Child Care

Children Sent to the Back of the Ballot in Florida

Joe Mathews — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:25:00 -0400

According to the language that established it, the Children's Trust in Miami-Dade County must be renewed in this Tuesday's primary elections by county voters. The trust dedicates 50 cents of every $1,000 in assessed property value to improving the lives of children. The money goes to child care, parent counseling, and school health teams. It has bipartisan support. What could be the problem?

Poor ballot design. In several Dade County precincts, the measure to reauthorize the Children's Trust has been placed on the back of the ballot. So voters will have to turn over their ballot to find it. Let's hope they do. Or this could be another major disaster for Florida election officials.

Primary Watch: Barack Obama's Early Education Agenda

Sara Mead — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:49:00 -0400

Yesterday we explored Senator Hillary Clinton’s early education agenda. Today, we’re taking a look at Senator Barack Obama’s early education proposals.

Focusing on Zero-to-Five

The centerpiece of Barack Obama’s early education agenda would be a new program of Early Learning Challenge Grants, which would provide states with funding to support quality child care, early education, and other services for pregnant women and children from birth through age five. States could use Early Learning Challenge Grant funds to support voluntary, high-quality preschool programs for three- and four-year olds, but universal pre-k is not the central focus of Obama’s early education strategy. Instead, states would be given flexibility in how they choose to expand quality pre-k and other early education programs.

In order to receive Early Learning Challenge Grants, states would be required to: match new federal funds, meet quality and accountability standards, develop public/private partnerships, ensure that parents receive valid information, and provide support for both early learning and family support services (such as nurse home visiting). Although Senator Obama’s plan refers to high-quality early childhood care and pre-k, it does not describe the quality standards states would be expected to meet.

The proposal draws from the work of the Illinois Early Learning Council, which Obama helped create as a state legislator. The Illinois Early Learning Council works to support a seamless system of early learning and care in Illinois for young children from before birth through school entry--something Obama's proposals are intended to help other states do as well. Obama would also establish a Presidential Early Learning Council, modeled after the Illinois Early Learning Council, to promote collaboration among various federal agencies that support programs for young children, and to encourage states to better coordinate services across multiple federal early childhood funding streams.

Obama’s plan includes several other steps to expand quality early education, including:

Quadruple Early Head Start: The Early Head Start program provides services to low-income children ages 0-3, and evaluations of the program have produced very positive findings. Early Head Start currently serves about 61,000 children.
Increase Head Start Funding, which has stagnated under the Bush administration. The plan does not include specific targets for funding increases or numbers of additional youngsters served.
Improve Head Start Quality: Provide $250 million to create or expand regional training centers to help Head Start centers implement successful models.
Increase funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which has stagnated under the Bush administration, resulting in the loss of services for 150,000 children. Obama would double quality funding within CCDBG, and would encourage states to use their quality set-aside funding to develop strategic plans that better coordinate all birth-to-five services.
Support Nurse-Family Partnerships: Provide Nurse-Home Visitation for 570,000 new mothers annually. This model, in which nurses visit at-risk mothers during pregnancy and for the first 18 months of their children's lives to provide support, health services, and education, has been shown to be effective in improving children's and mothers' outcomes.

Obama has proposed spending $10 billion annually to support these early education investments. He has also proposed making the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, so that low-income families can receive up to a 50 percent tax credit for their child care expenses. Currently, the tax credit is non-refundable and covers only 35 percent of the first $3,000 in child care expenses ($6,000 if a family has two or more children). It’s not clear whether the cost of this proposal is included in the $10 billion or not.

Supporting Work-Family Balance

Senator Obama has also proposed several work-family balance proposals that could affect young children’s learning and development:

Expand Paid Family Leave: Create a $1.5 billion fund to help states with start-up costs for paid family leave programs and offset costs for employers and employees.
Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover employers with 25 workers (it currently applies only to employers with at least 50 workers).
Provide Afterschool Programs to 1 Million More Children: Double funding for the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers program, the federal government’s primary afterschool investment (currently funded at $1 billion).
Promote flexible workplaces: Create a program to inform businesses about the benefits of workplace flexibility and help them set up flexible work arrangements. Increased federal incentives for telecommuting. Make the federal government a model for workplace flexibility.

Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have laid out ambitious early education agendas. Next week we’ll raise some questions that voters and the media should be asking about these proposals and discuss their potential to be enacted into law under a Clinton or Obama administration. We’ll also look at what Republican Presidential candidate John McCain is—or, more importantly, is not—saying about early education on the campaign trail.

If you’d like to learn more about Senator Obama’s views on education issues, check out his full PK-12 education plan, or read about his higher education proposals on our sister blog, HigherEdWatch.org.

Photo by flickr user Brian Finifter used under a Creative Commons license.

Primary Watch: Hillary Clinton's Early Education Agenda

Sara Mead — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:44:00 -0400

Yesterday, we asked why there hasn't been more attention focused on early education issues so far in this election cycle, noting that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have released detailed and ambitious early education agendas. Today we'll explore Senator Clinton's early education agenda. Tomorrow we'll look at Senator Obama's early education plan.

Supporting High-Quality Universal Pre-K

The centerpiece of Senator Clinton's early education agenda is her Universal Pre-k Plan, which her campaign rolled out nearly a year ago as her first major education policy proposal and one of her earliest big policy releases. Senator Clinton's plan would provide grants to states to establish high-quality pre-k programs. In order to receive funds states would have to:

Ensure that state pre-k programs meet high quality standards, including:
- Teachers with a bachelor's degree and training in early education
- Age-appropriate curriculum
- Small class sizes and teacher student ratios
- Safety and health monitoring.
Provide pre-k at no cost to four-year-olds from low-income homes and English language learners
Develop a plan to make voluntary pre-k universally available for all-four-year-olds in the state.
Include community-based providers in their pre-k system. (The pre-k bill Clinton has introduced in the Senate would require 25% of funds to go to community-based providers.)
Match federal investments dollar-for-dollar.

Once state pre-k programs meet high quality standards and serve all low-income and ELL four-year-olds, they could use federal pre-k funds to serve higher income students, serve younger students, raise teacher salaries, or other activites that expand and improve pre-k. Clinton has proposed providing states with $5 billion in grants to support universal pre-k in the first year and ramping up to $10 billion over the next five years.

Zero-to-Five
More recently, Senator Clinton's campaign announced a broader "Zero-to-Five" agenda that includes their Universal Pre-K program as well as the following elements:

Nurse-Home Visitation: Senator Clinton's plan would provide Nurse-Home Visitation for all at-risk mothers. This model, in which nurses visit at-risk mothers during pregnancy and for the first 18 months of their children's lives to provide support, health services, and education, has been shown to be effective in improving children's and mothers' outcomes.
Triple Early Head Start: The Early Head Start program provides services to low-income children ages 0-3, and evaluations of the program have produced very positive findings. Early Head Start currently serves about 61,000 children.
Expand Head Start to serve 160,000 more children: This would be an almost 20 percent increase above the 833,516 children Head Start currently serves.
Increase funding for the Child Care Block Grant, which has stagnated during the Bush administration, and support the following to improve child care quality:
- Help states improve and enforce child care licensing and safety standards
- Support public-private partnerships to increase the supply of affordable, high-quality child care for working families.
- Promote and support state quality rating systems for child care
- Support workforce initiatives to improve child care workers' training
Allow qualified low-income parents to receive Child Care and Development Block Grant funding to stay home with their children. Right now, low-income parents can only receive CCDBG funds if they place their children in childcare. This proposal would let low-income parents receive payments to care for their children at home.

Clinton has also said she supports reform of the Dependent Care Tax Credit, but hasn't offered specifc policy recommendations for how it should be reformed.

Supporting Work-Family Balance
Senator Clinton has also offered several work-family balance proposals that could affect young children's learning and development:

Expand Paid Family Leave: Senator Clinton would support a variety of initiatives to help parents care for new babies, with the goal of having paid family leave for employees in all states by 2016:
- $1 billion State Family Leave Innovation Fund to providing matching grants to help states start paid family leave programs using a variety of funding strategies,
- Paid maternity/paternity leave for federal workers (they currently have none)
- Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover employers with 25 workers (it currently applies only to employers with at least 50 workers)
Support workplace flexibility and telecommuting: Senator Clinton would create a "model workplace" program to highlight business that establish innovative workplace flexibility models, would promote telecommuting for federal workers, and would provide $50 million annually in incentives for state and local telecommuting initiatives.

Senator Clinton also has a history of supporting and advocating for early education and quality childcare. As First Lady, for example, she hosted the White House Conference on Early Development and Learning, which expanded public awareness about early childhood development and helped raise the national profile of early education issues. Early Ed Watch is pleased to see that she's continuing to support programs for young children on the campaign trail.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about Senator Barack Obama's early education proposals, and next week we'll raise some questions about both candidates' agendas. If you're interested in learning more about Senator Clinton's other education policy proposals, check out the education page on her website, or read our sister blog HigherEdWatch.org's coverage of her college proposals.

Photo by flickr user wausaublog used under a Creative Commons license.