit from preschool (including
evidence on children from different family income backgrounds), and the
costs versus benefits of preschool education. We also incorporated
comments and feedback from 20 additional experts in early childhood
development and preschool evaluation. Here, I focus on preschool (early
childhood education) for 4-year-olds, with some review of the evidence
for 3-year-olds when relevant. We do not discuss evidence regarding
programs for 0-3-year-olds.
summary points
Large-scale public preschool programs have shown substantial
impacts on children's early learning. Scientific evidence on the
impacts of early childhood education has progressed well beyond the
landmark Perry Preschool and Abecedarian studies. A recent meta-
analysis integrating evaluations of 84 preschool programs concluded
that, on average, children gain about a third of a year of additional
growth across language, reading, and math skills, above and beyond
comparison groups. At-scale preschool programs in Tulsa and Boston have
produced larger gains of between a half and a full year of additional
growth in reading and math, above and beyond comparison groups (most of
whom attended other centers or preschools). Benefits to children's
socio-emotional development have been documented in programs that focus
intensively on these areas.
Quality preschool education provides strong returns on investment.
Available benefit-cost estimates based on older, intensive
interventions, such as the Perry Preschool Program, as well as
contemporary, large-scale public preschool programs, such as the
Chicago Parent Child Centers and Tulsa's preschool program, range from
$3 to $7 saved for every dollar spent.
The combination of curricula focused on specific aspects of
learning and in-person coaching and mentoring has proven successful in
improving quality in public preK, Head Start, and child care systems.
Children benefit most when teachers are emotionally supportive and
engage in stimulating interactions that support learning. Interactions
that help children acquire new knowledge and skills provide input to
children, elicit verbal responses and reactions from them, and foster
engagement in and enjoyment of learning. Recent evaluations tell us
that effective use of curricula focused on such specific aspects of
learning as language and literacy, math, or social and emotional
development provide a substantial boost to children's learning.
Guidelines about the number of children in a classroom, the ratio of
teachers and children, and staff qualifications help to increase the
likelihood of--but do not assure--supportive and stimulating
interactions.
Coaching or mentoring that provides support to the teacher on how
to implement content-rich and engaging curricula shows substantial
promise in helping to assure that such instruction is being provided.
Such coaching or mentoring involves modeling positive instructional
approaches and providing feedback on the teacher's implementation in a
way that sets goals but is also supportive. This feedback and exchange
can occur in the classroom or though web-based video.
Quality preschool education can benefit middle-class children as
well as disadvantaged children; typically developing children as well
as children with special needs; and dual language learners as well as
native speakers. Although early research focused only on programs for
low-income children, more recent research focusing on universal
preschool programs provides the opportunity to ask if preschool can
benefit children from middle-income as well as low-income families. The
evidence is clear that middle-class children can benefit substantially,
and that benefits outweigh costs for children from middle-income as
well as those from low-income families. However, children from low-
income backgrounds benefit more. Studies of both Head Start and public
preK programs suggest that dual language learners benefit as much as,
and in some cases more than, their native speaker counterparts.
Finally, two large-scale studies show that children with special needs
benefit from large-scale preschool programs that take an inclusion
approach.
A second year of preschool shows additional benefits. The few
available studies, which focus on disadvantaged children, show further
benefits from a second year of preschool. However, the gains are not
always as large as from the first year of preschool. This may be
because children who attend 2 years of preschool are not experiencing a
sequential building of instruction from the first to the second year.
In addition, quality preschool should be followed by efforts to
implement higher quality in kindergarten through third grade and
beyond.
Long-term benefits can occur despite convergence of test scores. As
children from low-income families in preschool evaluation studies are
followed into elementary school, differences between those who received
preschool and those who did not on tests of academic achievement are
reduced. However, evidence from long-term evaluations of both small-
scale, intensive interventions and Head Start suggest that there are
medium-term impacts on outcomes such as reduced grade repetition and
reduced special education referrals, and long-term effects on societal
outcomes such as high-school graduation, years of education completed,
earnings, and reduced crime and teen pregnancy, even after test-score
effects decline to zero. Research is now underway focusing on why these
long-term effects can occur even when test scores converge.
There are important benefits of comprehensive services when these
added services are carefully chosen and targeted. When early education
provides comprehensive services, it is important that these extensions
of the program aim at services and practices that show benefits to
children and families. Early education programs that have focused in a
targeted way on health outcomes (e.g., facilitating a regular medical
home; integrating comprehensive screening; requiring immunizations)
have shown such benefits as an increase in receipt of primary medical
care and dental care. In addition, a parenting focus can augment the
effects of preschool on children's skill development, but only if it
provides parents with modeling of positive interactions or
opportunities for practice with feedback. Simply providing information
through classes or workshops is not associated with further
improvements in children's skills.
detailed discussion
Early skills matter, and preschool can help children build these
skills.
The foundations of brain architecture, and subsequent lifelong
developmental potential, are laid down in the early years in a process
that is exquisitely sensitive to external influence. Early experiences
in the home, in other care settings, and in communities interact with
genes to shape the developing nature and quality of the brain's
architecture. The growth and then environmentally based pruning of
neuronal systems in the first years support a range of early skills,
including cognitive (early language, literacy, math), social (theory of
mind, empathy, prosocial), persistence, attention, and self-regulation
and executive function skills (the voluntary control of attention and
behavior).\2\ Later skills--in schooling and employment--build
cumulatively upon these early skills. Therefore investment in early
learning and development results in greater cost savings than
investment later in the life cycle.\3\ The evidence reviewed below
addresses the role of preschool in helping children build these skills.
Rigorous evidence suggests positive short-term impacts of preschool
programs.
Effects on language, literacy, and mathematics. Robust evidence
suggests that a year or two of center-based ECE for three- and 4-year-
olds, provided in a developmentally appropriate program, will improve
children's early language, literacy, and mathematics skills when
measured at the end of the program or soon after.\4\ These findings
have been replicated across dozens of rigorous studies of early
education programs, including small demonstration programs and
evaluations of large public programs such as Head Start and some State
pre-K programs. Combining across cognitive (e.g., IQ), language (e.g.,
expressive and receptive vocabulary) and achievement (e.g., early
reading and mathematics skills) outcomes, a recent meta-analysis
including evaluations of 84 diverse early education programs for young
children evaluated between 1965 and 2007 estimated the average post-
program impact to be about .35 standard deviations.\5\ This represents
about a third of a year of additional learning, above and beyond what
would have occurred without access to preschool. These data include
both the well-known small demonstration programs such as Perry
Preschool, which produced quite large effects, as well as evaluations
of large preschool programs like Head Start, which are characterized
both by lower cost but also more modest effects. Two recent evaluations
of at-scale urban programs, in Tulsa and Boston, showed large effects
(between a half of a year to a full year of additional learning) on
language, literacy and math.\6\
Effects on socio-emotional development. The effects of preschool on
socio-emotional development \7\ are not as clear-cut as those on
cognitive and achievement outcomes. Far fewer evaluation studies of
general preschool (that is, preschool without a specific behavior-
focused component) have included measures of these outcomes. And
relative to measures of achievement, language and cognition, socio-
emotional measures are also more varied in the content they cover and
quality of measurement.
A few programs have demonstrated positive effects on children's
socioemotional development. Perry Preschool was found to have reduced
children's externalizing behavior problems (such as acting out or
aggression) in elementary school.\8\ More recently, the National Head
Start Impact Study found no effects in the socioemotional area for 4-
year-old children, although problem behavior, specifically
hyperactivity, was reduced after 1 year of Head Start among 3-year-
olds.\9\ An evaluation of the Tulsa pre-Kindergarten program found that
pre-Kindergarten attendees had lower levels of timidity and higher
levels of attentiveness, suggesting greater engagement in the
classroom, than was the case for other students who neither attended
pre-Kindergarten nor Head Start. However, there were no differences
among pre-Kindergarten and other children in their aggressive or
hyperactive behavior.\10\ A recent explanation for the divergence of
findings is suggested by meta-analytic work on aggression, which found
that modest improvements in children's aggressive behavior occurred
among programs that made improving children's behavior an explicit
goal.\11\
Effects on health. The effects of preschool on children's health
have been rigorously investigated only within the Head Start program;
Head Start directly targets children's health outcomes, while many
preschool programs do not. Head Start has been shown to increase child
immunization rates. In addition, there is evidence that Head Start in
its early years of implementation reduced child mortality, and in
particular mortality from causes that could be attributed plausibly to
aspects of Head Start's health services, particularly immunization and
health screening (e.g., measles, diabetes, whooping cough, respiratory
problems, etc).\12\ More recently, the national Head Start Impact Study
found somewhat mixed impacts on children's health outcomes between the
end of the program and the end of first grade.\13\ Head Start had small
positive impacts on some health indicators, such as receipt of dental
care, whether the child had health insurance, and parents' reports of
whether their child had good health, at some post-program time points
but not at others. Head Start had no impact at the end of first grade
on whether the child had received care for an injury within the last
month or whether the child needed ongoing care. The positive impacts of
Head Start on immunization, dental care and some other indicators may
be due to features of its health component--the program includes
preventive dental care, comprehensive screening of children, tracking
of well-child visits and required immunizations, and assistance if
needed with accessing a regular medical home. In contrast to the
literature on Head Start and health outcomes, there are almost no
studies of the effects of public pre-Kindergarten on children's health.
A second year of preschool shows additional benefits.
There are few studies that have examined the relative impact of 1
vs. 2 years of preschool education, and none that randomly assigned
this condition. All of the relevant studies focus on disadvantaged
children. The existing evidence suggests that more years of preschool
seem to be related to larger gains, but the added impact of an
additional year is often smaller than the gains typically experienced
by a 4-year-old from 1 year of participation.\14\ Why the additional
year generally results in smaller gains is unclear. It may be that
children who attend multiple years experience the same curriculum
across the 2 years rather than experiencing sequenced 2-year curricula,
as many programs mix 3-year-old and 4-year-olds in the same classroom.
Children show larger gains in higher-quality preschool programs.
Higher-quality preschool programs have larger impacts on children's
development while children are enrolled in the program and are more
likely to create gains that are sustained after the child leaves
preschool. Process quality features--children's immediate experience of
positive and stimulating interactions--are the most important
contributors to children's gains in language, literacy, mathematics and
social skills. Structural features of quality (those features of
quality that can be changed by structuring the setting differently or
putting different requirements for staff in place, like group size,
ratio, and teacher qualifications) help to create the conditions for
positive process quality, but do not ensure that it will occur.
For example, smaller group sizes and better ratios of staff to
children provide the right kind of setting for children to experience
more positive interactions. But this context itself is not enough.
Teacher qualifications such as higher educational attainment and
background, certification in early childhood, or higher than average
compensation for the field are features of many early education
programs that have had strong effects. Yet here too, research indicates
that qualifications alone do not ensure greater gains for children
during the course of the preschool years.\15\ To promote stronger
outcomes, preschool programs should be characterized by both structural
features of quality and ongoing supports to teachers to assure that the
immediate experiences of children, those provided through activities
and interactions, are rich in content and stimulation, while also being
emotionally supportive.
The aspects of process quality that appear to be most important to
children's gains during the preschool years include teachers providing
frequent, warm and responsive interactions.\16\ In addition, teachers
who encourage children to speak, with interactions involving multiple
turns by both the teacher and child to discuss and elaborate on a given
topic, foster greater gains during the preschool year, across multiple
domains of children's learning.\17\ Both the warm and responsive
interaction style and elaborated conversations also predict the
persistence of gains into the school years.\18\ Some evidence suggests
that children who have more opportunities to engage in age-appropriate
activities with a range of varied materials such as books, blocks, and
sand show larger gains during the preschool years (and those gains are
maintained into the school years).\19\
Quality in preschool classrooms is in need of improvement, with
instructional support levels particularly low.
Both longstanding and more recent research reveal that the average
overall quality of preschool programs is squarely in the middle range
of established measures. In large-scale studies of public pre-
Kindergarten, for example, only a minority of programs are observed to
provide excellent quality; a comparable minority of programs are
observed to provide poor quality.\20\ It is therefore not surprising
that impacts of most of the rigorously evaluated public pre-
Kindergarten programs fall shy of those in Tulsa and Boston (in the
small to moderate range for reading and math, that is, a few months of
added learning, rather than the half-year to full-year of additional
learning that was found in Tulsa and Boston).\21\ Head Start programs
also show considerable variation in quality. While few programs are
rated as having ``poor'' quality, research suggests that as in studies
of many public pre-Kindergarten programs, Head Start programs on
average show instructional quality levels well below the midpoint of
established measures.\22\ In sum, there is variation in quality in both
Head Start and pre-Kindergarten nationally, with no clear pattern of
one being stronger in quality than the other in the existing research.
It is important to note here that funding streams are increasingly
mixed on the ground, with pre-
Kindergarten programs using Head Start performance standards or
programs having fully blended funds; thus, these two systems are no
longer mutually exclusive in many locales.
High-quality programs implemented at scale are possible, according
to recent research. Evaluation evidence on the Tulsa and Boston pre-
Kindergarten programs shows that high-quality public pre-K programs can
be implemented across entire diverse cities and produce substantial
positive effects on multiple domains of children's development.
Assuring high quality in these public programs implemented at scale has
entailed a combination of program standards, attention to teacher
qualifications and compensation, additional ongoing onsite quality
supports such as the ones described previously, and quality monitoring.
The combination of developmentally focused, intensive curricula with
integrated, in-classroom professional development can boost quality and
children's skills.
Curricula can play a crucial role in ensuring that children have
the opportunity to acquire school readiness skills during the preschool
years. Preschool curricula vary widely. Some, typically labeled
``global'' curricula, tend to have a wide scope, providing activities
that are thought to promote socio-emotional, language, literacy, and
mathematics skills and knowledge about science, arts, and social
studies. Other curricula, which we label ``developmentally focused'',
aim to provide intensive exposure to a given content area based on the
assumption that skills can be better fostered with a more focused
scope.\23\
Global curricula have not often been evaluated rigorously. However,
the evidence that exists from evaluations by independent evaluators
suggests no or small gains associated with their use, when compared
with curricula developed by individual teachers or to other
commercially available or researcher-developed curricula.\24\ A revised
version of such a curriculum is currently being evaluated via a
randomized trial.\25\
As for developmentally focused curricula, several recent
experimental evaluations have demonstrated moderate to large gains in
the targeted domains of children's development, for math curricula,\26\
language and literacy curricula,\27\ and curricula directed at
improving socio-emotional skills and self-regulation, compared to usual
practice in preschool classrooms,\28\ which typically involve more
global curricula.
Most of the successful curricula in these recent evaluations are
characterized by intensive professional development that often involves
coaching at least twice a month, in which an expert teacher provides
feedback and support for in-classroom practice, either in person or in
some cases through observation of videos of classroom teaching. Some
curricula also incorporate assessments of child progress that are used
to inform and individualize instruction, carried out at multiple points
during the preschool year. These assessments allow the teacher to
monitor the progress of each child in the classroom and modify her
content and approach accordingly.
This recent set of research suggests that intensive,
developmentally focused curricula with integrated professional
development and monitoring of children's progress offer the strongest
hope for improving classroom quality as well as child outcomes during
the preschool years. However, more evidence is needed about the
effectiveness of such curricula, particularly studies of curricula
implemented without extensive support of the developer, or beyond
initial demonstrations of efficacy.\29\ That is, the majority of
rigorously conducted trials of developmentally focused curricula have
included extensive involvement of the developer(s) and have occurred on
a relatively small scale. There have been only a few trials of
curricula in ``real world'' conditions--meaning without extensive
developer(s)' involvement and across a large program. Some notable
recent results in ``real world'' conditions show promise that
substantial effects can be achieved,\30\ but more such studies are
needed given the widely noted difficulties in taking interventions to
scale.\31\
A recent development in early childhood curricula is the
implementation of integrated curricula across child developmental
domains (for example, socio-emotional and language; math and language),
which retain the feature of defined scope for each area. In two recent
successful instances, efforts were made to ensure feasible, integrated
implementation; importantly, coaches and mentor teachers were trained
across the targeted domains and curricula.\32\
In addition to in-classroom professional development supports, the
pre-service training and education of teachers is of critical concern
in the field of preschool education. However, here evaluation research
is still scant. There are a range of recent innovations--for example,
increasing integration of practical and in-classroom experiences in
higher education teacher preparation courses; hybrid web-based and in-
person training approaches; and attention to overlooked areas of early
childhood teacher preparation such as work with children with
disabilities, work with children learning two languages, or teaching of
early math skills. However, these innovations have yet to be fully
evaluated for their impact on teacher capacities or preschool program
quality.\33\
Over the course of elementary school, scores for children who have
and have not had preschool typically converge. Despite this
convergence, there is some evidence of effects on societally important
outcomes in early adulthood.
As children in preschool evaluation studies are followed into
elementary school, the differences between those who received preschool
and those who did not are typically reduced, based on the available
primary-school outcomes of evaluations (chiefly test scores of reading
and math achievement). This phenomenon of reduced effect sizes on test
scores over time is often labeled ``fadeout.'' \34\ We use the term
convergence, as this term more accurately captures how outcomes like
test scores of children who participated vs. did not participate in
preschool converge over time as the non-attenders catch-up. There is
not yet a strong evidence base on reasons for the convergence of test
scores in follow-up evaluations of children after early childhood. A
number of factors may be involved--for example, low quality of primary
schooling, particularly for students in disadvantaged areas, may fail
to build on the gains created by early childhood education.\35\ Having
students who attended and benefited from preschool may also permit
elementary-school teachers to focus more on the non-attenders, and this
extra attention may explain the convergence or catch-up pattern.
Persistence of effects in landmark, small demonstration programs. A
handful of small-scale demonstration programs show that while the
language, literacy, and mathematics test scores of children
participating versus not participating in preschool programs tend to
converge as children progress through their K-12 schooling careers, the
programs nonetheless appear to produce effects on a wide range of
behavioral, health, and educational outcomes that persist into
adulthood. The existing evidence pertains to low-income populations.
The two most famous randomized experimental tests of preschool
interventions with long-term outcome data--Perry Preschool and
Abecedarian--provided striking evidence of this. Both programs produced
large initial impacts on achievement test scores, but the size of these
impacts fell in magnitude as children aged. Nonetheless, there were
very large program effects on schooling attainment and earnings during
adulthood.\36\ The programs also produced striking results for criminal
behavior; fully 60-70 percent of the dollar-value of the benefits to
society generated by Perry Preschool come from impacts in reducing
criminal behavior.\37\ In Abecedarian, the treatment group's rate of
felony convictions or incarceration by age 21 is fully one-third below
that of the control group.\38\ There were other important effects as
well, with reductions in teen pregnancy in both studies for treatment
group members and reductions in tobacco use for treatment group members
in Abecedarian.
Persistence of effects in programs at scale. Patterns of converging
test scores but emerging impacts in adulthood are present in some other
noteworthy preschool programs as well. These also focus on
disadvantaged populations. For example, in studies of Head Start, there
appear to be long-term gains in educational, behavioral and health
outcomes even after test score impacts decline to zero. Specifically, a
number of quasi-experimental studies of Head Start children who
participated in the program in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s find test
score effects that are no longer statistically significant within a few
years after the children leave the program. But even though Head Start
participants have test scores that look similar to other children by
early to mid-elementary school, these studies show that Head Start
children wind up completing more years of schooling, earning more,
being healthier, and (in at least some studies) may be less likely to
engage in criminal behavior.\39\ Two studies have examined the medium-
term persistence of gains of publicly funded State pre-Kindergarten
programs. One of these has followed children through third grade and
found persistence of mathematics gains, but not reading gains, through
third grade for boys.\40\ The second study has followed children
through first grade and has found convergence of participating and non-
participating children's cognitive skills and mixed impacts on
children's behavioral outcomes.\41\
Future Directions in Sustaining Short-Term Gains from Preschool.
Despite several promising studies of long-term gains, we caution that
the vast majority of preschool program evaluations have not included
long-term followup. Strategies for sustaining short-term gains for
children require more exploration and evaluation. One path to
sustaining short-term gains may be to maximize the short-term impact,
by ensuring that quality of preschool is high, according to the
approaches described previously. Another is to work toward greater
continuity in learning goals and approaches across the preschool and
early elementary years by, for example, ensuring instructional quality
and support for health and socio-emotional learning in kindergarten and
the early elementary grades. And finally, efforts to bolster three
major influences that parents have on children's development--their
psychological well-being; their parenting behaviors; and their economic
security--have not often been part of preschool education, but
intensifying and further specifying these components may increase the
impact of preschool. Recent advances in successful parenting
interventions, which provide great specificity and intensive focus on
the dimension of parenting targeted (e.g., specific behavior management
approaches or contingent responsiveness), have yet to be integrated
with preschool systems.\42\ A recent meta-analytic study suggests that
a parenting-focused component can be an important complement to
preschool and produce added gains in children's cognitive skills. The
key is that the component on parenting be delivered via modeling of
positive interactions or opportunities for practice with feedback.
Didactic workshops or classes in which parents merely receive
information about parenting strategies or practices appeared to produce
no additive benefits beyond those from the early education component of
preschool alone.\43\ Efforts to integrate recent advances in adult
education and workforce development programs (a new set of two- or
dual-generation programs), similarly, are just now being evaluated.\44\
preschool's effects for different subgroups
Family income. Recent evidence suggests that high-quality preschool
positively contributes to the language, literacy, and mathematics
skills growth of both low- and middle-income children, but has the
greatest impact on children living in or near poverty. Until recently,
it has been difficult to compare the effectiveness of high-quality
preschool across income groups, because almost all of the earlier
studies focused on programs that targeted children from poor families.
For example, the median percentage of families in poverty in rigorous
early childhood education evaluations identified in a recent meta-
analysis was 91 percent.\45\ One study from the 1980s of the positive
impacts of preschool education on children from well-to-do families
suggested substantial positive impacts on boys.\46\ More recently, the
advent of universal pre-K in a small number of States and communities
has permitted comparisons based on income. In two studies of public
pre-Kindergarten programs, positive and substantial impacts on
language, literacy, and mathematics skills were obtained for both low-
and middle-income children. In both of these studies, the impacts were
larger for children living in or near poverty (as indicated by free-or
reduced-lunch status), but still substantial for their less
disadvantaged peers.\47\
Race/ethnicity. Overall, the current research evidence suggests
that children of different racial/ethnic groups benefit from preschool.
Many of the most prominent evaluations from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
(e.g., Perry, Abecedarian, and the Chicago Parent-Child Centers)
focused on African-American students, with no comparisons of effects
possible across different racial/ethnic groups. Several more recent
studies have compared effects for students from different racial/ethnic
backgrounds. The Head Start Impact Study reached somewhat different
conclusions for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds: for 3-year-olds, positive
post-program impacts were strongest for African-Americans and
Hispanics, relative to White, non-Hispanic children; for 4-year-olds,
positive impacts were smaller for Hispanics, again relative to White,
non-Hispanic children.\48\ The Tulsa study found substantial
improvements in school readiness for pre-Kindergarten participants from
all racial and ethnic groups. Effect sizes were moderate to large for
all racial and ethnic groups studied (white, black, Hispanic, Native
American) but especially large for Hispanics.\49\ The Boston study
found substantial benefits in language, literacy, mathematics, and
executive functioning domains for children from all racial and ethnic
groups. Effect sizes were especially large for Hispanics and for Asian
Americans, though the sample size for Asian Americans was relatively
small.\50\
Dual language learners and children of immigrants. Positive impacts
of preschool can be as strong or stronger for dual language learners
and children of immigrants, compared to their English-speaking or
native-born counterparts. Given the specific challenges and
opportunities faced in school by dual language learners (DLL) \51\ and
the growing number of such students in the United States, it is
important to know how high-quality preschool programs impact them in
particular, as well as the features of quality that are important to
their development. National non-experimental evidence suggests that
positive effects of preschool on early reading and math achievement are
as strong for children of immigrants as for children of the native-
born.\52\ In the Tulsa pre-Kindergarten program, effects for Hispanic
students who came from homes where Spanish was the primary spoken
language (dual language learners) were larger than effects for Hispanic
students who came from homes where English was the primary spoken
language.\53\ And the National Head Start Impact Study found
significantly stronger positive impacts of Head Start on language and
school performance at the end of kindergarten for dual-language
learners, relative to their native speaking counterparts.
Generally, the same features of quality that are important to the
academic outcomes of monolingual English speaking children appear to be
important to the development of DLL. However, a feature of early
childhood settings that may be important specifically to the
development of DLL is language of instruction. There is emerging
research that preschool programs that systematically integrate both the
children's home language and English language development promote
achievement in the home language as well as English language
development.\54\ While there are no large meta-analytic studies of
bilingual education in preschool, meta-analyses of bilingual education
in elementary school and several experimental preschool studies have
reached this conclusion.\55\ Home language development does not appear
to come at the cost of developing English language skills, but rather
strengthens them. Thus, programs that intentionally use both languages
can promote emergent bilingualism, a characteristic that may be
valuable in later development.\56\
Children with special needs. More rigorous research is needed on
the effects of preschool on children with special needs (note that we
do not discuss effects of preschool programs that serve only children
with special needs). The Head Start Impact Study found that children
with special needs randomly assigned to Head Start as 3-year-olds made
significant gains in math and social-emotional development at the end
of first grade compared to peers assigned to the control group.\57\
Research on the Tulsa pre-K program found that children with special
needs who participated in pre-K experienced significant improvements--
comparable to those for typically developing children--in their reading
skills and writing skills, though not necessarily in math. There is a
need to test these patterns in other studies.
The benefits of quality preschool outweigh the costs.
High-quality preschool programs are one of many possible ways to
support children's development, and it is important to ask whether the
benefits from such programs can offset their considerable costs. Cost-
benefit frameworks enable researchers to assess the value of social
investments.\58\ Key to this technique is a systematic accounting of
the costs and benefits of an intervention, based on a careful
comparison of outcomes for those individuals who participated in the
program and otherwise similar individuals who did not. Early childhood
education costs refer to all expenditures necessary to provide the
program, including staff time and capital investments. Benefits
typically take one of two forms. First, benefits may come from cost
savings, such as reduced spending for special education and grade
retention, as well as lower involvement in the child protection,
welfare, and criminal justice systems. Second, benefits may flow from
greater economic productivity, especially higher earnings as adults. It
is also important to note that benefits can accrue not only to the
individuals who directly participated in preschool programs, but also
to society (e.g., the value of not being a crime victim). When both
costs and benefits are quantified, researchers can produce an estimate
of a program's benefits relative to its costs.
Rigorous efforts to estimate benefit/cost ratios of preschool have
yielded very positive results, suggesting that early childhood
education can be a wise financial investment. Using data on the long-
term life outcomes of program participants and non-participants,
assessments of the Perry Preschool program \59\ and the Chicago Parent
Child Centers \60\ both yielded estimates of about 7 to 1 or higher.
Estimates of the longer and thus more costly Abecedarian Project
(program length of 5 years) have produced a lower estimate of
approximately 2.5 to 1.\61\ Other scholars, lacking hard evidence on
long-term impacts for program participants and non-participants who
have not yet become adults, have made projections by blending evidence
on short-term results from the program with evidence on the
relationship between short-term results and adult outcomes from other
sources. Such efforts have yielded estimates for universal pre-
Kindergarten programs (available to children from all income groups)
that range from 3 to 1 to 5 to 1.\62\ The divergence of estimates
across programs suggests that it may be hard to predict the exact rate
of return for programs. However, the best current evidence suggests
that the impact of quality preschool per dollar spent on cognitive and
achievement outcomes is larger than the average impact of other well-
known educational interventions per dollar spent, such as class-size
reductions in elementary schools.\63\
The consistent finding of benefits that substantially exceed
preschool program costs indicates that high-quality early childhood
education programs are among the most cost-effective educational
interventions and are likely to be profitable investments for society
as a whole.
Endnotes
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2. Harvard Center on the Developing Child (2007). The science of
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everything? How early childhood education program impacts vary by
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the same proportion of the classrooms combined strong social,
emotional, and instructional support to children, 18.5 percent of the
classrooms had a profile involving mediocre emotional climate and low
instructional support, and 18.8 percent were observed to have poor
quality overall, lacking in both social and emotional support and
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program results in a larger gain than .35, then this analysis suggests
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distinguish among multiple possibilities will make a valuable
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36. Campbell, F.A., Ramey, C.T., Pungello, E., Sparling, J., &
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47. In Tulsa, OK, across multiple cohorts of students, researchers
found substantial benefits from pre-kindergarten participation for
children from poor (free lunch; up to 130 percent of the Federal
poverty line), near-poor (reduced-price lunch; 130 percent-185 percent
of the poverty line), and middle-class (full-price lunch; >185 percent
of the poverty line) families. The studies on these cohorts used a
rigorous regression-discontinuity design, taking advantage of a long-
standing age-cutoff requirement to enter the program in a particular
year. In 2003 and 2006, positive effects on children's language,
literacy, and mathematics skills were higher for free-lunch students
than for ineligible students but statistically and substantively
significant for both. In 2006, children from poor families entering
kindergarten were 11 months ahead, children from near-poor families
entering kindergarten were 10 months ahead, and children from middle-
class families entering kindergarten were 7 months ahead of the control
group (test scores for the treatment group and the control group were
converted into age-equivalent test scores, using national norms from
the Woodock-Johnson Test). Gormley, W., Gayer, T., & Phillips, D.A.
(2008). Preschool programs can boost school readiness. Science, 320,
1723-24; Gormley, W., Gayer, T., Phillips, D.A., & Dawson, B. (2005).
The effects of universal pre-k on cognitive development. Developmental
Psychology, 41, 872-84. In Boston, MA, researchers also used a
regression discontinuity design and found that both children eligible
for free/reduced-price lunch and more middle-class children improved
their language, literacy, and mathematics outcomes, emotional
development, and some executive functioning outcomes as a result of
pre-K. Impacts were statistically significantly larger on some
assessments for children from low-income families. Weiland, C., &
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emotional skills. Child Development.
48. These were statistically significant differences in impacts
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51. The term ``dual language learners'' (DLLs) is used to refer to
children learning more than one language in the home and ECE settings
during the early childhood years (ages 0-5); other terms, such as
English (LEP), English Learners (ELs), Non-English speaking (NES),
English as a second language (ESL), and Bilinguals are used to refer to
children in grades K-12 who are learning English in addition to a home
language.
52. Magnuson, K., Lahaie, C., & Waldfogel, J. (2006). Preschool and
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53. Tests were conducted in English; Gormley, W.T. The effects of
Oklahoma's pre-k program on Hispanic children. Social Science
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54. Barnett, W.S., Yaroz, D.J., Thomas, J., Jung, K., & Blanco, D.
(2007). Two-way immersion in preschool education: An experimental
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L.K., Roseth, C.J., & Hoffman, P. (2010). An experimental study
comparing English-only and transitional bilingual education on Spanish-
speaking preschoolers' early literacy development. Early Childhood
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& Rodriguez, J.L. (1999) When learning a second language does not mean
losing the first: Bilingual language development in low-income,
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Solution Tree Press; Slavin, R., Madden, N., Calderon, M., Chamberlain,
A., & Hennessy, M. (2011). Reading and language outcomes of a multiyear
randomized evaluation of transitional bilingual education. Educational
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literacy, & cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press; Saiz, A.,
& Zoido, E. (2005). Listening to what the world says: Bilingualism and
earnings in the United States. Review of Economics and Statistics, 87,
523-38.
57. Phillips, D., & Meloy, E. (2012). High-quality school-based
pre-k can boost early learning for children with special needs.
Exceptional Children, 78, 471-90; U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. (2010). Head Start Impact Study: Final report, executive
summary. Washington, DC: Administration for Children and Families,
Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, p.xxiv.
58. Gramlich, E. (1998). A guide to benefit-cost analysis, 2d
edition. Prospects Heights, IL.: Waveland Press.; Weimer, D., & Vining,
A. (2011). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice, 5th edition.
Boston: Longman.
59. Heckman, J.J., Moon, S.H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P.A., & Yavitz,
A. (2010). The rate of return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program.
Journal of Public Economics, 94, 114-28
60. Reynolds, A.J., Temple, J.A., Robertson, D.L., & Mann, E.A.
(2002). Age 21 cost-benefit analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-
Parent Centers. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24, 267-
303; Reynolds, A.J. Temple, J.A., White, B., Ou, S., & Robertson, D.L.
(2011). Age-26 cost-benefit analysis of the Child-Parent Center Early
Education Program. Child Development, 82, 379-404.
61. Barnett, W.S., & Massie, L. (2007). Comparative benefit-cost
analysis of the Abecedarian program and its policy implications.
Economics of Education Review, 26, 113-25.
62. Bartik, T., Gormley, W.T., & Adelstein, S. (2012). Earnings
benefits of Tulsa's pre-k program for different income groups.
Economics of Education Review, 31, 1143-61; Karoly, L., & Bigelow, J.
(2005). The economics of investing in universal preschool education in
California. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation; Southern Education
Foundation. (2011). The promise of Georgia pre-k. Atlanta, GA: Author.
63. Bartik, T., Gormley, W.T., & Adelstein, S. (2012). Earnings
benefits of Tulsa's pre-k program for different income groups.
Economics of Education Review, 31, 1143-61; Borman, G.D., Hewes, G.M.,
Overman, L.T., & Brown, S. (2003). Comprehensive school reform and
achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 73, 125-
230; Heckman, J.J., Moon, S.H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P.A., & Yavitz, A.
(2010). The rate of return to the HighScope Perry Preschool program.
Journal of Public Economics, 94, 114-28; Karoly, L.A., Kilburn, M.R., &
Cannon, J.S. (2005). Early childhood interventions: Proven results,
future promise. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation; Krueger, A.B.
(1999). Experimental estimates of education production functions. The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 497-532.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Yoshikawa.
Now we'll turn to Mr. White.
Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF JOHN WHITE, STATE SUPERINTENDENT FOR LOUISIANA
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, BATON ROUGE, LA
Mr. White. Thank you. Chairman Harkin, Senator Alexander,
and members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity
to speak with you today.
Early education can be life-changing for low-income
children when it is done well and when quality is sustained in
the grades that follow. In our State, we believe it is our
responsibility, therefore, both to ensure that these options
exist for families and to ensure that those supported with
taxpayer dollars meet a minimum bar for quality.
In Louisiana, we believe that a quality education must be
fostered by conditions in which quality thrives--high
expectations, parental choice, skilled teachers. At present,
the most prohibitive barrier in our State to achieving these
conditions for young learners is the fragmentation of the early
childhood education system.
Amidst a disjointed collage of early education programs and
funding streams exist widely varying minimum standards for
quality. Teachers' own educational backgrounds vary
significantly from one program to the next. Professional
development is a fact of life in some and nearly unheard of in
others. And in almost every case, there is no requirement to
coordinate the number of seats offered or the process by which
parents choose those offers.
This fragmentation has a real impact on the development of
children. In Louisiana, 46 percent of kindergartners start the
year requiring intensive support in literacy. Tracing those
kindergarten numbers back to 4-year-olds shows not only that
children not enrolled as 4-year-olds suffer great deficits, but
also that we have wide disparities in the extent to which early
childhood centers are equipping those children who are enrolled
as 4-year-olds with fundamental literacy skills.
In early 2012, our State set out to solve these issues of
fragmentation. That year, Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law
Act 3 calling for the creation of a statewide early childhood
network bringing child care, Head Start, publicly funded pre-
kindergarten, and publicly funded private pre-kindergarten
under one system of enrollment, one system of minimum academic
standards, and teacher preparation. Next and equally important,
Act 3 called on the State board of education to take on the
licensure of all programs involved in the fragmented collage.
In implementing Act 3, we realized two humbling but
important lessons. First, each program's funding levels,
teacher qualification requirements, and academic standards were
tightly bound together. We could not raise one to a minimum
standard without addressing the other. Next, the complexity of
addressing these interconnected policies was compounded by the
diversity of local settings in which these policies played out.
We thus called on communities to develop pilot networks of
all program types around a set of core principles: unified
enrollment and access for families; minimum academic and
developmental standards, birth through five; and a basic
standard of teacher effectiveness with equal access to
professional development for teachers in all programs.
In the time since, the networks have instituted shared
academic and developmental expectations in every classroom
involved. They use the Teaching Strategies Gold assessment to
measure child developmental progress. They use the CLASS
evaluation system of child-teacher interaction to improve
teacher practice.
Likewise, the networks have identified the number of
children ages 0 to 5 who are eligible for publicly funded
services in their parish. This year, they will collaborate in
their admissions processes, offering parents unified
applications to all programs along with coordinated outreach
efforts to parents. This means that parents will have clear,
comparable information in making their choices among all
programs.
Having measured local families' demand for early childhood
services, we're able to establish cost and revenue models for
providing quality services in all programs. We can now set into
motion changes to early childhood funding that would come into
effect on the same timeline as would changes in teacher
certification requirements.
The Federal Government can assist States like ours greatly
in two ways. Congress can first support the growth of State-run
programs that foster parental choice, minimum standards for
teacher preparation, minimum quality expectations, and
accountability when taking the public dollar. The subsidies in
our State and most others are not yet adequate, not just to
make choices available to parents, but also to provide for the
conditions of quality choices.
Second, Congress can address the Federal Government's
greater contribution to the fragmentation I described, Head
Start and its regulations. That $120 million of Federal funding
annually skirts State-level input in Louisiana and virtually
institutionalizes fragmented governance. States should have the
opportunity to be Head Start grantees. In making this change,
you will endorse the idea that families and taxpayers need not
only greater access to early learning programs, but also a
rational basis for choosing among those programs and a faith
that government funding comes with a basic expectation of
quality.
I thank you once again, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee, and I look forward to answering whatever questions
you may have for me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]
Prepared Statement of John White
Chairman Harkin, Senator Alexander, members of the committee, I
thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Louisiana's
story reflects both the opportunities and the challenges in providing
families access to quality early childhood care and education. A choice
among quality early childhood options, especially for the most
disadvantaged, while not a panacea for all challenges, is among the
most effective tools we have for preparing children and parents alike
for the challenges of the 21st century, and we must update our old ways
to meet with this reality.
Our State knows its fair share of challenges. Two thirds of the
700,000 public school students in Louisiana receive federally
subsidized lunches. Thirty-one percent of Louisiana's children live in
poverty.
Louisianans know, however, that for our State's prosperity, and for
the rights of our people to partake of the American dream, we cannot
let these challenges pre-determine our children's destinies. We have
committed to making our education system one that offers opportunity to
the next generation, and the results are encouraging. Louisiana
students graduate at a rate 12 percent higher than just a decade ago.
New Orleans, once the lowest performing school district in our State,
now tops the State's average high school graduation rate and, among
African-Americans, tops the national average. In 2013 nearly 4,000 more
Louisiana seniors than in 2012 achieved a college-going ACT score. And
last year, Louisiana was the fastest growing State in the Nation in
Advanced Placement participation and test passage.
Part of the reason for this progress is Louisiana's creation of
State-funded pre-kindergarten programs, the ``LA4'' public school
program and the Nonpublic Early Childhood Development Program (NSECD)
private school program. Through a mix of State and Federal funds, LA4
and NSECD have served more than 100,000 4-year-old children since their
inceptions. A University of Louisiana study recently validated that
low-income students participating in these programs have shown
significant, positive results through the 8th grade in not just
literacy rates but also rates of student retention and special
education referral.
Often the debate over investing in early childhood education comes
down to study against study, each claiming an absolute truth about the
effectiveness of an initiative that spans hundreds of thousands of
young lives in disparate settings. I think--and our State proves--that
it's time we get beyond this debate. Early education can be life
changing for low-income children when it is done well, and when quality
is sustained in the grades that follow. Done poorly, like anything
else, its effects are limited. But done well, it is a potent arrow in
the quivers of those fighting the effects of inequality and poverty.
It is therefore our responsibility, at the State and Federal level,
both to ensure that those options exist for families, and to ensure
that those we support with taxpayer dollars meet a minimum bar of
quality.
In Louisiana, we believe promoting quality schooling starts with
fostering an environment in which quality thrives: high expectations
for student achievement and progress; parents who are able to choose
the school option best suited for their children; and knowledgeable,
skilled teachers who continue to learn and grow throughout their
careers. We also know that if we are to offer quality choices
accessible to all parents who seek them, we need simple, accessible
enrollment processes and coordinated planning across often disconnected
funding streams.
Government should be modest in its ambitions to influence the
choices of parents and teachers, but government plays an important role
in assuring these basic conditions for quality and for access.
The greatest barrier to achieving these conditions--no less than
financial resources themselves--is the fragmentation of our country's
early childhood education system. Consider that LA4, for all of its
successes, serves fewer than 40 percent of low-income 4-year-olds in
Louisiana. Districts use title I and State constitutional funds to
provide another 25 percent of 4-year-olds with pre-kindergarten
education. Head Start likewise serves 20 percent of 4-year-olds.
Publicly funded child care centers and publicly funded NSECD private
schools serve another 10 percent. A final 5 percent of 4-year-olds are
not enrolled in any program.
Amidst this collage of education providers, governance structures,
and funding streams are multiple definitions of a minimum standard of
classroom quality and multiple sets of regulations determining how
classrooms operate, including those imposed by the Federal Government
through Head Start, which I will address toward the end of my
testimony. Teachers' own educational backgrounds vary significantly;
some programs require not even a high school degree, others full
certification. Professional development is a fact of life in some,
nearly unheard of in others. And in almost every case, there is no
requirement to coordinate the number of seats offered or the process by
which parents choose to enroll. While one center could have a mile-long
waiting list, another nearby center could be enrolling families at only
half of its capacity and never have access to families whose children
are waiting at home for a wait list elsewhere to clear.
This fragmentation affects not only access but also quality. In
Louisiana, we assess every kindergartner at the start of the school
year for basic literacy skills. In spite of great progress, today 46
percent of kindergartners start the year requiring ``intensive
support'' in literacy, the lowest score possible. Tracking those
kindergarten numbers back to 4-year-old settings shows that we have
wide disparities in the extent to which centers are equipping children
with fundamental literacy skills.
Much as we have a challenge of fragmented access, we have an even
greater challenge of fragmented effectiveness. That's not the fault of
any one program or group. And it is not uncommon among States. But it
is solvable, starting with ending the fragmentation that has
characterized early childhood education governance for decades.
In early 2012, our State set out to do just that. That year
Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law Act 3, passed unanimously by both
houses of our State's legislature, calling on our State board of
elementary and secondary education to take two steps.
First was the creation of a statewide early childhood network,
bringing child care, Head Start, publicly funded private pre-schools,
and public school pre-kindergartens under one system of enrollment,
minimum academic standards, and teacher preparation. Next, and equally
important, the legislature called on the State board to itself take on
the governance of all programs involved in the fragmented collage and
to assume responsibility for licensing organizations of all types that
provide publicly funded early childhood services. Act 3 called for both
mandates to be fully implemented across every parish in Louisiana by
the 2015-16 school year.
In implementing Act 3, we realized early two humbling but important
lessons. First, each program's funding levels, teacher qualification
requirements, and academic standards were tightly bound together. We
could not bring one up to a minimum standard without addressing the
others. Next, the complexity of changing these interconnected policies
was compounded by the diversity of local settings in which the policies
played out: from the urban streets of New Orleans and Shreveport to the
distant woods and bayous of our rural parishes.
The statewide network, we determined, would actually have to be
comprised of dozens of local networks. And it would take multiple years
to navigate the maze of funding, staffing, and academic requirements,
bringing each to a consistent, minimum standard.
We decided that year to start by calling on the most committed
among our communities to develop pilot networks of local providers
around a set of core principles: unified enrollment and access for
families; minimum academic and developmental standards, birth through
five, with shared measurement of child development to guide the way;
and a basic standard of teacher effectiveness with equal access to
professional development for teachers in all program types. Each
network was to include local school systems, local Head Start grantees,
and multiple child care providers and private schools. We identified a
local organization--a school system or a non-profit organization, most
typically--to coordinate the network, and we began to develop the core
functions of an Early Childhood Network, place by place. As we learned
how it worked on the ground, we reasoned, we would return to the
legislature and State board to make statewide policy on issues of
funding, certification, and licensure.
Seventeen of our sixty-nine school systems were selected to
participate in this first round of pilots. Another 15 are scheduled to
join this spring. In the time since they have started, the networks
have instituted shared academic and developmental expectations in every
classroom involved. They use the Teaching Strategies Gold assessment to
define developmental expectations and progress. They also use the
Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) evaluation of child-teacher
interaction to improve professional practice and to establish a shared
language among professionals teaching in different programs. As a
result, teachers in child care and Head Start programs are starting to
regularly observe and be observed by teachers in private and public
pre-kindergartens.
Likewise, the networks have taken responsibility for identifying
the number of children ages 0 to 5 who are eligible for publicly funded
education in their parishes, a large and important gap in such a
fragmented system. This year they will collaborate in their admissions
processes, offering parents unified applications to all programs, along
with coordinated outreach efforts. In their second year, networks will
go further, identifying enrollment targets for every school and center
and operating a fully unified enrollment process. This means that
parents will have clear, comparable information in making choices and,
rather than driving from center to center hoping for a spot, will be
able to rank all choices in one application. Coordination will enhance
parental choice.
At the State level, we are able to learn from the networks prior to
crafting statewide policy. Act 3 allows for a rolling policymaking
process where the State works directly with practitioners to implement,
and then returns to the State board and the legislature to make policy
once we feel comfortable our conclusions are validated by work in the
field.
While it has long been our vision to establish a higher minimum
standard for the education backgrounds of our educators, for example,
we knew early on that this would come at a cost and would have to
accompany a change in funding. But we did not know then, for example,
whether the fragmented system was offering too many unused seats or
offered too few seats given the number of families eligible. Only after
working with our pilot regions have we been able to create cost and
revenue modelsindicating the funds needed for every child to have a
teacher with at least an associate's or bachelor's degree. We can now
set in motion changes to early childhood funding that would come into
effect on the same timeline as would changes in teacher certification
requirements. Likewise, in the year to come we plan to codify in law
this coordinated local governance structure, giving diverse providers a
voice in local enrollment plans. And we will establish licensure
standards that incorporate a center's ability to promote child
development and kindergarten readiness. These steps are aimed at
gradually closing the gaps of our State's fragmented early childhood
system so that we can offer parents a choice of providers and a
guarantee of a minimum standard of quality.
The Federal Government should maintain a modest role in this
process. But it can assist States greatly in two ways. Congress can
first support the growth of State-run programs that foster parental
choice, minimum standards for teacher preparation, minimum quality
expectations, and accountability when taking the public dollar. Second,
Congress can address governance of the Federal Government's greatest
contribution to the fragmentation, Head Start. While we are thrilled at
the restoration of Head Start funding in the most recently passed
budget, and while we appreciate greatly the contributions of
Louisiana's Head Start providers, that $120 million of Federal funding
annually skirts State-level input in Louisiana virtually
institutionalizes fragmentation and guarantees incoherence in access
and quality for parents, teachers, and children alike. States that
adopt strategies rooted in quality and access, eliminating
redundancies, making all programs accessible to parents, and defining a
minimum standard of quality, should have the opportunity to be Head
Start grantees, to bring family eligibility and center operating
requirements into line with expectations across the State's network,
and to maximize Head Start dollars for families choosing such programs.
In doing this, you will send a strong signal that families and
taxpayers need not only greater access to early learning programs but
also a rational basis for choosing among those programs and a faith
that government funding comes with a basic expectation of quality.
I thank you once again, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,
for the opportunity to discuss these important issues, and I look
forward to answering whatever questions you might have for me.
The Chairman. Very good. Thank you very much, Mr. White.
Now we'll turn to Ms. Ewen.
STATEMENT OF DANIELLE EWEN, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF EARLY
CHILDHOOD EDUCATION, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS,
WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Ewen. Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander, and members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me to present information
today about the innovative approach to early childhood in place
in the District of Columbia's public schools.
The growth of high-quality early childhood programs in DCPS
and across the district is due to the leadership of Mayor
Vincent Gray and Chancellor Kaya Henderson. Both have shown
tremendous vision and dedication to ensure that young children
at risk of school failure have access to the resources and
supports they need to be successful.
I want to tell you the story of what we've done and share
our results. In 2008, faced with declining graduation rates,
low reading proficiency scores, large numbers of children
living in homelessness and in poverty and near poverty, as well
as a growth in the number of children with special needs and a
rising number of children in language minority households, the
city council and the mayor convened a working group to identify
real solutions that could improve outcomes for all of our
students.
The working group noted that high-quality early childhood
programs can have significant benefits, but also that many
children in DC who could benefit from these programs did not
have access to them due to lack of space or ineligibility for
Federal programs. As a result, the city passed the Pre-K
Enhancement and Expansion Act in 2008 mandating universal pre-K
for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds.
This act extended the school funding formula to 3-year-olds
and established a goal of making high-quality pre-K universally
available within 5 years. Traditional public and charter
schools began to incorporate 3- and 4-year-olds into their
school plans to create 2-year early childhood programs. The act
also invested in community-based providers as another component
of universal access.
According to the National Institute for Early Education
research, more than 90 percent of 4-year-olds and nearly 70
percent of 3-year-olds are now enrolled in pre-K in the
district. There is an early childhood classroom in every
District of Columbia Public Schools elementary school, meeting
high-quality standards, including bachelor's degree teachers.
As a city, we have met our goal of universal access for 3-
and 4-year-olds with families having a choice of traditional
public schools, charter schools, or community-based providers.
For us in DCPS, the implementation of the act was a critical
turning point in our efforts to improve outcomes for our
children, allowing us to ensure that those most at risk for
school failure receive a comprehensive array of services to
meet their needs, both for high-quality educational
opportunities and for supports for healthy development.
We are now the largest single provider of services for 3-
and 4-year-olds in DC. We achieved this through a partnership.
In 2010, DCPS had many Head Start eligible families and other
students needing early childhood education who we just could
not serve. We designed a blended Head Start model to expand
access and quality.
The Head Start model, like many blended funding models in
school districts and community-based programs around the
country, combines Head Start funds with local funding. The
local dollars pay for teachers, aids, and other infrastructure
costs, while the Head Start funds allow us to provide
comprehensive supports to all families and coaching and other
professional development for every teacher.
This approach allows us to provide the Head Start
experience to nearly 5,000 children each day in neighborhood
schools meeting title I eligibility. This is nearly three times
the number served prior to implementing the model.
We have created a unified early childhood system where all
classrooms provide the same quality, regardless of what the
program is called. Specifically, every child in the Head Start
model receives services that meet the Head Start standards,
including screening and diagnostic assessment, high-quality
classroom settings for the full school day and year using a
research-based curriculum, and access to family support
services.
While we are very pleased that a Federal review in 2011
found that we meet all Head Start standards in nearly 300
classrooms, we are most proud of raising the quality of
education for all of our 3- and 4-year-olds in title I schools.
Our data show that the model is working and helping our
students to grow and to learn. In fact, children in
kindergarten who attended pre-K in our program were found to
have stronger pre-reading skills than their classmates who did
not attend the program.
In addition, we have taken a closer look at what children
are learning while in the Head Start model using the CLASS
observation system, GOLD, and other measures. The results give
us reasons to be very optimistic about our approach. We've
learned that our youngest learners are gaining important pre-
reading and math skills, as well as self-regulation and working
memory skills. These results reaffirm our commitment to a high-
quality, comprehensive approach that meets the needs of all
students.
Because of the implementation of the Head Start model and
the increase in the number of children and families we're
reaching, we are truly excited for the future. We're proud of
what our teachers and students have achieved, and we're
committed to continuing to improve the quality of our programs
so that every child has what he or she needs.
LaToya Smith, the parent of a pre-K student in DCPS agrees.
She said,
``My child is at the Langdon Education Campus.
Socially, he's thriving in a group of friends.
Emotionally, he's maturing as a scholar who excels.
Cognitively, he's secure in the basics. He's already
learning to read! His teacher's goal is for him to be
reading and writing by the end of the year. At home, he
tells me about different cultures and continents. He
speaks of space, astronauts, and the galaxy. He is so
into learning and experiencing life, and I am happy for
him and for us.''
Thank you for having me today.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ewen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Danielle Ewen
summary
Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander and other committee members,
thank you for inviting me to present information about the innovative
approach to early childhood programming taken by the District of
Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). DCPS is proud of what we have achieved.
The growth of high quality early childhood programming in DCPS and
across the District of Columbia is due to the leadership of Mayor
Vincent Gray and Chancellor Kaya Henderson. Both have shown tremendous
vision and dedication to ensure that young children at-risk of school
failure have access to the resources and supports they need to be
successful.
In 2008, faced with declining graduation rates, low reading
proficiency scores, large numbers of children living in poverty, and
growth in the number of children with special needs and those from
language minority households, the city council and the Mayor convened a
working group to identify solutions to change outcomes for children.
As a result, the District of Columbia passed the Pre-K Act,
mandating universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds. This Act extended the
Uniform Per-Student Funding Formula (UPSFF) to 3-year-olds, and
established a goal of making high quality services universally
available within 5 years. The Act also invested in the quality of
community-based providers as another component of universal access.
For DCPS, the implementation of the Act was a critical turning
point in our efforts to improve outcomes for our children, allowing us
to bolster our commitment to ensure children most at-risk of school
failure got a comprehensive array of services to meet their needs both
for high quality educational opportunities and for supports for their
healthy development. We are now both the largest single provider of
services for 3- and 4-year-old children and of Head Start-eligible
children in the District of Columbia.
In 2010, we designed the Head Start blended model, which is in all
57 ``title I'' elementary schools in DCPS. The Head Start model, like
many blended funding models in school districts and community-based
settings around the country, combines Head Start funds with local
funding. In our case, the local funding comes through the Uniform Per-
Student Funding Formula (UPSFF). The local dollars pay for teachers,
aides and other infrastructure costs while the Head Start funds allow
us to provide comprehensive supports for families and coaching and
other professional development for teachers and to meet the Performance
Standards. This approach allows DCPS to provide the Head Start
experience to nearly 5,000 children each day in neighborhood schools
meeting title I eligibility. Prior to the Head Start model, DCPS served
1,782 children.
With the blended model, we are able to provide high quality
comprehensive services to many more children who can benefit, with the
same level of grant funding. This has created a unified early childhood
system where all children in our classrooms receive the same quality of
programming regardless of whether the program is called Head Start or
pre-kindergarten.
Every child in the Head Start model receives the services that meet
Head Start standards, including screening and diagnostic assessment,
high quality early childhood classroom settings for the full school-day
and school-year, and access to family support services. And we are
doing it well: in a Federal review in 2011, we were found to meet all
standards.
We are excited that data show that our model is working and helping
our students to grow and learn. New data show that in Kindergarten,
children who attended pre-K at DCPS had stronger pre-reading skills
than their classmates who did not attend the program.
______
I want to thank Senator Harkin and Senator Alexander for inviting
me to present information about the innovative approach to early
childhood programming taken by the District of Columbia Public Schools
(DCPS). DCPS is proud of what we have achieved.
The growth of high quality early childhood programming in DCPS and
across the District of Columbia is due to the leadership of Mayor
Vincent Gray and Chancellor Kaya Henderson. Both have shown tremendous
vision and dedication to ensure that young children at-risk of school
failure have access to the resources and supports they need to be
successful.
Today I am going to briefly outline the risk factors faced by young
children in the District, describe our pre-kindergarten system, then
focus on the blended funding model that has been implemented in DCPS,
known as the Head Start School-Wide Model. Finally, I will share some
exciting data on children's outcomes.
Research has documented the academic risk faced by children in
poverty, and those risks are faced by thousands of District children.
Despite the increase in median income over the past decade, 19 percent
of the DC population continues to live below the Federal Poverty Level
(FPL) ($22,350 for a household of four), as compared to 15 percent
nationally (IFF, 2012). District children are far more likely to live
in poverty than adults: 15 percent of children ages 0-3 and 21 percent
of children ages 3-5 live in extreme poverty (at or below 50 percent of
FPL) while 26 percent of children ages 0-3 and 32 percent of children
ages 3-5 live in families with incomes at or below 100 percent of the
poverty line (Young Child Risk Calculator, 2012). Wards 5, 7 and 8 are
most affected by child poverty and almost 60 percent of all young
children in Ward 8 live in poverty. Wards 7 and 8 also have the highest
unemployment rate, lowest median income, and the most children
receiving TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (DC Action
for Child Kids Count, 2012b).
The National Center for Children in Poverty has noted that children
who face three or more risk factors are the most likely to experience
school failure and other negative outcomes, including maladaptive
behavior. They define risk factors as low-income, single parent, teen
mother, low parental education, unemployed parents, residential
mobility (one or more move in last 12 months), households without
English speakers, and large family size (families with more than four
children) (Young Child Risk Calculator, 2012). Of children ages 3-5 in
DC, 69 percent experience at least one risk factor; 40 percent
experience one-to-two risk factors; and 29 percent experience three or
more risk factors. In addition to experiencing a large number of risk
factors, DC has the highest rate of children (17 percent) living in
extreme poverty in a single-parent household compared to all other
States.
These troubling statistics impact our success as a city; for
example, nearly 4 in 10 students in DC schools do not graduate on time
(NCES, Jan 2012).
In 2008 the city council and the Mayor convened a working group to
identify solutions to change outcomes for children in the district. The
working group noted first, that research has clearly documented the
impact high quality early childhood programs have in increasing success
for children at-risk, and second, that many children who could benefit
from these programs did not have access to them.
As a result, in 2008, the District of Columbia passed the Pre-K
Enactment and Expansion Act, mandating universal pre-K for 3- and 4-
year-olds. This Act extended the Uniform Per-Student Funding Formula
(UPSFF) to 3-year-olds, and established a goal of making high quality
services universally available within 5 years. The Act also invested in
the quality of community-based providers as another component of
universal access.
According to the District of Columbia Office of the State
Superintendent for Education (OSSE), 70 percent of families with 3- or
4-year-old children have enrolled their children in full school-day and
school-year programs in either DCPS or in a public charter school.
There is now an early childhood classroom in every elementary school
throughout the District, meeting quality standards including Bachelor's
degreed teachers. Across the city, we have now achieved universal
access for 3- and 4-year-olds, with families having a choice of
traditional public schools, charter schools or community-based
providers. DCPS is currently providing nearly half of all early
childhood seats for 3- and 4-year old children in the District.
For DCPS, implementation of the Act was a critical turning point in
our efforts to improve outcomes for our children. We are now both the
largest single provider of services for 3- and 4-year-old children and
of Head Start-eligible children in the District of Columbia.
The implementation of the Act also allowed us to be innovative in
our approach. As a Head Start grantee, DCPS was already committed to
ensuring our children most at-risk of school failure got a
comprehensive array of services to meet their needs both for high
quality educational opportunities and for supports for their healthy
development. However, we did not have the resources to serve all Head
Start eligible children.
To serve those children, in 2010, we designed the Head Start
blended model, which is in all 57 ``title I'' elementary schools in
DCPS. The Head Start model, like many blended funding models in school
districts and community-based settings around the country, combines
Head Start funds with local funding. In our case, the local funding
comes through the Uniform Per-Student Funding Formula (UPSFF). The
local dollars pay for teachers, aides and other infrastructure costs
while the Head Start funds allow us to provide comprehensive supports
for families and coaching and other professional development for
teachers and to meet the Performance Standards. This approach allows
DCPS to provide the Head Start experience to nearly 5,000 children each
day in neighborhood schools meeting title I eligibility. Prior to the
Head Start model, DCPS served 1,782 children.
With the blended model, we are able to provide high quality
comprehensive services to many more children who can benefit, with the
same level of grant funding. This has created a unified early childhood
system where all children in our classrooms receive the same quality of
programming regardless of whether the program is called Head Start or
pre-kindergarten.
Every child in the Head start model receives the services that meet
Head Start standards, including screening and diagnostic assessment,
high quality early childhood classroom settings for the full school-day
and school-year, and access to family support services. And we are
doing it well: in a Federal review in 2011, we were found to meet all
standards.
The program supports the needs of our families, and is also
providing a warm, supportive environment that helps young students
develop social and emotional skills. Children also develop academic
skills and knowledge they need to succeed in Kindergarten. Each of our
classrooms has at least two staff members, including a teacher and
paraprofessional, so that students can learn in small groups and with
one-on-one instruction and support. We require every teacher to have at
least a Bachelor's Degree. Every classroom uses a research=based
curriculum, and families can choose the school and curriculum that best
meets their needs, whether it is Montessori, Reggio-Emilia, Tools of
the Mind or Creative Curriculum. All early childhood staff receive
extensive and regular professional development and training throughout
the year. Paraprofessionals have been supported to gain their Child
Development Associate (CDA) credential as well. Some of the key
components of the Head Start model are:
All early childhood classrooms in title I schools are
fully supplied with high-quality early childhood materials and
equipment in all content areas (literacy and language development,
math, science/sensory, gross motor, art, drama, music/movement) that
meet all children's specific development and learning needs.
Every classroom has a teacher with a bachelor's degree and
specialized training in early childhood who receive 8 days of
professional development, weekly collaborative meetings with trained
coaches to identify strengths and areas of improvement for teachers and
aides and provide best practices, resource materials and peer-to-peer
learning and individualized professional development through intensive
coaching each quarter for teachers to meet identified goals and improve
instructional practices.
All classrooms in the Head Start-blended model use a
research-based curricula that is aligned with the Office of the State
Superintendent of Education (OSSE) Early Learning Standards (revised
March 2013), the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning
Framework and GOLD child assessment system, as well as with the Common
Core standards.
Inter-departmental and agency collaboration provides high-
quality support to Dual Language Learners and students with special
needs.
Staff resources are dedicated to improving services and
supports for children with special needs and to support teachers as
they implement children's IEPs.
Master's level mental health specialists provide
individualized clinical services to children and families.
Opportunities for family engagement in the school,
classroom and at home while promoting parent education of child
development through a comprehensive parent curriculum.
Children from high-need families, especially those that
are homeless or in foster care are supported on an as-needed basis
through intensive case management and family outreach services.
Assessment of health and dental needs of families, and
partnerships with dental screening programs, school nurses, and local
universities to provide dental, health and nutrition services to
children and families.
Participation in a universally free School Breakfast and
the National School Lunch Program, meeting high nutrition standards.
We are excited that data show that together, these program
components are working and helping our students to grow and learn. In
fact, in Kindergarten, children who attended pre-K at DCPS had stronger
pre-reading skills than their classmates who did not attend the
program.
DCPS is committed to providing a high quality program for all early
learners. We use a number of assessments to gain a better understanding
of what works for students and to be sure our classrooms are high
quality. To help students learn and grow, DCPS uses classroom
observations, teacher quality assessments, teacher evaluations and
other measures of children. Our data show clearly that our programs
meet benchmarks for quality and that our teachers and classrooms have
the needed supports to help students do their best.
The DCPS early childhood program uses the Classroom Assessment
Scoring System (CLASS), a widely used and researched tool that looks at
the quality of the classroom and how the teacher and students interact.
When compared to other programs across the country where CLASS is
widely used, DCPS programs are meeting national trends and the quality
levels of other programs.
Additionally, our early childhood classroom teachers participate in
the DCPS teacher evaluation system, known as IMPACT. In the 2012-13
school year, 82 percent of early childhood teachers were rated
Effective or Highly Effective on the IMPACT teacher evaluation system.
This means that most early childhood students have teachers who have
been recognized and rewarded for their work. The IMPACT system also
gives teachers opportunities to work with and learn from their peers,
which ultimately leads to better instruction.
The DCPS early childhood program also looks at student's
development and progress over the school year using a tool called
Teaching Strategies GOLD. GOLD uses teacher observations to look at how
a child is progressing to meet grade-level expectations in six
developmental and content areas (see chart for a list of areas). We
know that children are making progress throughout the year on this
assessment, as 35 percent enter the year below these benchmarks and
then make gains throughout the year. At the end of the last school
year, 97 percent of our early childhood students met or exceeded the
GOLD expectations for their grade-level. This means that most students
finish the program with the skills needed to enter and succeed in
Kindergarten.
In addition to GOLD, DCPS has taken a closer look at the classrooms
in the HSSWM to examine the quality of the early childhood program at a
deeper level. Students in those rooms are assessed using several
measures that look at pre-reading, pre-math, problem solving, and
social-emotional development. The results give us reasons to be very
optimistic and very proud of our students. We've learned that our
students are gaining important reading and math skills, as well as
self-regulation and working memory skills. These results reaffirm our
commitment to a high quality, comprehensive approach that meets the
needs of all our students.
Because of the implementation of the blended model with Head Start
and the number of students and families we are now reaching, we are
truly excited for the future. We are proud of what our teachers and our
students have achieved, and we are committed to continuing to improve
the quality of our programs so that every child has what he or she
needs to be successful.
But don't take my word for it. Here are the words of LaToya Smith,
a parent at Langdon Education Campus:
My child is in a Montessori program, at Langdon Education
Campus. Socially, he's thriving in a group of friends.
Emotionally, he's maturing as a scholar who excels.
Cognitively, he's secure in the basics (alphabet, counting,
shapes, and colors). He's already learning to read! His
teacher's goal is for him to be reading and writing sentences
by the end of the year. At home, he tells me about different
cultures and continents. He speaks of space, astronauts, and
the galaxy He is so into learning and experiencing life! And
I'm happy for him, for us.
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Ewen.
Now we'll turn to Ms. Brantley.
STATEMENT OF CHARLOTTE M. BRANTLEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF
CLAYTON EARLY LEARNING, DENVER, CO
Ms. Brantley. Good morning, Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member
Alexander, and members of the committee. I'm Charlotte
Brantley, president and CEO of Clayton Early Learning in
Denver, CO. Thank you for this opportunity to tell you about
early learning initiatives in Colorado and how they align with
the Clayton belief that all children are born with unlimited
potential and our mission to ensure all children have access to
a quality early education.
Clayton Early Learning is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) with a
century of history providing vulnerable children with a good
start. We provide exemplary early care and education services
to more than 600 primarily low-income children, prenatal to age
5, while integrating as seamlessly as possible multiple State,
Federal, and local funding streams.
All our program options, half-day, full-day, extended
hours, home visiting, play and learn groups, are designed to
give parents choices and are all research-based, family-
centered, comprehensive, and results-driven. Our statewide
coaching and training services annually reach more than 2,500
early education teachers and leaders, impacting the quality of
services for thousands of additional children across our State.
We have been an Early Head Start grantee since the late
1980s, in fact, before it was even called Early Head Start. We
began offering Head Start in the mid-1990s and joined the
nationwide Educare Learning Network in 2006. In 2010, we were
named one of the first 10 National Centers of Excellence in
Early Childhood by the Office of Head Start.
An ever-expanding body of research, as my colleagues have
noted here, indicates that young children from disadvantaged
homes start kindergarten lagging far behind their advantaged
peers. This persistent gap, growing over time, is linked to
illiteracy, teen pregnancy, high dropout rates, and
unemployment. It may surprise you to learn that this gap is
identifiable as early as 9 months of age in children's language
development.
At Clayton Early Learning, we work to reverse this trend by
helping to create a coordinated system of early learning,
parent engagement, social-emotional development, and health and
nutrition services to support all children becoming school-
ready. We also work to join with our K-12 colleagues to create
and maintain quality in their early elementary years.
Such a coordinated system is greatly facilitated by
expanded opportunities to both increase and further leverage
State, Federal, and public-private investments to link programs
across the critical prenatal to age 5 period of rapid growth
and development. We applaud efforts such as the introduction of
the Strong Start for America's Children Act and the recent
appropriation of $500 million to create Early Head Start and
Child Care partnerships.
State and local program practitioners are working very hard
to ensure we reach more children who really need that support.
But we can't do it alone.
The State level Colorado Preschool Program--and, Senator
Harkin, maybe we can get that changed to the Colorado Early
Learning Program. I'm with you there. CPP, as we call it,
serves about 20,000 at-risk 3- and 4-year-old children each
year, which represents approximately 14 to 15 percent of our
eligible children, and 171 of 179 districts participate.
CPP encourages local districts to partner with community-
based early childhood programs. And, in fact, 9 percent of the
children are receiving CPP in a Head Start program, 23 percent
are served in a community-based site, and 68 percent are served
in the public schools.
Data shows that children who have had a CPP early childhood
experience are still doing well as of fifth grade. They're
scoring above their likely resourced peers who were not able to
go to CPP as preschoolers.
Clayton Early Learning is fortunate to have a strong
partnership with Denver Public Schools with just over 250 half-
day preschool slots in our two schools under contract with DPS.
Effective collaborations like these help create the systems to
ensure children's success, and we support continued
encouragement by policymakers of such partnerships to leverage
all early care and education resources available in local
communities.
Colorado's Race to the Top early learning challenge grant
will maximize a broader, coordinated set of State and local
early childhood efforts to improve our workforce and the
quality of settings, to measure and track outcomes, and to
fully engage parents as partners. Our State Early Childhood
Leadership Commission and network of local early childhood
councils in partnership with our new Office of Early Childhood
will oversee implementation of the grant.
We know that building these coordinated systems of
education, health, nutrition, and family engagement will take
concerted effort on the part of practitioners, policymakers,
funders, families, and the public at large. And at Clayton, we
are confident that as a nation, we can do it. As we aspire to
achieve this goal, we must be careful not to over-complicate or
to under-resource our strategies.
I thank you for your efforts and those being made by the
States you represent, and I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Brantley follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charlotte M. Brantley
summary
Good morning Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander and members
of the committee. I am Charlotte Brantley, president and CEO, Clayton
Early Learning in Denver, CO. Thank you for the opportunity to tell you
about early learning initiatives in Colorado, and how they align with
the Clayton mission to ensure all children have access to quality early
education.
Clayton Early Learning is a non-profit 501(c)(3) with a century of
history providing vulnerable children with a good start. We provide
exemplary early care and education services to more than 600 primarily
low-income children prenatally to age 5. All program options are
research-based, family-centered, comprehensive, and results-driven. Our
statewide coaching and training services reach more than 2,500 early
education teachers and leaders every year, impacting the quality of
services for thousands of additional children. We have been an Early
Head Start grantee since the late 1980s, began offering Head Start in
the mid-1990s and joined the nationwide Educare Learning Network in
2006. In 2010, we were named 1 of 10 national Centers of Excellence in
Early Childhood by the U.S. DHHS, Office of Head Start.
An ever-expanding body of research indicates that young children
from disadvantaged homes start kindergarten lagging far behind their
more advantaged peers. This persistent gap, growing over time, is
linked to illiteracy, teen pregnancy, high dropout rates, and
unemployment. At Clayton Early Learning we work to reverse this trend
by helping to create a coordinated system of early learning, parent
engagement, social/emotional development, and health and nutrition
services to support all children becoming ``school-ready''. Such a
coordinated system is greatly facilitated by expanded opportunities to
leverage Federal-State and public-private investments to link programs
across the critical prenatal to age five period of rapid growth and
development. We applaud efforts such as the introduction of the Strong
Start for America's Children Act and the recent appropriation of $500
million to create Early Head Start and Child care partnerships.
The Colorado Preschool Program (CPP) serves about 20,000 at-risk 3-
and 4-year-old children each school year with 171 of 179 districts
participating. CPP encourages school districts to partner with
community-based early childhood programs. About 9 percent of the
children are receiving CPP in a Head Start program, about 23 percent
are served in a community-based site, and 68 percent are served in
public school sites. Clayton Early Learning is fortunate to have a
strong partnership with Denver Public Schools (DPS), with just over 250
half-day preschool slots in our two schools under contract with DPS.
Effective collaborations like these create the systems to ensure
children's success and we support continued encouragement by
policymakers of such partnerships to leverage all early care and
education resources available in local communities.
Colorado's Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant will
maximize a broader, coordinated set of State and local early childhood
efforts to improve our workforce and the quality of settings, measure
and track outcomes, and fully engage parents as partners. Our State
Early Childhood Leadership Commission and network of local Early
Childhood Councils, in partnership with our Office of Early Childhood,
will oversee implementation of the grant.
We know building these coordinated systems of education, health,
nutrition, and family engagement will take concerted effort on the part
of practitioners, policymakers, funders, families, and the public at
large, and at Clayton we are confident that as a nation, we can do it.
I thank you for your efforts, and those being made by the States you
represent.
______
Good morning, Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander and members
of the committee. My name is Charlotte Brantley; I am the president and
CEO of Clayton Early Learning in Denver, CO. Thank you for the
opportunity to share some exciting early learning developments in
Colorado and shed some light on how these align with and support my
organization's mission to ensure all Colorado children have access to a
high quality early education.
Clayton Early Learning is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with
more than a century of history providing vulnerable children with a
good start toward success. Though we first opened our doors in 1911 as
an orphanage and school for boys, our focus in today's world is on
offering the highest quality early childhood education experiences and
facilitating other providers to do the same. We currently provide
exemplary early care and education services directly to more than 600
primarily low-income children prenatally to age 5. While we offer
several different program options designed to give parents choices, all
are research-based, family-centered, comprehensive, and results-driven.
We also work with many public and private partners including public
schools, State agencies, higher education, health and mental health,
and private funders to improve early learning systems throughout
Colorado. Our statewide coaching and training services reach more than
2,500 early education teachers and leaders every year, impacting the
quality of services for thousands of additional children. We have been
an Early Head Start grantee since the late 1980s, began offering Head
Start in the mid-1990s and joined the nationwide Educare Learning
Network in 2006. In 2010, we were named 1 of 10 national Centers of
Excellence in Early Childhood by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, Office of Head Start. I personally have been in the
business of early childhood for more than 30 years, serving in
academia, State and Federal program and policy administration,
children's educational media, and local program operations.
An ever expanding body of research indicates that young children
from disadvantaged homes start kindergarten lagging behind their more
advantaged peers. We know this gap grows, continues into high school,
and negatively impacts adulthood. It is linked to illiteracy, teen
pregnancy, juvenile justice issues, high dropout rates, and
unemployment.
Our ultimate goal at Clayton Early Learning is to reverse this
discouraging trend. Child progress evaluations within our own programs
make clear that learning gaps in the area of language development begin
in infancy. If not addressed, this lag in early language development
will later manifest itself as a lag in overall academic achievement. It
is much more efficient to close these gaps very early, or prevent them
from opening at all. Children and families, particularly those with
multiple risk factors, need the support of a coordinated system of
early learning, parent engagement, social/emotional development, and
health and nutrition to be ``school-ready'' when it comes time to enter
kindergarten. Component parts of such a system include:
Professional development opportunities, matched with
adequate wages, to build and retain high performing staff;
Clear articulation of early learning standards and program
guidelines, across funding streams and program approaches;
Support for parents in helping their children acquire
language, literacy skills, and problem-solving skills;
Empowering parents to form networks and to reach their own
aspirational goals;
Supports for young children's progress toward healthy
social/emotional development and self-regulation skills, including
access to mental health services for both children and the adults in
their lives; and
Physical health and nutrition supports.
Creating and maintaining such a coordinated system is made possible
by expanded opportunities to leverage Federal-State and public-private
investments to support linkage of services and programs across the
critical prenatal to age 5 period of children's rapid growth and
development. We applaud related efforts such as the introduction of the
Strong Start for America's Children Act and the recent appropriation of
$500 million to create Early Head Start and Child care partnerships.
Colorado is moving forward with an enhanced focus on improving and
expanding access to early learning experience's for all our children.
We recognize that we must do more to reach communities throughout our
State. Our geographic and economic diversity (urban, rural, frontier)
at times poses significant challenges in terms of service delivery. In
addition, while many urban areas in Colorado have seen their child
population grow, most rural communities across the State have
experienced declines in child population, increasing the challenge of
creating cost-effective ways to provide the same level of early
learning services.
In 2011, children were the age group most likely to be living in
poverty in Colorado. Unfortunately, children under the age of 6--whose
brains are at the most critical developmental stages--are more likely
to live in poverty than older children. In 2011, 21 percent of all
Colorado children under 6 lived in poverty and more disturbing, since
2000 the number of young children living in poverty has increased by
136 percent. As you know, poverty is closely associated with challenges
such as unstable housing, a lack of nutritious foods, and physical and
mental health issues that can impact a child's ability to learn.\1\
Furthermore, children affected by several adverse circumstances--three
or more risk factors--are the most likely to experience school failure
and other negative outcomes. An estimated 15 percent of children under
the age of 6 experience multiple risk factors in CO (2011).\2\
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\1\ KidsCount. Colorado Children's Campaign. Page 17, 57.
\2\ NCCP ``Investing in Young Children''. Page 3.
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State and local efforts are underway on several fronts to ensure we
reach greater numbers of our children with high quality early learning
experiences. Colorado's State-funded preschool program or CPP provides
preschool for approximately 20,000 children each school year.\3\ The
program serves mostly 3- and 4-year-olds that exhibit risk factors such
as eligibility for free and reduced lunch, homelessness, drug abuse in
the family, etc. Currently 171 out of 179 school districts participate
plus the Charter School Institute. In many districts, local funds are
added to what is available from the State to expand the number of
children provided with a quality early education.
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\3\ CPP 2013 Legislative Report.
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CPP leverages a mixed delivery model that encourages local school
districts to partner with Head Start and community-based early
childhood programs. Statewide, about 9 percent of the enrolled children
are receiving CPP services embedded in a Head Start program, about 23
percent are served in a community-based partner site, while 68 percent
are served within public school sites operated directly by the school
district. Clayton Early Learning is fortunate to have a very strong and
long-standing partnership with Denver Public Schools (DPS). Currently,
we have just over 250 half-day preschool slots, funded with State and
local district preschool funds, under contract with DPS.
Effective collaborations, such as those with school districts,
create the systems to support children's success. We know first-hand
that early childhood education at the community level through programs
such as CPP strengthen the public-private partnerships between school
districts, community-based programs, and Head Start programs. We fully
support continued encouragement of such partnerships to leverage all of
the early care and education resources in local communities to create
high quality choices for parents to help their children succeed.
In Colorado we see that a quality preschool experience can have
lasting effects into a child's K-12 academic career. For example, when
compared to a matched cohort of students, children that participated in
CPP continue to outperform their non-participant at-risk peers on State
achievement measures, even into middle school. We are continuing to
track CPP participants through high school. At Clayton Early Learning,
we are also tracking our children's performance as they enter the K-12
system through our partnership with Denver Public Schools.
Last year, the Colorado State Legislature approved an additional
3,200 CPP slots ($10M investment) through Colorado's annual school
finance act. Despite these investments, however, we know we reach just
14 percent of eligible children in our State and have a long way to go.
In addition, Colorado currently funds only half-day kindergarten and
relies on individual parents or the taxpayers in each school district
to cover the remaining cost of full-day kindergarten.
While we hope to see increased investments in our State's preschool
program, CPP is just one funding source that contributes to our early
learning landscape. Nurse Home Visiting Programs, Food Assistance,
Child Care Assistance, Early Head Start and Head Start--all contribute
to creating a more efficient and effective system to promote better
child outcomes. In addition, several school districts and local city
and county governments have significantly increased public funding
available to support early childhood programs. For example, the sales
tax-funded Denver Preschool Program recently enrolled the 25,000th
child since the program's inception in 2006/2007. Summit County voters
recently approved a ballot measure to extend a property tax levy
supporting early childhood care and learning programs. Voters in Denver
overwhelmingly approved an increase in local public school taxes in
November 2012 that included significant expansion of preschool for 4-
year-olds. At Clayton Early Learning we help our families access all
funding streams for which they are eligible, and work to create a
seamless integration within our program options.
Colorado is fortunate to receive a Race to the Top Early Learning
Challenge grant of $30 million and a supplemental grant of $15 million
over 4 years. This grant opportunity is setting in motion a number of
initiatives to maximize a broader, coordinated set of State and local
early childhood efforts supported by foundations, private companies,
and the State.
Increasing kindergarten readiness is one of Colorado's top
priorities, as we know it is a major milestone in a child's path to
success. To accomplish this goal, Colorado's most at-risk children must
have access to the kinds of high-quality early learning programs that
will give them a great start. Major actions covered by the grant work
plan include:
Efficient and effective grant management and coordination,
supported by the newly established Office of Early Childhood within the
Colorado Department of Human Services.
Communication to families, especially those with high
needs, on all aspects of quality including the Early Learning
and Development Guidelines, Tiered Quality Rating and
Improvement System (TQRIS), and statewide online resources to
increase ease of access to high quality programs.
Supports to local early childhood councils to provide
flexible, responsive support of grant activities at the local
level.
Grant evaluation per Federal specifications.
Tracking Implementation of High-Quality, Accountable
Programs.
Statewide implementation of the new TQRIS tied to
child care licensing.
Training and communication to programs and providers
on the new TQRIS.
Supports to increase quality, including local
supports for shared services, especially for high-need
programs.
Early Childhood Data System (ECDS) development
including access and reporting for families, providers, and
administrators.
Promoting Early Learning and Development Outcomes for
Children.
Development and dissemination of user-appropriate
tools for programs, providers, and families.
Incorporation of Early Learning and Development
Guidelines (ELDG) into the TQRIS, training and professional
development, assessment training, and communications to
communities and families.
Ensuring a Great Early Childhood Education Workforce.
Unification of the State workforce competency system.
Alignment of teacher preparation programs (2 year and
4 year) around workforce competencies and promote articulation
of coursework across all institutions.
Incorporation of competencies into statewide
professional development opportunities.
Development of measurements for competencies in order
to give credit for prior learning.
Provision of incentives and supports to advance
through the ladder of competencies, especially for high-need
providers.
Full deployment of a statewide Learning Management
System (incorporating a workforce registry) to advance
professional development opportunities to the early childhood
education workforce.
Measuring Outcomes and Progress.
Tiered expansion of the Results Matter program to
track outcomes for more Children with high needs from birth
through 5 years of age.
Implementation of a kindergarten entry assessment for
all children in all school districts statewide.
Throughout the work plan are two emphases: (1) the development of
data systems and increased data sharing across programs and departments
for continuous quality improvement, and (2) an increased emphasis on
educating and empowering families so they can best support the optimal
development of their children and become effective advocates when
needed. Starting with the new Office of Early Childhood, through
smarter management of grant activities and a new emphasis on empowering
and educating families, these efforts will constitute a comprehensive
evolution in the State's push for quality early learning programs.
Together, these accomplishments will enable Colorado to achieve
significant increases in overall kindergarten readiness as well as
major decreases in the gap in readiness between children with high
needs and their peers.
In 2013 our Governor-appointed Early Childhood Leadership
Commission was reauthorized by the State legislature. This body of 20
individuals represents business, State agencies, parents, early
childhood program providers, Head Start and private foundation leaders.
A key component of its charter is to advise the Office of Early
Childhood and other relevant State offices on implementation of all
aspects of the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant work
plan.
Colorado established a system of local early childhood councils
many years ago, and expanded their numbers in recent years to create
statewide coverage. These local councils are charged with identifying
the best ways to facilitate local coordination among programs and
services serving children and their families. In addition, they are
often the conduit for moving funding and other supports targeted to
improving quality down to the local grass roots level. In many cases
they have also successfully increased local investments in early
childhood programming.
Establishing and maintaining this State and local leadership
infrastructure is critical to ensuring we are leveraging our public
investments to their utmost potential, better able to monitor child
outcomes, and continuously improve the vital supports that serve our
youngest and most vulnerable learners.
Clayton Early Learning leadership staff serve as members of the
Governor-
appointed State Commission and the local Denver Council. We strongly
believe it is our obligation to take part in the early childhood
quality and access improvement work at all levels and to share what we
learn through our own demonstration programs.
In conclusion, I would like to encourage you to continue thinking
about how we as a nation want to invest in our future. The work I get
to do every day sends me home feeling very good, and not just because
little children are so satisfying to be around. At Clayton Early
Learning, we believe that all children are born with unlimited
potential, and that all parents want the best for their children. As I
was beginning a tour of our Educare School one day for a research
physician in Colorado who is also a Head Start graduate, I mentioned
that the children we serve are often destined to never finish high
school unless we do something, now. He looked across the group of
preschool children before us on the playground and replied, ``Yes, and
you never know which one will cure cancer, given the opportunity.''
This is about giving all our children the opportunity to enjoy life
every day while a young child, see themselves as a successful learner,
and to become a contributor to the greater good as they grow up. We
know this will take concerted effort on the part of practitioners,
policymakers, funders, families, and the public at large, and at
Clayton we are confident that as a Nation, we can do it.
I thank you for your efforts, and those being made by the States
you represent.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ms. Brantley.
Thank you all for your statements and for your written
statements, also. We'll start a round of 5-minute questions
here.
Let me just ask this at the outset. Have you all taken a
look at the bill that I introduced in November called the
Strong Start for America's Children Act? Is that something that
you've kind of looked at? OK. Here's my question. What's wrong
with it?
Dr. Yoshikawa, what's wrong with it? What needs to be done?
What am I missing? What needs to be better focused on?
Obviously, we're just starting this whole process, and I'd like
to know--do you see any gaps in there, anything that you think
we should focus on stronger than something else?
Mr. Yoshikawa. I appreciated the emphasis on quality. I
think--and I'm going to stick to my expertise here, which is
not so much the financing or those kinds of aspects of a system
like this. But I appreciated the emphasis on quality. I think
there could be perhaps even greater specificity on what that
actually means and how to support it.
I think there were some emphases in there on issues like
coaching. Certainly, our review shows that there are now
multiple choices, and programs can be given a choice of
particular skills they would like to strengthen in their
programs, whether these are language and literacy, math, or
socio-emotional development. So we have, luckily, strong and
proven curricula in each of these domains that can be paired
with this kind of coaching or mentoring model.
So I think maybe some further thought could be given to the
supports for learning and the critical role of curricula,
which, again, are not push-down kinds of instructional models,
but are designed for children this age. These are activities
that children enjoy. They're play-based, but they're focused to
improve children's skills. And maybe there, there could be a
bit more guidance.
The Chairman. OK. Good.
Mr. White, you focused a lot in your testimony, written and
spoken, about the role of the States. So in our legislation--my
bill, anyway--we have a lot of co-sponsors on--and that is to
set up Federal-State partnerships to work on this. Is there
anything that you could advise us on that you think we should
change or modify or emphasize more?
Mr. White. Thank you, Senator. I would just reemphasize
what I said in my testimony, which is that I don't think the
idea of additional Federal funding--and additional funding is
needed for the size of subsidies that exist across the programs
that we manage in Louisiana. But I don't think that there is a
dichotomy between that--and also the idea of making the most
and, frankly, making sense of preexisting funding streams.
I would encourage any legislation to--and I recognize Head
Start has to be reauthorized and such, and this is a matter of
process--but to take a look at the wide plurality of funding
streams. And even if we are adding additional funding streams
or asking States to match Federal funding, to allow States
greater fungibility of those dollars so that we can actually
address questions of classroom quality and questions of basic
minimum standards as well as questions of access in unison,
offering families multiple options with an assurance of
quality.
If we don't solve for that fragmentation, I worry that we
will just create additional layers of complexity for government
that will end up resulting in some of the, frankly,
inconsistent outcomes that we see. The inconsistent outcomes
that we see in our State when kids come into kindergarten are
not just because kids didn't attend a program prior to
kindergarten. It has very much to do with the differences in
quality among those programs they attended. Solving for that
problem is a critical aspect of any legislation.
The Chairman. Well, that's what Dr. Yoshikawa talked about.
All right.
Ms. Ewen, is there anything that you think we should be
looking at?
Ms. Ewen. I'm not sure I'm going to say anything different.
But I would emphasize the quality piece. I would emphasize the
need for stability of resources to programs. Programs cannot
provide high quality if they don't have the level of resources
needed to pay for quality, and that's a key piece of what
you've put on the table.
The Chairman. I have to interject here. All my years I've
been here looking at Head Start programs and things, the
problem has been getting good qualified people to run and to
teach at Head Start programs. But that costs more money.
Ms. Ewen. It costs more money. That exactly right.
The Chairman. Costs more money. If you want quality, you've
got to pay for it.
Ms. Ewen. And you need a stable source of that funding.
It's not just making sure the dollars come in and out. It's
that you can rely on the funding that you have so you can build
a program like Charlotte and I have described.
The Chairman. Yes.
Ms. Ewen. And the third thing I would just say is I think
the focus, while it is on preschool, is making sure that you
still have the capacity to serve children birth to five and to
build a quality system for all children, because as you started
with, children need high quality from the moment they enter an
early childhood program.
The Chairman. Ms. Brantley, same question. You looked at
it. Is there anything that we need to focus on differently?
Ms. Brantley. I think there's a couple of comments I would
make. One is that I think the language in it around supporting
the idea that these services, No. 1, as my colleagues have all
said, are high quality, high quality, high quality--and, yes,
it does cost. I think we have to be honest for once about that
cost.
I think that it's very strong in the language around--that
these services can be offered in multiple places. There's not
one set idea of where it gets offered. But it can be offered in
community-based settings. It can be offered on public school
campuses and can be offered in multiple sites. I think that's
very strong.
The other thing I would simply say is that while I firmly
believe that we need to partner State, Federal, and private
people who are interested in partnering in this, and I think
that's all good, and incentivizing all that is wonderful, I am
concerned about the sustainability over time when the Federal
money gets pulled back and pulled back and pulled back over
time. And what will happen--some States are better resourced
than others to take care of those things, and sometimes
unforeseen circumstances come your way, like the flooding that
happened in my State.
This year, our Governor has just announced that we need
another $3 billion just to fix our roads and our infrastructure
because of what was destroyed in flooding last year. So you
just never know exactly, and we want to be sure that as we move
forward with this, we don't set it up in such a way that when
money is needed for something else, it gets taken away from our
kids.
The Chairman. Thank you all very much. My time has run out.
Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Brantley and then Mr. White, I want to ask you the same
question and first make an observation, especially with the
chairman of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations
Committee here. I come from a State where the Governor
yesterday announced that in Tennessee, community college
attendance would be free for any student who wanted to go; and
a State where since 2005, early childhood education has
expanded in all 95 counties.
So States are moving ahead. But what's most difficult for
them is when Medicaid spending goes from 8 percent of the State
budget to 30 percent, or in the Federal budget, when we look
down the road 10 years and see mandatory entitlement spending
going up 80 percent. That squeezes out of the Federal budget
and the State budget the dollars that we'd like to invest in
early childhood education. So that observation just needs to be
made.
The Centers of Excellence, of which Denver is one, was a
bipartisan compromise that came up in 2007 when the House
passed President Bush's proposal to basically block grant Head
Start to the States. And the idea was that this fragmentation--
and there's this 18 billion Federal dollars, there's State
dollars, there's local dollars--that it might be useful for a
period of 4 or 5 years to allow Governors to designate and the
department to pick cities that were doing the best job of
coordinating all these fragmented programs.
We only appropriated $2 million and only designated 10
centers. But, Ms. Brantley, what could we do to improve that
Centers of Excellence program based on your experience as being
one of those 10?
Ms. Brantley. I appreciate the question, Senator Alexander.
We at Clayton Early Learning have been very fortunate to have
been selected in that first round, and we were 1 of the first
10 and did receive the funding. We have 1 year of funding left.
Senator Alexander. What did you get, about $200,000?
Ms. Brantley. Two-hundred thousand dollars a year over 5
years. We're in the fourth year of that funding. We have one
more year to go. We will receive a final payment in September
of this year for another $200,000. It has allowed us to deepen
some of our most promising practices, particularly around
working with teachers in all sorts of early childhood settings.
We have spent quite a bit of our time working on that
around the coaching services, and once we add coaching to the
professional development model, sending teachers--more and more
of them are going out and getting their A.A. degrees and now
getting their B.A. degrees.
Senator Alexander. Is there anything we can do--I only have
a couple of minutes left. Is there anything we could do to
improve it or change it or make it more useful?
Ms. Brantley. I think giving more opportunities for those
Centers of Excellence that have been funded to come together
and to have opportunities to share what they're learning
throughout the network would be helpful. There's a little bit
of that beginning to go on, but we would like to see more of
it.
Senator Alexander. If you have any other suggestions, would
you send them to me in writing after this is over? I'd be very
interested in those.
Ms. Brantley. Yes, sir. I'd be happy to do that.
Senator Alexander. Mr. White, you mentioned fragmentation
and allowing the State to be a Head Start grantee. We had a
pretty big argument about that in 2007 when President Bush
recommended and the House passed a block grant to States. But
it's a little different proposal to allow the State of
Louisiana to be a Head Start grantee.
Do you have anything to say about the Centers of Excellence
idea as a way of encouraging or promising the practice of
coordination of fragmented programs? Or do you want to
elaborate at all on your suggestion that the State might be a
Head Start grantee and why that might be better received today
than a similar proposal was a few years ago?
Mr. White. It's a question of access and a question of
quality. And we, as a country, seem to be rallying around both
of those questions. But you can't claim to be providing full
access and full choice when you have separate centers, separate
funding streams, separate sets of regulations that literally
require no coordination in the offering of seats even within
the same neighborhood to parents who reside in that
neighborhood.
So allowing for one system of governance----
Senator Alexander. Well, would the best way to do that be--
you'd almost have to coordinate that locally, wouldn't you, in
order to make it work?
Mr. White. Yes. But as you pointed out, and has been
pointed out throughout today's testimony, much of the funding
comes from the States. Most of the funding is coordinated
through the States. If we're choosing to work as we typically
do in education through the States as the governing entity, the
State can essentially enfranchise locals, as we do with the K-
12 system, to distribute funds and to coordinate enrollment
through the local system. But the State is the governing
entity. And insofar as there are funding streams that work
around that, it's greatly debilitating to both questions of
access in a neighborhood and questions of quality and defining
it.
I would say at the same time regarding the Centers of
Excellence that if we're going to stick with that strategy,
getting serious about the regulatory consistency between Head
Start and other pre-K programs, no matter how we do the
funding, is important. I talk every day with school
superintendents who themselves--and I commend the
administration--could take advantage of the opportunity
themselves to be Head Start grantees but don't, partially
because the regulatory burden is so significant and, frankly,
so different from what it is in the funds that they typically
receive for early childhood services.
Senator Alexander. Thank you.
The Chairman. I have Senator Mikulski, Senator Scott,
Senator Franken, Senator Isakson, Senator Murray, Senator
Casey.
Senator Mikulski.
statement of Senator Mikulski
Senator Mikulski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
having this hearing and such a wonderful panel.
I'm going to get right to what I think we need. I'm not so
sure we need new programs. I know this might surprise
everybody, because I'm a good Democrat. I don't know if we need
a new program, but what I am convinced of is that we need a new
commitment to early childhood education.
Head Start was created almost 50 years ago. It was one of
the building blocks that President Johnson wanted in the war on
poverty. My first job after getting my master's in social work
was to be a social worker in a Head Start program--and for
those of us who were in those programs, we were so excited,
because we saw Head Start as one of the keys to helping our
children move out of poverty because we knew how important it
is.
Forty-eight years of experience with Head Start and we are
still having these kinds of discussions. So, I say we need a
real commitment. I'm going to get to my questions, but I just
want to make a few more comments.
We need to build on existing programs, like Head Start and
the Child Care Development Block Grant program that Senator
Burr and I have been working on to reauthorize--on a bipartisan
basis, and ready for the floor. We did a great job in
appropriations. Head Start is now funded at $8.6 billion. We
added a billion dollars, and that was decided on a bipartisan
basis. The Child Care Development Block Grant--again, we
increased that--that's now funded at $2.3 billion.
So, we have some of the building blocks. What we need to do
is build on best practices, provide local flexibility, and look
at the reality. Everything that I've read in your testimony and
listened very carefully to--all of these programs have
qualified people with bachelor's degree working in them. Yet
the average pay for a preschool teacher is about between
$32,000 and $38,000.
Yet, a teacher at a high school can make $30,000 more. This
is stunning. We need to be able to look at that. So as we work
on this, we need to make the highest and best use of what we
have, which takes me to my question to you, Mr. White.
You've spoken about fragmentation and this coordinating
council that was established in Louisiana. And congratulations
for that. Would you recommend that as we move ahead with
whatever we want to do--the reauthorization of Head Start, the
creation of a new program--that we encourage States to
establish councils and coordinating mechanisms like that to get
highest and best use of existing programs?
Mr. White. I would encourage that any levying of Federal
dollars----
Senator Mikulski. And should we mandate those councils?
Mr. White. I would say that States should develop plans
that have three principles embedded: No. 1, a basic minimum
standard of quality; No. 2, a plan to ensure that teachers are
capable of delivering that quality; and, No. 3, a plan to
maximize the variety of choices and the funding streams that
come with them. In Louisiana, in our State, that happens to
come through the parish level.
However, in a State like New York, where I previously
worked, that has more than 900 school systems, you can imagine
a different local structure. If we don't get to the question of
how these funding streams interrelate with each other, as I
believe, Senator, you're hinting at, we'll never----
Senator Mikulski. I'm not hinting at it. I'm pretty
definite about it.
Mr. White. Yes, ma'am. We're never going to get the
quality----
Senator Mikulski. I really do think we have to make use of
existing programs and have them work together.
Mr. White. But if I can highlight some of the points you're
making around teacher pay, yes, it's a $28,000, $29,000,
$30,000 question maybe for some of the pre-kindergarten
teachers. In our State, it's often a minimum wage question for
a child care educator.
If we don't address, thus, the relationship of the child
care subsidy to the Head Start subsidy to the pre-K subsidy
into one uniform system of funding that's somehow determined
not at a level across 300 million people, but more of a level
across 4 million people, as in my State, we will never be able
to develop policies complex enough, nuanced enough to address
the fact that a minimum wage educator today is what we are
asking to provide a world-class standard of public education
for 3- and 4-year-olds.
Senator Mikulski. I think that's great. You also said $120
million of Louisiana money skirts the State.
Mr. White. Correct.
Senator Mikulski. What is that? Is that the faith-based
programs?
Mr. White. Those are the Head Start dollars that we're
spending on 3- and 4-year-olds.
Senator Mikulski. So how does that skirt the State?
Mr. White. Well, insofar as the relationship is directly
between a grantee, in our State, at the parish level, and the
Federal Government, the regulatory structure is outside of it,
the funding structure, and I think probably most important for
these purposes, the enrollment structure is outside of it. And
this is critical to understand, and you mentioned it with the
networks.
So long as we're talking about maximizing dollars and
maximizing choice and access for families, we cannot continue
to have families driving around whatever jurisdiction they live
in, dropping off applications at 17 different places whose
admission processes don't speak to one another. This is a
fundamental problem of governance. We won't make best use of
taxpayer dollars, but we also won't be able to establish
minimum standards if we don't solve it.
Senator Mikulski. If you could flesh that out and get those
ideas to us, I would appreciate it.
Mr. White. I would be happy to do that.
Senator Mikulski. Thank you very much.
There are many questions for all of you, but I appreciate
it. My time is up.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Mikulski.
Senator Scott.
Statement of Senator Scott
Senator Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to say thank you to the panel for your commitment
to America's children. It is, without question, that each and
every one of you has a desire to see our Nation flourish. And,
without question, it seems to me that you all understand the
importance of early childhood development, and your commitment
to it is certainly to be acknowledged. So I appreciate that.
To build on what Senator Mikulski spoke about, building on
our existing programs, seems to be very important. Taking on
the task of looking to build a new program to put on top of all
the other existing programs in order for us to reach more kids
doesn't seem like the best approach.
Mr. White, I'll ask you this first question. How can
Congress ensure that the large number of Federal early
childhood programs, each with different levels of rules and
regulations, is not making it more difficult for low-income
families to access the opportunities to have their kids in the
programs?
Mr. White. As some of my fellow panelists have hinted at,
the distinctions between an urban environment like Denver or a
rural environment in Colorado, Louisiana, or anywhere else are
so vast that there is no way to do choice planning and
enrollment planning other than that at the local level. And
there is no way to do regulatory planning other than through
one entity, and I believe that should be the States.
The States should empower locals to ensure that there is
equal access and choice. And the way that, thus, the Federal-
State relationship should be is the Federal should say to
States,
``We know that you're different. We know that your
contacts are different. Your current funding situations
are different. Your current regulatory situations are
different. Thus, our job is to respond to your plan and
to help support a State's plan rather to impose a new
set of regulations or a new set of funding streams that
allows for less coherence that already exists today.''
Senator Scott. Thank you.
Ms. Brantley or Mr. White, we talk a lot about parental
involvement and the importance of parental involvement. And it
seems like the maze that we currently have, really, for a
parent, makes it more difficult to understand and appreciate
the resources that they may have access to.
What would you, Ms. Brantley, suggest that we could do to
help States and perhaps community providers help their parents
understand the complexity of the system?
Ms. Brantley. Thank you for that question, Senator Scott.
You know, I think there's a lot of traction being gained at the
State level and sometimes at the community level in working to
combine these programs, despite some of the issues that can
make that difficult, but trying to really do it from a parent's
perspective or from the child's perspective so that they're
coming into a program and don't have to worry about the
multiple funding streams that might be behind it.
Colorado has a State statute that was passed a couple of
years ago that we're making progress on now to create a
universal application for multiple programs. We intend to
include Head Start in that, although, as my colleague here, Mr.
White, is pointing out, you have to sort of do that on a
grantee by grantee opt-in basis. But we are getting traction
with that in our State, because there's been a lot of
conversation at the State level about that.
So I think in terms of the Federal role, sometimes just
even paving the way by having Federal agencies putting out
information memoranda that point out to States the flexibility
they might actually have that they haven't taken advantage of
in some of those kinds of things, is quite useful.
Senator Scott. Thank you.
Would any other panelists like to touch on that question?
Ms. Ewen. I think that there are, as Charlotte said, lots
of ways that we can build on the existing flexibility to help
States and local government agencies assist families, and that
it's not about this program and that program, because when you
look at the few early childhood programs that there are that
are serving our families, for the most part, they are under-
resourced, and there's just not enough out there.
It's not that we have so many different programs that
families have umpteen different choices. The problem is that
families don't have choice. There's not enough high-quality
programming available. At the State level and at the local
government level, we can help families find the best door for
them, and we can pave the way. But, ultimately, we have to
invest in quality programs so that every family that needs a
space has one.
Senator Scott. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. I just might add--and I'm going to
keep adding this--quality costs money.
Ms. Ewen. I'll keep saying it, too.
The Chairman. All right. Thank you.
Senator Franken.
Statement of Senator Franken
Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing.
I hope it's the beginning of a number of these, because I,
along with Senator Mikulski--and it sounds like pretty much
everybody here--really believe in the return on investment of
early childhood education, quality early childhood education.
Yes, quality costs money.
In Minnesota, we won a Race to the Top grant, and it's
helpful. But we still only cover about a quarter of the kids
that qualify, and that's a shame. I want to ask Dr. Yoshikawa--
and anyone can weigh in--about the evidence on return on
investment.
I know that the first study on early childhood--or I guess
one of the first--was the Perry school, and it showed at first
these positive gains in IQ, but then the fade-out phenomenon at
third grade. And that seemed to be grabbed onto by people who
were opponents of early childhood.
But then we learned, as that Perry study continued and
studies since, that we have these other benefits that come--
better health outcomes, fewer kids being left back a grade,
fewer kids being in special ed, fewer pregnancies in
adolescence, more graduation from high school, higher earning,
less imprisonment, less crime--and that the estimates, in your
testimony, are as high as $7 of return for every dollar. Is
that right?
Mr. Yoshikawa. The estimates are $7 for small-scale
demonstration programs like the Perry Preschool. For larger-
scale programs, they get a bit lower. But these are still
substantial returns on investment. The range is $3 to $7 across
large-scale programs like the Chicago Parent Child Centers,
like the Tulsa universal pre-
kindergarten program, ranging up to $7 for the Perry Preschool.
I'm glad you mentioned this issue of fade-out, because we
know that there is this convergence of test scores. Test scores
is much of what we have during the elementary and junior high
school years, for example. And there, often, the kids who did
not get exposure to preschool catch up. But we know that test
scores are not the only indicator of children's development.
There are medium-term impacts on special education grade
referrals, and, in addition, these long-term societal impacts
on things like reduced crime, reduced teen pregnancy. We're
just starting to understand what these factors are that might
explain some of these very important long-term outcomes.
Senator Franken. We do have to understand that, and we're
also understanding that there are certain non-cognitive
abilities or talents or characteristics that really determine
success maybe more than the cognitive factor, and that maybe
that has something to do with it. And we'll learn about that in
the research.
I really want to emphasize parents. I introduced a bill
last year, the Parent Education and Family Engagement in
Education Act, to expand parent engagement. Parents are the
first teachers. And just to anyone on the panel, can you
elaborate on the impact of parent engagement on preschool
learning and outcomes?
Mr. Yoshikawa. From our meta-analysis of 84 studies of
rigorous preschool, we looked at the added impact of parenting
education components in early education programs. And we looked
at two types, one type that provided didactic workshop
information to parents about children and about parenting----
Senator Franken. That was less successful.
Mr. Yoshikawa. That was less successful than the type that
actually offered opportunities for practice and skill building.
So parents and children together with a skilled facilitator
engaging in this process of observation and feedback--that
doubled the effects on children's skills above and beyond the
effect of preschool alone.
Senator Franken. Mr. Chairman, my time is up. But I also
want to just say--since Senator Mikulski talked about the pay
of preschool teachers and early childhood teachers--if we're
going to get quality, we have to have good teachers, and we
have to have workforce improvement for those who are going to
be in the classroom with our little children who are only--
you're only three once. That's my last word. You're only three
once.
The Chairman. I think that's probably true.
[Laughter.]
Senator Franken. Well, it depends on your whole theory of
cosmology and religion and----
The Chairman. Stop.
Senator Franken. I'll stop.
The Chairman. Senator Isakson.
Statement of Senator Isakson
Senator Isakson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commend Senator
Franken on focusing on parental involvement. When I chaired the
Board of Education in Georgia, I used to be asked if attention
deficit disorder, ADD, was the biggest learning disability, and
I said, ``No, it's parental deficit disorder.''
We don't have enough parents involved with their kids to
really give higher expectations, and, therefore, a lot of our
kids fall and drop out. So I commend your focus on parental
involvement. It's extremely important.
Mr. White, you're a young man, so you're going to live a
long time and be head of the school system for a long time. I
want to ask you a longitudinal question about this proposal on
early childhood.
The President's recommendation to the States that would be
eligible for the grants would be that the first year, the State
would have to match the cost by 10 cents on the dollar. But by
year 10, it would have to have 300 percent match. In other
words, slowly but surely, over a decade, from the time you
started the program until 10 years later, you would take over
the full cost.
Understanding the financial challenges that Louisiana and
every State has in public education today, could you take on an
initial challenge today that you knew was going to cost you 300
percent more in 10 years of State funds?
Mr. White. Senator, for better or for worse, I'm not the
one who makes the financial decisions in our State. It,
obviously, would be a significant consideration. I suppose I
would encourage, however, the committee and the Congress to
understand that, No. 1, we're not making the most use of the
dollars that we have today, but, No. 2, that our modeling shows
that even if we did, we would not be able to pay for a truly
highly qualified teacher providing a world class education for
every child or to make that available to every child.
So I don't believe that those two things are dichotomous.
We have to make better use of the dollars that we have, and at
the same time, the money has to come from somewhere. The
Federal Government working with States can play a helpful role
in that, but States clearly need to be secure in their own
financial position if it's to happen.
Senator Isakson. So you agree with Senator Mikulski. I
happen to agree, too. We've got to take the existing programs
and make them better rather than trying to recreate the wheel
all over again? Is that----
Mr. White. I do believe that we need to fix the current
fragmented framework, yes. And I also believe that there are
States like your own, Senator, that have stepped up and made
this a real priority of their volition, and I commend them for
doing that.
But I don't want to totally discount the fact that the
Federal Government can be helpful to States like mine. I just
think it's a matter of not drawing these lines of dichotomy,
making sure we've got what we have right, and accepting on the
other hand that the current subsidy levels, no matter where the
money is coming from, are not adequate, and it's urgent that we
fix it.
Senator Isakson. You worked in the State of New York for a
while, correct?
Mr. White. Yes, sir.
Senator Isakson. And now you're in Louisiana. There are
tremendous differences in terms of the challenges in those two
States, are there not?
Mr. White. I'm reminded of this on a daily basis.
Senator Isakson. That's why when we try and do Federal
programs, sometimes we try to write a prescriptive program. I
was reading in the briefing book here about the conditions on
the Federal funding, which is to qualify for funding, States
must first meet Federal benchmarks for early learning
standards, teacher quality certification, training and
compensation comparable to K-12 staff, comprehensive data and
assessment systems, comprehensive health and related services,
small class size, and low adult-to-child ratios.
If you get into that prescriptive of a requirement on the
money you're sending to the State, it's going to turn off the
State from asking for the money. Would you agree with that?
Mr. White. Yes, sir, I would. I do think it's important
that as we talk about quality, we understand that quality is a
question of the principal or the head of the center, the
teacher, the parent, and the child. The question is how do we
put those individuals in the best position to learn and to
develop, and not to recreate mistakes we've made in the K-12
system out of our ambitions for quality.
I agree with you, Senator, that those plans can come from
the ground up. But imposing them from the top down is not the
best approach.
Senator Isakson. Thank you very much. And I appreciate your
recognition of our State. The guy that beat me for Governor of
Georgia, Zell Miller, who is now one of my closest personal
friends, did our State a great service when he passed the
Georgia lottery and constitutionally dedicated the money to 4-
year-old pre-kindergarten for all children eligible, to
technology, and to a full college scholarship for anybody
graduating from a Georgia high school with a B average.
That's been a great program. We now invest $300 million a
year on 82,386 students in our pre-K program. It's a great one
and a real testimony to Zell Miller.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. By the way, I'll say to my friend from
Georgia that our bill is different from the President's. I hope
you recognize that. We started out with a 10 percent, and it
goes to 100 percent. But it never goes above that, in other
words, equal, and it never goes above----
Senator Isakson. Your bill is the best one.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Thank you. We're looking for you to sign on
to the bill.
Senator Murray.
Statement of Senator Murray
Senator Murray. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and
Senator Alexander, for holding this hearing today. I think
everyone knows that early childhood education is near and dear
to my heart.
As the only former--what we used to call preschool teacher,
now early learning teacher, but former preschool teacher, I
know firsthand what this research really confirms. And it is
such an important investment and focus that our country needs
to take on. I know, as well as everybody, that when a young
learner gets the attention they need, they start off
kindergarten on stronger footing.
What I have really come to respect as I've gone around my
State to talk to people about our effort to expand early
learning to all kids in this country, is who has come to be the
most visible beside me. It has been our business owners,
because they know they need workers. It is the sheriffs,
because, as Senator Franken talked about, they know who is in
their jails today, but, most surprisingly, our military
leaders, because they know that the quality of the recruits
that we need for security for our country in the future depends
on this.
Do you know that, today, 75 percent of the Americans who
apply to go into the military are ineligible because of health
and academic shortfalls? That is a threat to our national
security as well. So I think this focus on early learning is
extremely important.
I'm delighted to see a number of city and State governments
who are looking at this. The New York Times said that Michigan
and Alabama have increased their investments in pre-
kindergarten. Republican Governor Rick Snyder said those
investments, ``will show up for decades to come.''
This, to me, is something that parents are behind, teachers
are behind, communities are behind, the military is behind, law
enforcement is behind, and I think Congress needs to get behind
it. I really appreciate your attention on this, and I
appreciate the bill that you have offered, the Strong Start for
America's Children Act that you mentioned earlier.
So far, we don't have any Republican co-sponsors. I'm
looking forward to hearing what their ideas are and to them
joining us in this effort along with so many other people in
America.
With that, let me just focus on a couple of questions. As I
said, I travel all over my State. I talk to so many people
about the importance of early learning, and yet what I hear
from families is story after story after story about waiting
lists for child care or preschool.
So, Ms. Ewen, you talked about this, and I'd like for you
to focus on it a little bit more. It isn't just a matter of
who's managing it or how it's streamlined. It really is access
for these people. What are the barriers for these families to
getting into early learning opportunities?
Ms. Ewen. In DCPS, we do not have any barriers. We offer
the pre-K program in the neighborhood school. Families register
through the lottery in the same way they do for a seat in
kindergarten or first grade. Right now, we have universal
access across the city.
Senator Murray. So do all children attend?
Ms. Ewen. We have available space for all families.
Sometimes they have to travel a little bit. They look for
different things. We have choice. So their neighborhood school
may not have the program they want. They may want a Montessori
program, and so they look for that program in a different
school. But we do have enough space for all the children
between DC public schools, the charters, and the community-
based providers.
Senator Murray. What is your percentage of attendance?
Ms. Ewen. Across the city, we have 90 percent of our 4-
year-olds and 70 percent of our 3-year-olds who are currently
enrolled.
Senator Murray. This is quite different, Mr. Chairman, than
most of the Nation. In a lot of the Nation, 80 percent of the
kids who enter kindergarten have not had any early learning
experiences.
Ms. Ewen. And one of the things that we've done is we've
really eliminated--we do all the back work to make sure that
families are eligible, that they are where they need to be.
Families just go where they want to go. They don't have to say,
``Hey, I have to put a piece of paper here and here and here.''
We've made the spaces available throughout the city at the kind
of providers they want.
Senator Murray. Ms. Brantley, are there barriers? Do you
have a 90 percent rate? Where are you?
Ms. Brantley. I would love to be able to say we have the
same thing that DC public schools have. We do not yet in
Colorado. I think that we--under-resourced is, I think, my
favorite expression right now.
We have some really high-quality programs. We know that
they are effective. We simply don't have enough money in them
to serve everybody, whether it's the State preschool program,
which, by the way, can be used birth to five in certain school
districts. But we certainly don't have enough money in the
child care assistance program. Head Start, we already know--
Early Head Start--none of those are funded to the point where
100 percent of the eligible children can be served.
As we work to combine these funding streams locally into
high-quality programs, it does help a little bit, because
families can stay in with different funding streams as they
sort of ebb and flow in and out of their eligibility processes.
But at the end of the day, you have a waiting list, because
there simply are not enough dollars in the system to fund
everybody across the board in the way that they've managed to
do in the preschool by combining Head Start and preschool, as I
understand is in DC public schools.
Senator Murray. My time is up. But, Mr. Chairman, I know
that we use words here that don't mean a lot. When I heard one
of our panelists--I think it was Mr. White--talk about the wide
disparity of kids entering school today from those who have had
some kind of early learning, and they don't--let me translate
that for you. As a kindergarten teacher said to me, three-
quarters of her kids come without any early learning and do not
know how to turn a page in a book or hold a pencil. That is a
huge disparity when you are a child starting out in
kindergarten.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray.
Senator Casey.
Statement of Senator Casey
Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I want to thank the panel. I appreciate your testimony and
your personal witness. I was in and out so I missed some of the
dialog.
This is an issue that I think for a lot of us has commanded
not just our attention, but I think our passion and our focus
for a long time. And I know virtually every member of this
panel and others have made it a priority. I think we're
starting to make progress. We have Senator Harkin's bill, the
Strong Start for America's Children legislation, which is
gaining significant momentum now and support. The House has a
comparable measure.
I think when you get right down to it, it's, obviously, the
right thing to do for our children, but it's also the right
thing to do for all of us, because all the data shows--and it's
irrefutable now--that this is a critically important part of
economic growth, gross domestic product, skill development,
workforce development. Almost anything we can talk about that
relates to our economy has its origin in early learning.
I like to say if kids learn more now, they'll earn more
later. It's a nice rhyme, but it actually is true, unlike some
rhymes around here, I guess.
But one part of the support structure for this--and it's
been substantial. I saw it in Pennsylvania, going back even
more than a decade, as support was building. The support from
the business community has been remarkable and I believe
essential. So we've gotten tremendous support from across the
board. You can't talk to many CEOs of major companies or even
smaller firms that don't agree with it.
But for those who have not been persuaded yet, what would
you say to them? Maybe I'll start with Ms. Brantley just to
talk about--and anyone else on the panel--your interaction with
business leaders and the priority they place on early learning
as a way to build a stronger workforce and a stronger economy.
Ms. Brantley. A group of business leaders in Colorado
formed an organization in the last few years called EPIC,
Executives Partnering to Invest in Children, who are working
collaboratively with those of us in the direct practitioner
world, the advocacy community, and others to try to build more
of that understanding among business leaders throughout our
State about the importance of this.
One of the things that I find very interesting about them
is that--and, Senator Franken, this is kind of coming back to
something you mentioned earlier--they don't focus so much on
the child's academic outcomes as they do on children's--what we
call sometimes now in the field--executive functioning skills,
being able to take turns, being able to wait for delayed
gratification, being able to set goals and achieve them, being
able to simply show up on time and be there and control
yourself and take care of your own needs, and also being able
to take someone else's viewpoint into account. They focus on
that a lot more.
We find that our District Attorney in Denver also focuses
on that a lot. He will say that without those skills, you show
up in his world. With those skills, you show up in a successful
business person's world as an adult.
It's an interesting additional conversation that we are
able to have with those business leaders who really can dig
down into what it is that a high-quality early learning program
needs to set children on a path toward, and that it's not just
their academic outcomes. It's also their outcomes as a person,
as an individual who can function well in our society. It
brings a little bit of a different tone to the conversation.
Mr. Yoshikawa. If I could add a little bit on that, the
Boston universal pre-K program, in addition to producing the
largest vocabulary and math impacts of any public pre-K
evaluation to date, also affected all three dimensions--there
are three dimensions of what Ms. Brantley was talking about
around executive function skills.
But I'd like to highlight that we do have these very
serious access problems so that children are not getting
access. Sixty-five percent of 4-year-olds in the bottom 40
percent of this country are attending preschool. And in
comparison, 90 percent of the top 20 percent as far as income--
90 percent of those kids get access to these rich experiences.
So I'm not sure 200 or 300 Centers of Excellence really meet
the demand that we need, that our economy needs in the 21st
century.
Senator Casey. I only have about 15 seconds, but if you
both can comment quickly, that would be great.
Ms. Ewen. I am a champion fast talker. I would add to what
Charlotte has said, that in addition to building the case for
the workforce for the future, the stability of an early
childhood system today means that business leaders have staff
that are going to be able to come to work every day, that are
going to be reliably at work, and that feel comfortable being
at work because they know their children are safe and well
cared for, as well as building the workforce for the future.
This is a reform strategy that strengthens our capacity to have
better graduates who have higher skills throughout their
lifetimes.
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Mr. White.
Mr. White. I would only add on a different spin on this
question that tax credits that exist from one State to the
next, including corporate tax credits for child care subsidies,
are also an important part of the financing structure and are
more reason why we should allow States to design their own
funding regimes rather than continuing to manage a portfolio of
10 or 20 different programs.
Senator Casey. I'll have some questions for the record. But
thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Casey.
Ms. Ewen, I had my staff look at, and they've informed me--
I maybe need to go out and get a little hands-on look at this,
too. But I think what you've accomplished in the District of
Columbia is quite astonishing, quite frankly, how you've put
all these entities together. There's a couple or three things I
want to just have a dialog with you on.
You relied on facilities of traditional and charter
elementary schools. In other States, however, they've gone
outside the school system, such as Head Start agencies and
other community-based providers. If that were the case, are
there any lessons that you've learned that could be carried
over to that type of an implementation, where you might go
outside the system?
Second, you suggested that a Head Start blended model was
critical. Now, this is new to me. We always thought of Head
Start as serving low-income kids. They're sort of segregated
out. What you did was put them in with everybody else. I'd like
to know how you've done that. And what has been the reactions
of parents who would be ineligible for Head Start because of
income? How do they feel about their kids being in that program
with kids who are eligible?
Those are two things I just wanted you to address yourself
to.
Ms. Ewen. I am happy to address that. I first want to make
sure that I don't get all of the congratulations, because it
really took the leadership of the city to do what we did and
people coming together with a combined vision.
To your first question, I do think it is critical to have
community-based providers as part of what we're doing. The 2008
bill that we passed in the city included funding to improve the
quality and the capacity of the community-based providers in
addition to building the school funding formula so that we
could serve 3s and 4s in the school buildings.
So it really is a matter of committing to all the places
where families might want to go and need to go for a variety of
reasons. As I said earlier, some families have a different
choice of the kind of program model they want, but some----
The Chairman. But I think you just stated within the
existing school structure.
Ms. Ewen. Most of it is in the school structure now. But we
do still have some community-based providers.
The Chairman. Oh, you do?
Ms. Ewen. Yes, and I do think it's critically important
that we have those community providers, because some families
still need 10 to 12 hours of care because of the nature of
their work or other issues in their family. But most of our
kids are in either traditional public schools or in the
charters, because our funding comes through the school funding
formula. But we make sure that community providers are part of
the act, that they're part of the approach to universal.
We're lucky in that we had space in our schools to do this.
Many communities don't have that space. In New York City
schools, for instance, they don't have extra space, and so
community providers have to be a part of that equation.
But what we've seen across the country is that there is the
capacity to do partnering between community providers and local
school buildings and local school districts when folks come to
the table together. Charlotte has seen this in her community.
We've seen it in other places around the country. We see it in
Georgia. We see it in New Jersey with the Abbott program.
We see lots of opportunities for folks to partner to make
sure that families are not the ones that have to answer the
question, that we as a community can say, ``We have a range of
options for you.'' But it started with the funding, and then we
went to how can we do this appropriately. So that's an answer
to your first question.
Your second question about mixed income----
The Chairman. Blending, yes.
Ms. Ewen. That's actually one of my favorite things to talk
about, so I'm glad you asked. When we looked at who wasn't
getting services, it was both Head Start eligible families and
families who were making maybe a dollar more. When we talk
about our mixed income, it's not just poor and higher income.
It's extremely poor, it's poor, it's near poor, it's low income
under 200 percent, and then we have some higher income families
as well.
One of our challenges was why are we providing Head Start
services through one door when you have a family who needs
exactly the same things who can't get in that door. That's one
of the things we tried to address with the model.
The second thing we addressed is that you cannot look at a
family or look at an income number on a piece of paper and know
what that family needs. And all the research from early
childhood shows that it's not just high-quality teachers that
make a difference or an educational option. It's making sure
the family has that comprehensive set of supports.
Again, it's not about ``You live in poverty, so you need
family services. And you don't live in poverty, and you don't
need anything else.'' All of our children need to be assessed
developmentally to make sure that we can get them the supports
they need early so that if they need early intervention, we can
get them that. We need to know that families have what they
need to make sure their children are healthy, that they have a
medical home, as Senator Alexander mentioned. All families need
those supports.
What we find when we look at where our families are is that
families are coming to our schools. They're not saying, ``I'm
not going to go there because that's a poor school.'' Families
come to our programs because they're high quality and they're
providing early childhood experiences that families want,
regardless of income, and they enroll their kids.
They see this as part of the school experience, and they
enroll their kids, regardless of whether the child sitting next
to their kid is poor or not. We have a system where everybody
comes.
The Chairman. And you didn't run into any real problems
with that?
Ms. Ewen. We didn't run into any problems in terms of
people saying, ``I'm not going to go to that school because
that's a poor school or that's Head Start.'' A lot of that was
in the language used, I will say, in what we did with the Pre-K
Expansion Act. We took a lot of the labels off.
Again, we, behind the scenes, deal with those labels and
deal with those funding streams. We say, ``This is school. This
is pre-K. This is where your child is going to go this year.''
So we don't put that burden on families to identify where they
need to go or what it's called.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. I want to go back to the issue that has
been brought up by many of you and many Senators, which is
fragmentation. I want to discuss it in a way that does not
exclude whatever need there is for additional subsidies either
from State or Federal Government.
I should add that Senator Murray--I'm sorry, she left. She
said she hadn't heard a Republican proposal. Well, I'm a
Republican, and I made a proposal. But I didn't want it to be
thought of as a Republican proposal. I was hoping that we could
take the Head Start Centers of Excellence idea and fully
implement it, which would mean go from 10 to 200 centers
recommended by the Governors and selected by the secretary, and
then fully fund it, which would be to go from $10 million to
$100 million.
Mr. White, let me ask you this. The whole idea of that in
2007 was to try to address the fragmentation issue that we've
talked about. But as I listen to you, you're not able to really
do that with just--because you have Federal laws and rules, and
no one has the authority to coordinate the various programs. I
mean, you can't just identify, let's say, all the 3- and 4-
year-olds in Baton Rouge, and then take all the Federal, State,
local, and private money available for early childhood
education in Baton Rouge, and then create a comprehensive
program to address the needs of those children.
I know there are like 45 Federal programs, but only 12 of
them are most of the money, and then Head Start and the Child
Care and Development Block Grant are most of that. So could you
envision a way where we could at least create pilot programs,
such as these 200 centers, and say, ``Louisiana, you can take
two or four jurisdictions''--the State can--and working with a
local jurisdiction, you can override all the Federal rules and
come up with your own plan for how to spend all the money you
can assemble for all the early learners in that jurisdiction.
Could you envision that? Sometimes it's better if we start
off with pilot programs than if we just make a change that
affects this entire complicated country at one time. We usually
don't have enough wisdom to do that here.
What's your comment on how we--could we advance the Head
Start Centers of Excellence idea with more authority and, in
doing so, make it easier to do what we had hoped to do, or at
least I had hoped to do, which is to identify all the children,
identify all the dollars, and put it together in the most
effective way?
Mr. White. I think you'd find willing participants in
Louisiana, most certainly, Senator, and I would hope across the
country. I believe the principles that you're advancing are
exactly the right principles with respect to cutting out the
fragmentation.
I actually believe in their own ways that the Washington
example and the Denver example are very good instances in which
we've cut out the eligibility--or we've minimized the results
of the fragmentation on eligibility for parents and families,
on the operating rules, and on the size of the subsidy, and
we've just asked, ``What's best for the child?''
Senator Alexander. But in Denver, you have to do a lot of
negotiating to get that done, right? I mean, for example, if
you want to involve Head Start in your universal application
form, you've got to persuade them to do that. Is that correct?
Ms. Brantley. Persuade, invite, encourage them to do that,
yes. But we think that we're making a lot of progress on that.
I think that, as John has pointed out, there are so many
different masters in charge of all of these different programs.
Senator Alexander. Yes.
Ms. Brantley. It can be done. I think what you see that has
been done in DC, what you see has been done in our program in
Denver--there are some other programs in Colorado that have
successfully navigated those things. So it can be done. I think
that the potential for the new Early Head Start-Child Care
partnerships may help us to pave the way to a bit more of what
you're talking about.
Senator Alexander. But you know the number of 3- and 4-
year-olds in Denver, right? I mean, that's a definite.
Ms. Brantley. Right.
Senator Alexander. And you probably know pretty well the
total amount of money in all the programs that are available to
help them. Is that correct?
Ms. Brantley. Yes.
Senator Alexander. But you've just got a lot of different
people in charge of all those dollars.
Ms. Brantley. Well, it's the way that this field has grown
up, with multiple funding streams and with multiple people.
However, you can at a community level--when there is the desire
at the community level to pull those pieces together, you can,
in fact, do it. But you have to have people who are pretty
conversant in what each one of those is requiring.
At Clayton Early Learning, what we have decided to do is to
take the high road, and whatever the highest quality piece of--
a regulatory model or whatever it might be that comes from any
one of our funding streams, we aim for that one so that we are
at the highest point of each one of those. So it can, in fact,
be done.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Warren.
Statement of Senator Warren
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I'm going
to followup on the same point that Senator Alexander was
making, but from a little different perspective.
It's clear to me that our country needs a strong early
childhood education system. Investments in our children are
investments in the future. And that's why I'm pleased to join
President Obama and Chairman Harkin and so many others in the
push for substantial increases to investment in early
education.
Research shows that the payoff from these investments is
greatest when the early education programs are of high quality.
So if we want to increase investments in early education, we
need to be very careful that we're investing only in high-
quality models.
Now, we can try to ensure quality from the outset by using
certain conditions, like class size or a well-designed
curriculum. But we also need to have a way to determine whether
we're making the right investments. So what are the metrics
that we should be tracking to determine whether States are
investing in practices and programs that work? Anyone--who
would like to answer this?
Dr. Yoshikawa.
Mr. Yoshikawa. Head Start has made progress on that, as you
know, in the last reauthorization by instituting a progress
monitoring tool, the CLASS classroom assessment, which Mr.
White also mentioned is being used in Louisiana. So taking the
pulse of a system's quality is extraordinarily important. This
is not about high stakes assessments that are then tied to
hiring and firing decisions. But this is about how systems have
done this at scale.
In the research world, I think we very much value pilot
programs, but only in situations where we really don't know
what to do. We now know how to implement high-quality preschool
at scale across entire States, like Oklahoma. So I think we're
far beyond the point of pilot programs, given the scale of the
need of young children in this country.
Senator Warren. Could I ask you to say, Dr. Yoshikawa, just
for all of us, a little bit about the kinds of data that are
tracked so that we're assuring ourselves that we're spending
our money in the right places?
Mr. Yoshikawa. Sure. The CLASS assessment, for example, is
observational. So it is not about what's typically done, which
is a supervisor coming in and checking only class size or group
ratios or those kinds of things. It actually gets at the
quality of interactions between teachers and children related
to instruction, related to classroom management, related to
their ability to be responsive in their interactions with
children. That's the aspect of quality that matters a great
deal for children's learning.
Senator Warren. Good. Thank you.
I have another question I want to ask, and that is about
preparing the workforce. There seems to be a growing consensus
that better-educated teachers are critical to building a high-
quality pre-kindergarten program. But I think there are still
some big questions about how we get there and who is going to
pay for it.
Increasingly, State and Federal policymakers are
considering measures to require preschool teachers to get at
least some college training. Proposed legislation often says
that teachers should have early childhood degrees or be in a
related field. But the content of these teacher preparation
programs vary, and there seems to be an opportunity to improve
these preparation programs if we can be more specific about
what we need from them.
So I want to start by asking what the research on early
childhood education tells us about the kinds of skills that
teachers need to be effective in the classroom.
Ms. Ewen, did you want to answer on that? Or anyone.
Ms. Ewen. I'll let Dr. Yoshikawa start.
Senator Warren. OK. Good.
Mr. Yoshikawa. Qualifications are important. One of the
ways that they're important in issues like compensation is that
we have a terrible situation with the average pay of preschool
teachers. Teaching children 1 or 2 years older can double your
salary. So we have enormous teacher turnover, which is not good
for stable systems, and it's not good for child development.
The approaches to improving teacher skills in the
classroom, which include this structured curriculum plus the
coaching and mentoring in the classroom, have been proven with
teachers with a variety of qualifications and skill levels,
including child care providers, Head Start teachers, as well as
B.A.-level public pre-K teachers. So, again, we know how to
create high quality tailored to different skill and
qualification levels of the teacher and caregiver workforce.
Senator Warren. Ms. Ewen.
Ms. Ewen. The only thing I would add is that we look to
teachers who are strong on instructional support, that is, they
know how to talk to children to scaffold their learning, to ask
higher order questions of children to build their vocabulary.
We look to them for emotional support of children's full range
of development, and we look to make sure that teachers are
prepared to use the classroom environment to support how
children learn, that is, centers, play areas, those kinds of
things.
We find that B.A. degree teachers with early child
experience are critical to that, as is a second adult in the
room with early childhood experience. But we also need that
ongoing coaching and professional development, because teachers
need a lot of help in managing the individual children that
they get.
We're getting many more children with special needs. We're
getting many children from language minority backgrounds. And
those things may well be taught in college environments, but
teachers need the help and support they can get on a daily and
weekly basis to build those skills.
Senator Warren. I think Ms. Brantley wanted to add
something.
Ms. Brantley. Just to build on what has already been said,
some of the things we're also learning is that our teacher
preparation programs, as you pointed out, aren't necessarily
hitting the mark, either, yet. And we have a lot going on with
that in Colorado right now with a new set of core competencies
for early childhood professionals that we are now working to
embed within college course work and mirroring it with
coaching, actually, at the same time.
One of the pieces that we have really begun to learn is
that we have not been doing a good job of preparing our
teachers through college course work in math and in science.
We've spent a lot of time around early literacy, around helping
make sure that teachers are having the kinds of conversations
that Danielle was pointing out.
But we're also learning that they aren't necessarily
competent themselves, particularly in the area of math, to be
able to then bring that down appropriately to a 2-year-old, 3-
year-old, 4-year-old kind of level. So as we redid our early
learning standards in Colorado, we paid very special attention
to what we should be expecting our 3-, 4- and 5-year-old kids
to know and be able to do. Now, how do we make sure our
teachers know how to be able to encourage that development in
those fields of those young children.
Senator Warren. Thank you. That's a very interesting point,
and I see that I'm out of time, so I'll quit. But I do want to
say as long as teacher pay remains so low for our youngest
learners, we're going to have difficulty attracting and keeping
teachers in this area. And we really have to ask how realistic
it is to say that we're going to raise the standards, expect
people to go to school to incur more college loan debt, when
the consequence is to leave them in a profession where they
won't be able to pay off that debt. So I think these pieces are
related to each other. We must come back to them.
I thank you all very much for your work, and thank you for
being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I just have one last question, mostly for my
curiosity more than anything else. I noticed that in the
District of Columbia, I believe that you have involved either
one or more--I don't know how many--Montessori schools in your
preschool program. It's more than one, maybe?
Ms. Ewen. Yes. I have four schools that are Montessori
accredited that are part of the public school system.
The Chairman. And how is that working?
Ms. Ewen. Beautifully. It's another aspect of parent choice
that we have. The programs have Montessori-trained teachers.
They have all the Montessori materials. We send the teachers to
training when we can that is Montessori specific. Our PD is
around Montessori practices, and we train both the teachers and
the aids to be Montessori.
The Chairman. Well, I just personally happen to be a big
fan of the Montessori method. Both of our kids attended early
learning Montessori, and I've sort of kept in touch with the
Montessori schools. We have one in Iowa. Well, no, we have a
lot of private, obviously, preschools. There I go again--early
learning. We have one elementary school in Iowa that is a
Montessori elementary school, and it just does fantastic. So
I'm more interested in the Montessori methodology of teaching
in the early years.
Do any of the rest of you have any thoughts on that? I
really kind of wanted to put it into my bill, but I guess I
didn't. But I may want to add it as an amendment to give some
preference, or to give some sort of little push for grantees to
involve existing Montessori or to start Montessori
methodologies in early learning.
Ms. Ewen. Let me just say that one of the reasons we
support the Montessori curriculum is because it's one of four
research-based curricula that we put out for families.
Different children develop in different ways, and different
families have different preferences.
I think it's important to have a range of research-based
curricula to meet the needs of families, and I would be wary of
limiting or prioritizing one over the other. Just because some
children thrive in a Montessori environment, other children,
like my son, for instance, who is a baseball fanatic--if you
put him in a Montessori environment, all he would have done was
play with the balls, and I'm not sure he would be reading at
13.
[Laughter.]
So it's really important that we have--see, you're all
laughing. I'm serious. I think it's really important that we
have a variety of environments that every family can choose
from, regardless of the learning style of their child, but that
every environment be based on a research-based curriculum that
has criteria that has been established in the past that support
not just reading and math, but also social and emotional
development for our kids.
Mr. Yoshikawa. If I could add, really, there are even more
than four. What's very strong about the preschool evidence
literature is we have 12 or 15 rigorous evidence-based
curricula. And I would like to thank the Institute on Education
Sciences for funding a lot of that research. I think there have
been major advances. I'm starting with Russ Whitehurst and now
with John Easton to build the rigorous science of preschool
education in this country that is relevant to quality
improvement.
The Chairman. Anyone else?
Senator Alexander. Mr. Chairman, if I could respectfully
suggest, you might call that the Harkin School Choice
Amendment.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. I'll call it the Alexander-Harkin. You're A.
I'm H.
But I like that idea, but I want to make sure they're
research-based and they're proven--just not some pie in the sky
kind of thing that some person has an idea on. It's just that I
have been watching the Montessori methodology for a long time,
and I'm quite enthused about it.
Now, you say there's some kids who won't thrive in it.
Well, I don't know about that. Maybe you're right. But it seems
like it's a methodology in which just about any child could
thrive--again, you've got to have good parental involvement,
too.
Ms. Ewen. And, again, I think it's an opportunity to talk
about the need for well-compensated teachers.
The Chairman. That's true, too.
Ms. Ewen. Because the implementation of the Montessori
model in our other models needs somebody who can themselves
think through a curriculum, think about how to individualize
for each child, and is delivering what kids need. That goes
right back to compensation, and we, of course, pay all of our
preschool teachers the same way we pay our first, second, and
third grade teachers.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Are there any last things that anybody wants to bring up
before we go?
Thank you all very much. You're excellent thinkers on this.
You've provided some good input into this. We're going to
continue to have some more hearings on this and we hope that we
could--our staff, at least, could keep in contact with you as
we move ahead to get other thoughts and suggestions as we
develop this legislation.
I appreciate it very much. The record will stay open for 10
days for other Senators for questions or comments.
And with that, we'll stand adjourned.
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Senator Casey
Chairman Harkin, thank you for convening this hearing to
talk about the importance of early learning. Like you, I share
a strong belief in the need for the Federal Government to play
a more active role in promoting access to high-quality early
learning.
In my first year in the Senate, the first bill I drafted
that was referred to the HELP Committee was the Prepare All
Kids Act, my bill to create a universal, voluntary pre-K
program. This legislation would build on the investments States
are already making, helping them expand access to pre-K so that
all children have access to at least 1 year of high-quality
pre-K.
Pennsylvania is one of the States that have made
significant investments in early learning through its school
districts and through the dedicated programs Pre-K Counts and
the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program, serving a total
of over 20,000 children.
At the Federal level, the omnibus appropriations measure we
recently passed included an additional $1 billion for Head
Start and Early Head Start, which starts to undo the terrible
cuts from sequestration.
An increasing body of evidence demonstrates the lasting
impact of high-quality early learning. Children who participate
in quality early learning programs do better on a host of
measures, including both academic measures (higher academic
achievement, lower rates of grade repetition, less use of
special and remedial education) and social measures (decreased
crime, increased socio-emotional skills).
More successful children turn into more successful adults,
and society benefits in many ways. We save money by
incarcerating fewer people and having to pay for less remedial
education. Employers benefit from a better-trained and more
capable workforce. It all starts with high-quality early
learning.
We're going in the right direction, but we need to do more.
We have the opportunity to make a significant investment in
early learning, and set future generations on a path to
academic and economic success.
Chairman Harkin and his staff worked with me, Senator
Murray and Senator Hirono on the Strong Start for America's
Children. It has been a privilege to join with the other
champions of early learning in the Senate on this important
legislation, and I look forward to continuing our discussions
on the importance of early learning.
I would like to thank the Chairman for his commitment to
early childhood education, and I look forward to hearing from
our panelists today and am grateful for their testimony and
expertise.
Prepared Statement of Senator Baldwin
Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Alexander, I would like
to thank you both as well as my other colleagues on the
committee for holding this hearing on high-quality early
learning, which is essential to fulfilling both the promise of
the American Dream and the fundamental American principle of
equal opportunity for all.
I'm proud that this committee has heard the call and has
taken action to improve education by working to reauthorize the
Child Care and Development Block Grant Program (CCDBG),
improving the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and
introducing the Strong Start for America's Students Act. Under
the direction of Senators Mikulski and Murray we have rolled
back the harmful sequestration cuts that were extremely
detrimental to our investments in early learning and care. We
continue to make progress, but there is more to be done.
Investments in early learning improve education outcomes,
support families, and also make basic economic sense. The Nobel
laureate economist James Heckman has found a lifelong economic
rate of return of 7 to 10 percent per year per $1 invested in
early learning. Rob Grunewald and Arthur J. Rolnick from the
Minnesota Federal Reserve found a $17 to $1 return on
investment in early learning. It is the very reason that law
enforcement, the business community and educators alike are all
clamoring for their Federal, State, and local representatives
to make sound investments in high-quality early learning.
The sound evidence that early learning investments work is
the reason why States are taking the lead in implementing their
own high-quality early learning opportunities. I am proud to
say that Wisconsin has long been a leader in investing in our
children early. Education for 4-year-olds was part of
Wisconsin's Constitution in 1848 and the first kindergarten in
the United States was founded in Watertown, WI in 1856. We also
have strong childcare and early learning partnerships that take
a community approach to providing every child access to a
comprehensive delivery system for high quality education and
care.
Today, Wisconsin is nearing universal ``4K,'' with over 90
percent of school districts offering kindergarten for 4-year-
olds, serving 46,914 students--that's 60 percent of the State's
population of 4-year-olds enrolled in this program. Governors
throughout the country have followed Wisconsin's lead by
supporting early learning including Republican Governors in
Michigan and Alabama who are pushing some of the biggest
increases in preschool spending in the Nation.
It is my sincere hope that this bipartisan push for pre-K
in States across our country will soon be mirrored on Capitol
Hill. Chairman Harkin, I'm a proud cosponsor of your Strong
Start for America's Students Act. This measure would fund
preschool for 4-year-old children for families earning below
200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), and encourage
States to spend their own funds to support preschool for young
children with family incomes above that income level. For
States like Wisconsin, which already provide preschool for 4-
year-olds at 200 percent FPL, funds can be used to expand this
program for 4-year-olds and then be used to extend the reach to
pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds.
Furthermore, this act will support early learning
partnerships by authorizing $4 billion for Early Head Start-
child care partnerships. These partnerships will be able to
serve one in five children living at or below poverty.
Wisconsin is proud to boast strong Head Start programs, serving
over 13,000 children in Head Start and 1,872 in Early Head
Start in fiscal year 2012. I was pleased to vote for a budget
that increased funding by $1.025 billion over fiscal year 2013,
allowing Wisconsin to undo the over 800 slots lost due to the
failed sequestration policy. The budget increase also rightly
invests $500 million nationwide in Early Head Start.
Wisconsin is lucky to have a graduate of the Head Start
program, Lily Irvin-Vitela, as its new executive director. Ms.
Irvin-Vitela has shared with me her own personal success story
of how Head Start transformed her life. She also shared the
amazing impact Head Start is having on the ground in Wisconsin,
including the unique partnership that Head Start programs have
between parents, staff, community leaders, and advocates. The
early intervention and two-generational approach has
transformed the lives of children and their families across my
State. I was touched by the story of Charisse Daniels, whose
son Rowan was enrolled in Head Start. Not only did Rowan excel
but Charisse's entire family dynamic changed. Charisse became
involved in Head Start and is now the Local Policy Chairperson
for CESA, 2, Jefferson County. Most impressively, she plans on
pursuing a higher education in order to work in the early
education field.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Alexander, I would like to
submit Charisse and Lily's story into the record for this
hearing.
Equally as important as investments in pre-K and programs
like Head Start are the commitments we make to high-quality
childcare. CCDBG is the primary Federal grant program that
provides child care assistance for parents that work or are
participating in education or training activities. Our recent
budget agreement provides CCDBG with $2.36 billion for fiscal
year 2014, an increase of $154 million over fiscal year 2013.
This allows organizations like Wisconsin's Early Childhood
Association to provide quality childcare services throughout
the State.
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to submit for the record
Joan Mrvicka's story. She has been a childcare provider in
Wisconsin for 22 years. Over more than two decades, she has
seen the investments in high-quality child care and early
learning payoff. Joan owns and runs Joan's Tot Spot. She was
able to further her professional training and earn the
Administrators Credential and the Infant and Toddler
Credential, through the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Wisconsin
Scholarship Program. T.E.A.C.H is administered through WECA for
early childhood professionals wishing to further their credit-
based education using Federal funds from the Child Care and
Development Fund.
The bottom line is that investments in early learning
opportunities work. It is what the research has shown. It is
why States are moving ahead with investments in early learning
opportunities. It makes sound economic sense. And, most
importantly, it changes lives--not only of the children
involved but the lives of their families and communities. It is
my hope that this hearing helps illustrate the need for strong
Federal investments in early learning so we can expand these
success stories and truly provide equal opportunity for all. If
we are to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of
the world we must make sound investments in children, early.
------
Letters for the Record
lilly irvin-vitela\1\
Dear Honorable Senator Baldwin: As the executive director of the
Wisconsin Head Start Association and a former Head Start graduate, I
know the power of high quality early care and education. My family's
Head Start experience in Albuquerque, NM was life-forming! My love of
learning, joy I take in working and being with others, belief in
possibilities, and passion for early learning was forged in my own
earliest years and cultivated through public education. As a Maters'-
trained community and regional planner, I understand that it takes more
than a built environment to form healthy communities. Policies that
invest in people, especially young people and families, have tremendous
positive impact.
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\1\ Executive Director, Wisconsin Head Start Association, 4222
Milwaukee Street, Suite #22, Madison, WI 53714; E-mail: irvin-
[email protected]; 608.442.6879 (office), 608.577.8987 (cell),
608.442.7672 (fax); www.whsaonline.org.
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This week as you participate in the HELP hearing, I want to add my
voice to the voices of others in support of high quality early care and
education in general and Head Start and Early Head Start in particular.
One of the distinguishing factors about Head Start and Early Head Start
is the unique and powerful partnership between parents, staff,
community members, and advocates. In Head Start our work is framed
daily as more than early care and education, it is early intervention
using a two-generation model. We know from research on the developing
brain and social emotional development that it isn't possible to work
effectively with any child, without understanding the child in the
context of their family, community, and culture. By partnering with
parents from issues related to their child specifically and their
family's needs in particular, to involving parents in the governance
and operations of Head Start and Early Head Start, we daily live our
values around empowering families and building community.
Another critically important component of Head Start and Early Head
Start is our level of accountability and efficacy around consistently
delivering high-quality services to the most vulnerable families who
are living in poverty. We are not simply committed to do something. We
are committed to doing everything possible to meet families where
they're at and connect them to concrete resources through a broad
continuum of services. To provide an overview, our comprehensive
services range from school readiness, physical activity, nutrition,
oral health, and access to mental health providers for children to
leadership development, job training, career exploration, and financial
goal-setting with families.
Your long-term support of Head Start and Early Head Start as well
as high quality early care and education is well-known and deeply
appreciated in our Wisconsin Head Start Association. Your understanding
of the degree of importance of the early years for children and
families is evident in the policy positions you've taken in support of
promoting healthy child development. However, supporting high quality
early care and education isn't simply a smart child development and
family development strategy; it's a strong community and economic
development strategy.
The return on investment from decisions such as restoring cuts
experienced during budget sequestration, is more than restoring an
opportunity for children from low-income and working class families.
Rob Grunewald and Arthur J. Rolnick from the Minnesota Federal Reserve
have demonstrated through their economic analysis that for every
$15,000 invested per child over the course of 2 years in high quality
early care and education, there is a $260,000 net present real
financial gain. In their analysis of the Perry Scope efforts for
example, they noted a 17:1 dollar return on investment. Their most
conservative financial analysis demonstrated a 4:1 dollar return on
investment for public early childhood programs in Chicago. Those
returns can be seen in less demand for special education, less life-
long criminal justice involvement, less demand for publicly funded
social services, fewer unintended pregnancies, greater involvement in
the workforce, increased contributions to the tax base, and higher
levels of civic involvement.
Comparatively, Rolnik notes that typical economic tools produce
zero public return or worse. High quality early care and education and
early intervention which uses a two-generation model, more than pays
for itself. Equally importantly, Head Start and Early Head Start also
generate and support family experiences in which children and families
are valued. Within Wisconsin, communities and schools are strengthened
by the children and families who have participated in Head Start and
Early Head Start. It is our sincere hope that more children and
families gain access to high quality early childhood services to
reinforce and strengthen their goals for there children and their
families!
Thank you for your support of our children and families.
Respectfully,
Lilly Irvin-Vitela, MCRP,
Head Start Graduate.
charisse daniels
Dear Honorable Senator Baldwin, I am writing to you today to
express my sincere gratitude and appreciation for Head Start. My name
is Charisse and I am a proud Head Start Parent. I decided to enroll my
son Rowan in the program at the age of 4. At first, it was a way for me
to help foster a love of learning and make sure a bright mind could
continue to grow although I could not afford child care. Previous to
enrollment, I'd just lost my job. My fiance was unemployed. In addition
to my son, we also had a 6-month-old daughter, Riley. It was difficult
to make ends meet.
After a few months in Head Start I began to see a change. My son
began to meet or exceed his grade level expectations. Not only that,
but my family dynamic began to change. Through Head Start, not only was
my son excelling, my family was making progress toward financial
stability. With all of the resources and referrals we were given, we
were finally able to live up to our true potential. My fiance found a
job. Although I'm a stay-at-home mom, I found my calling in early
childhood education and will be pursuing my degree in the near future.
It gave us a renewed sense of confidence. Personally, I believe it is
because of the support we received from Head Start that gave us such a
boost in confidence and the environment of our home made it possible
for us to succeed.
I am so very grateful for the program and the work that they do.
Head Start has given my family so much more than I could have hoped
for.
Sincerely,
Charisse Daniels,
Local Policy Council Chairperson,
CESA 2, Jefferson County Head Start; Wisconsin Head Start Parent;
Wisconsin Head Start Association Board of Directors.
February 4, 2014.
joan mrkvicka
Dear Senator Tammy Baldwin: I have been a family child care
provider for over 22 years and I just wanted to let you know the value
of quality early child care and the means to get that for parents.
There will always be grandmas available to babysit the children;
however, the pre-K and kindergarten grades in elementary schools are
getting the brunt of that. Many children in our community receive
quality early child care and preschool from birth, but many others do
not. It is essential for families that cannot afford a quality early
childhood environment for their children to have access to a program
for the children to be able to ``catch up'' to the rest of the children
as they begin their education. I am glad 4-K is now an option for
families in our community.
The other programs that I am thankful for and have participated in
as a family child care provider and educator are the TEACH Wisconsin
Scholarships and the REWARD program offered through WECA. While I have
a degree in another field, it was not Early Childhood. After being in
the field for so many years, I did not feel it necessary to go back to
school for that degree. I also did not have the funds to go back to
college. When I found out about the REWARD program, it gave me an
incentive to further my early childhood education. Through the use of
the TEACH scholarships and many awesome early childhood professional
mentors, I completed the Administrators Credential and the Infant
Toddler Credential for another 33 college credits in the field of Early
Childhood. I was then able to get a much higher REWARD!!
I am married with a family to support, but I see this as a great
benefit to so many younger adults starting out in the field of early
childhood. Trying to buy books, pay tuition, afford rent and put food
on their table is very hard while working. Through the TEACH
scholarship program they not only get a portion of their tuition paid
for, but books and release time, in addition to a bonus or higher wage
after completion.
This is a great and needed program in our community and I see many
happy outcomes running around every day in my home as the beneficiaries
of getting a higher quality care and early childhood education.
Sincerely,
Joan Mrkvicka,
Joan's Tot Spot,
2418 Dahlk Circle,
Verona, WI 53593.
Prepared Statement of the American Public Human Services Association
(APHSA) and the National Association of State Child Care Administrators
(NASCCA)
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander and Honorable Members of
the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on behalf
of the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and the State
child care administrators that it represents, we respectfully submit
this statement for the record regarding the Senate hearing on February
6th entitled ``Supporting Children and Families through Investments in
High-Quality Early Education.''
APHSA is a nonprofit, bipartisan organization representing State
and local human service professionals for more than 80 years. APHSA
serves State child care administrators through its affiliate, the
National Association of State Child Care Administrators (NASCCA). We
thank Congress for supporting early learning programs through the
Fiscal Year 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 113-76). This
funding moves States in a positive direction. It provides the necessary
tools to assist States in their collaborative efforts to achieve
positive outcomes for children and their families.
The hearing called attention to the multiple Federal programs
serving the early care and education needs of children, which can often
be viewed as duplicative, overlapping and too fragmented. We have a
workable, bipartisan, solutions-focused blueprint for achieving better,
more efficient and sustainable outcomes for low-income children and
their families.
APHSA's policy initiative, Pathways: The Opportunities Ahead for
Human Services, was developed in coordination with cabinet-level
commissioners of health and human services agencies, along with
administrators and program directors from States and counties across
the country. The outcomes we seek--and that a revitalized system can
achieve--include gainful employment and independence; stronger and
healthier families, adults and communities; and sustained well-being of
children and youth. We know these outcomes can be produced far more
effectively, sustainably and efficiently in a transformed human
services system. Child care and other early education programs make
positive contributions to a broader human services transformation
effort. However, in many ways they and other programs remain limited in
their ability to contribute to the sustained outcomes that APHSA
envisions in Pathways.
The Pathways vision involves a fully integrated health and human
services system that operates a seamless information exchange, shared
services, and a consumer-focused benefits and services delivery system.
Public human services must move in new directions--down new pathways--
if we are to meet increased demand for assistance at a time of tight
budgets and heightened public expectations for effective outcomes in
the work we do. Our solutions require changing health and human
services in a way that focuses on the needs of people rather than
compliance with bureaucratic outputs. This requires a new commitment to
outcomes over process, and a shared investment among Federal and State
partners.
Our recommendations include the following:
Sustainable Federal resources must be provided for States to
promote innovation leading to a transformative system and positive
outcomes for children and families. Such resources are essential to
make the best use of available funds and encourage the use of
integrated State systems of health and human services, synchronized
data applications, and streamlined Federal data reporting cycles and
requirements. We strongly support cross-cutting approaches that reach
across multiple systems and strive for collective, robust results.
These systems should be supported by the flexible use of funds and
facilitate far more effective outcomes with the resources we have
available. States must have the ability to blend Federal, State and
local dollars across government agencies and their programs to provide
a solid, sustainable foundation for these innovations to grow and
thrive. The flexible use of Federal dollars can also help State
agencies tap into private resources and blend them with existing
dollars to support these efforts. Soliciting buy-in from external
stakeholders is essential in this process. This would amplify State
efforts to collaborate, coordinate, and shift costs across multiple
systems and sectors in order to produce robust results. States'
inability to move funding across programs and among systems hinders
their ability to innovate and meet children and families' service
needs. We must be able to take advantage of such flexible approaches in
this difficult economic and political environment.
For example, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human
Services recently awarded six additional States a total of $280 million
in Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT ELC) funds to improve
access and build a statewide system of high-quality early learning and
childhood development. These States will join the 14 existing States
participating in the first and second round of funding opportunities,
initially released in 2011. RTT ELC joins the current list of cross-
cutting, ground-breaking innovations supporting a transformative agenda
in government. However, APHSA and NASCCA believe the RTT ELC program
should be a nationwide effort touching all 50 States, tribal government
agencies and U.S. territories and not limited to a few States competing
for a small pool of funds.
These funding opportunities build on and help strengthen the
capacity of existing programs. They promote school readiness for
children while cultivating partnerships among public, private and
community-based sectors aimed at achieving more efficient use of
resources and maximizing impact. Such initiatives need to be fully
funded and sustained overtime in order to see tangible results and a
solid return on investment.
Because CCDBG is a flexible block grant, there are several
approaches that Congress can take to support and maximize these
efforts. CCDBG's reauthorization can be a vehicle that helps move this
agenda forward. We recommend adjusting CCDBG funds to keep pace with
inflation using the consumer price index. The flexibility within CCDBG
must also be preserved to implement these types of innovations. APHSA
and NASCCA's recommendations for reauthorization can be found here:
http://www.aphsa-nascca.org/content/dam/NASCCA/PDF%20DOC/Home/
CCDBGReauthorizationPolicyBrief.pdf.
Rules, regulations, and laws must be updated and made more flexible
to account for political contexts and practical considerations of
timeframes, costs, and workforce issues. For decades, systems and data
bases have been narrowly designed to meet the needs of program
``silos'' using individual data sets with different definitions. They
provide a poor fit for the use of innovation in modern technology or
interagency data sharing in real time. Health and human services
agencies offer a wide array of supports to a large and diverse
population. In many situations, individuals need more than one service
or benefit. However, the pressures of increased demand and declining
resources have created roadblocks for States. An integrated,
coordinated system of care would address these challenges, but will
require robust reforms and a shared investment.
This shift in our paradigm also requires States to embrace the use
of timely, reliable data. Electronic data sharing across systems and in
real time requires standardization and the use of modern and updated
technology. States can use these approaches to improve information
exchanges across programs, identify service gaps and inform evidence-
based practices.
Through enhanced funding opportunities within the Affordable Care
Act and a time-limited waiver of normal cost-allocation requirements,
States are able to take advantage of some of these innovative
approaches. APHSA's National Workgroup on Integration (NWI) has
developed guidance for States on the need for horizontal linkages of
health and human services along with an interoperability and
integration continuum.
NWI has published several guidance documents, including: Governance
and Technology Guidance for integrated health and human services and a
toolkit for States in maximizing the A-87 cost allocation exception.
These resources assist States in streamlining and connecting clients
with the appropriate services; aligning eligibility and program
standards; building interoperable information and technology systems;
and strengthening program integrity. We encourage cross-cutting
approaches like these and have taken critical action steps bringing
together Federal, State, non-profit and private industry partners to
support States in these efforts. The CCDF program is critical to the
NWI work. There are numerous benefits to aligning CCDF eligibility
standards with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid programs. CCDF
administrators recognize that strategies that minimize agency burden
and expand and improve access to child care subsidy and other supports
for low-income children and families are critical at this time. CCDBG
also does not currently provide for a specific systems earmark to
support States in improving program integration and integrity.
Therefore, CCDF Administrators embrace these integrative efforts.
Processes for reviewing and identifying waste and fraud should also
be efficient, and methodologies for calculating improper payments must
be based on measurements that accurately reflect States' work. Program
integrity and accountability standards should focus on outcomes, not
outputs, and should gather reliable information needed to design and
improve effective systems. In this current environment, States are
pressured to meet restrictive Federal requirements, and this in turn
has diminished States' ability to be innovative and outcome-driven in
their approaches to meet the service needs of families. NASCCA and
another APHSA affiliate, the National Association for Program
Information and Performance Measurement, have identified areas within
the CCDF program where waste, fraud and improper payments can be
reduced and have collaborated with HHS on these efforts. This Federal-
State partnership must continue to make the necessary improvements
within our current delivery system.
Support the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) 2012 annual
report recommendation regarding opportunities to reduce duplication,
overlap and fragmentation in Federal Government programs (GAO-12-
342SP). GAO recommended that HHS and DOE extend their coordination
efforts to other Federal agencies supporting early learning. This
includes the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Justice, Labor, and
Housing and Urban Development, as well as the General Services
Administration and other agencies. GAO's recommendation calls for HHS
and DOE to follow through with their plans to include these agencies in
an interdepartmental working group. Currently, there are
interdepartmental efforts within DOE and HHS to improve the school
readiness needs of low-income children. APHSA and NASCCA remain
essential partners in this work and encourage strengthening the
Federal-State partnership. APHSA and its affiliate members have also
been included in HHS's strategic plan for fiscal years 2004-9 and
succeeding years to help identify the similarities and differences in
program goals, objectives and target populations that tend to overlap
or be complementary. Being a part of the conversation helps ensure that
resources are being used effectively and efficiently. HHS has worked in
consultation with APHSA, its affiliates, and other State associations
and partners in the development of these common goals and objectives.
We support GAO's recommendation and encourage the expansion of these
activities to other agencies.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit our comments and for your
interest in examining the investment of quality early education and
care. We look forward to a full reauthorization of CCDBG and thank the
Senate HELP Committee for its efforts. If you have any questions,
please contact Rashida Brown at (202) 682-0100 x225 or
[email protected].
Sincerely,
Tracy L. Wareing,
Executive Director, APHSA.
Julie Ingersoll,
Chair, NASCCA.
Prepared Statement of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander, and distinguished
members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions:
The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) commends you for
coordinating a hearing on early childhood education and appreciates the
opportunity to submit written testimony. This discussion is a positive
step toward understanding the importance of early childhood development
and securing critically needed investments to ensure that all children,
especially low-income children, are given a strong start and enter
kindergarten ready to learn. As you consider ways that Congress can
help children get an early start on the pathway to success, we
encourage you to recognize the critical role that early childhood
facilities play in preparing young children for achievement in school
and in life, and urge you to ensure that Federal policies adequately
finance the acquisition, construction, and improvement of these spaces.
about lisc
Established in 1979, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(LISC) is a national nonprofit with Community Development Financial
Institution (CDFI) designation, dedicated to helping community
residents transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy places of
choice and opportunity--good places to work, do business and raise
children. LISC mobilizes corporate, government and philanthropic
support to provide local community development organizations with
loans, grants and equity investments; local, statewide and national
policy support; and technical and management assistance.
LISC has local offices in 30 cities and partners with 60 different
organizations serving rural communities throughout the country. We
focus our activities across five strategic community revitalization
goals:
Expanding Investment in Housing and Other Real Estate;
Increasing Family Income and Wealth;
Stimulating Economic Development;
Improving Access to Quality Education; and
Supporting Healthy Environments and Lifestyles.
For more than three decades, LISC has developed programs and raised
investment capital to help local groups revive their neighborhoods.
Because we recognize the link between human opportunity and social and
economic vitality, we have spent the last 17 years working to bring
high quality early care and education settings to low-income
neighborhoods where children enter the world at high risk for negative
outcomes. Through our signature early childhood program, the Community
Investment Collaborative for Kids (CICK), LISC has invested $48 million
in planning and developing 184 new facilities serving 20,000 children
in more than 65 low-income urban and rural neighborhoods across the
country.
overview
Early childhood is a critical development period. Research shows
that a complex interplay between genetics and environment profoundly
influences how children grow physically, socially, and emotionally.
Investments in high quality early childhood programs can help promote
healthy development and strong communities. Those active in community
revitalization believe without question, that early care and education
programs are essential parts of every neighborhood--they prepare young
children for success in school and life, support working parents, and
improve family well-being.
Regrettably, many families--particularly those who are low-income
or in rural areas--lack access to the stable, high-quality early
childhood centers that parents need to maintain gainful employment and
children need to grow and thrive. Additionally, while there is
appropriate focus on the need for high quality curriculum and qualified
teachers, the physical environment is an essential feature that is
often overlooked.
In this testimony, we highlight the important role that physical
environments play in supporting the quality of early learning programs
and healthy early childhood development and encourage Congress to
address the need for comprehensive early childhood facility policies.
background
Early Childhood is a Critical Development Period
Decades of research has shown that early life experiences are
extremely important to the social, emotional, and academic development
of children.\1\ Positive experiences promote healthy brain development
and behavior, while negative experiences undermine development--and, in
severe circumstances, permanently impair a child's nervous and immune
system, stunting healthy growth.\2\ High quality early care and
education is widely regarded as the single most effective intervention
to promote healthy development and close the academic achievement gap
for low-income children at risk for poor social and economic
outcomes.\3\ The data are clear: the quality of one's early childhood
experiences profoundly influence that person's future life trajectory.
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\1\ Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, Editors, From Neurons
to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development, National
Research Council Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press,
Washington, DC 20000.
\2\ National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.
``Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain.
Working Paper No. 3'' (2005) http://www.developingchild.net/pubs/wp/
Stress_Disrupts_Architecture_Developing_Brain.pdf. (Accessed June 17,
2009).
\3\ http://www.readynation.org/uploads//
20130919_ReadyNationVitalLinksLowResEndnotes
.pdf, Schweinhart, L.J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W.S.,
Belfield, C.R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime Effects: The High/Scope
Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.
And Reynolds, A.J., Temple, J.A., Robertson, D.L., & Mann, E.A. (2002).
Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-Parent
Centers. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty. And FPG Child
Development Center. (1999). Early Learning, Later Success: The
Abecedarian Study. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina.
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The Quality of Early Childhood Facilities Matters
While many factors contribute to program quality, the physical
environment is an essential feature that is often overlooked. The link
between the quality of buildings and the quality of programs tends to
be only vaguely understood and largely undocumented among child care
providers. Despite this inclination, evidence about the connection
between space and effectiveness has been found even when physical space
is not the focal point of the research undertaken. A study conducted at
the School for Young Children (SYC), a distinguished preschool program
housed at St. Joseph College in West Hartford, CT, provides a
compelling example.\4\
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\4\ Tony Proscio, Carl Sussman & Amy Gillman, Authors, Child Care
Facilities: Quality by Design, (2004). http://www.lisc.org/content/
publications/detail/815.
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Every State has a minimum adult-child ratio for licensed centers,
in large part because attention from nurturing adults is a prime
indicator of quality in child care programs. SYC is a highly regarded
preschool program with a more than ample staffing ratio; the program is
largely viewed as meeting if not exceeding minimum quality standards.
Yet, when a research team set out to monitor enrolled children's
contact with adults during free play time they found shocking results:
Only 3 percent of the children's time was spent engaged in meaningful
interactions with a teacher.
While the SYC executive director was digesting the researchers'
negative findings in order to develop a workable solution, her
organization moved to new accommodations. A routine followup test in
the new space immediately showed a strikingly higher result. Teacher-
child interactions increased to 22 percent. There had been no change in
the management, staff, or program, only the physical space. The new
space, which Bye had taken pains to design, was considerably roomier
and there were bathrooms, telephones, storage space, and other
logistical necessities in each classroom. Adults no longer had to leave
the room to escort children to the bathroom, retrieve or store
supplies, or take a phone call. Fewer distractions and interruptions
for adults naturally meant more time for children.
Both children and staff benefited from the new space configuration.
The more generous square footage allowed staff to configure each
classroom into well-defined areas for different activities. Children
were no longer crowded together into inadequate space and distracted by
one another, so they ran into conflicts less often, and had better play
experiences--making their interactions with adults and other children
more constructive. Teachers were able to use their time in a more
effective and rewarding way, resulting in higher morale and lower staff
turnover. Overall, the effect of the new space on the content of the
program was considerable and measurable--even when not a single change
had been made in the program itself.
Space matters: a facility's layout, size, materials and design
features can improve program quality and contribute positively to child
development while a poorly adapted and overcrowded environment
undermines it.\5\ Bathrooms adjacent to classrooms, accessible cubbies,
and child-sized sinks, counters, furnishings and fixtures increase
children's autonomy and competence while decreasing the demands on
teachers. Early learning centers with ample classrooms divided into
well-configured activity areas support uninterrupted self-directed pay
and exploration. The physical configuration of early care and education
spaces directly affect adult/child interaction and influence how
children grow and learn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ http://www.lisc.org/docs/publications/
2007_nieer_cick_facilities_brief.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The National Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC) acknowledges the importance of a quality environment in the
following statement:
``The physical environment sets the stage and creates the
context for everything that happens in any setting--a
classroom, a play yard, a multipurpose room. A high-quality
environment welcomes children; engages children in a variety of
activities; provides space for individual, small-group, and
large-group activities; and generally supports the program's
philosophy and goals. Ultimately, the physical environment must
convey values and messages about who is welcomed, what is
important, and what the beliefs are about how children learn.''
\6\
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\6\ http://www.naeyc.org/store/node/402.
What Facilities Experts Know
Although physical spaces play an important role in promoting
program quality and healthy development, it is rare to find high
quality facilities designed to meet the unique needs of very young
children, especially in low-income communities. Early childhood
specialists have long maintained that the physical environments where
learning takes place--and where young children spend the majority of
their waking hours--significantly influence the quality of early care
and education programs.
Facilities experts and those proficient in financing the design,
acquisition, construction, and improvement of early care and education
spaces concur and largely agree that:
Well-designed facilities enhance child development and
program quality;
An adequate supply of facilities is needed to support
rapidly increasing preschool education programs;
The quality and location of the facilities can encourage
enrollment and parent involvement;
Facilities can help promote a positive workplace in an
industry challenged to retain experienced teachers;
Child care program income, especially in low-income
communities, is typically not sufficient to cover the full cost of
delivering quality early education services and doesn't allow for the
added cost of constructing or improving appropriate facilities; and
Few centers have the experience or personnel to handle the
complexities of real estate development tasks and require specialized
technical assistance to address their facilities needs.
Early Childhood Facilities Financing Challenges
Despite what is known about the importance of the spaces where
learning takes place, there is no dedicated source of capital to help
early care and education programs develop well-designed facilities
suitable for our youngest learners. Programs serving low-income
communities are highly dependent on public operating revenues that
don't cover the cost of purchasing or renovating an appropriate
facility. Without a consistent and effective financing system or
capital subsidies, providers are left to pursue piecemeal approaches,
cobbling together small donations and grants from a variety of sources.
This prevents the early childhood field from addressing its physical
facility needs and creating the kind of environments that support high
quality programs.
Historically, private financial institutions have not made
significant infrastructure investments in early care and education--
particularly in economically distressed areas. Few mainstream banks,
credit unions, and lending institutions are willing to finance early
childhood facility projects, which tend to require relatively small,
complex loans often characterized by uncertain future funding for
repayment through government operating subsidies. The projects
generally have little to no equity, and limited collateral value. In
addition, private banks typically don't employ staff with specialized
knowledge of the child care sector, consequently they are unable to
understand the needs of child care or preschool centers and assist
program directors lacking experience with real estate development and
financing.
Certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI)
working in market niches that are underserved by traditional financial
entities are among the small number of organizations who have made
investments in early childhood physical spaces. They have a proven
track record in economically challenged regions and are experienced
with providing a unique range of financial products and services that
spur private investment in their target markets. Unfortunately, given
the limited funding available to CDFIs to carry out their comprehensive
mission, demand for early childhood facilities capital far outstrips
supply.
recommendations
As Congress considers ways to help children get an early start on
the pathway to success, we urge you to:
1. Recognize the critical role that early childhood facilities play
in preparing young children for achievement in school and in life.
Congress has the power to influence and support State and local early
childhood priorities. We believe that conversations about early care
and education should always acknowledge the significant impact of early
childhood physical settings on early learning.
2. Ensure that Federal policies adequately finance the acquisition,
construction, and improvement of early care and education spaces.
Currently, there is no dedicated source of funding for the acquisition,
construction, and improvement of early care and education spaces.
Additionally, the economic instability of the past 5 years has resulted
in very little investment in early childhood physical infrastructure.
Capital must be available in order for early care and education
providers to create high quality physical spaces that promote early
learning. We are encouraged by the national dialog on the importance of
investments in early childhood development, and request that you create
the supportive policy, regulatory, and funding environment that is
needed to enable the early care and education field to meet its
physical capital needs.
conclusion
As investments are made to increase access to preschool and child
care, attention must be paid to the physical environment where many
young children spend the majority of their waking hours. Without
support for facilities, programs will locate in the least expensive and
most readily available spaces--makeshift, donated, or surplus space
such as basements and storefronts or outdated classrooms for older
students that haven't been adapted for our youngest children and fall
far short of standards to support high quality programs.
We look forward to continuing conversations with you and your
staff. Our organization serves on the executive committee of the
National Children's Facilities Network (NCFN), a coalition of like-
minded nonprofit financial and technical assistance intermediaries
involved in planning, developing, and financing facilities for low-
income child care and early education programs. Both LISC and NCFN
would welcome an opportunity to serve as a resource. If you would like
additional information about our work, please contact Amy Gillman,
senior program director at (212) 455-9840, or [email protected], or
Nicole Barcliff, senior policy officer at (202) 739-9296 or
[email protected].
Thank you again for your leadership.
Prepared Statement of Matthew E. Melmed, Executive Director,
Zero To Three
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Alexander, and members of the
committee, thank you for holding this hearing on an issue that will
help determine the future competitiveness of our country: the need to
invest in early childhood education and care in America. As the
committee considers the Federal role in early learning programs that
help lay the foundation for success, I urge you to remember that this
foundation has its beginnings in the first days, weeks, and years of
life. Babies are born learning as their brain development proceeds at
an unparalleled pace. The foundational brain architecture on which all
learning that follows will rest, is shaped and molded by the quality of
the experiences and relationships young children have in the first 3
years of life. Therefore, if I have one message for the committee
members as you consider the direction of early childhood education, it
is ``Don't forget the babies!'' Learning happens from the start, and so
should our investments.
ZERO TO THREE's mission is to promote the health and development of
all infants and toddlers. The organization was founded 35 years ago by
an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners who came
together to share and enhance their work with the latest research on
how young children learn and how brains are built starting at birth. It
is this research and how it can be applied in policies related to early
learning that we draw on for our comments today.
summary of major points
Early brain development during the infant-toddler years
lays the foundation on which will rest all later architecture for
higher-level functioning. Children who face adverse experiences in
infancy and toddlerhood can fall behind before their second birthday--
long before they reach pre-Kindergarten age.
Research has shown proven strategies to intervene early
and promote positive development, but quality services for infants,
toddlers, and their families are lacking.
Early learning policy should be built as brains are--from
the bottom up, starting with outreach to pregnant women and continuing
with comprehensive services that reach the youngest children and their
families where they are, in their homes or in child care settings.
More resources are needed for early care and learning
programs and especially for those focused on the youngest children: the
Federal Government plays the predominant role in funding infant-toddler
services, but devotes only about $4 billion a year to their early care
and learning even though almost half of all children under three live
in low-income families.
the infant-toddler years lay the foundation for all later learning
Babies are born with billions of neurons. These neurons start to
form connections, or synapses, at a rate of 700 every second to
organize the brain for important functions.\1\ Synaptic formation for
critical functions peaks early, in the first year of life for hearing,
sight, and language and soon after for cognitive and social-emotional
functioning. This doesn't mean we don't continue learning and creating
connections in our brain--of course we do. But our earliest
``learning'' comes from the experiences that reinforce--or fail to
reinforce--the first important connections within the brain, thus
determining if the foundation for later higher-level functioning will
be strong or fragile.
Babies learn within the context of their earliest relationships
with trusted adults--usually with parents, but also with other close
caregivers. As babies, the way we are held, talked to and cared for
teaches us about who we are and how we are valued. This profoundly
shapes who we will become. Nurturing relationships foster strong
social-emotional development, which must go hand in hand with cognitive
and physical development. Emotions drive early learning. Social-
emotional characteristics such as persistence, the ability to forge
relationships, cope with frustration, feel pride in accomplishments,
and cooperate with peers are the skills that will carry children to
success in school and all through life.
This period of marvelous development is also one of great
vulnerability. Babies who do not receive the positive experiences they
need for strong development in the first few years, who do not have the
protective relationships that can buffer them from adverse experiences,
can fall behind quickly. These adverse experiences--such as poverty,
maltreatment, maternal depression, substance abuse, or environmental
deprivation such as lack of heat or housing instability--can create
persistent stress that, if not alleviated with positive early supports
for babies and parents, becomes toxic to the developing brain.
Disparities among different socio-economic groups in areas such as
language appear as early as the first year of life.\2\ By age two,
disparities across a wide range of cognitive and social-emotional
indicators are clear.\3\ Infants and toddlers who experience early
adversity are more likely to experience developmental delays and
disabilities.\4\ Unquestionably, young children fall behind long before
they reach the age of formal pre-Kindergarten programs.
intervening early promotes positive development but quality infant-
toddler services are lacking
The good news is that program evaluation research shows effective
strategies to improve the lives of at-risk infants and toddlers and
their families. Proven approaches to supporting early development,
several beginning in the important prenatal period, can help buffer
toxic stress, promote stronger social-emotional foundations, and
improve cognitive and language development, as well as promote family
self-sufficiency. However, such services are in short supply.
Early Head Start has been found through rigorous
evaluation to have positive impacts on children's cognitive and
language development, approaches to learning, and reducing behavior
problems. Parents were more involved with their children's
development--and remained engaged after their children left the
program--provided more support for learning, and had reduced risk of
depression.\5\ Less than 4 percent of eligible infants and toddlers are
able to participate in Early Head Start.
Evidence-Based Home Visiting, depending on the model used,
has positive impacts in one or more domains, including child health,
child development and school readiness, maternal health, reductions in
child maltreatment, improved family economic self-sufficiency, and
positive parenting practices.\6\ Yet, in 2011/2012, nationwide only
13.6 percent of pregnant women and parents with infants and toddlers
received a home visit, although individual States ranged from 3.7
percent in Texas to 30.6 percent in Minnesota.\7\ The Maternal, Infant,
and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program is helping States
reach more at-risk families with young children with evidence-based
services, but will expire at the end of this year if not reauthorized
and funded.
High-Quality Child Care has been shown to produce positive
effects in the areas of early learning, cognitive and language
development, and school achievement, as well as positive associations
with early social and emotional development.\8\ Positive effects can
endure into the adult years, particularly for children from the poorest
home environments.\9\ Children under age 3 represent 28 percent of
children served through the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
Nationally, half of all requests for child care referrals are for
infant-toddler care,\10\ but CCDBG serves only 1 in 6 eligible
children. State reimbursement rates often are too low to ensure parents
can access quality services, even if they can find them.
The quality of child care for infants and toddlers is a particular
concern. For 6 million infants and toddlers, child care is an important
environment influencing their early development. We urge the committee
not to dismiss this setting as irrelevant to early learning and
education simply because it also serves an important function for
adults by enabling parents to work. Babies' brains are shaped by the
experiences and relationships that come their way. They do not know
what adults label these experiences. It is up to us to ensure they are
of high quality.
National and State studies consistently raise concerns about the
quality of care infants and toddlers are receiving. National studies
have found that the majority of child care for infants and toddlers is
of fair to mediocre quality and only a small fraction is of high
quality. In fact, the most recent national study found of infants in
care, 75 percent of these were in low or mediocre quality care.\11\ For
infants in child care centers, quality was higher for those living in
poverty than for children living in near poverty--between 100 and 200
percent of the Federal poverty level.\12\ One study found care of good/
developmentally appropriate quality in just over 8 percent of infant/
toddler classrooms, as compared to nearly 24 percent of preschool
classrooms. Medium/mediocre quality care was found in 51 percent of
infant/toddler classrooms and poor quality in over 40 percent. In
preschool classrooms, medium/mediocre care was found in 66 percent and
poor quality in 10 percent.\13\ State studies bear out these findings.
A study of child care for Georgia's infants and toddlers found that
two-thirds of infant-toddler classrooms in child care centers \14\ and
75 percent of family child care providers \15\ provided care of poor
quality. Georgia has a robust pre-Kindergarten program, but babies and
toddlers who do not receive the strong developmental support they need
from the settings they are in early in life will truly find themselves
playing catch-up at age 3 or 4.
Paid parental leave is the first step in supporting positive
development. I also want to highlight for the committee another
important factor for getting children off to a good start in life: time
with their parents following birth or adoption. It takes several months
of focused attention to become a responsive caregiver to a young child,
establishing a pattern that will influence the child's long-term
cognitive, social, and emotional development.\16\ Parental time off
facilitates the early detection of potential developmental delays at a
time when problems can be most effectively addressed and interventions
identified to minimize them.\17\ Yet most employed women and men do not
have access to paid parental leave that could help them afford to take
the time off needed to build that nurturing bond with their children.
build early learning policy from the bottom up
Early learning policy should be built as brains are, from the
bottom up. This means creating a continuum of services starting even
before birth and reaching the most vulnerable children and families as
early as possible. Approaching policy in this way, rather than starting
in the middle and working down as resources and inclination permit,
creates an unparalleled opportunity for true prevention policies that
promote positive, healthy development that will resonate throughout a
child's life, increasing the individual's well-being and future
contributions to society.
In systems terms, this translates into a continuum of quality
services starting at birth or during the prenatal period and continuing
through preschool--but it must start at the earliest possible
opportunity. Most people can envision a preschool setting and think
about how to expand access for more children. For infants and toddlers
we must ask a different question: How can we reach at-risk young
children wherever they are and support their parents and other
caregivers in giving them the very best developmental start? Thus the
early childhood system is not just a linear continuum. It is also a
broad web of services that must reach children and families at home, in
child care, and for very low-income children, in comprehensive settings
such as Early Head Start.
An often overlooked component of such a system is ensuring access
to early intervention services for infants and toddlers with
developmental delays or disabilities (funded at the Federal level
through Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or
IDEA). These services must be viewed as an integral part of any early
care and learning system with the goal of giving all children the
opportunity to reach their potential. Intervening early can help
promote the success of all children by addressing developmental delays
and disabilities before they progress too far, reducing or eliminating
the need for costly special education services later on. Early
identification and intervention can improve cognitive and social
skills, lead to higher achievement and greater independence, and
promote family competence and well-being.\18\ Viewing early
intervention in this manner is especially important when discussions
about pre-Kindergarten programs look to reducing the need for special
education services as an outcome. Achieving this goal is unlikely if
children are not reached early, when their delays or disabilities are
first detectable and more easily addressed. Moreover, these discussions
about pre-Kindergarten and other early learning programs usually focus
on reaching the most at-risk families, the same families in which
children have a higher incidence of developmental delays and
disabilities.
The work of Nobel Laureate in Economics James Heckman bears out the
wisdom of a policy approach that starts with the youngest children. In
looking at the rates of return to human capital investment at different
ages, he found the greatest return in programs targeted in the earliest
years.\19\ His economic model also shows that children who have
received optimal support and services during the birth to 3 years can
expect greater benefits from preschool interventions than children who
have not had such advantages.\20\
Professor Heckman is not alone. In 2012, in its report Unfinished
Business: Continued Investment in Child Care and Early Education is
Critical to Business and America's Future, the Committee for Economic
Development updated its recommendations on early childhood education to
``recommend meeting the comprehensive early learning and development
needs of children as early as possible in their lives, especially for
those whose healthy development is most at risk.'' They noted that in
the past, ``CED has called for Federal and State funding sufficient to
ensure access to high-quality preschool for all. We now amend that
recommendation to include the range of high-quality early childhood
programs and services that have demonstrated effectiveness for children
from birth to age 5.'' [emphasis added] Citing the strategies of
reaching pregnant women and parents of infants and toddlers through
programs such as home visiting, developmental screening, high quality
child care, and expansion of Early Head Start, the report urged that
``Business leaders should tell policymakers those strategies are just
as important to them as preschool.'' \21\
invest greater federal resources, provide leadership on infants
and toddlers
We believe the resources now invested in the early care and
learning of our Nation's children are not adequate to provide the broad
access and high quality needed if this vital period of learning is to
create the strong foundation needed for later education to be most
beneficial. The most critical point for infants and toddlers is to
understand both the overwhelming importance and the relative scarcity
of Federal funding for early care and learning programs for this age
group. The Urban Institute estimates that in 2008 the Federal
Government accounted for 78 percent of all public funding for this
category of spending on children under age 3 ($3 billion Federal
compared with $.9 billion State funding). For children ages 3 to 5,
Federal funds accounted for only 22 percent ($13.4 billion Federal
compared with $47.3 billion State).\22\ Clearly, States are not
investing in the youngest children, and Federal support is at a minimal
level, especially when we consider that almost half of all infants and
toddlers live below 200 percent of the Federal poverty level.\23\ In
2011, less than $4 billion in Federal funds were spent on the early
care and learning of our babies and toddlers.\24\ We believe the
Federal Government must take the lead to ensure access to high quality
services and provide incentives for States to invest as well.
We understand there is concern about the GAO findings on Federal
programs that address child care and early learning in some way. We
believe only a handful of these programs provide substantial support
for early care and education, and they were developed to meet different
purposes or function within different contexts that allow for
flexibility at the State or local level. Resources can always be used
more efficiently. But that does not mean that an underfunded system--
one in which the Federal Government spends roughly $330 per capita on
early learning for infants and toddlers when almost 6 million live in
low-income families--can be expected to give the youngest children the
strong start they need to avoid or minimize learning gaps. Such a
system makes their efforts to fulfill their potential a greater
struggle than any child should have to undertake and places our future
competitiveness as a nation at risk.
ZERO TO THREE strongly supports the Strong Start for America's
Children Act with its vision for a high-quality birth-to-five system.
We believe the funding for such a system must be equitably distributed
across the continuum so that infants and toddlers do not spend
important years developmentally waiting for access to quality supports
for their earliest learning. Therefore, we particularly appreciate the
recognition of the needs of infants and toddlers in the robust funding
the bill proposes for partnerships between Early Head Start and child
care. The infant-toddler set-aside option in the pre-Kindergarten
portion of the bill also would give States the incentive to build more
high-quality child care programs needed to give infants and toddlers
the strong developmental start they need to take full advantage of
their preschool experience. As the bill moves forward, we urge the
committee to require States to use these funds for the youngest
children.
Congress should invest in our Nation's young children and work with
States to build services and systems that ensure every child has the
opportunity to reach his or her potential and promote positive
development, not playing catch-up:
Establish a national paid family leave program so that
more parents could afford to spend the first weeks and months of their
babies lives establishing the all-important bonds that are the first
steps in the social and emotional development that is the bedrock of
putting children on the road to school readiness.
Expand Early Head Start and using its proven approach as a
platform--through EHS-Child Care partnerships as well as State
establishment of high quality child care programs--to raise the quality
of early care and learning services and give many more infants and
toddlers the chance for a strong start instead of falling behind.
Ensure access to early intervention for infants and
toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities by adequately
funding Part C of IDEA.
Invest in high quality child care and emphasizing the
development of a quality infrastructure--high standards and a well-
trained infant-toddler workforce--so that the youngest children have
access to the best care from the start, long before they enter pre-
Kindergarten.
Ensure access for 3- and 4-year-olds to high-quality pre-
Kindergarten services, giving families the choice of diverse settings
to meet their needs.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide ZERO TO THREE's insights
to the committee. We stand ready to work with you on policies that put
our babies and toddlers on the path to school readiness and successful
lives.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* For more information on ZERO TO THREE's recommendations for
policies for children under age 3, see Putting Infants and Toddlers on
the Path to School Readiness: A Policy Agenda for the Administration
and the 113th Congress. http://www.zerotothree.org/public-policy/
Federal-policy/2013-Federal-policy-agenda.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
End Notes
1. Center on the Developing Child, ``Child Development Fact
Sheet.'' Harvard University. http://developingchild.harvard.edu/.
2. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the
Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H.
Brookes, 1995.
3. National Center for Education Statistics, Table 120:
``Percentage of Children Demonstrating Specific Cognitive Skills, Motor
Skills, and Secure Emotional Attachment to Parents at About 2 Years of
Age, by Selected Characteristics: 2003-04.'' In Digest of Education
Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, January 25, 2013, http://
nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_120.asp.
4. T. Halle, N. Forry, E. Hair, et al., Disparities in Early
Learning and Development: Lessons From the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study--Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Washington, DC: Child Trends, 2009.
5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for
Children and Families, Making a Difference in the Lives of Infants and
Toddlers and Their Families: The Impacts of Early Head Start.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002.
6. Elizabeth DiLauro and Lisa Shreiber, Reaching Families Where
They Live: Supporting Parents and Child Development Through Home
Visiting. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE, 2012.
7. Department of Health and Human Services, Data Resource Center
for Child & Adolescent Health. The National Survey of Children's
Health, 2011/2012. http://childhealthdata.org/browse/survey/
results?q=2503&r=1.
8. J. Ronald Lally, Abbey Griffin, Emily Fenichel, et al., Caring
for Infants and Toddlers in Groups: Developmentally Appropriate
Practice. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE, 2003.
9. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, From
Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development.
Jack Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds. Washington, DC: National
Academy Press, 2000.
10. Child Care Aware of America. Child Care in America: 2013 State
Fact Sheets. Alexandria, VA: Child Care Aware of America. Accessed at
http://www.naccrra
.org/sites/default/files/default_site_pages/2013/
2013_state_fact_sheets_
national_summary_082013.pdf.
11. K. Flanagan and J. West. (2004). Children Born in 2001: First
Results From the Base Year of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,
Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) (NCES 2005-036). U.S. Department of Education,
Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.
12. NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (1997). Poverty and
patterns of child care. In G.J. Duncan & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.),
Consequences of growing up poor (PP. 100-31). New York: Russell Sage
Foundation. www.childcareresearch.org/location/ccrca929.
13. S. Helburn, M.L. Culkin, J. Morris, N. Mocan, C. Howes, L.
Phillipsen, D. Bryant, R. Clifford, D. Cryer, E. Peisner-Feinberg, M.
Burchinal, S.L. Kagan, and J. Rustici. Cost, quality, and child
outcomes in child care centers: Public report. Denver: University of
Colorado, Department of Economics. 1995. www.childcare
research.org/location/ccrca1459.
14. K.L. Maxwell, D.M. Early, D. Bryant, S. Kraus, K. Hume, and G.
Crawford. Georgia study of early care and education: Child care center
findings--Executive summary. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute, 2009.
15. K.L. Maxwell, D.M. Early, D. Bryant, S. Kraus, and K. Hume.
Georgia study of early care and education: Family child care findings--
Executive summary. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute, 2010.
16. Edward Zigler, Susan Muenchow, and Christopher J. Ruhm, Time
Off With Baby: The Case for Paid Care Leave. Washington, DC: ZERO TO
THREE, 2012.
17. Ibid.
18. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. From
Neurons to Neighborhoods.
19. James Heckman. ``Investing in Disadvantaged Young Children is
Good Economics and Good Public Policy.'' Statement Presented to the
Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. 110th Congress, First
Session, June 27, 2007.
20. James Heckman. ``The Case for Investing in Disadvantaged
Children.'' In First Focus. Big Ideas for Children: Investing in Our
Nation's Future. Washington, DC: First Focus. 2008.
21. Committee for Economic Development. Unfinished Business:
Continued Investment in Child Care and Early Education is Critical to
Business and America's Future. Washington, DC: Committee for Economic
Development. 2012, p. 26.
22. Sara Edelstein, Julia Isaacs, Heather Hahn, and Katherine
Toran. How Do Public Investments in Children Vary with Age? Washington,
DC: Urban Institute. 2012.
23. ZERO TO THREE. National Baby Facts: Infants, Toddlers, and
Their Families in the United States. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.
http://www.zerotothree
.org/public-policy/pdf/national-baby-facts.pdf.
24. Edelstein, et al. How Do Public Investments in Children Vary
with Age?
Response of Hirokazu Yoshikawa to Questions of Senator Murray
and Senator Casey
senator murray
Question 1. We know from research on early brain research and child
development that development and learning start from birth, and even
before, and that babies and toddlers start falling behind well before
they reach preschool. The National Early Childhood Longitudinal Study
shows that disparities in child outcomes are evident at 9 months and
grow larger by 24 months of age--well before children enter preschool.
These disparities exist across cognitive, social, behavioral, and
health outcomes. Yet, people are often puzzled about how public
programs can address the early development and learning of infants and
toddlers.
How do we raise the importance of reaching babies and toddlers and
preventing these gaps from forming, and what should our strategy be to
reach them wherever they are?
Answer 1. Evidence-based interventions for families with children
from birth to preschool age can be implemented beginning at birth in
systems that engage a large proportion of all newborns, such as
primary-care systems and well-child visits. Some models exist for how
to support families in these systems. In addition, efforts must be
strengthened to provide the kind of intensive, onsite professional
development that has proven so successful in preschool education to
caregivers in different forms of out-of-home child care, birth to age
5.
Question 2. How has the research demonstrated that high-quality,
literacy-rich environments beginning in early childhood is one of the
most important factors in determining school readiness and success,
high school graduation, college access and success and workforce
readiness?
Answer 2. In the first years of life, a combination of
responsiveness in parenting and caregiving, cognitively stimulating
activities, and language-rich conversations that elicit vocalizations
and then language from the growing infant and toddler have powerful
effects in determining positive future outcomes. Responsiveness--the
``serve and return'' interaction in which infants' gestures, affect and
vocalization are responded to with nurturing communication from adults,
encouraging further communication from the child--is important
throughout, but particularly in the first year. As children's
capacities grow in toddlerhood and early childhood, a variety of
cognitively stimulating activities such as interactive play, songs,
interactive reading with picture books and then story books, and play
with toys and materials are important in promoting early learning.
senator casey
Question. In both your written remarks and your testimony during
the hearing, you referenced emerging evidence that coaching or
mentoring teachers on how to improve the quality of their teaching and
curricula can be extremely beneficial for students. In the Strong Start
Act, in my own legislation the Prepare All Kids Act, and in other
programs like Head Start and the CCDBG reauthorization we are working
on, we are starting to seriously address teacher quality issues: how we
can train and retain teachers with the knowledge of and expertise in
working with young children? Is the coaching/mentoring method you
discussed in your testimony replicable on a large scale?
Answer. The existing rigorous evaluations of coaching and mentoring
in preschool classrooms suggest the following: When coaches are skilled
not only in supporting evidence-based, outcome-focused curricula, but
also in general good teaching practice and classroom management, both
teachers and children can benefit. This approach has been replicated at
relatively large scale across entire cities (such as Boston). In
addition, in-classroom coaching has been implemented at wide scale at
the State level (e.g., New Jersey).
Response by John White to Questions of Senator Murray and Senator Casey
senator murray
Question 1. How does infant and toddler education fit into a
continuum of birth to five services and how can their needs best be
met?
Answer 1. As I discussed, Louisiana is currently implementing a
comprehensive ``birth-to-five system'' in which providers across all
settings work collaboratively to ensure high-quality programs through:
support for teachers, measuring and recognizing progress, and
establishing unified expectations for programs serving all children
including the State's youngest citizens. All elements of this system
reflect a ``birth-to-five'' scope, including standards, training, job-
embedded support for teachers and common enrollment. Ultimately
Louisiana will develop a new accountability or ratings system for all
publicly funded programs that will also cover the full ``birth to
five'' scope.
As part of implementation, local community pilots in the field will
develop unique, more nuanced approaches to support the teachers and
families of younger children. The State plans to learn from and support
the scaling of these practices.
Much of the capacity of the ``birth-to-five'' system relies on
developing a corps of early childhood teachers who are skilled at
teaching infants and toddlers. To that end the State is developing a
Birth to Kindergarten baccalaureate certificate/pathway. Currently the
State's certification includes 3-5 Early Interventionist and PreK-3
levels. Additional work is being done to design an Early Childhood
Professional Ancillary Certificate that would serve as a mechanism for
improved teacher credentialing primarily for those working in child
care which typically serves the State's largest populations of infants
and toddlers.
Question 2. In the allocation of public resources, how do we best
coordinate and integrate initiatives ranging from prenatal care to home
visiting to infant and toddler care to preschool? What is the best way
to break down the silos that impede cooperation, coordination, and
resource-sharing?
Answer 2. Until the passage of Act 3, State agencies and programs
were independent with varying goals, priorities and operations. This is
changing, and it is anticipated that this legislation will be the
catalyst for building long-term shared agendas and policy priorities.
As Community Network Pilots expand and move forward, the State will
have more information on how to build common agendas and policies both
at the State and local levels to ensure that infants and toddlers are
not forgotten in a system where more resources, support and people are
dedicated to serving 3- and 4-year-olds.
Inherent in this work is the development of a solid leadership
structure within each Community Network Pilot. Each Pilot establishes a
Leadership Team which is representative of all types of programs. The
State is working to support the development of effective Leadership
Teams where all partners have an equal share in the decisionmaking
responsibilities related to coordination of services and sharing of
resources.
Question 3. In the Fiscal Year 2010 Consolidated Appropriations
Act, Congress authorized the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy
Program. This Act provided $200 million for a comprehensive literacy
development and education program to advance literacy skills for
students from birth through grade 12. Georgia, Louisiana, Montana,
Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Texas all received grants through the
Department of Education for the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy
program.
As one of six recipients of the funds, how is Louisiana using this
funding to improve the quality of instruction for our youngest learners
in early childhood education settings?
Answer 3. Comprehensive early literacy services that begin at birth
and combine parent literacy, parent education, and child-focused
instruction;
Home visits to teach and encourage parents, relatives, and other
adults to talk with, read to, and work to build children's early
literacy skills through one-on-one reading and instruction;
Literacy coaches/teacher leaders who provide demonstration lessons
and co-teaching to support teacher development of early learning/
literacy standards and instructional concepts;
Early Childhood LETRS training (see: http://www.soprislearning.com/
professional-development/letrs-for-early-childhood-educators);
Preschool and K-3 reading curricula aligned to standards, including
the use of computer-assisted tutorials to meet the needs of individual
children;
Book distribution/reading programs linked to elementary schools,
community centers, doctors' offices and health clinics where you find
parents and children together;
Summer reading bus in ``high-need'' communities;
Imagination Library through United Way; and
Transitional activities for children and parents to visit
preschool, kindergarten, and first grade sites where children will
attend the following year.
Question 4. How can we best incorporate families and community
partners in early literacy activities?
Answer 4. Survey educators and families to determine needs,
interests, and ideas about partnering;
Develop and pass family friendly policies and laws (i.e., leaves of
absence for parent/caregivers to participate in schools or education-
related activities);
Provide professional development on family and community engagement
for faculties;
Offer training for parents and community stakeholders on effective
communications and partnering skills;
Provide better information on preschool/school policies and
procedures;
Use effective communication tools that address various family
structures and are translated into languages that parents/families
understand;
Hire and train school community liaisons who know the community
history, language and cultural background to contact parents and
coordinate activities; and
Collaborate with higher education institutions to infuse parent,
family, and community involvement into prep programs.
senator casey
Question 1. As you described, Louisiana has gone to great lengths
to improve coordination between early learning programs in the State.
Has Louisiana taken any steps to promote greater alignment between
these same early learning providers and the K-12 system?
Answer 1. Yes. We believe strongly in Louisiana that aligning a
birth to 12 system is fundamental to achieving the outcomes for
students we want.
Historically, we are able to demonstrate through our State-funded
PreK program (LA 4) that students benefit at least through the 8th
grade from high-quality PreK. This continues to demonstrate to K-12
superintendents the value of early childhood.
Through the early childhood network pilots, superintendents have
been a key participant as well as other traditional district staff. The
work connects child care providers, head start operators, and PreK
teachers, staff, and principles together under one vision. This is
allowing the K-12 system, particularly in elementary grades, to better
align its work and planning from PreK up through higher grades.
Through the State department's field support teams, we work to be
consistent in our support and messaging to districts. The same staff
that support K-12 initiatives are also supporting the early childhood
work.
The early childhood pilots also build on the work of SRCL grants,
in those districts that are SRCL participants, by strengthening the
relationships with early childhood providers and raising the bar on
expectations for learning and development outcomes for children at all
ages.
Response of Charlotte Brantley to Questions of Senator Murray
Question 1. In 2012, in its report Unfinished Business: Continued
Investment in Child Care and Early Education is Critical to Business
and America's Future, the Committee for Economic Development updated
its recommendations on early childhood education to ``recommend meeting
the comprehensive early learning and development needs of children as
early as possible in their lives, especially for those whose healthy
development is most at risk.'' They noted that in the past,
``CED has called for Federal and State funding sufficient to
ensure access to high-quality preschool for all. We now amend
that recommendation to include the range of high-quality early
childhood programs and services that have demonstrated
effectiveness for children from birth to age five.''
They went on to exhort their constituency by citing reaching
pregnant women and parents of infants and toddlers through programs
such as home visiting, developmental screening, high quality child
care, and expansion of Early Head Start, saying ``Business leaders
should tell policymakers those strategies are just as important to them
as preschool.''
So the question is how can we give these strategies the importance
they deserve and avoid making infants and toddlers an afterthought?
Answer 1. Decades of scientific research has demonstrated the
critical importance of the first 3 years of life in the development of
the human brain. As stated by Zero to Three,
``A newborn's brain is about 25 percent of its approximate
adult weight. But by age 3, it has grown dramatically by
producing billions of cells and hundreds of trillions of
connections, or synapses, between these cells.''
It is imperative that we better educate policymakers, funders,
business leaders, parents, school districts, and early childhood
providers of the necessity of offering a good, healthy start to all our
children, beginning during pregnancy whenever possible. At a minimum,
we must ensure that all our children have a medical home starting at
birth, and that their parents have access to quality information and
supports as they nurture their infants and toddlers. For those with
deeper needs such as children having developmental delays, or parents
who need child care to support their employment, we must ensure
sufficient funding to support high quality home visiting and center-
based options, with competent and well-compensated staff.
Question 2. Studies of the quality of child care have consistently
found infant-toddler care overall to be of poor to mediocre quality.
Yet, 6 million children under age 3 spend some of their day in
childcare and it thus becomes an important setting for shaping their
earliest development. We often think of literacy as beginning when
children start to learn to read. But it actually starts in the early
communications stages, as infants. Studies show that gaps in language
abilities among children of different socio-economic status start to
emerge before the first birthday and widen so that by age three, the
gap is pronounced.
How can we better incorporate early language and literacy into
early care and learning programs starting at birth?
Answer 2. Substantive training in the foundations of early language
and literacy development is essential for all staff working in infant/
toddler child care and other early care/education settings. However,
traditionally our focus has been on preschool development and beyond.
We are finally beginning to recognize that the knowledge, skills and
abilities of a successful infant/toddler teacher differ in many
important ways from those required by a preschool or early elementary
teacher. Specific training for these individuals, and a broadened base
of knowledge in the field of how best to support our very youngest
learners is becoming more available in the mainstream, but concerted
effort is still needed in many parts of our early childhood system.
This area of knowledge and competency for teachers must be incorporated
into the content of courses required by State licensing authorities for
lead teachers in infant/toddler classrooms. In addition, as more school
districts begin to think about serving children in this age range
within their preschool programming, we have to incorporate this
specific area of knowledge into teacher licensing.
Question 3. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting
program was established in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act. This program facilitates collaboration and partnership at the
Federal, State, and community levels to improve health and development
outcomes for at-risk children through evidence-based home visiting
programs.
Can you describe the need for increased support for infants and
toddlers? Specifically, what role do you see home visiting programs
playing in child development? And what more do we need to be doing?
Answer 3. Home visiting is especially important in reaching low-
income families whose very young children are not enrolled in Early
Head Start or other high quality early childhood care and education
programs. A well-trained home visitor, using evidence-based models,
cannot only provide good information to a parent, but can also help
relieve the isolation often faced by young low-income parents of
infants and toddlers. In addition, a trusted home visitor can also play
a strong role in encouraging the parents/caregivers to make their own
plans for continuing their education and working toward the self-
sufficiency of their family. We must pay close attention to the
particular competencies home visitors need to be most effective, and
ensure these form the basis for training and for making hiring
decisions. Many families in more isolated communities, where these
services can be most beneficial, are very cautious about allowing
people from outside their community into their homes. It is often
essential to reach people from within such a community who are
interested in becoming trained as home visitors.
[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[all]