Federal Policy

Young Children Can’t Wait for Disaster Lessons to be Learned

Sara Mead — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:37:00 -0500

Early Ed Watch is pleased to feature this guest post by Catherine Graham Hildum. Hildum covered early childhood issues for the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families during the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and currently works with Linchpin Strategies, a policy consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita brought to light the lack of a federally coordinated mechanism for assisting young children in the wake of a disaster. FEMA estimated that more than 270,000 evacuees on the Gulf coast of the United States spent time in evacuation centers after the hurricanes. This figure does not specify the number of young children or account for all of the children displaced from their childcare and early education settings. All of the affected children had both short-term health and safety needs and longer-term safety, stability and mental health needs. During fall 2005 and after, disaster relief efforts focused on getting people back in safe housing, back to work and children back to school. What was missing from these efforts was attention to the critical role that appropriate care for young children plays in allowing adults to relocate, rebuild and work.

Unfortunately, too little has changed in the three years since Katrina. The federal Stafford Act, which authorizes federal disaster assistance, has been amended to ensure proper planning and care of pets, but there is still not a system in place for ensuring accurate information and coordinated services to assist children.

Recent disasters impacting young children

Newsweek reports that “our littlest evacuees” are still being overlooked. In September, Hurricane Ike swept through the Texas coast leaving tens of thousands of young children in its wake. The Houston Chronicle reported that Ike left 45,000 young children without childcare. Similarly, flooding devastated the Midwest this summer, affecting many families with young children. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 16 percent of licensed childcare providers suffered damages. Some progress has been made in ensuring children’s immediate safety in temporary shelters and rebuilding their security and the centers and preschools they attended. But much more remains to be done.

The Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute (ECI) has found that many states are unprepared to respond to the needs of young children in major disasters. In a report this August, they found that only 15 states require licensed childcare providers to have disaster preparedness plan in place. ECI’s research on capacity grew out of their leadership of the large public –private effort entitled “Rebuilding After Katrina” which has led to restoring child care capacity in Mississippi’s Gulf . Much work has been done at state, local and federal levels, but clearly greater efforts and coordination are required to keep children safe.

Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, policymakers had a difficult time estimating the number of very young children impacted by the storm. Because preschool-aged children spend time in a variety of early care and education settings—childcare centers, family care homes, part-day Head Start or preschool programs, and public pre-kindergarten, among others—local, state, and federal officials find tracking young children challenging even before a disaster strikes. Accounting for them following a disaster like Katrina can benearly impossible.

Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Community Action Agencies, Head Start Centers and other federally funded programs provided for thousands of refugees. Along with these programs, non-profit organizations, private donations and corporate assistance, and a multitude of volunteers in the region provided immediate recovery assistance. Federal Head Start programs received an infusion of funding to take in evacuee children, as well as increased flexibility in their eligibility guidelines to enable them to do so. Since childcare centers are not public institutions like schools, they are not eligible for immediate federal disaster assistance. Private institutions providing essential services such as power and water receive federal disaster assistance, but child care is not considered an essential service. The Gulf States were instead provided flexible federal funding and relaxed regulations to aid children served in childcare settings.

Katrina also highlighted the unique needs of infants and toddlers in the aftermath of a disaster. Cribs, diapers, adequate shelter and safe spaces for infants and toddlers were often lacking . Lessons about these unique needs proved instructive for helping children in recent disasters, but a broader coordinated effort is still lacking.

To address the clear need for more coordinated information and planning for children affected by disasters, Congress established the National Commission on Children and Disasters, which brings together experts in the fields of child development, safety, health and mental health and disaster preparedness to make policy recommendations for the federal government. The Commission met for the first time on October 14 and will have 16 months to complete its work. Unfortunately, the recommendations won’t be ready before the next hurricane season hits. In the meantime, federal, state, and local policymakers should begin implementing the following recommendations:

Improve data collection on young children and the programs and services where they spend the time. In order to effectively reach all children; local, state and federal officials must do a better job of collecting and coordinating data.
Build on existing programs such as Head Start to provide high-quality comprehensive services for children and their families in the aftermath of disasters. Integrate and coordinate programs in which children may be involved and include mental health services. Many states are already moving toward coordinated early childhood systems and these efforts should instruct disaster planning.
Coordinate efforts between local, state and federal entities, allowing local entities that know their communities and residents well to play a lead role in planning and recovery efforts.
Consider childcare an essential service for purposes of federal disaster relief. This will allow more immediate funding to flow to centers and allow parents to know their children are safe while they begin to rebuild, relocate, look for work or go back to work.

Researchers, advocates and policy makers will continue to write recommendations for assisting young children in disasters. I look forward to the Commission’s recommendations and to a coordinated federal plan to keep young children out of harm’s way.

--Catherine Graham Hildum

House Education Committee Advances Federal Support for Pre-K

Sara Mead — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:30:00 -0400

Earlier today we wrote about legislation that the District of Columbia passed last month to establish universal pre-k here in Washington, D.C. Today D.C.'s other legislative body--Congress--took a small step towards helping more states follow the District's example here.

The House Committee on Education and Labor today approved H.R. 3289, the PRE-K Act, sponsored by Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai'i), which creates a partnership between the federal government and the states to improve pre-k quality and access.

Hirono's bill gets it right by focusing on pre-k quality first and foremost. To be eligible to receive funding, states would have to have pre-k programs that meet certain quality standards--including standards for curriculum, class size, and teacher qualifications. States that don't already have such programs in place could also receive funding to help them get to higher quality. Once states have high-quality programs in place, they could use up to 50 percent of funds to expand pre-k access in low-income communities, but the majority of investment would go towards quality. The bill also recognizes that any federal effort to improve pre-k quality and access has to be in partnership with states, and seeks to use new federal investments to leverage increased state pre-k spending. That's essential because states must be the primary player when it comes to pre-k--but the federal government can help by giving them a nudge, combined with help. Hirono's bill does exactly that.

While we think this bill is a step in the right direction, there are a few changes we'd like to see to it. In particular, we'd like to see an increased focus on PK-3 alignment, which currently receives scant attention in the bill. The definition of quality that Hirono and her staff have incorporated is good, but to be truly high-quality pre-k programs must have curricula, standards, and teaching strategies aligned with those of the early elementary programs that children will enter after pre-k, so that what children learn in pre-k feeds seamlessly into the early elementary years. But there's still time for Congress to address that ommission.

Committee passage is just the beginning for the PRE-K Act. It order to become law, it would need to pass on the House floor, it would need to pass the Senate, and the President would need to sign the legislation. That's a lot of steps--particularly in an election year, when it's harder to move legislation; when it's not attached to a larger vehicle, such as NCLB reauthorization; and when it's looking increasingly unlikely that we'll see a Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill pass this fall. Further, the PRE-K Act doesn't currently have a companion bill in the Senate, although Senators Hillary Clinton and Kit Bond have introduced the Ready to Learn Act, and Senator Robert Casey has introduced the Prepare All Kids Act, both of which also support similar pre-k investments in partnership with states. That's a lot of obstacles. But it's still exciting to see pre-k legislation moving in Congress, which has too long left states to do the heavy lifting on improving pre-k, with little federal help.

FY2008 Budget Cuts Early Education Funding

Sara Mead — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Early education programs fared poorly under the fiscal year 2008 omnibus appropriations bill signed by President Bush in late December. Of 9 federal programs that provide support for early education, only one—Title I—received a significant funding increase—$1 billion, bringing Title I funding to $13.9 billion for 2008. But, because Title I funds are used to improve education for disadvantaged students from preschool through high school, only a fraction of this increase will go to early education.

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The legislation significantly cuts funding for three early education programs:

Cuts Reading First, which supports scientifically based literacy programs in kindergarten through third grade, by two-thirds, or $636 million;
Cuts Even Start, which supports family literacy, parenting classes, and early education, cut by 20 percent, or $16 million;
Eliminates the Early Childhood Educator Professional Development program.

Several other programs received level funding—a cut in real terms—or small cuts due to a 1.74% across the board recission for all programs. As a result, total funding for early education programs other than Title I fell by $677 million. These cuts exceed any likely increase in school districts’ early education spending as a result of Title I increases.

Would early education programs have faired better under a Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill that the President vetoed earlier this fall? That bill would have provided a larger, nearly $1.5 billion, increase in Title funding, and would have increased funding for Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant (which can be used to fund pre-k) by about $185 million. But it also made large cuts—totaling more than $650 million—to Reading First, Even Start, and the Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program.

Congress’ and the President’s tightfistedness with early education programs stands in stark contrast to the states, 36 of which increased early education by a total of more than $500 million for fiscal year 2008, as well as rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail, where leading Democratic candidates have proposed billions in new early education investments.

Why such a disconnect? The biggest reason is politics around the Reading First program, which accounted for the bulk of funding cuts to early education. The Reading First initiative is strongly identified with President Bush, who made it a signature campaign proposal in 2000, and has been
embroiled in a controversy over efforts by some former Department of Education staff to steer state grantees toward particular reading programs. Appropriators saw cuts in Reading First funding as a way to hold the Department accountable for these problems.

That’s unfortunate, because cutting Reading First doesn’t just hurt the Department; it hurts children by undermining state efforts to improve literacy instruction. These cuts are particularly disappointing because early evidence suggests that, despite the problems with the Department’s implementation, Reading First is having positive impacts on students’ reading skills. Even the organizations that first complained about how the Department was implementing Reading First don’t want to see its funding cut.

More fundamentally, Members of Congress and the President don’t seem to see early education as a priority the way state elected officials are. That’s hardly surprising: Early education advocates, pessimistic about the chances of enacting new early education investments under a Republican
President and Congress, have spent much of the past 7 years focused on state-level advocacy. The significant expansion in state pre-k funding is the result of that advocacy. But it’s not progress if states expand early education funding while the federal government cuts it.

If the rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail is any guide, early education issues are going to be getting more attention at the federal level. Supporters of high-quality, aligned systems of early education must educate members of Congress—on both sides of the aisle—about the benefits
of investing in PK-3 early education.