Child Care

So Far, So Good: Home Visitation Still Intact in Health Care Reform Bill

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:46:00 -0400

The home visitation program -- a key piece of the Obama Administration's pledge to strengthen programs for children from birth to age 5 -- received another boost yesterday when the Senate's Finance Committee passed its version of the health care bill. The bill includes language that would establish a program for "maternal, infant and early childhood visitation."

Over the summer, the House committees with dominion over the financing and regulation of the proposed program had already cleared the way for the program. And it appears to have support from both Democrats and Republicans. Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) was among the authors of the first version to be introduced this year, and Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) has introduced similar legislation in the past. Unless something unexpected happens -- and anything is possible given the overheated environment surrounding health care reform (see our post on Chuck Norris) -- chances are good that any health care bill that passes the House and Senate will bring home visitation along for the ride.

Still, there are differences between the House and Senate versions that will have to be worked through -- especially related to funding. The version that passed yesterday allocates twice as much funding for home visitation than what passed in the House committees. It would provide $1.5 billion in mandatory funding over five years (starting with $100 million in 2010). The version passed by the House committees put the price at $750 million over five years.

Obama's budget, you may remember, had requested $124 million in mandatory funding for fiscal year 2010, with plans to spend $1.8 billion on the program ten years from now. The Administration had estimated that 50,000 additional families could be served in the program's first year, with 450,000 on board by 2019.

Aside from the increase in money, the Finance Committee's version looks similar to what we've described before.

Here's how it would work: The federal government would grant states money each year to support programs that assist low-income pregnant women and mothers with babies who want the help. The assistance would come in the form of a registered nurse or trained paraprofessional who arrives at the mother's home on a regular basis to provide information that encourages healthy pregnancies and infant care.

States who want the grant money would have to fund programs modeled on already-well-researched approaches, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership and the program run by Healthy Families America. The bill also requires states to hit benchmarks if they want to keep their grants, showing improvement in maternal and child health, child injury protection, school readiness, and other factors related to children's well being. States would have to use rigorous research methods to evaluate the programs.

The Finance Committee's version also requires states to conduct a "needs assessment" - a report on how many at-risk families live in the state and what services they lack access to. This report, according to the committee mark-up, would be "separate from but coordinated with" the needs assessments required by agencies that receive Head Start grants. It's encouraging to see a nod to the need to align efforts between Head Start and this program, especially since the Early Head Start program is already designed to offer pregnant women and new mothers a combination of services including center-based child care, parenting groups and home visitation. Here at Early Ed Watch, we wonder if there are other areas of commonality between Early Head Start and home visitation programs that should be examined to promote coordination and avoid redundancies.

Given that smart health-care reform should include as many enticements for prevention and wellness as possible, it makes good sense for home visitation to be included in this bill. And as many experts pointed out at a Brookings Institution forum earlier this month, it's exciting to see the bill's emphasis on rigorous evaluation and the use of programs with strong, scientific evidence of effectiveness. Along with our colleagues at New Health Dialogue, another New America Foundation blog, we'll be watching the progress closely as the Senate and House start their debates. Stay tuned.

A Closer Look at Stay-at-Home Moms

Sara Mead — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:17:00 -0400

The Census Bureau just released America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2007, a report that describes the characteristics of American households and families. The report and extensive data tables that accompany it should interest early childhood policymakers, media, and educators because they tell us about the types of families American children are growing up in, as well as trends and changes in family composition over time.

This year’s report is especially interesting because it zeroes in on America’s parents, taking an extra close look at stay-at-home moms. About 5.6 million American women — about one out of every four mothers with children under age 15 — were stay-at-home moms in 2007. Not surprisingly, stay-at-home moms were more likely to have younger children—and to be younger themselves — than non-stay-at home moms. They are also disproportionately Hispanic, foreign-born, and have less education, compared to all mothers.

Some journalists have seized on this report as evidence that the so-called “opt-out revolution” — educated, affluent women who leave the workforce to care for children full-time — is an illusion, because such women comprise a larger share of working mothers than they do of the population of stay-at-home moms. That conclusion may be over-reaching a bit — the 5.6 million stay-at-home moms includes women from across the education and income spectrums, and 7.4 percent of stay-at-home moms have graduate degrees. But it is clear that extensive media coverage devoted to elite mothers who choose to stay home skews perceptions and ignores the many less educated and lower-income women who are full-time moms.

Mommy wars aside, these findings also have implications for early childhood policy, where debates tend to focus on improving access to quality child care and preschool programs for disadvantaged youngsters. This data tells us that stay-at-home mothers disproportionately include women who do not have the educational background or resources that allow better-off parents to provide more robust learning experiences for their children. If that's the case, then policymakers may need to supplement efforts to improve child care with strategies that help that subset of stay-at-home moms support their children’s early development.

At the same time, this information reaffirms the importance of expanding access to pre-k, separate from debates about child care. Some critics argue that universal pre-k is unfair or unnecessary to mothers who prefer to keep their children at home. But this data suggests that a significant percentage of children with stay at home moms are disadvantaged children who could benefit from pre-k even if their mothers don’t have jobs that require them to seek child care. Officials and organizations that operate pre-k programs should also keep this in mind, and ensure that pre-k enrollment efforts are reaching low-income stay-at-home mothers and their children. Ultimately, the goal should be to ensure that all children get access to the support and learning opportunities they need to thrive, whether it’s in child care centers, family home care, or at home with mom or dad.

State Funding for Child Care in 2009: 30 States Saved by the Stimulus, Others Make Cuts

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:03:00 -0400

Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, most states are keeping public child care programs afloat near last year's levels. But a handful of states are not providing the same level of assistance to poor families even with the federal help.

Those are a few of the messages in the 2009 report on states' child care policies, released yesterday by the National Women's Law Center. The center surveyed representatives of all 50 states this summer about how they would use funds from the stimulus bill, known as ARRA, which provided an additional $2 billion in funding for 2010 and 2011 through Child Care and Development Block Grants. Thirty states reported that they were using that money to maintain services, avoid or lessen waiting lists and open their services to more parents in search of work. But several others, including Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said they will be cutting funding and tightening eligibility requirements for childcare subsidies.

The center also asked states where they stood in February 2009 (exactly a year from the date of last year's survey) on a range of policies, such as how they determine income cut-offs for assistance, the size of the co-payments they require families to make, and how they reimburse child care center and other providers who enroll qualifying children. Updates on state's waiting lists are also included.

The report showed that states are:

Employing more waiting lists: This year, 19 states have them - up from the 17 states with waiting lists in 2008. (The good news is that things aren't as bad as they were in 2001, when 22 states had children on waiting lists.)
Keeping up with inflation: This year, 35 states raised or maintained their eligibility guidelines to take inflation into account. For parents, this meant a better chance for qualifying for child care subsidies even if their salaries increased at the same rate as inflation.
Not providing the recommended level of reimbursements for child care providers: Only 9 states are paying child care providers at the federally recommended level, which is at the 75th percentile of market rate. (For example, in Arizona, a per-child reimbursement at that level would be $780 per month, but the state only reimburses child care providers for $541 per month.) A year ago, 10 states were reimbursing at the recommended level, and in 2001, 22 were able to hit that mark.

What the report doesn't say -- and wasn't designed to probe -- is whether states are able to make any dents in the quality of their child care programs. Given the increasing numbers of families in poverty -- 13.2 percent, an 11-year high -- it is understandable that states are hard-pressed to keep doing what they are doing, let alone try to improve the quality of what happens in subsidized child care centers, family child care and pre-K programs. But as research this month in Child Development showed, a boost in quality could enable these providers to not only give parents a safe place to park their children while they work, but also to raise children's academic achievement throughout elementary school. And if states are serious about vying for the proposed Early Learning Challenge Grants, which the U.S. Senate is expected to consider in the coming weeks, quality will need to be part of the picture.

Better Child Care Could Boost Children's Math and Reading Scores Through Elementary School

Maggie Severns — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:17:00 -0400

Research has shown for years that placing 3- and 4-year olds from low-income families in high-quality early education settings can curb the relationship between growing up in a low-income family and underperforming in school. Now a new study in the September/October 2009 issue of Child Development goes a few steps further, linking quality child care settings at even younger ages to school achievement up to fifth grade.

The study, led by Eric Dearing, an associate professor at the Lynch School of Education of Boston College, uses longitudinal data from a national study that tracks children from birth up to fifth grade. It includes children from high-, middle-, and low-income families in a variety of childcare environments that ranged from maternal care to structured preschool facilities. The dataset also included information on children's cognitive and academic performance, along with the quality of various childcare settings they attended, as measured by observation-based records of the care-giving environments.

Dearing analyzed the data to see if being in above-average child care settings could help boost their later performance. He found that higher-quality child care can "protect" children from low-income families by boosting their math and reading scores through elementary school. Further, the more time these children spent in above-average child care providers, the further the association between familial income and school performance weakened.

"Higher-quality child care promoted low-income children's school readiness skills and, in turn, these skills promoted achievement through middle childhood," wrote Dearing and his co-authors- Kathleen McCartney from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Beck A. Taylor from Samford University.

"Higher-quality" in this study equates with "above average" -- meaning that it includes all the child care settings in the dataset with higher scores than what researchers calculated as the dataset's average score. Professional observers come up with the scores based on numerical ratings of how well the child-care settings were organized, how teachers interacted with children, class sizes, and other indicators of quality care.

Debates about investing in child care and preschool programs often center on the large gains found in studies like that of the Perry Preschool Project, in which the childcare and education settings were of such high quality -- and so expensive -- that they are referred to as "Cadillac" programs. Critics have also pointed out that these programs do not occur "naturally," meaning that there are few examples of large-scale programs available to families around the country.

But this report suggests that among the childcare programs already available, there are quality distinctions that can make a significant difference, and that the higher-quality programs do provide benefits that could make a noticeable impact on America's achievement gap.

"There are a range of programs where parents can find above-average child care," Dearing said. "And, you begin to see benefits of higher-quality care with relatively minimal exposure, but the greatest benefits were evident for children with the greatest exposure to higher-quality care."

Exactly how much do today's average programs need to crank up their quality to get better results for children? And how much does the quality of a child's elementary school change the picture?

Those questions aren't directly addressed by the research, but they are on the minds of many early learning experts who are trying to find the right mix of quality standards in child care and education settings. This study injects a significant piece of information into that discussion. It suggests that Cadillac preschool programs are not the only way to drive children toward academic success, but that delivering better quality does matter -- and the more frequently children experience it, the better.

Mario Small's Compelling Case for Child Care Centers as Networking Hubs

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:02:00 -0400

See the words "the network effect" and you might assume that the topic is Facebook or your cellular company's family plan. But take a moment to watch this video of Mario Luis Small talk about child care centers and you realize, ah yes, this is what networking is all about.

Small, a social scientist at the University of Chicago, has conducted research on child care centers in New York and has written about them in his new book Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. We learned about this on Birth to Thrive, and we're hungry to read more. Here's blogger Paul Nhyan's take:

More importantly, parents build social capital at these centers, connecting with other moms and dads. This isn’t a big surprise to me, since I found everything from job leads and story ideas to nanny referrals and parenting advice at our child care center.

In the video, Small says that he found that mothers with children in childcare centers were less depressed and exchanged more information about child rearing. They also found out about resources like health clinics and museums that catered to children. Instead of being thought of as simple drop-off spots for babysitting, Small argues, "the centers have quite a few benefits for the social networks and social well-being of the mothers."

Small talks, too, about how certain characteristics of centers can encourage or discourage parents to get to know each other. For example, he says, child care centers that set specific drop-off and pick-up times are better at enabling parents to meet, talk and compare experiences.

The next step would be to see how center-based programs -- preferably those that offer a high-quality preschool experience -- provide benefits to parents a few years later. Do they enable them to feel better connected to the elementary school their children will attend? Do they provide them with role models for how to advocate for their children's needs? We'd welcome more research on whether this network effect ripples upward through children's school years.

Bring on the Pain: Chuck Norris on the Home Visitation Plan

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:17:00 -0400

Just when you thought that the debate over health care reform couldn't possibly devolve any further, Chuck Norris comes karate-chopping onto the scene.

The "martial arts champ, action star, TV hero, and media phenomenon" has just blogged about "Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare" and the honor goes to the home visitation proposal that provides support to new mothers and their babies. It is, he says, "about the government's coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development."

Funny, we thought it was about giving children every chance to grow up strong and healthy. Last we checked, helping mothers help their children was a pretty universal family value.

Among his remarks: "Children belong to their parents, not the government. And the parents ought to have the right -- and government support -- to parent them without the fed's mandates, education or intervention in our homes."

Let's be clear: Nothing about this program would impose mandates on parents or restrict their right to make decisions about how they care for and educate their children. Mothers would be able to choose whether they would like to receive these visits if the program became law.

I probably don't have to tell you that this is not Chuck Norris trying his hand at satire. A shame, really, given that the Chuck Norris Facts phenomenon has given him some great models to follow.

Fate of Home Visitation Program Is Tied To Health Reform Bill

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:45:00 -0400

In May, when President Obama released his budget proposal for fiscal year 2010, he requested funds -- $124 million for the first year -- to create a federal program to send nurses to the homes of low-income women who are pregnant or caring for babies. The idea was to scale up fledgling programs that, according to randomized and controlled studies, improve women's and children's health and well-being and can reduce healthcare costs in the long run.

Home visitation doesn't appear in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill moving through Congress this month; it was proposed to reside on the "mandatory" side of the funding column and therefore not be subject to the year-to-year appropriations process. But it does have a spot -- for the moment at least -- in the massive health-care reform bills being shaped in fits and starts this summer.

The program is part of the text of H.R. 3200, the health care bill being jointly developed by three committees in the House of Representatives. Two committees -- the Education and Labor and Ways and Means Committees -- have already voted yea for the parts of the bill that are under their jurisdiction. A large chunk of the home visitation program would become law with an amendment to the Social Security Act, which puts it under the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee. That committee kept the program intact but dropped its price, authorizing it as a five-year, $750 million program instead of the $1.75 billion that was initially proposed.

Now there is just one more hurdle on the House side before the bill can get to the floor: The Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for approving changes to Medicaid. Advocates are hopeful that Medicaid provisions relevant to the home visitation program will be included in whatever version of the bill the committee will eventually pass.

That's not even half the battle, though. Over in the Senate, it is likely - but not guaranteed - that the program will become part of its version of health care reform. Advocates are anxiously waiting for action from the Senate Finance Committee -- as is anyone who is following the fate of health care reform this summer.

Another Senate panel -- the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee - has already voted on the portion of the health reform bill that is under their jurisdiction. But alas, it doesn't hold the reins on the home visitation sections and so has no direct impact on how or whether this program will survive the legislative process. That isn't to say, of course, that members of the HELP committee who have championed early childhood programs are not involved in advocating for its inclusion.

Sen. Harry Reid announced last week that the full Senate will not try to bring the bill to a vote before September, so it's possible that we will not see any more movement on this particular proposal until after Labor Day.

So what would this home visitation program look like? Early Ed Watch provided details of Obama's proposal back in June, and the bill under consideration started from that outline. In essence, it would issue grants to states to help them pay for nurses or other professionals who visit the homes of poor women who are pregnant and/or have young children.

Yet more details come from a bill originally introduced as the Early Support for Families Act on June 2 in the House Ways and Means Committee by Jim McDermott (D-WA), one of the committee's members and chair of the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support. The House version of the healthcare bill has now taken up that bill's language. It would be up to individual states to determine whether the program must employ nurses, social workers, early childhood specialists or trained volunteers, but all states would have to show evidence of their programs' effectiveness. Advocates have been debating what that evidence should look like. The bill passed by the House so far is not limited to randomized controlled trials, which can be expensive, but it does require evaluations of how children and mothers are faring before and after the program is established.

To follow the nitty gritty details of the bill, you have to look at two different parts. One piece, section 1904, would establish the grant program to provide funds to implement a system of home visitation at the state level that would apply to mothers of children "under the age of school entry." (That's the section putting home visitation under a subsection of the Social Security Act.) The other, section 1713, adds an option to the Medicaid law allowing states to get reimbursed under Medicaid for nurses visiting the homes of eligible pregnant women and mothers of children under 2.

Meanwhile, outside the halls of Congress, more scientific research has appeared to support the argument for making these kinds of investments in a child's earliest years. A study released last month by Child Trends shows that when infants are raised in high-poverty conditions, their cognitive abilities start to decline, with disparities showing up as early as 9 months of age. By 24 months of age, researchers report, the differences become even more pronounced.

Also in June the Journal of the American Medical Association published commentary by James A. Mercy and Janet Saul, two researchers at the National Center for Injury and Prevention. They stressed that helping children at very early ages not only gives them a chance for better cognitive skills and school performance, but can also make a profound difference in their long-term health. The article reiterates the findings of the Nurse-Family Partnership , one of the most often cited models for home visitation programs, which has been shown to reduce abuse and injury, improve cognitive and social skills and return economic dividends to society over time.

"The time has come," the authors wrote, "to act on scientific knowledge about preventing early exposure to adversity and promoting positive child development." We couldn't agree more. As the home visitation program moves through Congress, we'll keep you updated on what shape it takes.

Ohio Slashes Early Childhood Budget and Eliminates Full-Day Pre-K

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:25:00 -0400

The economic crisis exacted one of its biggest casualities on state pre-k programs last week when Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland signed into law a biennial state budget that zeroes out the state's full-day pre-k program and chopped funding for its half-day program by one-third.

The budget also slashed reimbursements for child care providers that serve low-income children, cut back on the number of poor families that can qualify for child care and reduced funding for the state's birth-to-three program by 25 percent.

The Early Learning Initiative, which funds full-day preschool for some 13,000 children, was one of 61 items that Gov. Strickland struck from the budget last week using the power of his line-item veto. The initiative was designed to bring community-based providers into the state's fledgling early education system by providing them with funds to train teachers. In fiscal year 2009 the program received $128 million, and in an observational study published last month, its teachers showed improvement in literacy instruction and classroom management since its launch four years ago.

It's too early to know how many children will be affected by ELI's phase-out, scheduled for August 23. Fortunately, about 4,500 of its enrollees are old enough to start kindergarten this fall. And the state has developed a transition plan to allow about 90 percent of current enrollees to continue receiving financial assistance through Ohio's subsidized child care program, according to Terrie Hare, director of the Child Care Bureau at the Ohio Department of Jobs and Families. (The department sent a letter to ELI parents late last week encouraging them to apply for subsidies.)

The state also runs an older half-day program, once called "public preschool" and now called Early Childhood Education. Children in this program are typically taught in pre-K classrooms located in public schools. To balance the budget, lawmakers stripped the program of $11 million, leaving it with $23.5 million. About 1500 to 2300 fewer children will be able to served, said Jane Wiechel, an early education official at the Department of Education.

So where will parents enroll those children instead? Good question. If they are looking for an affordable alternative at a child care center they may find themselves out of luck. The budget ax came down on child care providers too. The Ohio Legislature reduced reimbursement rates for providers that serve low-income families and lowered the income level at which families can qualify for subsidies. Newcomers to the subsidy program must now show that their incomes are at 150 percent of the federal poverty level ($33,075 for a family of four). Previously, families at up to 200 percent of the poverty were eligible.

The budget also squeezed Help Me Grow, the state's birth-to-three program, dropping its funding to $58.5 million next year compared to the nearly $80 million it received for fiscal year 2009, according to a budget summary sent to the childcare community from the Department of Jobs and Family Services. The program will be restricted to first-time parents at 200 percent of poverty, reports groundWork, a coalition of early childhood advocates. But one glimmer of good news for the program, said groundWork's operations coordinator Susan Blasko, is that most of its funding will now come from the state's general fund instead of being pulled from a pot of welfare money that is often used for other programs.

Including a few smaller programs not mentioned above, the cuts mean a drop of about $150 million in funding for early childhood in Ohio from 2009 to 2010, according to the summary by the Department of Jobs and Family Services.

This is a sad turn-of-events for early childhood advocates, who had been applauding the state's efforts until now. Gov. Strickland has been pushing for early childhood education and K-12 reforms since his election in 2007 and has been quoted in advocates' brochures for his dedication to increasing pre-K opportunities for disadvantaged children. But the cuts could undermine these efforts.

For example, a pillar of Gov. Strickland's reform agenda is a new funding formula for the K-12 system that the Governor was able to push through in this budget. Instead of distributing money to districts based almost entirely on the number of pupils they serve, the state will now allocate funding depending on what kind of services and what types of teaching expertise are needed by the pupils in those districts. The Ohio Education Association praised the passage of the new spending plan, describing it as fair and helpful to rural and poor schools.

But given the cuts to early learning programs, the K-12 system shouldn't be celebrating yet. It will likely be receiving more children unprepared for elementary school, leading to more education costs in the long run.

And while the budget does require schools to offer full-day kindergarten by the 2010-11 school year -- a good move -- it doesn't require that every school offer it for free. That's because, with budgets so tight, the new funding plan permits some schools that had started charging parents for all-day kindergarten to continue to do so. Fortunately, the Department of Education reports, most schools in Ohio's high-poverty areas are already providing full-day kindergarten for free.

One bright spot in the budget is an incentive system to nudge child care centers to make quality improvements. Centers that serve low-income children will be able to earn increases in their state subsidies if they score a two-star or three-star rating on Ohio's Step Up to Quality system. (We describe this type of quality rating improvement system in a recent issue brief.) But given the funding reductions these centers are contending with, it's a bit of a mystery how they are supposed to pay for the staff training or salaries that will help them achieve higher quality.

The shame is that the backsliding on early childhood investments may take Ohio out of the running for a new federal grant program that is part of legislation in Congress this week. Under the proposed plan for Early Learning Challenge Grants, states can compete for $1 billion a year to build a state-wide early learning system. The catch is that to get the grants, states must show progress and dedication to upgrading what they've already got. Ohio no longer looks so strong on that score. The state's now-defunct vision was to use ELI and the ECE program as key components of an integrated "mixed market" early childhood system, in which parents could choose from high-quality community providers or enroll children in preschool classrooms at their local schools. Both programs were designed, according to Wiechel of the Ohio education department, to use the same curricula, step into alignment with the state's K-12 academic standards and move toward hiring more teachers with degrees and early childhood credentials. ELI was a key piece of that puzzle because it had been providing payments to 101 school districts, Head Start agencies and community-based providers to help them hire credentialed teachers and pay for their training.

"Consistency across settings" was the intention, Wiechel said. "But it takes time," she added. "It's not a quick fix."

One of ELI's fatal flaws, it seems, is that it was funded with surplus federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program -- a program that allows states to determine how they want to use any extra money left over after federal welfare assistance funds have been distributed. Now, "that surplus has been depleted," according to a fact sheet distributed last week by Ohio's Early Childhood Cabinet. Child advocates had been hoping that ELI would eventually be funded with state tax revenues instead of the less-secure TANF dollars. The governor opted to delete it instead, according to officials, when revenue projections for state coffers looked even bleaker than expected.

Yet the administration is "still committed" to developing a system for early childhood programs, said Hare of the Department of Jobs and Families. She pointed, for example, to the implementation of the reward system for childcare centers with 2- and 3-star ratings under the Step Up to Quality system. In addition, the Child Care Bureau will be moved from the Department of Jobs and Families to the Department of Education to provide more continuity between child care and early education programs. And the budget calls for the development of a state center for early childhood to coordinate all early learning programs in the state. "We could have really dropped a lot of things but we tried to maintain some infrastructure," Hare said.

A bare bones infrastructure is, indeed, better than none at all. But it's disappointing to see Ohio balance its admittedly dismal budget on the backs of its youngest children and struggling families. Federal money for Head Start expansion may help in a small way (throughout the country, those dollars are still trickling through the pipeline and have yet to translate into any substantial new slots yet), but until we see an economic turnaround, early childhood programs appear to be easy targets.

Meanwhile, in the Appropriations Committee ...

Sara Mead — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:00:00 -0400

Last Friday the House Appropriations Committee passed its version of the fiscal year 2010 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which funds early education programs operated by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.

The bill includes $7.2 billion in funding for Head Start, a $122 million (1.7 percent) increase over the fiscal year 2009 funding level, and $2.1 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the same funding level as in fiscal year 2009. The bill also sets aside $271 million in CCDBG for quality improvement, above the 4 percent of CCDBG funds automatically set-aside for quality. $99 million of these funds are directed towards improving quality of care for infants and toddlers. These funding levels match those proposed by the Obama administration in the President's fiscal year 2010 budget request.

The bill also provides $146 million in funding for the Striving Readers program, a $110 million increase that will provide funding for a new PreK-3^rd early literacy initiative designed to replace the now-defunded Reading First program -- although the committee's funding level falls far short of the $370 million the administration requested for this program. The bill also provides $127 million for the Early Reading First program, a $15 million (13 percent) increase from fiscal year 2009, but again less than the administration requested for this program.

The Appropriations Committee did not, however, provide funding for some new early education programs that the President proposed. The committee-passed bill does not include the $500 million the administration requested for Title I Early Childhood Grants, intended to create incentives for school districts to invest stimulus Title I funds in pre-k. As we've reported previously, the proposed Early Childhood Grants had encountered opposition from both school boards and school administrators, who preferred to keep the money in the regular Title I program, as well as from community-based early childhood providers providers, who feared competition from school district-operated pre-k programs funded with Title I dollars. Congressional appropriators were also unimpressed with the proposal, in large part because it would have funded the new grants by transferring money out of the existing Title I program. Thus, it's not surprising that it receives no funding in this bill. In a prepared statement, Committee chair David Obey said that school districts can already use Title I funds for early childhood, though at the moment just 2 percent of funds are used for this purpose.

Nor does this bill include $300 million in funding the administration requested for the Early Learning Challenge Fund, which has not yet been authorized by Congress. However, as we reported last week, a separate bill making its way through the House of Representatives as part of the budget reconciliation process, which is different from the annual appropriations process, would authorize the Early Learning Challenge Fund and provide $1 billion in funding for Early Learning Challenge Grants over each of the next eight years.

Although the House appropriators don't seem to have made early childhood investments a priority in the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill, when the reconciliation process taken into account the outlook for early childhood funding looks much brighter for fiscal year 2010 (and beyond). And of course the Senate has yet to put together its version of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (not likely to happen until after they return from the August recess), which gives early education advocates and the administration another shot on funding some of these programs through the appropriations process. Early Ed Watch will continue following the federal funding picture for early childhood programs until President Obama signs a final appropriations bill into law later this fall, so stay tuned.

Early Learning Challenge Fund -- Trimmed to an 8-Year Program -- Is Approved by House Committee

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:56:00 -0400

A major new federal investment in early education, the Early Learning Challenge Grant program that was included in legislation introduced last week by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, and which we wrote about here, cleared its first hurdle on the way to becoming law yesterday. The House Committee on Education and Labor passed a reconciliation bill that would overhaul federal student loan programs and use some of the savings from those reforms to fund Early Learning Challenge Grants.

As included in the committee-passed bill, the Early Learning Challenge Grant program is virtually unchanged from Miller's original bill. But the House committee did chop funding for the Early Learning Challenge Grants in the last years of the reconciliation bill's 10-year time frame. Instead of a program that sends $1 billion to states each year until 2019, the program is now described as ending in 2017. In other words, the new bill sets the funding at $8 billion over 8 years intead of $10 billion over 10.

The trim may be a result of an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, obtained by New America's Education Policy program. The CBO's projections, drawn up after the bill was introduced last week, showed that the overall student-aid bill would start costing $1 billion by 2019, instead of saving money each year. Because the bill is moving through Congress as a reconciliation bill, instead of an annual appropriations bill, it must adhere to certain rules that apply to the reconciliation process, one of which is that it must show cost savings in later years.

In addition, a change made to the legislation during the mark-up process yesterday led to a $2.7 billion reduction in the amount of money being saved by student-loan reforms. That change, which was the elimination of a controversial provision related to financial aid, may have required legislators to look toward the early learning grants to fill the gap.

Now the bill will go to the House floor, where it is expected to be voted on before Congress's summer recess. We'll keep you posted on developments as they happen.