NIEER’s State of Preschool Yearbook 2022 report is out. Overall in the US, 3- and 4-year-old enrollment in preschool is up (13%), but still not reaching pre-pandemic levels of enrollment.  

Quotable & Notable

Fact of the Week

Rutger’s National Insitute for Early Education Research just published the 2022 State of Preschool Yearbook which identifies 10 quality standards benchmarks to assess state’s preschool programs. Ohio met 5 out of the 10 benchmarks, including early learning & development standards; curriculum supports; teacher specialized training; screening and referral; and continuous quality improvement system.   

FYI

The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) is collecting feedback about what professional development and support might be helpful for early childhood educators when it comes to serving young children experiencing homelessness. The survey is here.  

Events and Happenings

The CAYL Institute is hosting a panel on addressing the fiscal deficit in ECE on Thursday, June 1. 

Beyond the Buckeye State

Iowa just expanded eligibility for public funded child care to 160% of the federal poverty level, which will make the program accessible to 2,700 new children. The state also increased reimbursement rates for providers to 80% of the market rate, while requiring that parents work a few more hours (32 instead of 28) per week than before to be eligible.

Vox offers a fantastic overview of how a coalition of leaders and advocates in Vermont secured impressive early childhood investments in the state.

Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood partnered with the Children’s Funding Project to model the true cost of implementing a preschool program and to improve their funding structure. They advocate cost-modelling on a classroom-based funding model, rather than a per-child funding model as a more stable way to fund programs.  

What We're Reading

Hechinger Report shares researcher perspectives on racial bias in early childhood education, an important topic after Alabama’s removal of a teacher training manual for emphasizing the need to address bias and racism (and the much-protested firing of the state’s early education director). On a related note, the Center for the Developing Child published a brief on the impact of experiencing trauma and stress from racism and the need to move “upstream” to confront it. In other words, confronting racism as it occurs is insufficient; going upstream means to address the root causes of inequities at a much earlier point, and to provide equitable access to health, education, housing, employment, and wealth creation to offset structural racism.

Early Learning Nation describes the extra challenges experienced by parents working non-traditional hours when trying to find childcare. The Urban Institute conducted a study on non-traditional workers’ needs for childcare in Austin, Texas. Roughly a third of children under 6 live in a household where parents work non-traditional hours. Nearly three-quarters of the parents working these jobs are immigrants. Despite the need, only 4% of childcare providers in Austin have a license to operate outside of normal hours. This leads to a “patchwork of care” for families to navigate on their own. To address this concern, Austin is trying out a shared services alliance, allowing in-home child care providers to share resources - (hopefully) including those who offer afterhours care.  

Research Round-Up

An article published in the Annual Review of Public Health examines evidence on possible relationships between early childhood education (ECE) and various health-related outcomes. The authors based their review in three meta-analyses published over the last 15 years, highlighting studies that measured long-term health benefits of ECE attendance like reductions in depression or alcohol/tobacco use; cardiovascular or metabolic diseases; diet/nutrition and obesity; and infant mortality, among several others. They offer several important reminders about the difficulties and nuances of this type of research. First, health outcomes from ECE attendance may “take time to manifest” and be more difficult to study over the long-term than more immediate educational outcomes. Second, it may be hard to disentangle outcomes commonly measured by research – like grade retention, educational attainment, and later economic outcomes typically studied – from “health” outcomes, as these all represent social determinants of health that strongly affect one’s health. Indeed, the benefits of ECE – such as development of cognitive skills, social skills, family/parental involvement in a child’s education, etc. - likely have impacts on health that are hard to isolate. Finally, the authors share an important caution that while ECE “is a powerful intervention for promoting the education and health of low-income populations, it is not a silver bullet.” 

This edition written by: Jamie O'Leary and Janelle Williamson

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