The Associated Press outlines tips for families on how to choose a high-quality preschool program.

QUOTABLE & NOTABLE

“In prior research, my colleagues and I have also found that students who are parents — particularly mothers ... have less time available for college than their peers. This explains differences in academic outcomes. Time poverty affects students from many different groups, yet existing college policies, practices and structures rarely take it into account. Even though nearly one in four current undergraduates have children, the availability of on-campus child care has been shrinking for decades, and child care costs are not automatically included in financial aid. Student-parents also have to work extra hours to pay for their children’s living expenses, which are not covered by federal financial aid.”

Who:

Claire Wladis, Professor of Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center

Where:

“‘Time poverty’ can keep college students from graduating — especially if they have jobs or children to care for” published by The Conversation

Note that September is National Student Parent month.

FACT OF THE WEEK

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently detailed that roughly 69,000 employees reported being absent from work in August due to problems with child care.

BEYOND THE BUCKEYE STATE

A business owner in Wisconsin is committed to supporting employees with child care needs. While an attempt to build a new child care facility fell through, he landed on providing monthly $400 stipends to his employees to use for child care. On a related note, The 19th describes the role of employer-sponsored or supported child care, such as tax credits to offset employees’ child care costs, as well as the pros and cons of such an approach.

A Philadelphia program called Para Pathway trains teacher aides and classroom assistants to earn associate and bachelor’s degrees in education. The programs used a combination of pandemic-era funding and district funds to prepare over 100 paraprofessionals to teach in the city’s public schools. Throughout this school year, Chalkbeat Philadelphia is following an early childhood teacher who completed the program.

WHAT WE'RE READING

Ohio is set to receive $3 million from the Centers for Disease Control to research underlying causes for infant mortality and develop local solutions to prevent deaths. Ohio is among 46 states and six U.S. territories from which the CDC is collecting infant mortality data.

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, published a brief on the role of family, friend and neighbor (FFN) care among immigrant communities, based on prior research and surveys of 1,300 parents. Parents who are immigrants reported relying more on FFN than those who were born in the U.S. (53% to 37% respectively for infant care), with grandmothers the most common FFN caregiver, and a “significant portion of immigrant caregivers remain unpaid for their work.” Note that the survey data come from California families and may not be generalizable to other states. State policies have significant influence on the FFN caregiving sector, with some states enabling FFN caregivers to receive public subsidies and even unionize, while others disallow them from receiving subsidies. Ohio is among the 11 states which do not allow FFN caregivers to access public subsidies, according to analysis by the Build Initiative .

RESEARCH ROUNDUP

A study published in Children and Youth Services Review found that an increased presence of high-quality preschools in North Carolina had an overall positive effect on the learning community of the elementary schools those students then attended. Researchers examined North Carolina’s state-funded pre-K program (NC Pre-K) and tested whether there was an association between the proportion of elementary students who had participated in the program, which started in 2001, and the overall K-6 learning environment in those schools between 2004-2018. They used teacher surveys and administrative data to measure teacher perceptions of their working environment and trends in teacher retention. They discovered that a 10-percentage point increase in the proportion of children with economic disadvantage who had attended NC Pre-K was associated with increases in teacher satisfaction, and teacher and principal retention rates. The study authors conclude that when considering the role of publicly funded pre-K, “policymakers should factor in the potential school-wide benefits accruing through more positive working environments for teachers and principals, which may lead to more positive learning environments for students.”

This edition was written by Jamie O’Leary and Janelle Williamson.

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