Preschool For All:Investing In a Productive and Just Society

CED

CED

Investing In a Productive and Just Society

A Statement by the Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development

Preschool For All

Preschool For AllInvesting In a Productiveand Just Society

A Statement by the Research and Policy Committeeof the Committee for Economic Development

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Committee for Economic Development. Research and Policy Committee. Preschool for all : investing in a productive and just society : astatement on national policy / by the Research and Policy Committee ofthe Committee for Economic Development.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 0-87186-143-71. Education, Preschool—United States. 2. Education and

state—United States. 3. Educational equalization—United States. I.Title. LB1140.23 .C66 2002 372.21'0973—dc21

2001059878

First printing in bound-book form: 2002Paperback: $15.00Printed in the United States of AmericaDesign: Rowe Design Group

COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT477 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022(212) 688-2063

2000 L Street, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20036(202) 296-5860

www.ced.org

iii

CONTENTS

RESPONSIBILITY FOR CED STATEMENTS ON NATIONAL POLICY iv

PURPOSE OF THIS STATEMENT viii

CHAPTER 1: SUMMARY 1

CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF EXISTING POLICIES AND PROGRAMS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN 6Backdrop: Changing Societal Perspectives on Education, Work, and Welfare 6Who Cares for America’s Preschoolers? 8Who Pays for Early Care and Education? 9

CHAPTER 3: SHORTCOMINGS IN THE U.S. APPROACH TO EARLY LEARNING 15Young Children Have Untapped Potential for Learning 15Access to Formal Early Learning Programs is Limited and Uneven 17Early Education and Care Aren’t Integrated 22United States Lags Other Countries 23Public Investment is Inadequate 25

CHAPTER 4: MOVING TOWARD EARLY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL 26Access 26Delivery 27Financing 30Infrastructure, Quality Improvement, and Oversight 32Data and Research 33Getting Started 34

APPENDIX: ESTIMATING THE COST OF UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL 35

ENDNOTES 38

MEMORANDA OF COMMENT, RESERVATION, OR DISSENT 41

OBJECTIVES OF THE COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 43

The Committee for Economic Develop-ment is an independent research and policyorganization of some 250 business leadersand educators. CED is nonprofit, nonparti-san, and nonpolitical. Its purpose is to pro-pose policies that bring about steady eco-nomic growth at high employment andreasonably stable prices, increased productiv-ity and living standards, greater and moreequal opportunity for every citizen, and animproved quality of life for all.

All CED policy recommendations musthave the approval of trustees on the Researchand Policy Committee. This committee is di-rected under the bylaws, which emphasizethat “all research is to be thoroughly objec-tive in character, and the approach in eachinstance is to be from the standpoint of thegeneral welfare and not from that of anyspecial political or economic group.” Thecommittee is aided by a Research AdvisoryBoard of leading social scientists and by asmall permanent professional staff.

The Research and Policy Committee doesnot attempt to pass judgment on any pend-

ing specific legislative proposals; its purpose isto urge careful consideration of the objectivesset forth in this statement and of the best meansof accomplishing those objectives.

Each statement is preceded by extensivediscussions, meetings, and exchange of memo-randa. The research is undertaken by a sub-committee, assisted by advisors chosen for theircompetence in the field under study.

The full Research and Policy Committeeparticipates in the drafting of recommenda-tions. Likewise, the trustees on the draftingsubcommittee vote to approve or disapprove apolicy statement, and they share with theResearch and Policy Committee the privilegeof submitting individual comments for publi-cation.

The recommendations presented herein arethose of the trustee members of the Research andPolicy Committee and the responsible subcom-mittee. They are not necessarily endorsed by othertrustees or by nontrustee subcommittee members,advisors, contributors, staff members, or othersassociated with CED.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR CED STATEMENTS ON NATIONAL POLICY

iv

RESEARCH AND POLICY COMMITTEE

Co-ChairmenPATRICK W. GROSSFounder and Chairman, Executive

CommitteeAmerican Management Systems, Inc.BRUCE K. MACLAURYPresident EmeritusThe Brookings Institution

Vice ChairmenIAN ARNOFRetired ChairmanBank One, Louisiana, N.A.ROY J. BOSTOCKChairman, Executive CommitteeB/Com3 Group, Inc.CLIFTON R. WHARTON, JR.Former Chairman and Chief Executive

OfficerTIAA-CREF

REX D. ADAMSDeanThe Fuqua School of BusinessDuke UniversityALAN BELZERRetired President and Chief Operating

OfficerAlliedSignal Inc.PETER A. BENOLIELChairman, Executive CommitteeQuaker Chemical CorporationFLETCHER L. BYROMPresident and Chief Executive OfficerMICASU CorporationDONALD R. CALDWELLChairman and Chief Executive OfficerCross Atlantic Capital PartnersJOHN B. CAVEPrincipalAvenir Group, Inc.CAROLYN CHINChairmanCommtouchChairmanKindmarkA. W. CLAUSENRetired Chairman and Chief Executive

OfficerBankAmerica CorporationJOHN L. CLENDENINRetired ChairmanBellSouth Corporation

GEORGE H. CONRADESChairman and Chief Executive OfficerAkamai Technologies, Inc.RONALD R. DAVENPORTChairman of the BoardSheridan Broadcasting CorporationJOHN DIEBOLDChairmanJohn Diebold IncorporatedFRANK P. DOYLERetired Executive Vice PresidentGET.J. DERMOT DUNPHYChairmanKildare Enterprises, LLCCHRISTOPHER D. EARLManaging DirectorPerseus Capital, LLCW. D. EBERLEChairmanManchester Associates, Ltd.EDMUND B. FITZGERALDManaging DirectorWoodmont AssociatesHARRY L. FREEMANChairThe Mark Twain InstituteRAYMOND V. GILMARTINChairman, President and Chief Executive

OfficerMerck & Co., Inc.BARBARA B. GROGANPresidentWestern Industrial ContractorsRICHARD W. HANSELMANChairmanHealth Net Inc.RODERICK M. HILLSChairmanHills Enterprises, Ltd.MATINA S. HORNERExecutive Vice PresidentTIAA-CREFH.V. JONESOffice Managing DirectorKorn/Ferry International, Inc.EDWARD A. KANGASChairman and Chief Executive

Officer (Retired)Deloitte Touche TohmatsuJOSEPH E. KASPUTYSChairmanThomson Financial PrimarkCHARLES E.M. KOLBPresidentCommittee for Economic Development

ALLEN J. KROWERetired Vice ChairmanTexaco Inc.CHARLES R. LEEChairman and Co-Chief Executive OfficerVerizon CommunicationsALONZO L. MCDONALDChairman and Chief Executive OfficerAvenir Group, Inc.NICHOLAS G. MOOREChairman EmeritusPricewaterhouseCoopersSTEFFEN E. PALKOVice Chairman and PresidentXTO Energy Inc.CAROL J. PARRYPresidentCorporate Social Responsibility

AssociatesVICTOR A. PELSONSenior AdvisorUBS Warburg LLCPETER G. PETERSONChairmanThe Blackstone GroupNED REGANPresidentBaruch CollegeJAMES Q. RIORDANDirectorQuentin Partners Co.LANDON H. ROWLANDChairman, President and Chief Executive

OfficerStillwell Financial Inc.GEORGE RUPPPresidentColumbia UniversityROCCO C. SICILIANOBeverly Hills, CaliforniaMATTHEW J. STOVERPresidentLKM VenturesARNOLD R. WEBERPresident EmeritusNorthwestern UniversityJOSH S. WESTONHonorary ChairmanAutomatic Data Processing, Inc.DOLORES D. WHARTONFormer Chairman and Chief

Executive OfficerThe Fund for Corporate Initiatives, Inc.MARTIN B. ZIMMERMANVice President, Governmental AffairsFord Motor Company

v

*Voted to approve the policy statement but submitted memoranda of comment, reservation, or dissent. See page 41.

*

*

*

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

Co-ChairsROY J. BOSTOCKChairman, Executive CommitteeB/Com3 Group, Inc.EDWARD B. RUST, JR.Chairman and Chief Executive OfficerState Farm Insurance Companies

TrusteesIAN ARNOFRetired ChairmanBank One, Louisiana, N.A.HENRY P. BECTON, JR.President and General ManagerWGBH Educational FoundationTHOMAS D. BELL, JR.Special Limited PartnerForstmann Little & Co.PETER A. BENOLIELChairman, Executive CommitteeQuaker Chemical CorporationJOHN BRADEMASPresident EmeritusNew York UniversityWILLIAM E. BROCKChairmanBridges LearningSystems, Inc.THOMAS J. BUCKHOLTZExecutive Vice PresidentBeyond Insight CorporationJOHN B. CAVEPrincipalAvenir Group, Inc.FERDINAND COLLOREDO-

MANSFELDChairman and Chief Executive OfficerCabot Industrial TrustJOHN DIEBOLDChairmanJohn Diebold IncorporatedKATHLEEN FELDSTEINPresidentEconomics Studies, Inc.JOSEPH GANTZPartnerGG Capital, LLCCAROL R. GOLDBERGPresidentThe AvCar Group, Ltd.BARBARA B. GROGANPresidentWestern Industrial ContractorsJEROME H. GROSSMANChairman and Chief Executive

OfficerLion Gate Management Corporation

JUDITH H. HAMILTONPresident and Chief Executive OfficerClassroom ConnectWILLIAM F. HECHTChairman, President and Chief

Executive OfficerPPL CorporationHEATHER HIGGINSPresidentRandolph FoundationROBERT J. HURSTVice ChairmanThe Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.DAVID KEARNSChairman EmeritusNew American SchoolCOLETTE MAHONEYPresident EmeritusMarymount Manhattan CollegeELLEN R. MARRAMPartnerNorth Castle PartnersWILLIAM F. MAYChairman and Chief Executive

OfficerStatue of Liberty - Ellis Island

Foundation, Inc.DIANA S. NATALICIOPresidentThe University of Texas at El PasoSTEFFEN E. PALKOVice Chairman and PresidentXTO Energy Inc.CAROL J. PARRYPresidentCorporate Social Responsibility

AssociatesARNOLD B. POLLARDPresident and Chief Executive OfficerThe Chief Executive GroupHUGH B. PRICEPresident and Chief Executive OfficerNational Urban LeagueE. B. ROBINSON, JR.Chairman EmeritusDeposit Guaranty CorporationROY ROMERFormer Governor of ColoradoSuperintendent, Los Angeles

Unified School DistrictDANIEL ROSEChairmanRose Associates, Inc.NEIL L. RUDENSTINEChair, ArtStor Advisory BoardThe Andrew Mellon Foundation

WILLIAM RUDERPresidentWilliam Ruder IncorporatedMARGUERITE W. SALLEEChairman and Chief Executive OfficerBrown SchoolsALAN G. SPOONManaging General PartnerPolaris VenturesJAMES A. THOMSONPresident and Chief Executive OfficerRANDMICHAEL W. WICKHAMChairman and Chief Executive OfficerRoadway Express, Inc.HAROLD M. WILLIAMSPresident EmeritusThe J. Paul Getty TrustKURT E. YEAGERPresident and Chief Executive OfficerElectric Power Research Institute

Ex-Officio Members

FRANK P. DOYLERetired Executive Vice PresidentGEPATRICK W. GROSSFounder and Chairman, Executive

CommitteeAmerican Management Systems, Inc.CHARLES E.M. KOLBPresidentCommittee for Economic DevelopmentBRUCE K. MACLAURYPresident EmeritusThe Brookings InstitutionJOSH S. WESTONHonorary ChairmanAutomatic Data Processing, Inc.

Special Guests

MYLES A. CANEChairman EmeritusSkidmore CollegeCHRISTINA LAURIAVice President, Pricing AdministrationRoadway Express, Inc.LAWRENCE T. PISTELLSummit, New JerseyADELE SIMMONSVice Chair and Senior ExecutiveChicago Metropolis 2020

vi

*Voted to approve the policy statement but submitted memoranda of comment, reservation, or dissent. See page 41.

*

Advisors

W. STEVEN BARNETTProfessor, Rutgers Graduate School of

EducationDirector, Center for Early EducationDAVID BLAUProfessor of EconomicsUniversity of North CarolinaJOAN LOMBARDIDirectorThe Children’s ProjectLOUISE STONEYStoney Associates

Project Director

JANET HANSENVice President and Director of

Education StudiesCommittee for Economic Development

Project Associates

NORA LOVRIENResearch AssociateCommittee for Economic DevelopmentSETH TUROFFResearch AssociateCommittee for Economic DevelopmentBETHANY PETROVSKYIntern

vii

viii

CED has for many years argued that thedevelopment and education of all childrenfrom the earliest stages of their lives must bea national priority. In this report we take aimdirectly at the educational needs of childrenage 3 and up who have not yet entered kin-dergarten. Increasingly, research is indicat-ing that prekindergarten children have muchgreater capacity to learn than was previouslyrealized. But the nation still depends on apiecemeal and haphazard set of preschoolarrangements that does not give all childrenequal opportunity to enter school ready tolearn.

It is time for the United States to acknowl-edge society’s stake in and responsibility forearly education, as it long has for older chil-dren, by making publicly-funded prekinder-garten available to all preschool childrenwhose parents want them to enroll. Withmost parents now working, it is also impor-tant that preschool opportunities from a di-verse set of providers include those preparedto supply the full-day, full-year care that em-ployees need for their children.

Over a decade ago, we and others pointedout the desirability of expanding preschoolaccess. Since then, growing numbers of chil-dren have begun to participate in center-based programs of early care and education.But too many of these programs do not pro-vide the kinds of activities that ensure thatchildren enter school ready to learn. A keyhurdle is the lack of public willingness tomake the investments necessary to give allchildren the strong start they need to suc-ceed in school.

This report makes the case for universal,free access to prekindergarten. It argues thatstates should take the organizational lead in

tying diverse providers into coherent systemsof early education. The report also proposesthat financial responsibility for preschoolshould be equally shared by the federal andstate governments, with today’s parentalcosts scaled back over time. Our reportdescribes an approach for constructing thisfederal/state financial partnership and em-phasizes the importance of identifying stan-dards of program quality and continuouslyimproving performance.

The report is a call to action rather than adetailed blueprint for moving from today’spiecemeal and underfunded early educationprograms to coherent and comprehensiveearly learning systems. It does not attempt topropose answers for all the policy issues thatwill arise in linking existing and new pro-grams together. It acknowledges that there ismore to learn about how to make the mostof the learning capabilities of young chil-dren. But it emphasizes that we know morethan enough to take action now to improveearly education, and it lays out a set of prin-ciples upon which we believe high-quality,universally-available preschool educationshould be built.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe would like to thank the dedicated

group of CED Trustees, advisors, and guestswho served on the subcommittee that pre-pared this report (see page vi). Specialthanks go to the subcommittee co-chairs,Roy J. Bostock, Chairman, Executive Com-mittee of B/Com3 Group, Inc., and EdwardB. Rust, Jr., Chairman and CEO of StateFarm Insurance Companies, who guided theproject with skill and insight. We are also

Purpose of This Statement

particularly grateful to project director JanetS. Hansen, Vice President and Director ofEducation Studies at CED, and Van DoornOoms, CED’s Senior Vice President and Di-rector of Research, for their contributions,and to Seth Turoff, Bethany Petrovsky, andNora Lovrien for research assistance.

Patrick W. Gross, Co-ChairResearch and Policy CommitteeFounder and Chairman, Executive CommitteeAmerican Management Systems, Inc.

Bruce K. MacLaury, Co-ChairResearch and Policy CommitteePresident EmeritusThe Brookings Institution

ix

The Committee for Economic Develo-pment (CED) calls on the federal and stategovernments to undertake a new nationalcompact to make early education available toall children age 3 and over. To ensure that allchildren have the opportunity to enter schoolready to learn, the nation needs to reform itscurrent haphazard, piecemeal, and under-funded approach to early learning by linkingprograms and providers into coherent state-based systems. The goal should be universalaccess to free, high-quality prekindergartenclasses, offered by a variety of providers, for all children whose parents want them toparticipate.

CED believes that universal access will be accomplished in the most timely and equitable way through a strong federal/statepartnership. States must be responsible for(1) expanding preschool opportunities, (2)ensuring that the necessary teachers and facilities are available, and (3) integratingtheir diverse array of preschool providers and programs into coherent systems that meet the educational needs of young childrenwhile also addressing child care needs ofworking parents. The federal governmentshould provide incentives for and assistanceto states constructing high-quality early learn-ing systems by (1) creating a new federal-to-state grant program to underwrite part of the cost of providing universal access toprekindergarten, (2) helping states build theinfrastructure needed to extend access to allchildren, and (3) certifying acceptable statestandards for early education.

For too long the United States has paid lipservice to the importance of preschool oppor-tunities that prepare children for school with-

out undertaking the level of investment need-ed to turn promise into reality. For the sakeof both the children and of our society, it istime to make good on the commitment toprovide early learning opportunities for all.We call on federal and state policy makers toimplement the steps outlined here, and weurge business leaders and others to supportthe additional public investments necessary to build and maintain universal prekinder-garten programs.*

Helping all children start school ready to learn is critical to their future success and to the well-being of society as a whole.Children who start school behind their peersare unlikely to catch up. Children who enterkindergarten with limited word reading skillsare the most likely to develop later readingdifficulties and require remedial education.Even with this subsequent extra help, theycontinue to lag; children who are not at leastmodestly-skilled readers by the end of thirdgrade are unlikely to graduate from highschool. Poorly-educated workers are increas-ingly unable to earn a living wage in a globalmarketplace where skills matter more thanever before. Society pays in many ways for failing to take full advantage of the learningpotential of all its children, from lost eco-nomic productivity and tax revenues to high-er crime rates to diminished participation inthe civic and cultural life of the nation. Ourdemocratic values are also betrayed when wefail to live up to our ethical and moral obliga-tion to safeguard the health and well-being ofall young children.

1

Chapter 1

Summary

*See memoranda by JAMES Q. RIORDAN (page 41).

For these reasons, CED Trustees havestressed the importance of investing in youngchildren in a series of reports since 1985.1Over a decade ago, CED urged the nation toview education as an investment, not anexpense, and to develop a comprehensive and coordinated strategy of human invest-ment. Such a strategy should redefine educa-tion as a process that begins at birth andencompasses all aspects of children’s earlydevelopment, including their physical, social,emotional, and cognitive growth.2 In the intervening years the evidence has growneven stronger that investments in early education can have long-term benefits forboth children and society.

Likewise, at the 1989 Education Summit of the President and the nation’s governors,the first of several goals set for American education was that “by the year 2000, all chil-dren will start school ready to learn.”Achieving this goal, in turn, depended onreaching 3 objectives:

• “Children will receive the nutrition, physi-cal activity experiences and health careneeded to arrive at school with healthyminds and bodies, and to maintain themental alertness necessary to be preparedto learn, and the number of low-birth-weight babies will be significantly reducedthrough enhanced prenatal systems.

• Every parent in the United States will be achild’s first teacher and devote time eachday to helping such parent’s preschoolchild learn, and parents will have access tothe training and support parents need.

• All children will have access to high-qualityand developmentally appropriatepreschool programs that help preparechildren for school.”3

We see many signs that the needs of ouryoungest citizens are receiving increased pub-lic awareness and support. Public subsidies forchild care have grown, as have state and fed-

eral efforts to improve the quality of care.States have expanded their efforts to makeprekindergarten education available to atleast some of their preschoolers. TheChildren’s Health Insurance Program hashelped expand the proportion of childrenwhose medical costs are covered by insurance.In state capitals and communities around the nation, many thousands of people haveworked to improve services for young chil-dren and make them more readily available.New messengers have joined long-time advo-cates of better programs for young children.For example, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, abipartisan, nonprofit, anti-crime organizationwhose members include nearly 1,500 policechiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys, and victimsof violence, has made early childhood devel-opment programs a major focus of its anti-crime efforts.

Despite these encouraging signs ofprogress, however, Goal 1 is still far fromaccomplished. America’s youngest childrenstill have many unmet needs.

In this report we focus specifically onaccess to preschool learning opportunitiesthat prepare all children for school. Due inpart to the fact that most mothers are now in

2

Preschool For All

Percentage of Preschool-Age Children in Center Based Programs, 1999

100%__________________________________________________________

90%__________________________________________________________

80%__________________________________________________________

70%__________________________________________________________

60%__________________________________________________________

50%__________________________________________________________

40%__________________________________________________________

30%__________________________________________________________

20%__________________________________________________________

10%__________________________________________________________

0%__________________________________________________________

Total 3-year-olds 4-year-olds 5-year-olds

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, Digest ofEducation Statistics, 2000, NCES-2001-034,(Washington, D.C.:U.S. Department of Education, January 2001), table 48.

59%

46%

69%76%

the workforce, the majority of 3- to 5-year-olds who have not entered kindergarten arealready enrolled in a center-based† early careand/or education program. This advance creates an opportunity to turn the promise of universal early childhood education into a reality for all of the estimated 8.3 millionchildren in this age cohort.

Existing early education efforts, however,are inadequate to fulfill this promise. Toomany children spend their time in settingsthat do not improve their school readiness ortake full advantage of their capacity to learnand that are staffed by poorly trained andpoorly paid workers with high turnover rates.Many children still do not have access to goodpreschool programs. Because families stillbear the largest financial responsibility forearly education, children of higher incomeand better educated parents are the most likely to participate.

Since most mothers of young children nowwork, parents need early education programsthat meet their child care needs as well; butpublic policies still too often treat educationand care separately. Policies must encompasssimultaneously the goals of school readinessfor children and support of working parents.

Other industrialized countries far surpassthe United States in recognizing the wisdomof investments in early education. A numberof European countries already enroll highproportions of their young children in pro-grams with significantly higher standards foreducational staff than are typically found inthis country. In most cases, these programsare publicly funded.

Without a serious and sustained commit-ment to overcoming the shortcomings ofAmerican preschool education, many

children will continue to miss out on the benefits of early learning. This loss could fur-ther widen the gaps in educational achieve-ment that already pose one of the biggestchallenges facing elementary and secondary educators and that permanently limit eco-nomic and social opportunities.

It is time for the United States to recog-nize, as do many other countries, that thepublic interest in assuring educational oppor-tunity for all should include younger childrenand not just those who have reached theirfifth or sixth birthdays. CED’s 1991 observa-tion is even more true today: “In the past,society’s responsibility for providing educa-tional opportunity for children started withtheir entry into schools. But a new under-standing of how children learn makes it clearthat the nation can no longer afford to waitthat long.”4 Just as we have long seen elemen-tary and secondary education for all as a soci-etal responsibility, we must now undertake toextend educational opportunity to all chil-dren age 3 and up.

A serious commitment to early educationfor all will require substantially greater invest-ments by both the federal, state and local gov-ernments. Parents now bear the largest shareof the burden of financing out-of-home careand education for their preschool children.Public subsidies reach far too few families toensure access for all to early learning pro-grams and, moreover, are frequently too lowto support quality services. The public sectorinvests only about $20-25 billion annually incare and education programs for youngstersfrom birth to age 5, while spending roughly$500 billion on K-12 and postsecondary edu-cation. We estimate that the annual publicexpenditures would need to be at least $25 to$35 billion higher to extend access to free,part-day, part-year preschool programs to allchildren age 3 and up, including the nearly3.5 million youngsters not now enrolled incenter-based care.* Additional investments will be necessary to improve the quality of

3

Chapter 1: Summary

†Center-based care refers to early education and/or careoffered in formal settings such as child care centers,preschools and prekindergartens, and federally-funded HeadStart centers. Center-based care does not include services provided to children by relatives or nonrelatives in home-based settings.

*See memoranda by ARNOLD R. WEBER (page 41).

teachers and facilities, monitor performance,and support research and data collection.

CED’s vision of universal preschool callson states to play the central role in buildinguniversal prekindergarten systems. We see thefederal government as catalyzing state system-building through significant subsidies tied tothe development of state strategic plans andtimetables and dependent on holding statepreschool services to acceptable standards.States should be free to choose their ownapproach to the development of universalprekindergarten so long as the approach isconsistent with the following five principles.

(1) Access. Children age 3 and up whoseparents want them to enroll should haveaccess to center-based preschool programsthat meet recognized standards for fosteringeducation and school readiness along withsocial and physical development in a safeenvironment. We believe a minimum goalshould be free part-day (4-6 hours), school-year long prekindergarten programs for allsuch children, just as older children are pro-vided publicly-funded elementary and sec-ondary education. The federal government,which already is and should continue to be a major source of early education funding,should ensure that basic standards of pro-gram quality are in place by creating an independent body to review state-developedand other standards for early education andcertify acceptable ones.

(2) Delivery. Preschool education consis-tent with recognized standards should beobtainable from a variety of providers, withparents choosing the setting most appropriatefor their child’s and family’s needs. A diversearray of providers (e.g., public preschools,Head Start, nonprofit and profit-making childcare centers) already enroll many young chil-dren. It makes sense to take advantage of thisexisting infrastructure by offering currentproviders the opportunity and means toupgrade their services to prekindergartenstandards while allowing parents to continue

selecting the setting they prefer for their children. Such arrangements are especiallyimportant for working parents, who needaccess to providers who build early educationinto full-day, year-round programs. Policymakers should encourage providers to inte-grate prekindergarten and child care by, forexample, eliminating incompatible rules thatcreate barriers to seamless provision of educa-tion and child care services. Policy makersshould also structure public subsidy programsto offer incentives to providers to supply high-er quality child care.

(3) Financing. While states should beresponsible for ensuring universal access toprekindergarten and tying diverse providersinto coherent systems of early education, thefederal and state governments should shareresponsibility for financing early learning. Toencourage equitable access across the nation,the federal government should provide fund-ing sufficient to cover children from lower-income families by creating a new federal-to-state grant program and should also providestates with financial assistance to help devel-op the infrastructure needed for universalaccess. States should ensure that places areavailable in approved preschool programs forall children age 3 and up whose families wantthem to attend.

Most states will not be able to implementuniversal free prekindergarten overnight, andfederal funding should begin in the earlystages of system-building. But even initial fed-eral funding should be contingent on statessubmitting plans describing a strategy andtimetable for accomplishing the goal of pro-viding free universal access to preschool forall. While eventually states should be responsi-ble for the costs of preschool for all childrennot covered by federal support, as an interimstep states could, by using income-based feeschedules, share these costs with families.

(4) Infrastructure, quality improvement, andoversight. In addition to subsidizing directpreschool costs, the federal and state govern-

4

Preschool For All

ments should make resources available toimprove staff and facilities and provide tech-nical assistance and monitoring. Universal,high-quality preschool will require many newfacilities and qualified teachers. Withoutexplicit attention from policy makers, short-ages of teachers and classrooms will hamperthe expansion of preschool programs.Providers wishing to upgrade their standardswill need help with costs that they may not beable to cover from routine operating income.In addition, states must monitor preschoolsystems that utilize diverse providers in orderto identify and assist those that are not meet-ing established standards.

(5) Data and research. The federal andstate governments should improve data col-lection to ensure that comparable and reliableinformation is available on access, costs, and outcomes and should support research to expand our knowledge about the most effective characteristics of early learning pro-grams. The fragmented nature of early careand education in the United States is reflect-ed in data systems that present only a partialpicture of current early learning activities.

Instead of piecemeal reporting approaches,federal and state policy makers must developunified data collection systems capable of pro-viding comprehensive information on chil-dren’s participation in early education andrelated services. Moreover, while research hasalready provided important insights into thelearning capabilities of young children andraised critical questions about the adequacyof existing programs, much remains to belearned about which policies and practiceswill most effectively and efficiently supportearly learning.

Moving beyond today’s fragmented andinadequate array of early education offeringsto a high quality preschool system that meetsthe needs of all young children will clearlytake time. Achieving this goal will also takeimproved knowledge about how to make themost of young children’s capacities to learn.But we already know more than enough tobegin making meaningful progress nowtoward the goal of early learning opportuni-ties for all. It is time to turn this knowledgeinto action.*

5

Chapter 1: Summary

*See memoranda by JOSH S. WESTON (page 41).

To appreciate the deficiencies in how theUnited States approaches early learning, it isnecessary first to understand what currentarrangements look like and why they work theway they do. The nation has a patchwork ofearly care and education opportunities thatevolved to meet different and traditionallyseparate objectives: fostering child develop-ment (giving young children access to educa-tion and other services that would preparethem for formal school) or meeting labormarket needs (providing working familieswith child care). Today there is growingrecognition of the significance of early learn-ing for efforts to improve K-12 education,while changing patterns of work and welfarehave created new incentives to provide earlyeducation to the growing number of youngchildren who spend time in out-of-home care.While education and care for young childrenare, therefore, increasingly intertwined activi-ties, public policies still tend to reflect theirseparate origins as either child developmentor labor market programs.

BACKDROP: CHANGING SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATION,WORK, AND WELFARE

Changing societal perspectives on educa-tion, work, and welfare make the educationand care children receive before they enterschool of growing importance for the generalpublic and not just for parents. Educationreformers increasingly recognize that their

efforts to improve student achievement are affected by differences in children’sdevelopment that are already evident whenformal schooling begins. With most parents,mothers as well as fathers, now working,employers know that it is more importantthan ever for their employees to have accessto high-quality child care arrangements tohelp them balance their work and familyresponsibilities. New welfare policies requirelow-income mothers of even very young children to work.

Efforts to reform elementary and sec-ondary education have drawn attention to early education. There is growing empha-sis on holding schools accountable for suc-cessfully educating all of their students.Reformers are increasingly aware that gaps in knowledge and skills are already evident when children enter kindergarten.Narrowing these gaps (especially those linkedto children’s race and family incomes) after children enter school has proven to be one of educators’ most intractable chal-lenges.

Ensuring that all students receive an adequate education may depend crucially on ensuring that they enter school ready to learn. In fact, courts in two states haverecently ordered state officials to providepreschool education to children at risk of later educational problems. Plaintiffs in school finance lawsuits challenged the legality of state school funding laws on the grounds that insufficient and inequit-able funding denied some students their constitutional rights to an adequate

6

Chapter 2

Overview of Existing Policies and Programs for Young Children

education.† In finding for the plaintiffs,courts in New Jersey and North Carolinaincluded in their mandated remedies the provision of publicly-funded preschool pro-grams for at-risk youngsters.5 (The NorthCarolina court specified access for 4-year-olds, while the court in New Jersey included3-year-olds as well.) Since school finance poli-cies are under legal challenge in many states,it is likely that court-ordered preschool for atleast some children will spread beyond NewJersey and North Carolina.

Access to preschool can also help familiesbalance child-rearing and work. While indi-viduals may still debate whether changing pat-terns of work and family are desirable, theirreversible reality is that it is now the norm inthe United States for women to work. This istrue of all women, including mothers of chil-dren who have not yet reached kindergartenage. Between 1950 and 2000 the civilian laborforce participation rate of women 20 years ofage and over increased from 33 to 60 percent.In 2000, 73 percent of women with childrenwere in the labor force, including 72 percentof those with children 3- to 5-years-old and 61percent of those with children under age 3.6

Moreover, public policy has shifted in itsexpectations about low-income mothers’ par-ticipation in the workplace. In the early 1990sover 90 percent of mothers receiving Aid toFamilies with Dependent Children (“welfare”)were not in the paid labor force. Prior to1996 states were not allowed to require publicassistance recipients who were single parentscaring for infants to participate in work-relat-ed activities.7 This stipulation changed withpassage of the Personal Responsibility andWork Opportunity Reconciliation Act

(PRWORA). As of October 1999 most statesstill continued to exempt individuals with veryyoung children from participating in workactivities, but 16 states set the age limit at 3 to6 months and 4 had no criteria for exemp-tions. In 23 states mothers of children overage 1 could be required to work. Only 5 stateshad an age limit higher than age 1.8 Thusmost single mothers became subject toPRWORA’s assumption that adults, even those with young children, should be

7

Chapter 2: Overview of Existing Policies and Programs for Young Children

Women’s Labor Force Participation Rate: 1950-2000

100%__________________________________________________________

90%__________________________________________________________

80%__________________________________________________________

70%__________________________________________________________

60%__________________________________________________________

50%__________________________________________________________

40%__________________________________________________________

30%__________________________________________________________

20%__________________________________________________________

10%__________________________________________________________

0%__________________________________________________________

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000Years

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Report on the AmericanWorkforce (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2001),p. 126, table 5.

Labor Force Participation Rate of Women with Children: 2000

100%__________________________________________________________

90%__________________________________________________________

80%__________________________________________________________

70%__________________________________________________________

60%__________________________________________________________

50%__________________________________________________________

40%__________________________________________________________

30%__________________________________________________________

20%__________________________________________________________

10%__________________________________________________________

0%__________________________________________________________

Total with With Children With ChildrenChildren aged 3 to 5 years under 3 years

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Report on the AmericanWorkforce, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2001),p. 127, table 6.

33% 38% 43%51%

58% 60%

• • • • • •

†Unlike the federal constitution, virtually every state constitu-tion includes some kind of “education clause” specifying edu-cation as a government function and requiring legislatures tocreate public schools that provide education variouslydescribed as “thorough and efficient” or “ample” or “ade-quate.” Many state school finance systems are under legalchallenge for failing to support an “adequate” education forall students.

73% 72%61%

self-supporting and that public benefitsshould be contingent on meeting work orwork preparation requirements.

WHO CARES FOR AMERICA’SPRESCHOOLERS?

Because the United States has notapproached the provision of early care andeducation in a systematic way, there is littleroutine and up-to-date information aboutwho cares for young children. Another conse-quence of the nation’s unsystematic approachis the lack of any universally accepted classifi-cation scheme for early care and educationproviders that would definitively describe theservices they offer. The situation is furthercomplicated by the fact that many young chil-dren are in multiple arrangements: for exam-ple, a child may spend part of the week in achild care center or preschool program andanother part in a family day care setting (in a non-relative’s home) or being cared for by relatives. Despite these difficulties, anoverview of preschool arrangements can bepieced together from a variety of special (andnot always strictly comparable) surveys.

In 1999, 59 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds who had not yet entered kindergarten partici-pated in some kind of center-based program,variously called day care, nursery school,prekindergarten, preschool, and Head Start.The older the child, the more likely he or shewas to be enrolled in a center-based programfor at least some part of a week: 46 percent of3-year-olds, 69 percent of 4-year-olds, and 76percent of 5-year-olds. Just 23 percent of thesechildren had parental care only: 31 percentfor 3-year-olds, 18 percent for 4-year-olds, and14 percent for 5-year-olds.9 The remainingchildren were more likely to be cared for byrelatives or in family day care settings operat-ed by non-relatives than in center-based pro-grams. Infants and toddlers were more likelythan preschoolers to be in family-based ratherthan center-based care.

Center-based providers vary in the extentto which they are organized to provide educa-tional experiences for preschool children andwhether they offer services on a full- or part-day basis. There are no hard and fast rulesdistinguishing centers, but those labeled “daycare” are more apt to be full-day programsmeeting the child care needs of working parents (i.e., 9 to 10 hours a day). Nurseryschools, prekindergartens, preschools, andHead Start are more apt to include instruc-tion as an important and integral aspect oftheir service and, like many public kinder-gartens, may be part-day programs (2-4hours) operating only during the regularschool year. Even when educationally-orientedproviders offer “full-day” services, full-day generally refers to the length of the typicalelementary/secondary school day (6-7 hours)rather than the 9 to 10 hours offered by centers oriented to the child care needs ofworking parents.

The number of centers caring for childrenwho have not yet entered kindergarten isunknown but totals well over 100,000.† TheChildren’s Foundation 2001 survey of childcenters found 111,506, based on reports fromstate child care licensing offices.10 However,states differ in the extent to which theyinclude or exclude educationally-orientedpreschool programs from their child carelicensing requirements.‡ The Foundation alsoreported that there were 304,958 regulatedfamily child care homes in 2000, mostly serv-ing six or fewer children,11 and estimated thatthere were 4 unregulated family day carehomes for every regulated one.≠

8

Preschool For All

†This figure compares to roughly 80,000 public elementaryand secondary schools.

‡For example, some states exclude preschools and prekinder-gartens, which may be regulated by different agencies. Somestates exclude religiously-affiliated centers from licensingrequirements.

≠States have varying rules about which family child care homesmust be regulated. Many exempt homes caring for a smallnumber of children.

Center providers operate under a varietyof auspices. Some are operated by nonprofitgroups, including religious organizations.Some are profit-making businesses, both single centers and large corporate chains. Insome places the public school system offersprekindergarten classes, although often theseare open mainly to children who are at risk ofnot being ready to succeed in school becauseof poverty, limited English, disabilities, orother factors.

States have the primary responsibility forsetting standards for and regulating early careand education providers. The major excep-tion is that the federal government requiresthat the states have basic child care safety and health requirements in place in order to receive funds from the Child Care Devel-opment Fund (see the next section). Evenhere, states set the health and safety require-ments as well as procedures for ensuring thecompliance of both regulated and nonregu-lated providers; and states vary in the extentto which their practices are consistent withrecommendations of experts.12 More general-ly, states differ in their rules about whichproviders are subject to regulatory standardsand what standards must be met. As notedabove, there are substantial numbers ofproviders (especially family-based providersbut also including some centers) who are eligible for public subsidies but are exemptfrom any regulation except basic health andsafety rules.

WHO PAYS FOR EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION?

In keeping with the traditional view thatearly care and education are individual con-sumer goods rather than an investment withimportant public benefits, families bear thelargest responsibility for providing care andeducation for preschool children.

It is estimated that in 2001, public and pri-vate spending on early care and education for

children from birth to age 5 will total $50-55billion dollars, with parents paying 50-55 per-cent, the federal government paying 25-30 percent, and state and local governments paying 15-20 percent. Corporate and philan-thropic investments could amount to 1-5 percent but are difficult to estimate.13 If theunpaid time of mothers and fathers engagedin child care is considered, the parental shareis obviously much higher. Other costs that arenot included in this total are those of relativesand others who take care of children on anunpaid basis or at a below-market rate.

It is impossible, given the structure of cur-rent funding policies, to identify theresources going specifically to support earlyeducation for 3- and 4-year-olds as distinctfrom child care for children from birth to age 4 or 5. Even the $50+ billion cited abovemust be seen as a ballpark rather than a precise figure, since funding programs maycover school-age children as well and seldomprovide good estimates of the age break-downof beneficiaries.

The two important considerations to keepin mind about early care and education fund-ing are that, unlike elementary and secondaryeducation, (1) families still bear the largestshare of costs, and (2) the federal govern-ment is a significantly more important part-ner than the states in funding (as opposed toproviding or administering) early care andeducation. This latter fact is easily obscuredby the state’s lead role in administering pro-grams and in the wide discretion states haveto structure program parameters. But theAmerican approach to financing early careand education has evolved quite differentlyfrom our approach to financing public ele-mentary and secondary education. In the lat-ter case, states and localities bear 93 percentof the burden of funding public schools, par-ents pay nothing, and the federal governmentonly contributes about 7 percent. As impor-tant as this marginal federal money is to manyelementary and secondary schools, federal

9

Chapter 2: Overview of Existing Policies and Programs for Young Children

funding policies have a far greater influenceon the availability of early education opportu-nities.

Federal FundingMost of the federal funding that subsidizes

education and care for children under age 5comes from 2 programs, Head Start and theChild Care Development Fund (CCDF). Theformer has its origins in the 1960’s efforts toexpand educational opportunity by giving dis-advantaged children a “head start” in school.CCDF is designed to support working parentsby helping them with the costs of child care.Reflecting their different goals, the two pro-grams operate in quite different ways.

Head Start. Head Start provides grants to local agencies to provide comprehensiveearly childhood developmental, educational,health, nutritional, social, and other servicesto low-income children and their families.Ninety percent of participants must be fromfamilies whose income is below the povertyline or from families who are eligible for pub-lic assistance. Most Head Start programs arehalf-day and part-year. While children frombirth through kindergarten are eligible, only6 percent of the 857,664 children enrolled inFY 2000 were under age 3. Fifty-six percentwere age 4. (The remainder were age 3 (33percent) or age 5 (5 percent)). Nationwide,1,535 Head Start grantees provided services in18,200 centers at an average cost of $5,951per child.† Head Start appropriations haverisen rapidly over the last decade, from $1.6billion in 1990 to $6.2 billion in 2001.14

Head Start is the oldest of the federal early care and education programs, havingenrolled its first children in 1965. With strongroots in the Community Action Program of

the War on Poverty, Head Start has tradition-ally given local grantees wide flexibility in program structure. Grantees must complywith federal program standards, whichCongress in 1998 modified to place moreemphasis on school readiness.

CCDF. The Child Care Development Fundwas formed during the 1996 welfare reformby consolidating several existing child careprograms. The fund provides grants to statesfor subsidizing the child care costs of eligiblefamilies and for improving the overall qualityand availability of child care services. SomeCCDF funds are subject to matching require-ments.

States give CCDF subsidies in the form of certificates or outright cash to parents topurchase child care services or through grantsand contracts to providers who enroll eligiblechildren. In FY 1999 only 11 percent of thechildren participating in CCDF were servedthrough grants or contracts; 83 percent wereserved through certificates and 6 percentthrough cash to parents. In that year 29 per-cent of CCDF children were served in settings“legally operating without regulation,” as dis-tinguished from regulated settings.15 Eligiblesettings include centers, family day carehomes, and relatives if they live in a separateresidence. Federal law requires that CCDFproviders comply with applicable state orlocal health and safety requirements but otherwise leaves it up to states to set licensingstandards and determine reimbursementrates.

Parents share responsibility for payingchild care fees, on a sliding scale basis,although states may waive fees for familiesbelow the poverty line. States set subsidy levels and fee schedules.

Children up to age 13 who reside with afamily whose income does not exceed 85 per-cent of the state median income are eligibleto participate; however, states are free to setlower eligibility limits, and most do. Parents

10

Preschool For All

†Head Start centers often provide a broader range of servicesto children and their families than do other early childhoodcenters or public schools, so annual per-child Head Start costsare not directly comparable to costs incurred by other earlyeducation providers.

must be working or in education or trainingor the child must be in need of protective services.

Federal funding for CCDF in FY 2001 was$4.5 billion. The General Accounting Office(GAO) estimates that 1.3 million childrenunder age 5 participated in CCDF in FY 1999and that 70 percent of total budget authorityfor the program went for children in this agegroup.16

Although children benefiting from CCDFmay receive care that helps them prepare forschool, school readiness is not an explicit goalof the program. There are no national perfor-mance standards for services or staff otherthan the basic requirements noted above that states must have and enforce health andsafety rules.

Other federal funding. Head Start andCCDF provide roughly three-quarters of thefederal subsidies available for early care andeducation. Smaller but still important subsi-dies flow from Temporary Assistance forNeedy Families (TANF), from special educa-tion programs, and from Title 1 of theImproving America’s Schools Act.17

Under TANF, the program that replacedAid to Families with Dependent Children inthe 1996 reform of federal welfare legislation,states can use some of their welfare blockgrant on child care. TANF in recent years hasbeen an important source of child care funds,reaching 350,000 children under age 5 in FY1999 at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion.

Children with disabilities get federal aidunder “special education” programs. GAOreports that 1.1 million children under age 5participated in special education in FY 1999,but these figures cover 3 different programsand may include duplicated counts of students. Total spending on special educationservices for children under age 5 was $835 million.

Title 1 grants for supplemental education-al and related services to educationally-disad-vantaged children in low-income areas mostly

are spent by local districts on elementary education, but about 300,000 children underage 5 benefited from Title 1 funds in FY 1999.

In addition to these direct expenditureprograms, several tax credits and exclusionshelp families and employers pay for employ-ment-related dependent-care expenses.Unlike direct federal early care and educationprograms, tax benefits are not targeted tolower-income families.

State And Local Funding

Prekindergarten. As of 1998-99, 42 states(including the District of Columbia) investedin state prekindergarten initiatives offeringregularly-scheduled group experiences foryoung children to help them learn and develop before entering elementary school.18

Beyond this fundamental similarity, the initiatives were quite diverse:

• Some programs were available only in public school settings, while others (suchas Georgia’s) made use of a variety of settings.

• Some states only supplement federal HeadStart programs, while others have devel-oped separate initiatives. A number ofstates sponsor multiple initiatives.

• Georgia offers prekindergarten to all 4-year-olds whose parents want them to par-ticipate. To qualify to participate, GeorgiaPre-K providers must offer services 5 days a week, for at least 6.5 hours per day, for36 weeks a year. Providers are reimbursed$2,219 to $3,475 annual per child (seeAppendix). Georgia officials estimate thatapproximately 63,500 4-year-olds, or 58 to60 percent, are participating, with another12,000 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Startcenters that are not Pre-K providers. New York and Oklahoma have launchedschool-district-based initiatives to openprekindergarten to all 4-year-olds, regard-less of income, but not all districts in thesestates participate. New York, which restricts

11

Chapter 2: Overview of Existing Policies and Programs for Young Children

district participation because of limitedfunding, appears to be currently servingroughly a quarter of its 4-year-olds andOklahoma around half.

• Enrollment rates in states that restrictaccess to prekindergarten reach or exceed20-30 percent in a few cases, but generallyare much lower.† These states have adopt-ed varying approaches to setting prioritiesabout whom to serve. Most state programsare limited to low-income families andchildren with other risk factors. (Eventhen, most states do not serve all eligiblechildren.) Some states focus on serving all children in selected communities, gen-erally chosen because they are home tosignificant populations of disadvantagedfamilies.

• Some states limit a child’s eligibility forprekindergarten to one year. Others

define eligible children to include both 3- and 4-year-olds or even all children frombirth to age 5.

• Many state pre-K initiatives offer only part-day (2 to 4 hours a day), part-year services,although there are exceptions such asConnecticut, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.

• Some initiatives (particularly those that follow a public school model and focus onpublic school settings) focus comparativelynarrowly on education goals, while othersprovide a more comprehensive array ofservices including health care and variousfamily supports.

• States may distribute pre-K funds directlyto providers or may distribute them tocommunities or school districts, which inturn distribute funds to individualproviders. Hawaii and Arizona distributesome or all funds directly to parents.

• Many but not all state pre-K initiativesrequire providers to meet quality stan-dards that are higher than the state’s childcare licensing standards. For example,New York State has no pre-service require-ments for teachers in child care centers,

12

Preschool For All

†Reliable data on enrollment rates in prekindergarten pro-grams are not available. We have made rough estimates basedon unpublished information provided to us by the staff ofEducation Week, who collected enrollment numbers fromstates. The problem in estimating enrollment rates is in know-ing what denominator to use, since states may allow childrenyounger than four to enroll but the extent of their eligibilityto participate is difficult to determine.

In 1993 Georgia established a prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds with funds fromthe state lottery. Originally targeting at-risk children, in 1995 the program was opened to allchildren whose parents want them to participate. Eligible providers include:

Public Schools Private SchoolsDepartment of Family Services Head Start AgenciesFor-Profit Child Care Agencies Nonprofit Child Care AgenciesHospitals Vocational/Technical SchoolsUniversities ChurchesAtlanta Job Corp Military BasesYMCAs and YWCAs

SOURCE: Karen Schulman, Helen Blank, and Danielle Ewen, Seeds of Success: State Prekindergarten Initiatives — 1998-1999 (Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 1999), p. 186.

GEORGIA’S PREKINDERGARTEN PROGRAM PROVIDERS

while prekindergarten teachers arerequired to be certified in elementary edu-cation.19

In 1998-99 states spent approximately $1.7billion on their pre-K initiatives and served750,000 children.20 Total state spending wasquite uneven: the 10 highest spending statesaccounted for over three-quarters of statespending on pre-K initiatives, although they

accounted for just over one-half the pre-K agepopulation. The 5 top spending states(California, Georgia, Illinois, New York, andTexas) accounted for about half of all statepre-K spending.21 State spending per enrolledpupil varied widely as well, from $7,000 inConnecticut (for children enrolled in full-dayprograms) to less than $2,000 in 14 state ini-tiatives. While the various initiatives are notdirectly comparable, in that they cover differ-

13

Chapter 2: Overview of Existing Policies and Programs for Young Children

Several states provide the necessary funding for full-day and/or full-year prekindergartenfor eligible children and also require that it be offered by at least some percentage of pro-grams.

Connecticut reimbursed providers $7,000 per child in 1998-99 for children participatingfor the full day and full year. The state also required that at least 60 percent of availableprekindergarten slots be for full-day/full-year participation, to meet the needs of full-timeworking families. Based on local planning processes that were required to assess the need forthese programs, several communities decided to go beyond minimum requirements andhave all their prekindergarten programs operate on a full-day, full-year basis. Connecticut’sprogram is open to all 3- and 4-year-olds where offered, but is limited to school districts withhigh concentrations of poverty. About 6,300 children were served in school year 2001-02,roughly 7 percent of the state’s population of 3- and 4-year-olds.

Massachusetts requires that at least one-third of the children participating in itsprekindergarten initiative be provided with full-day classes. This requirement reflects the ini-tiative’s orientation toward meeting the needs of working families. The state also promotesfull-day/full-year programming by encouraging local councils under its CommunityPartnerships for Children to consider the range of schedules faced by working families(including irregular as well as regular shifts) in implementing their prekindergarten pro-grams. Approximately 21,800 children from moderate and low-income families participatedin prekindergarten in 2001-02, roughly 13.5 percent of the state’s 3- and 4-year-olds.

Hawaii’s Preschool Open Door program funds full-day programs for all participatingchildren, although only for 9 months a year. The state provided funds directly to parents,who could choose the program their children attended. This might be a prekindergartenprogram, although it could also be a child care program that met only child care licensingstandards. Hawaii’s program served approximately 800 3- and 4-year-olds from low-incomefamilies in 1999-00, roughly 2.5 percent of the relevant age group.

In all 3 cases, while the states provided funding for extended programs, they alsorequired parents to pay fees on a sliding scale basis.

In 1998-99 several other states (California, Florida, and Maryland) reported providingsome support for extended hours in their prekindergarten programs, although they did notrequire programs to offer extended hours.

SOURCE: Karen Schulman, Helen Blank, and Danielle Ewen, Seeds of Success: State Prekindergarten Initiatives-1998-99(Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 1999), pp. 129-30; Nancy K. Cauthen, Jane Knitzer, and Carol H. Ripple,Map and Track: State Initiatives for Young Children and Families, 2000 Edition (New York, NY: National Center for Childrenin Poverty, Columbia University, 2000); unpublished information from Education Week.

FULL-DAY, FULL-YEAR PREKINDERGARTEN INITIATIVES

ent services, a sense of the meaning of theseaverage expenditure levels can be gained by comparing them with the $5,147 averageannual cost in the federal Head Start pro-gram in FY 1998.22 Some states require locali-ties to provide matching funds or permitthem to supplement state money. These addi-tional local dollars may come from school districts or from community programs andorganizations.

Child care. Most state spending on childcare is actually federal money, from federalappropriations for CCDF or from state deci-sions to transfer money from the TANF blockgrant to CCDF or to spend TANF fundsdirectly for child care. In addition to meetingtheir required state match for these funds,however, states do expend some of their ownfunds on child care. The exact amount, espe-cially the portion directed to preschool-agechildren, is hard to pinpoint. State and localspending on early care and education com-bined is estimated to have been about $8 to$10 billion in 1999.23

State child care spending tends to benefitlow-income families and to take the form ofvouchers or direct payments to providers.States sometimes draw on general revenuesfor child care funding but may also dependon a variety of other revenue sources. Forexample, Kentucky and Maine devote part oftheir tobacco settlement money to child care;and California uses funds raised by taxes oncigarettes and other tobacco products for arange of “early childhood development ser-vices,” including child care. Massachusettsand Kentucky give individuals, when register-ing and licensing motor vehicles, the optionof designating part of their fees to supportchild care. Missouri funds its Early ChildhoodDevelopment, Education and Care Fund from gambling fees. Georgia funds its pre-Kprogram, as well as college education, from a state lottery. Over half the states have taxcredits or deductions for child and depen-dent care.24

14

Preschool For All

The U.S. approach to early education suffers from serious shortcomings. Althoughmany young children spend time in somekind of center-based care, many are notexposed to developmentally-appropriate activities that would improve their readinessfor school. Moreover, access to formal learn-ing programs with qualified staff is limitedand uneven, despite growing evidence thatsuch investments in early education pay sub-stantial benefits to both individuals and soci-ety. Early education and child care programsare not well integrated, thereby complicatingthe lives of working parents who need safeand stimulating arrangements for their chil-dren on a year-round, full-time basis. Thenation lags most other developed countries,especially those in Western Europe, in theavailability and quality of learning opportuni-ties for 3- to 5-year-olds who have not yetentered kindergarten. Public investment inthe United States is inadequate for the task ofbuilding a strong early learning system avail-able to all.

YOUNG CHILDREN HAVEUNTAPPED POTENTIAL FORLEARNING

Too many children spend their time in settings that do not take full advantage oftheir capacity to learn.

Prekindergarten children have muchgreater power to learn than has traditionallybeen realized. A National Research Council(NRC) panel on early learning pedagogyrecently undertook “the first attempt at a

comprehensive, cross-disciplinary examina-tion of the accumulated theory, research, andevaluation literature relevant to early child-hood education.”25 The NRC study noted animportant change in what we know about“the major tasks for children during thepreschool years.” In earlier times, these taskswere seen primarily as those of “socialization:separating from home, learning how to inter-act with peers and unfamiliar adults, andexperiencing new material in a novel environ-ment. Today we recognize the first 5 years as atime of enormous growth of linguistic, con-ceptual, and social competence” as well.26

The pace of children’s learning duringtheir early years depends significantly on theenvironment in which they grow up. Learningis maximized in settings that encourage cog-nitive, socio-emotional (mental health), andphysical development; that feature responsiveinterpersonal relationships with teachers thatnurture children’s disposition to learn andtheir emerging abilities; and that offer well-planned curricula whose aims are specifiedand integrated across domains of learning.While not diminishing the importance ofmany traditional preschool activities, researchis showing that children can learn more inthe preschool years in reading, mathematics,and science than was previously understood.In reading, for example, the preschool yearsare a crucial time for developing the “emer-gent literacy skills” necessary to become areader: e.g., understanding the structure andsounds of words, the meanings of words, andthe concept that print conveys meaning.

The NRC panel noted that “while no sin-

15

Chapter 3

Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

gle curriculum or pedagogical approach canbe identified as best, children who attendwell-planned, high-quality early childhoodprograms in which curriculum aims are speci-fied and integrated across domains tend tolearn more and are better prepared to masterthe complex demands of formal schooling.”Among other factors, incorporating moreambitious learning goals into programs foryoung children requires teachers who aredeeply knowledgeable about how childrendevelop in the early years and about the peda-gogy of teaching preschool youngsters. Thepanel recommended that each group of chil-dren in a preschool be assigned a teacherwho has a bachelor’s degree and specializededucation related to early childhood.27

Current training levels of adults who workwith young children are a far cry, however,from those envisioned by the NRC panel; andpre-service training requirements vary widelyfrom state to state and program to program.Individuals can often be hired for preschooland child care center positions with only ahigh school diploma and little or no experi-ence.28 In 2000, 31 states set no minimumrequirements for teachers in child care cen-ters. Of the states with minimum require-ments, only Rhode Island and New York City(which has regulations separate from those ofNew York State) required teachers in childcare centers to have bachelor’s degrees.

Elsewhere, minimum requirements typical-ly included various combinations of course-work in child development, experience, andreceipt of a Child Development Associate(CDA) or similar credential.29 The CDA, anationally recognized credential originallydeveloped for Head Start workers, certifiesthat high school graduates with experienceworking with children and 120 hours of for-mal child care education have also passed aperformance-based assessment of their care-giving knowledge and skills. The CDA is themost widely held credential among child-care

workers and qualifies holders to be teachersin prekindergarten programs in 9 states as well. Twenty-nine states require their pre-kindergarten teachers to have teacher certifi-cation, which requires a college degree.30

Minimum qualifications for preschoolteachers are slowly being raised in someplaces. For example, as of the 2002-03 schoolyear, the CDA and related credentials will nolonger be acceptable as a lead teacher creden-tial in the Georgia Pre-K Program. Theseteachers will be required at a minimum tohold an associate’s degree, Montessori diplo-ma, or other equivalent credential.31 The federal Head Start program by 2003 willrequire that at least half of its teachers havean associate’s degree.

Preschool teachers in the United Statesare poorly paid. In 1998 their median annualearnings were $17,310. Median annual paywas highest for those preschool teachersworking in the elementary and secondaryschool system ($23,300) and lowest for thoseclassified as working in “child day care ser-vices” ($15,700). Child care workers faredeven worse: their median hourly earningswere $6.61 in 1998. This figure would trans-late to roughly $13,000 annually for full-timeworkers. Furthermore, preschool teachersand child care workers frequently do notreceive benefits such as health care and paidvacation.32 Not surprisingly, high levels ofturnover have plagued the preschool andchild care industries.

At current levels of training and pay, theearly education field is unlikely to attract thehighly-qualified and stable workforce neces-sary to meeting the growing expectations ofparents and policy makers for measurabledevelopmental outcomes for all children.

Moreover, child development specialistswarn that 10 to 20 percent of existing out-of-home child care settings fall below thresholdsof even adequate care. How do researchersdescribe the inadequate care experienced by

16

Preschool For All

too many children? According to an NRCpanel of experts on early childhood develop-ment, in poor-quality settings “[researchers]see caregivers who more often ignore thanrespond to young children’s bids for attentionand affection, a dearth of age-appropriate oreducational toys, and children who spendmuch of their time wandering aimlesslyaround, unengaged with adults, other chil-dren, or materials.” The panel also warnedthat, given the possibility that providers offer-ing extremely poor care do not participate inresearch, the proportion of poor-quality caremight actually be higher than these figuressuggest.33

Access to publicly-subsidized programshelps protect children against inadequatecare, for although they vary in quality, programs such as Head Start and other subsidized arrangements offer quality of care that is significantly higher than found in other community-based child care cen-ters.34 Formal preschool programs also offer parents some assurance that their children are receiving adequate care and the opportunity to learn. But preschool and public subsidies are not equally availableto all.

ACCESS TO FORMAL EARLYLEARNING PROGRAMS IS LIMITED AND UNEVEN

Because the United States still views educa-tion and care of young children as primarily a family responsibility, early learning opportu-nities are unavailable to many children.Children of higher-income and better-educat-ed parents are the most likely to have theadvantage of participating in early educationprograms.

In October 2000 the Census Bureaufound35 that 52 percent of all 3- to 5-year-olds not yet enrolled in kindergarten wereenrolled in “nursery school.”† Hispanic

children were significantly less likely to beenrolled than white non-Hispanic and Blackchildren: 36 percent compared to 55 and 58percent, respectively.

The likelihood that children would beenrolled in nursery school increased withincome, from 44 percent of children in fami-lies earning less than $10,000 to 71 percent ofchildren from families earning $75,000 andover. As the chart on page 18 indicates, themost noticeable differences in enrollmentrates were between families earning less than$50,000 and those earning more. The rela-tionship between enrollment and mother’seducation was still more dramatic. Just 32 per-cent of children whose mothers had only anelementary school education were enrolled innursery school, while 68 percent of childrenwhose mothers had college degrees wereenrolled.

The Census Bureau statistics on enroll-ment show that public school programs wereespecially important for children from lower-income families. Whereas 89 percent of theenrolled children of families with incomesless than $10,000 were in public nurseryschools, 77 percent of the children from families with incomes of $75,000 and overattended private schools.

The reliance of lower-income families onpublic programs is significant in light of thefact that many eligible families are deniedpublic subsidies because of limited funding.In 1990, with enthusiastic support of CED,Congress authorized full funding of HeadStart by 1994. Nevertheless, current appropri-ations are only sufficient to permit 60 percentof eligible 3- and 4-year-old children to

17

Chapter 3: Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

†The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey defines“nursery school” as “a group or class that is organized to provide educational experiences for children during the year or years preceding kindergarten. It includes instructionas an important and integral phase of its program of childcare.” Head Start is counted under nursery school. www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html

18

Preschool For All

Enrollment in Nursery School by Family Income: October 2000

Percent Enrolled

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%Less $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 $25,000 $30,000 $35,000 $40,000 $50,000 $75,000 Notthan to to to to to to to to and reported

$10,000 $14,999 $19,999 $24,999 $29,999 $34,999 $39,999 $49,999 $74,999 over

Family Income

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report, available at<www.census.gov/population/www.socdemo/school/ppl-148/tab04.txt> Accessed June 1, 2001.

44% 43%51%

43%38%

45%51%

42%

58%

71%

46%

Enrollment in Nursery School by Mother’s Level of Education: October 2000

Percent Enrolled

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%Children not Elementary: High School: High School Less than a Bachelor’s

living 0 to 8 9 to graduate Bachelor’s degreewith mother years 11 years degree or more

Level of Educational Attainment

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report, available at<www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/ppl-148/tab03.txt> Accessed June 1, 2001.

45%

32% 37%

47%53%

68%

participate. Only 12 percent of the childreneligible for subsidies under the Child CareDevelopment Fund block grant actuallyreceive them,36 and many states have waitinglists for these subsidies. The GeneralAccounting Office reports that theDepartment of Education does not haveinformation on the proportion of Title 1funds used for preschool children, but esti-mates that Title 1 reached only 264,000 suchchildren in 1996-97, or 2 percent of all chil-dren Title 1 served that year.37 School officialsfind it difficult to allocate Title 1 funds topreschoolers because of many unmet needsin elementary and secondary schools. Stateprekindergarten programs typically enrollonly a small fraction of 3- and 4-year-olds, as noted in Chapter 2.

Uneven access to early education opportu-nities is worrisome because learning gaps aredeveloping among children in the preschoolyears; and children who are behind when

they enter school are unlikely to catch upwith their peers. A recent National ResearchCouncil study on the science of early child-hood development found that “striking dis-parities in what children know and can do areevident well before they enter kindergarten.These differences are strongly associated withsocial and economic circumstances, and theyare predictive of subsequent academic perfor-mance.”38

Evidence for this conclusion can be seenin a new longitudinal study by the NationalCenter for Education Statistics, which is fol-lowing a nationally-representative sample of22,000 kindergarteners as they enter andprogress through the early grades of school.Early findings document differences in whatchildren know and can do when they enterkindergarten and show that many of these differences are linked to family characteristicssuch as income and mother’s education.Differences are found not only in knowledge

19

Chapter 3: Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

Enrollment in Public and Private Nursery School by Family Income: October 2000

� Percent Enrolled in Public School � Percent Enrolled in Private School

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Less $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 $25,000 $30,000 $35,000 $40,000 $50,000 $76,000 Notthan to to to to to to to to and reported

$10,000 $14,999 $19,999 $24,999 $29,999 $34,999 $39,999 $49,999 $74,999 over

Family Income

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report, available at <www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/ppl-148/tab04.txt> Accessed June 1, 2001.

89%85%

80%

70% 70%

20%

30% 32%

15%11%

54%

41%38%

23%

59% 62%

77%

50%45%

35%

50%

64%

and academic skills, but in non-cognitivedomains that are important for school success(such as physical health) and in the learning-related experiences that children have athome.

Unequal access to early education is alsodisturbing in light of mounting evidence thatearly education offers long-term benefits forboth children and for society, benefits thatcan substantially offset the large costsinvolved. It has been known for some timethat model demonstration programs provid-ing intensive, high-quality educational and

related services to young children from disad-vantaged backgrounds increased participants’school success on such measures as reducedreferral to special education, lower incidenceof retention in grade, reduced dropout rates,and improved test scores. As children in themost widely-watched† of these model pro-grams (High Scope/Perry Preschool and

20

Preschool For All

Mother withAll less than Mother with Utilized Never utilized

Characteristic Kindergartners High School BA or higher AFDC** AFDC

Have 3 PrintFamiliarity Skills* 37 17 56 19 40

Can Recognize Letters 66 38 86 41 69

Can RecognizeNumbers and Shapes 94 84 99 85 95

Can RecognizeRelative Size 58 32 79 33 61

Parents Say GeneralHealth is Excellent 51 35 62 36 53

Teachers SayPersist at Task 71 61 79 59 73

Have More Than50 Books at Home 46 14 71 21 49

Family MembersRead to Child 3 orMore Days a Week 80 63 93 66 82

*Such as knowing that print reads left to right, where to go when a line of print ends, and where the story ends.

**AFDC: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (pre-1996 welfare program).

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, America’s Kindergartners: Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Class of1998-99, Statistical Analysis Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, February 2000).

SELECTED FINDINGS ABOUT FIRST-TIME KINDERGARTNERS, FALL 1998

Percentage of Kindergartners with Characteristic

†Researchers weigh the results of the Perry Preschool andAbecedarian programs more heavily than many other earlyeducation and early intervention programs because theseprojects employed “gold standard” research designs usingrandomized treatment and control groups and because they have followed up participants over many years.

Carolina Abecedarian) have been followedinto young adulthood, more benefits havebecome apparent: e.g., lower juvenile crimerates, greater labor force participation, andhigher incomes. One careful effort to esti-mate the costs and benefits of the PerryPreschool program, based on data from theage-27 follow-up study, found that the mone-tary benefits (to the government, to programparticipants and their mothers, and to crimevictims) exceeded the costs per child by a factor of 4 to 1.† A more conservative estimateof benefits, limited to savings to governmentfrom the reduction in education servicesneeded, taxes from increased employment,reduction in welfare cost, and reduction incriminal justice cost, still showed benefits ofthe Perry Preschool program exceeding costsby a factor of over 2 to 1.39

Perry Preschool was not a typical pre-school program, however. It cost over $12,000per child in 1996 dollars, in part because ithad unusually low teacher/student ratios,because all teachers were certified public school teachers trained in child devel-opment, and because three-fourths of the participants received 2 years (rather than 1year) of services (2.5 hours of center-baseddaily classes and weekly 90-minute teacherhome visits). The program was also very small(121 children, divided between the treatmentand control groups). There have long beenquestions about whether investments in moretypical and less expensive early education pro-grams like Head Start and prekindergartenwould have similar payoffs.

Recent research suggests that indeedlarge-scale programs run at lower cost canalso generate significant benefits. The

Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) program began in 1967, funded by federalTitle 1 funds and carried out in Chicago public schools. CPC provides preschool andother services to 3- to 5-year-olds as well asextended intervention into the elementaryschool years to economically disadvantagedminority children. The program currentlyoperates in 24 schools.

Researchers have followed a cohort of1,539 children, born in 1980, who receivedsome combination of CPC services or who(the comparison group) were enrolled inlocally-funded full-day kindergarten programsbut did not receive preschool services.Findings from the latest follow-up study ofparticipants at age 21 show that each compo-nent of CPC had economic benefits thatexceeded costs, with the greatest returnresulting from the preschool component. For an average cost per child of $6,730 (1998dollars) for 1.5 years of participation, thepreschool program generated a total returnto society of $47,759 per participant, mea-sured as discounted present value—a ratio of7:1. The largest benefit was in increased earn-ings for participants expected from attaininghigher education levels. Benefits frompreschool also included savings from lowercrime rates and from reduced need forschool remedial services.40

There has never been a large-scale, ran-dom-assignment research study on HeadStart. In 1998 Congress called for such anational study to assess the impact of the program on the children it serves; data collec-tion is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2002and continue through 2006.41 Meanwhile, arecent review of Head Start research attempt-ed to draw some preliminary conclusionsabout costs and benefits. The study foundthat the costs of sending children to a HeadStart program for 2 years would be partiallyoffset by just the value of the child care pro-vided. Counting other short-term benefits of Head Start (e.g., improved health and

21

Chapter 3: Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

†In an analysis that estimated the dollar value of additionalbenefits such as reductions in the intangible losses to victimsof crime, Barnett calculated an even higher benefit-to-costratio for the Perry Preschool program, on the order of 7:1.See W. Steven Barnett, Lives in the Balance: Age-27 Benefit-CostAnalysis of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program (Ypsilanti, MI:The High/Scope Press, 1996).

nutrition) and reasonable estimates of medi-um-term benefits (e.g., prevention of specialeducation and grade repetition in the earlygrades) improves the benefit/cost ratio. Theauthor concludes that “available evidence suggests that the short- and medium-termbenefits could easily offset 40 to 60 percent of the costs of large-scale, publicly-fundedearly intervention programs such as HeadStart. Thus, even relatively small long-termbenefits of such a program may be sufficientto offset the costs of public investment.”42

There has not been much research on the costs and benefits of early education pro-grams for children from middle- and upper-income families, because these children areby and large not eligible for public subsidies.While the “payoff” to public investments indisadvantaged children is undoubtedly high-er, we expect that all children can potentiallybenefit from such programs. This resultwould be especially true if findings from newresearch on the learning capacities of youngchildren are translated into high-qualitypreschool programs of a kind that fewAmerican youngsters have yet experienced.

EARLY EDUCATION AND CAREAREN’T INTEGRATED

“Education and care in the early years aretwo sides of the same coin.”43 This conclusionseems obvious when we consider the children:social attachments fostered by high-qualitycare improve both social competence and theability to exploit learning opportunities. Thisstatement also seems obvious when we consid-er parents: with most of them employed, theyneed to know not only that their young chil-dren are learning but that they are being wellcared-for throughout the working day.

The reality of the two-sided coin of educa-tion and care is less apparent when we look atpublic policies, however, which lack a compre-hensive vision that encompasses both thegoals of school readiness for children and

support of working parents. In consequence,we have “a service delivery system with sepa-rate administrations, separate missions andprograms, and differing desired child andfamily outcomes, largely flowing from under-lying differences in principal goals.”44 Thisservice delivery system creates a huge chal-lenge for states trying to build comprehensiveand coordinated systems of services for youngchildren. The lack of integration also compli-cates the lives of service providers who mustcope with different eligibility requirementsfor children and families, different methodsof delivering federal and state funds, and different requirements and standards for theprograms they deliver. It creates barriers forfamilies trying to understand the public subsi-dies for which they are eligible and lookingfor providers who can meet both the educa-tional and child care needs of their children.

We touched on some of these differencesin Chapter 2; additional details will conveythe magnitude of the challenges facing policymakers, service providers, and parents.45

Head Start and many state prekindergartenprograms emphasize child development morethan work support and thus generally operateon a part-day, part-year basis. Head Startemphasizes services to children whose fami-lies are at or below the federal poverty line,and Head Start grantees are restricted in thenumbers of children they can serve abovethat income level. These provisions compli-cate efforts to make Head Start services avail-able to providers serving children receivingCCDF subsidies, since the latter can includefamilies with incomes up to 85 percent ofstate median income.

CCDF, on the other hand, is limited to children from families with a working par-ent,† while Head Start eligibility depends onlyon family income and not on the parent’s

22

Preschool For All

†Children in families with a parent engaged in education orwho are determined to be in need of protective services arealso eligible for CCDF subsidies.

employment status. State prekindergartenprograms have a variety of rules determiningprogram eligibility, some but not all of whichmatch one or another of the federal pro-grams.

Head Start provides federal funds directlyto local grantees on a prospective basis. CCDFsubsidies flow from Washington through state-designated lead agencies; most CCDFproviders receive reimbursement after theyprovide care to eligible children whose par-ents are using certificates that entitle them toservices. State prekindergarten programs maydistribute funds to local partnerships or local-ities (such as school districts or Head Startprograms); 2 actually distribute funds directlyto parents.

Head Start grantees are expected to meetperformance standards regarding educationaland other services (e.g., social services,health, and parent involvement). Some statesfollow Head Start performance standards intheir own prekindergarten programs; otherstates have no educational standards, and pro-grams must meet only child care licensing orschool code requirements. Federal law doesnot set performance standards for CCDF.States are not prevented by federal law fromapplying substantially similar performancestandards derived from other programs suchas Head Start to their CCDF subsidies.However, a federal provision that CCDF rulesmust not significantly restrict parental choiceof provider is sometimes interpreted as a barrier to imposing performance standards or other requirements on child care providersserving CCDF-eligible children.

State efforts to implement comprehensiveearly education initiatives are further compli-cated by the fact that programs are housed inseparate agencies. Child care administratorsare frequently housed in the state agency thatadministers welfare and public assistance pro-grams. Prekindergarten programs are oftenfound in state departments of education.Head Start is administered by federal and

regional offices, although in recent years fed-eral funding has been provided for a HeadStart Collaboration director who is housed inan agency chosen by the state. Often the topadministrators of different state early careand education programs have different levelsof power and status within the state andtherefore would not traditionally engage injoint planning. Moreover, oversight responsi-bilities in both state and federal legislaturesare divided among different committees. Allof these structural differences complicateseamless planning and administration; theyalso mean that distinct cultures and some-times program rivalries must be overcome.

UNITED STATES LAGS OTHER COUNTRIES

While the United States continues todebate about increasing its investments inyoung children, other industrialized countrieshave already recognized the wisdom of suchinvestments. Many nations far surpass us inmaking early learning opportunities operat-ing on convenient schedules for working parents available to all.

Belgium, France, and Italy, for example,offer universal, voluntary, and free programsfor preschool children age 3 to 6 and enroll95-99 percent of this age cohort. Preschool inthese countries lasts for the normal schoolday, 7 or 8 hours, and supplemental servicesare available before and after school and during school holidays. Parents share thecosts of the latter, paying fees tied to income.Denmark, Sweden, and Finland enroll 73-83percent of their 3- to 6-year-olds in early edu-cation programs that integrate education andcare and also guarantee places in subsidizedcare to any child age 1 and older with work-ing parents. While heavily subsidized by gov-ernment, parents in these countries are alsocharged income-related fees. Austria, theNetherlands, and Spain have preschoolenrollment rates above 70 percent. Germany

23

Chapter 3: Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

enrolls 85 percent of its 3- to 6-year-olds inkindergarten, although the programs arelargely part-day and usually do not offer sup-plemental services.46 The United Kingdomenrolls over 90 percent of its 4-year-olds inpreschool, while its coverage of 3-year-olds is significantly lower.47

These figures are especially impressivebecause they apply to education-oriented programs that are required to recruit staffwith specialized qualifications in education.Day care centers and other facilities wherethe staff are not required to hold a qualifica-tion in education are not included.48

Pre-service training requirements in theseEuropean countries are much higher than in

the United States. Professional staff workingwith children age 3 or older are generallyrequired to have completed at least 3 years ofpostsecondary education (which is the equiva-lent of a bachelor’s degree in many coun-tries). (“Wrap-around” services, on the otherhand, are often staffed by a different set ofworkers, for many of whom there is no frame-work for qualifying or regulating person-nel.)49

Public financing is the dominant approachto paying for preschool in the industrializedcountries of Europe. Parents share costs onan ability-to-pay basis in some cases, but theirshare is small and sometimes limited to thewrap-around care needed by those who work.

24

Preschool For All

At 8:45 A.M. students at a French école maternelle (“maternal school”) are gathered arounda teacher engaged in their daily discussion of the weather conditions and days of the week.By 9:30 they are in the studio learning tumbling and dancing. Later they play math gamesand eat together in a cafeteria with real plates and cutlery. In the afternoon, one group willparticipate in a science activity — baking a pie, while others will draw, paint, or illustrate stories. Their day lasts until 4:30 P.M., when many of their parents pick them up. When thisis not possible, there is an after school program offered for a minimum fee. At these institu-tions the teachers all have college degrees plus 2 years of additional preparation at ateacher-training institute, are paid a salary commensurate to a primary school teacher’s,receive medical benefits and paid vacation, and are continuously given opportunities toexpand their knowledge and ability to teach young children.

The French early childhood education system is the “crown jewel” of its public educationsystem. It has developed over 100 years and enjoys broad public support. Although participa-tion is voluntary for parents, nearly 100 percent of 3- and 4- year olds and almost 40 percentof 2-year olds attend école maternelle . The system is fully funded by the national government,with jurisdiction given to local districts to provide infrastructure and non-teaching staff. Onepolitician responded when asked by an American visitor which political party would cutfunding for the program in a recession, “No one would dare! It’s as if someone here wererunning for office and wanted to discontinue public education. You’d run him out of town.”

Experts in both countries praise many aspects of the French approach to early education,among them universal access, highly trained teachers, quality standards, public support, andimpressive facilities. However, a delegation of American early childhood education expertsvisiting several école maternelles in and around Paris pointed to some aspects of the Frenchschools that they wouldn’t necessarily want to replicate in the United States: large classes,teacher-directed teaching style, little parental involvement, and emphasis on French culturalimmersion rather than sensitivity to cultural differences.

SOURCE: Candy J. Cooper, Ready to Learn: The French System of Early Education and Care Offers Lessons for the UnitedStates (New York, NY: The French-American Foundation, 1999).

PORTRAIT OF PUBLIC SUPPORT: THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

European citizens and their leaders appearto have decided that universal access topreschool is valuable for both children andsociety, and there is increasing acceptance of the idea that programs should be availableto all children free of charge. While ahead of the United States in this regard, manyEuropean countries share with us a continu-ing need to expand the availability of supple-mentary services to meet the needs ofemployed parents.50

Despite broad agreement about universalaccess to public funding, there remain differ-ences in approach to preschool educationamong European countries. They differ inhow they divide responsibilities betweennational and local governments, whether they administer preschool programs underthe auspices of education or welfare agenciesor some combination, whether they utilizeprivate providers, how they define acceptablestandards, and so on.

Country approaches generally reflect dif-ferences in their broader political and socialtraditions. American observers are neverthe-less increasingly aware that we in this countrycan learn important lessons from countriessuch as France about “the art of the possible”in early education.51

PUBLIC INVESTMENT IS INADEQUATE

The inadequacies of the American “non-system” of early care and education are notnew concerns. To a discouraging degree, the shortcomings highlighted above repeatproblems CED has identified for almost 2decades. Why haven’t we as a nation mademore progress in meeting the needs of ouryoungest children?

We believe that the key problem is the lackof public willingness to the make publicinvestments necessary to give all children thestrong start they need as they enter school.52

Imagine what elementary and secondary edu-cation in the United States would look like ifchildren’s participation depended on whattheir parents could afford and were willing to pay. A hundred years ago Americans recog-nized that our society was not well served bysuch an approach, and we moved rapidlytoward universal access to elementary andthen to secondary schools. Imagine how limit-ed postsecondary educational opportunitywould be if it depended primarily on howwealthy one’s parents were. After World WarII and the success of the G.I. Bill, we under-stood that many more people than previouslyrealized could benefit from continuing theireducations beyond high school and that soci-ety would also benefit from rising educationalattainment. Public universities expandedrapidly, and new federal and state student aidprograms were created to help families paythe costs of education beyond high school.

Earlier in this report we estimated thatpublic spending in the United States on earlycare and education for children from birth toage 5 amounts to about $20-25 billion annual-ly. By contrast, governments at all levels spendroughly $400 billion annually on elementaryand secondary education and at least $100 bil-lion on postsecondary education (includingstudent aid).53 These numbers suggest thatour public investments are seriously unbal-anced. Just as the nation earlier acknowl-edged society’s stake in and responsibility forthe education of older children and youngadults, it is now time to recognize that earlyeducation is equally vital to our individualand collective well-being and equally worthy of public support.

25

Chapter 3: Shortcomings in the U.S. Approach to Early Learning

Moving beyond rhetoric to a real commit-ment to early learning opportunities for allchildren requires a new national compactthat articulates a clear vision of the objectiveand assigns responsibilities to key stakehold-ers. Current piecemeal actions, while well-intentioned improvements over the statusquo, cannot fully address the need forchange. A comprehensive framework forleveraging systemic reform and support forthe public investment to accomplish it areessential.

In this chapter we identify the principlesaround which an early learning system should be built and recommend specific stepsto start transforming our vision into reality.Moving from where we are now to full realiza-tion of the vision will clearly take time, whilepolitical support is built and the necessarynew resources found. The practical need to implement the principles gradually is no hin-drance. Indeed, we now have the opportunityto build into the planning process improvedknowledge about how both to make the mostof the learning capabilities of young childrenand to minimize educational and other devel-opmental gaps between youngsters of differ-ent backgrounds as they enter school. Thatwe have more to learn about how to providepreschool education effectively, however, is noexcuse to delay. We know more than enoughto act now.

ACCESSChildren age 3 and up should have access

on a voluntary basis to center-based preschoolprograms that meet recognized standards for

fostering education and school readinessalong with social and physical development in a safe environment.

Consistent with our belief that publicresponsibility for providing education shouldbegin earlier than it currently does, we urgethat the opportunity to enroll in a high-quali-ty center-based early learning program bemade available to all children age 3 and upwhose parents wish them to participate. Theseprograms eventually should be free to all children, just as older children are provided publicly-funded elementary and secondaryeducation. Recognizing that universal freeearly learning cannot be accomplishedovernight, given the large expendituresinvolved, we emphasize the importance ofproviding these programs at little or no costto lower-income families and, where free uni-versal access is not yet feasible, of implement-ing cost-sharing schedules that ensure thatearly learning programs will be affordable for all families.

There are still many unanswered questionsabout how much and what kind of early education is “enough:” e.g., whether well-designed part-day programs can achieve thesame developmental outcomes as longer programs; which curricula or pedagogicalapproaches will prove to be most effective;and what teacher qualifications, class sizes,and staff/child ratios offer the greatest bene-fits for investments in child development.54

Accordingly, we stress below the importanceof improved research and data.

In the meantime, however, we should notdelay improvements to the current systemsimply because we do not know more. The

26

Chapter 4

Moving Toward Early Learning Opportunities For All

foregoing chapters have made clear that theUnited States is far from offering high qualitylearning opportunities to all its preschoolers.Thus a minimum goal should be to makeavailable part-day (4 to 6 hours), school-year-long prekindergarten opportunities for allchildren in programs that meet recognizedstandards, offered (as indicated below) in settings providing full-day, year-round servicesfor those families who need them.

Because we will argue below that the feder-al government should underwrite the costs ofpreschool education for all children fromlower-income families, we believe the federalgovernment should create an independentbody to certify acceptable standards for earlyeducation. In establishing criteria for accept-able standards, this group should considerthe best available research-based knowledgeas well as the standards that have been devel-oped for federal programs such as Head Startand military child care, for state programs(such as the Georgia Pre-K program stan-dards), and/or by independent professionalgroups such as the National Association forthe Education of Young Children (NAEYC),currently the largest accreditor of early careand education programs. This independentbody should also continuously review its crite-ria for certifying standards as new informa-tion about how to design effective early learn-ing programs becomes available.

The purpose of creating such a body is notto adopt either a uniform or ideal definitionof an early learning program, but rather toprovide a means of ensuring that basic stan-dards of program quality are in place. Ourultimate objective is for all children to enterschool ready to learn. Therefore, standards(whether they focus on inputs, processes, or,most desirably, outcomes) should have clearlinks to this goal. Identifying standards willrequire, as a prestigious panel of experts onthe science of early childhood developmentrecently expressed it, “sound judgment in theface of incomplete information.”55 This activi-

ty will also require practical consideration ofhow quickly higher standards than currentlycharacterize early education can be imple-mented. It is for these reasons that both earlyeducation experts and the policy makers andpublic citizens who must legislate and pay forearly education programs should be repre-sented on the independent body that certifiesthe standards that qualify states for federalpreschool funding.

DELIVERYPreschool education consistent with recog-

nized standards should be obtainable from avariety of providers, with parents choosingthe setting most appropriate for their child’sand family’s needs.

Having evolved from 3 different directions(child care, nursery school, early interventionfor disadvantaged children), existing center-based programs enrolling 3- and 4-year-oldsoperate under a wide array of public and pri-vate auspices. A more coherent early educa-tion system, with universal access and higherstandards, should capitalize on the strengthssuch diversity can offer, rather than seek to replace the present system with a singlemodel of preschool. Both uncertainties aboutwhat constitutes “the best” preschool programand continuing public tension over parentaland public responsibilities for the care ofyoung children indicate the wisdom of givingparents a variety of settings in which to placetheir children.

Pragmatism, too, argues for building onthe current diversity of providers. Approacheswhich favor one delivery mechanism (e.g.,public schools) over another will face strongand organized opposition from establishedproviders who see themselves as losing out(and, in the case of for-profit providers, losingtheir businesses). Moreover, many childrenalready spend part of their day in center-based care. It makes sense to take advantageof the infrastructure that already exists by

27

Chapter 4: Moving Toward Early Learning Opportunities For All

offering current providers the opportunityand means to upgrade their services toprekindergarten standards.

Finally, many children will need care formany more hours a day than we envision inour basic preschool approach. Families maynot have meaningful access to prekinder-garten unless they can find providers whobuild early education into full-day, year-roundprograms.

Early education opportunities must simul-taneously address the child care needs ofworking parents. Policy makers shouldencourage providers to integrate educationand child care by, for example, eliminatingincompatible rules that create barriers toseamless provision of education and childcare services.

With so many preschool-age children nowspending significant amounts of time withcare-givers other than their parents, the olddistinctions between child care and preschoolno longer make sense. Formal preschool pro-grams in fact provide child care for the hoursthat they operate. Child care programs inturn have the potential to affect child devel-opment through the quality of their offerings.Thus it is important to include in a new visionfor early education the goal of making high-quality extended-day and year-round servicesavailable in concert with the development ofuniversal preschool programs.

While we will recommend below a sharedfederal and state responsibility for fundingpreschool, we believe that the states must bethe leaders in tying diverse providers into acoherent system of early education that meetsthe needs of working parents. The states, notthe federal government, have constitutionalresponsibilities for providing public elemen-tary and secondary education, with whichearly education must be coordinated. Statesadminister almost all of the current federalprograms that fund early care and education(with Head Start, a federal-to-local program,and tax credits to parents the notable excep-

tions). Patterns of early care and educationutilization vary from state to state,56 alongwith political and other conditions. States aretherefore the logical level of government fororganizing delivery systems.

One of the challenges of the next fewyears is to identify and evaluate variousapproaches that states might take to the taskof system-building. Promising options arealready available: e.g., Georgia’s and NewYork’s universal pre-K programs, Ohio’s HeadStart expansion and partnership initiatives,and Massachusetts’s Community Partnershipsfor Children.

Because the federal government is themajor provider of public child care subsidies,federal policies are key to integrating pres-chool and extended-care programs into high-quality, seamless systems. Funding for CCDF(even when supplemented by TANF monies)is so low that subsidies reach only a small frac-tion of eligible children. Program standardsalso are low, as we saw in earlier chapters.State reimbursement rates do not necessarilycompensate providers for the higher coststhey will incur if they opt to meet more thanthe minimal standards. By July 2000, however,18 state legislatures had adopted differentialreimbursement policies that paid accreditedchild care facilities at higher rates; andadministrative agencies in a small number ofstates had established such policies withoutexplicit legislative approval. Colorado’s legis-lature enacted differential reimbursement butgave discretion to counties to implement it. Afew states have chosen alternatives to accredi-tation-linked differential reimbursement.North Carolina, for example, has establisheda 5-star rating system for all licensed childcare facilities; the number of stars determineshow much the facility is reimbursed for eacheligible child.57

Because nothing in federal law requiressuch differentials, however, their use isuneven. States should be required to createincentives for higher-quality child care by

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Chapter 4: Moving Toward Early Learning Opportunities For All

States are pursuing diverse approaches to the task of expanding early education. For example:

GEORGIAGeorgia offers free prekindergarten to all 4-year-olds in the state through a lottery-funded

program administered by an independent state agency (the Office of School Readiness).Funding and policy decisions are made at the state level. Public and private child care andpreschool providers are eligible to receive state payments for every enrolled child if they agreeto use one of several approved curricula and meet other state standards. Pre-K programs arerequired to operate 6.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 180 days of the year.

MASSACHUSETTSMassachusetts uses a community partnership model to provide early childhood service

delivery. Through the Community Partnerships for Children (CPC) program, the State Depart-ment of Education makes state and federal funds available to local community councils to provide educational and other services to children age 2.9 to 5 years old. Priority is given tochildren in families earning up to 125 percent of state median income, and the same slidingfee scale as in the subsidized child care system is used to share costs with parents. The statedetermines eligibility, co-payments, quality standards and key objectives, while local councilsassess local needs and develop plans to meet them. Federal child care and state general revenues fund the program.

NEW YORKNew York has established a Universal Prekindergarten Program that delegates decision

making to the more than 700 local school districts in the state. The goal of the program whenenacted in 1997 was to provide access to all 4-year-olds by 2002-03. School districts decidewhether to participate and are expected to involve a wide range of community stakeholders indeliberating about participation and in providing services. With limited funding, priority forstate funds has been given to districts based on factors including the proportion of economi-cally disadvantaged children. Districts in turn must give priority to enrolling such children. In2001-02, 162 districts are expected to be eligible for state pre-K grants. Services may be half-dayor more; half-day programs must meet a minimum of 2.5 hours per day, 5 days a week.

OHIOOhio has chosen to implement preschool using the Head Start program as a model. The

state supplements federal Head Start funds so that, combined with its Public School Preschoolprogram, it is able to provide nearly all low-income 3- and 4-year-olds with prekindergarten.Public School Preschools are expected to comply with Head Start Performance Standards and to provide services for a minimum of 3 hours per day. State funding for Public SchoolPreschool is limited to children from families under 185 percent of the federal poverty level(FPL). Head Start grantees are allowed to apply for waivers so that they can serve childrenfrom families up to 125 percent of FPL, which is higher than the federal Head Start eligibilitylevel. In addition to Head Start-Public School Preschool collaboration, Ohio has linkages withchild care and community-based planning through its Family and Children First Initiative.State Head Start and the preschool program are administered within the same division of thestate Department of Education.

SOURCES: Rachel Schumacher, Mark Greenberg, and Joan Lombardi, State Initiatives to Promote Early Learning: NextSteps in Coordinating Subsidized Child Care, Head Start, and State Prekindergarten (Washington, D.C.: Center for Law andSocial Policy, April 2001); Karen Schulman, Helen Blank, and Danielle Ewen, Seeds of Success: State PrekindergartenInitiatives-1998-99 (Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 1999); information on New York from UniversalPrekindergarten Program website available at < http://www.emsc.nysed.gov> Accessed October 22, 2001.

DIVERSE APPROACHES TO EARLY EDUCATION

establishing differential rates in CCDF basedon approved quality indicators, and federalfunding for CCDF should be increased toenable states to reimburse providers of quali-ty care at higher rates. For providers serving3- and 4-year-olds, one quality indicator couldbe approval to participate in the state’spreschool program.

FINANCINGUniversal access to affordable and high-

quality preschool education depends criticallyon greater public funding. The federal andstate governments should significantlyincrease their investments in early learning.The federal government should underwritefinancial access to preschool education for all children from lower-income families andshould provide states with financial assistanceto help them develop the infrastructure (e.g.,facilities, trained staff) needed for universalaccess. States should be responsible forensuring that places are available in approvedpreschool programs for all children age 3 andup whose families want them to attend.Eventually states should be responsible forthe costs of all children not covered by feder-al support. As an interim step on the way touniversal publicly-funded preschool, statescould share these costs with families usingincome-based fee schedules.

Providing access to early education for allchildren will be expensive. We estimate thatpreschool with no parental fees would requirenew public expenditures of at least $25 to $35billion annually (see Appendix). Improvingthe quality of related child care services,building the infrastructure for universalpreschool, and expanding data collection andresearch will increase the funding needed.

The costs of high-quality preschool, whichbenefit the nation as well as individual chil-dren and families, should be shared by societyand not made solely or largely the responsibil-ity of the parents of current participants. We

noted earlier in this report that existing pat-terns of finance for early care and educationdiffer from K-12 education, in that federalspending exceeds that of the states. This dif-ference results from the traditional focus ofpublic early care and education programs onchildren of the poorest and most disadvan-taged families: expanding access and opportu-nity in education has long been seen in theUnited States as a special federal role.

A federal-state cost-sharing arrangementconsistent with this tradition would call forthe federal government to ensure access topreschool education for children of lower-income families with the definition of “lower-income” expanded somewhat to include notjust those living in outright poverty. States, onthe other hand, should undertake the task ofproviding enough additional money (perhapsinitially in a cost-sharing arrangement withparents) to make preschool opportunitiesavailable to all.

How should the federal government carryout the responsibility we envision of ensuringaccess to preschool for children of lower-income families? Currently Washingtonemploys a number of funding mechanisms in its various early care and education pro-grams: e.g., direct grants to local providers inHead Start; grants to states for child care sub-sidies either through contracting for places or (more commonly) certificates given to eli-gible parents; and tax subsidies to parents tooffset part of the costs of dependent care.

None of the major current programs iswell-suited to substantially increasing the fed-eral commitment to high-quality preschooleducation for all children (not only childrenin poverty) while reinforcing states’ capacitiesto build coherent early care and educationsystems and giving parents choice amongproviders willing to meet preschool standardsof performance. Although we continue tosupport programs like Head Start, which provides an array of important services forchildren living in poverty and their families,

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and CCDF, which provides critically-neededchild care subsidies for lower-income families,we also believe a new initiative is needed.

The federal government should fulfill its share of the responsibility for fundingprekindergarten education by creating a newfederal-to-state preschool grant program.

This new program should provide suffi-cient funding to each state for all childrenfrom families earning below 85 percent ofstate median family income (the income levelused to establish federal eligibility definitionfor CCDF subsidies) to have free access topart-day, school-year prekindergarten pro-grams. Because about half of all children in the United States live in such families (seeAppendix), this approach would imply rough-ly equal cost-sharing between the federal and state governments to pay for universalpreschool. (The federal share could includethe amount of federal subsidies supportingHead Start that go to local communities forservices for 3- and 4-year-olds, to the extentthat Head Start centers choose to offer educa-tional services that meet state preschool stan-dards.) To qualify for federal funds, statesshould be required to submit for approvalplans describing a strategy and timetable foraccomplishing the goal of providing universal

access to prekindergarten and aligning thebasic preschool program with extended-day,full-year options. States should be free tochoose their own approach to providing uni-versal prekindergarten, but their plans shouldenable diverse providers (e.g., public schools,nonprofit and for-profit child care centers,Head Start) to qualify as prekindergarten cen-ters. Parents should be able to choose amongproviders willing to offer programs meetingstate preschool standards. Parental choicecould be ensured either by having state fund-ing flow directly to state-approved preschoolproviders based on the number of childrenthey enroll, as in the Georgia Pre-K Program,or by providing certificates to parents to useat qualified providers, which is the way manysubsidies under CCDF are distributed. Forstate plans to be eligible for federal grants,state prekindergarten standards would haveto be approved by the certifying bodydescribed above.

The federal prekindergarten grant pro-gram must involve new money, not moneytaken from other important areas of educa-tion and child care such as K-12 reform, HeadStart, and infant and toddler care, wherethere are also important unmet needs.

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Chapter 4: Moving Toward Early Learning Opportunities For All

Illinois illustrates how one state is approaching the task of developing a strategic plan forproviding universal access to preschool. As part of the Futures for Kids initiative, more than80 stakeholders representing government, business, parents, advocates, educators, and ser-vice providers came together in an assembly where they chose “creation of a voluntary uni-versal early care and education program for 3- to 5-year-olds by 2005” as their highest priori-ty for improving services for children age 0 to 5 in the state. In response, Governor GeorgeRyan issued an executive order establishing a 33-member Task Force for Universal Access toPreschool.

The Task Force was charged with gathering information from parents, civic groups, andothers and preparing recommendations to be submitted to the governor and the GeneralAssembly by January 1, 2002. The Task Force carried out its work through 4 committeesfocused on (1) programs, outcomes, and assessments; (2) staffing and professional develop-ment; (3) systems integration and finance; and (4) public participation and support.

ILLINOIS: GOVERNOR’S TASK FORCE ON UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO PRESCHOOL

INFRASTRUCTURE, QUALITYIMPROVEMENT, AND OVERSIGHT

In addition to subsidizing direct preschoolcosts, the federal and state governmentsshould make funds available to improve staffand facilities and provide technical assistanceand monitoring.

Without explicit attention from policymakers, shortages of qualified staff and facili-ties are likely to hamper the expansion ofprekindergarten programs. Between 2000 and2005, states will face the need to provide K-12classrooms and teachers for nearly a millionmore school-age children.58 Public schools inmany places are also trying to reduce classsizes in the early elementary grades toimprove instruction and student learning.Both these factors mean that preschool pro-grams, many of which already struggle to findand keep qualified staff and locate acceptablespace in which to operate, can expect increas-ing competition (and thus higher prices) forthese important resources. The pressures willintensify as preschool programs expandtoward universal access, although encourag-ing the participation of existing child careand preschool providers in state-approvedprograms will help. There will still, however,be a need for several hundred thousand additional pre-K teachers.

Providers who wish to upgrade their standards in order to qualify for preschoolfunding face additional costs which they maynot be able to cover from routine operatingincome. Sometimes they need to make one-time upgrades to their facilities. In states thatset accreditation as a qualifying standard,providers must be prepared to pay the feescharged by accrediting agencies such as theNational Association for the Education ofYoung Children. Providers could also benefitfrom increased attention by colleges and universities to prekindergarten teacher prepa-ration and to the development and dissemina-tion of effective preschool curricula.

A preschool system drawing on diverseproviders, rather than a single entity such aspublic schools, offers many advantages; butdiverse providers also heighten the need formonitoring to identify those that are notmeeting established program standards.Monitoring can give states the informationthey need to target technical assistance tohelp programs improve or to terminate pub-lic funding for programs that are unable tomeasure up. States vary widely in theirapproaches to monitoring existing prekinder-garten programs, and many current effortsseem inadequate. In 1998-99, 21 states hadprekindergarten initiatives that either failedto require any state-level monitoring orrequired only written reports from programswith no on-site visits. States that did requireon-site visits frequently made such visits onlyonce a year or less frequently.59 Such prac-tices contrast with the military’s requirementfor at least 4 unannounced visits annually atits child development centers, with immediatecorrection of any violation of a safety, health,or child welfare law or regulation and the cor-rection within 90 days of any non-life-threat-ening violation.60

States need to expand the quality-enhanc-ing initiatives that have been started in manyplaces and beef up their technical assistanceand monitoring capacity. Many models exist;we highlight just a few here. To encouragefacilities development, Connecticut estab-lished a “pooled revenue bond” program aspart of its School Readiness Initiative, whichallows nonprofit prekindergarten providers to take out low-interest loans that only requirethe provider to repay between 15 and 25 percent of the loan. Maryland provides tech-nical assistance for professional developmentthrough its statewide Model for SchoolReadiness, offering intensive training to per-sonnel in prekindergarten, kindergarten, andprekindergarten special education programs.Kentucky has 5 early childhood regionaltraining centers. Rhode Island provides finan-

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Chapter 4: Moving Toward Early Learning Opportunities For All

cial support for accreditation through its Keys to Quality project. Ohio conducts 2annual on-site reviews, as well as additionalvisits based on a data-driven system thatenables the state to determine which programs would most benefit from a review.Tennessee makes 1 announced and 1 unan-nounced visit annually. Georgia uses a peerreview committee to provide recommenda-tions on whether to go beyond improvementassistance and terminate the contract of aprekindergarten program that is not in com-pliance with the state’s quality require-ments.61

Federal subsidies should continue to helpstates enhance preschool infrastructure, quali-ty, and monitoring. Head Start and CCDFhave mandatory quality set-asides that supportimprovements in their respective programs.The QUILT (Quality in Learning TogetherProgram) of the U.S. Department of Healthand Human Services supports partnershipsbetween early education programs in variousways, including collecting and disseminatinginformation, developing training materialsand publications, and providing technicalassistance. The Early Learning OpportunitiesAct, first funded at $20 million in FY 2001,provides a potential vehicle for directing fed-eral assistance toward state-led system build-ing, although until the act is funded at a levelof $150 million annually, current law calls forthe funds to go to localities instead of states.

DATA AND RESEARCHThe federal and state governments should

improve data collection to ensure that compa-rable and reliable information is available onaccess, costs, and outcomes and should sup-port research to expand our knowledge aboutthe most effective characteristics of earlylearning programs.

The fragmented nature of early care andeducation in the United States and theabsence of a coherent system of programs

and providers is reflected in the fragmentarydata that are available about who participatesin what settings, for how long, with what levelof quality, at what cost, and with what out-comes. There is virtually no routine data collection, either at the federal level or withinthe states, that provides complete and undu-plicated information about the participationof young children in early care and educationprograms and how access, affordability, and outcomes have changed over time.Monitoring progress toward providing earlylearning opportunities for all and closinggaps in school readiness will require muchbetter data systems than currently exist. Thefederal government should foster the avail-ability and comparability of nationwide dataon early education, as it does for K-12 andpostsecondary education: through nationalsurveys, procedural handbooks, national out-reach and professional communicationefforts, and technical assistance. States, wheremuch of the data will originate, will need toimprove their own data-collection capacitiesas well and should seek out opportunities tocollaborate with other states to improve comparability.

More research is also needed. While exist-ing research has provided important insightsabout the learning capabilities of young chil-dren and has raised critical questions aboutthe adequacy of the settings in which manyyoung children spend a great deal of time, ithas so far not provided sufficient informationto guide policy development and programimplementation. As previously noted, the“how much is enough” question, along withquestions of which program features are mostconducive to desired child outcomes, are yetto be answered. Two recent studies of childdevelopment and preschool education byexpert panels of the National ResearchCouncil62 have identified priorities forresearch that can improve our understandingof how children develop and learn and thatcan guide the development of policies and

practices to meet our goals for effective earlylearning opportunities.

In particular, we note that both reportsstress the need for improving the tools avail-able for measuring early learning outcomes.Throughout this report we have emphasizedthat early learning is not merely the extensiondownward of elementary school objectivesand structures, but involves preparing chil-dren cognitively, socially, and physically forschool. Too much of prior research on earlyeducation has focused only on standardizedcognitive evaluation, particularly IQ scores.More discriminating measurements are need-ed to capture the developmental outcomesthat are most important for later success inschool and life and that can paint a truer pic-ture of whether early education programs arereally making a difference in the lives of chil-dren. Since expanded public underwriting ofearly education will inevitably be accompa-nied by calls for evaluating the results of thisnew investment, improved methods of assess-ing learning and program quality as theyrelate to young children are urgently needed.

GETTING STARTEDBecause the current state of early educa-

tion in the United States is so complex andfragmented, creating high-quality early learn-ing systems that are accessible to all willrequire action on many fronts. As the variousactors — federal, state, and local officials;private-sector providers; parents and otherchildren’s advocates — work to improve ser-vices for young children, we recommend thatthey use the principles we have identified astouchstones for linking diverse actions to acommon agenda. Furthermore, we urge public officials and business leaders to begin

moving on the handful of key steps that areneeded to transform early education inAmerica:

• We urge state policy makers to (1) expandpreschool opportunities; (2) ensure thatthe necessary teachers and facilities areavailable; and (3) (for the vast majority ofstates who do not yet have them) developspecific plans and timetables for integrat-ing preschool providers and programs into coherent systems that meet the educa-tional needs of young children while alsoaddressing the child care needs of workingparents.

• We urge federal policy makers to provideincentives for and assistance to states constructing high-quality early learning systems by (1) establishing a new federal-to-state grant program to assist states withthe costs of universal preschool, (2) help-ing states build the infrastructure neededto extend access to all children, and (3)creating an independent body to certifyacceptable state standards for early education.

• We urge business leaders and all citizens to vigorously support the new publicinvestments that will be needed to builduniversal preschool systems by (1) champi-oning budget priorities that acknowledgethe importance of these investments and(2) advocating tax increases if necessary to fund them.

Education has long been recognized inthe United States as key to both a productiveand a just society. It is time to extend educa-tional opportunity to preschool children, fortheir good and for the good of us all.

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For purposes of this policy statement, wehave estimated that the minimum annual costfor a high-quality, part-day, school-yearprekindergarten program would be $4,000 to$5,000 per child. Although several researchprojects to develop cost estimates for variousearly education models are currently under-way, the results are not yet available. We indi-cate in this appendix how we arrived at esti-mates of the likely minimum costs and sug-gest why true costs may well be higher.

A summary of available dataBecause direct estimates of pre-K costs are

not available, we look for guidance to infor-mation on elementary education expendi-tures, data on child care costs, and reports of public expenditures on programs such asHead Start and the universal pre-K programin Georgia. These 4 data sources provide verydifferent numbers on costs.

• Elementary education expenditures:Current (i.e., operating) expenditures perpupil in public elementary and secondaryschools averaged $6,508 per enrolled stu-dent nationwide in school year 1998-99.Total costs (including facilities, replace-ment equipment, and interest on debt)averaged $7,534 per student. Notably, thestate-to-state range around this average was wide, from a high of $11,099 in NewJersey to a low of $5,147 in Utah.63 Someof these differences reflect cost-of-livingdifferences. Others reflect policy choices,such as the level of salaries paid to teach-ers and the range of course offerings avail-able to students. The National Center forEducation Statistics estimates that currentexpenditures per primary student nation-

wide averaged $6,043 in 1998, whileexpenditures per secondary student aver-aged $7,764.64 Except for some kindergart-ners, elementary students attend schoolfor 6-7 hours per day for roughly 36 weeksa year. A part-day (4-6 hours) pre-K pro-gram, even if offered in a public schoolwith the same requirements for teachersalaries, etc., as “regular” elementary edu-cation would presumably cost less.

• Child care/preschool: Child care costs,especially those incurred by centers offer-ing high-quality programs, provide anoth-er window into possible preschool costs.We looked at the costs reported by 96 centers with preschool classrooms that participated in the 1993 Cost, Quality, and Outcomes (CQO) Study, receivedpreschool classroom ratings of 5.0 orabove on selected ECERS65 items relatingto learning, and enrolled students whowere primarily preschoolers rather thanyounger children. The average cost of careper hour (in 2001 dollars) was $3.22(although this figure ranged from $2.29 inNorth Carolina to $4.22 in California).These per-hour costs are based on chil-dren who are generally in care year-roundand for extended days, while their parentswork. It is not clear that part-time pro-grams such as school-day, school-year pro-grams would have as low an hourly rate. Ifthey did, the per-pupil cost would be$2,300 for a 4-hour-a-day program. AsECERS ratings went up, so did costs. InMassachusetts, costs for a program with anECERS rating of 5.5 had costs almost 10percent higher than programs with a 5.0ECERS rating. A 1988 survey of NAEYC-

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Appendix

Estimating the Cost of Universal Preschool

accredited preschool programs foundcosts per child that were about 13 percenthigher than the CQO study.

The 1999 National HouseholdEducation Survey asked parents what theypay for private preschool. Parents usingschool-day type programs (20-34 hours perweek for 36 weeks per year) reportedspending an average of $2,956 annually.Upper-income parents (with incomegreater than $75,000 annually) reportedspending an average of $3,533. What par-ents paid may not reflect actual programcosts, however, since preschools may haveother sources of income (e.g., charitablegifts or “in-kind” contributions).

• Head Start: Federal Head Start costs perchild in 2000 were $5,951. These are thecosts of program grants and do notinclude federal administrative costs or thelocal match, which is supposed to be 20percent. Much of the latter is apparently“in kind” (e.g., through parental involve-ment). The key things to remember aboutHead Start is that it provides a variety ofservices to poor children and their fami-lies, not just preschool education. Theeducational component of Head Start pro-grams varies from place to place, althoughthere are new program standards that allgrantees are expected to meet.

• Georgia Pre-K: The Georgia Pre-K Programreimburses providers $2,219 to $3,475annually per child enrolled. The reim-bursement rate is tied to the qualificationsof the lead teacher in each classroom, thelocation of the school (in metro Atlanta ornot), and whether the provider is a publicschool or not. Public school reimburse-ment rates are lower than those to otherproviders. We have not seen a carefulanalysis of true provider costs in theGeorgia Pre-K program and suspect thatthe published reimbursement rates maywell not capture them all. It is also worth

noting that generally Georgia spends lessthan the national average on education:for example, Georgia spent $6,092 in current expenditures per public elemen-tary and secondary student in 1998-99,compared to $6,508 nationally.

Conclusions about likely costsIn considering the likely costs of pre-

school, it is important to remember the argument in this policy statement that thequality of programs needs to be upgradedand the fact that many of the costs citedabove for child care centers reflect the verylow pay and training of their workers.

As a very rough starting point for estimat-ing the annual costs of universal pre-K, there-fore, we use a range of $4,000 to $5,000 perchild in a part-day, part-year program. Thereare approximately 8.3 million children ages 3 to 5 not yet enrolled in kindergarten. If all these children were enrolled in publicly-funded pre-K, the cost would be $33.2 to$41.5 billion annually. Head Start and state-funded pre-K programs already meet some of these costs, but we estimate that at a mini-mum publicly-funded pre-K for all would costan additional $25 to $35 billion annually. Of course, not all children would participate,which would bring the cost down somewhat.On the other hand, many states would likelyface higher per-student costs, for the samereasons that their K-12 spending per pupilexceeds national averages. Quality improve-ments, in particular, are likely to make ourestimate low over time, as states adopt thekind of educational standards for preschoolenvisioned in CED’s report.

Data from the 1999 National HouseholdEducation Survey indicate that about half of3- and 4-year-olds in the United States live inhouseholds with incomes below 85 percent ofmedian household income.66 CED’s reportrecommends that the federal governmentprovide sufficient funding to each state for all children from families earning below 85

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37

Appendix: Estimating The Cost of Universal Preschool

percent of state median family income tohave free access to part-day, school-yearprekindergarten programs. The NHES datasuggest that this would mean roughly equalcost-sharing between the federal and stategovernments on a national basis, althoughthe shares might differ from state to statebecause of differences in state income pro-files.

1. Committee for Economic Development, Investing in OurChildren: Business and the Public Schools (New York, NY:Committee for Economic Development, 1985).

Committee for Economic Development, Children in Need:Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged (NewYork, NY: Committee for Economic Development, 1987).

Committee for Economic Development, An America ThatWorks: The Life-Cycle Approach to a Competitive Work Force (NewYork, NY: Committee for Economic Development, 1990).

Committee for Economic Development, The UnfinishedAgenda: A New Vision for Child Development and Education(New York, NY: Committee for Economic Development,1991).

Committee for Economic Development, Why Child CareMatters: Preparing Young Children for a More Productive America(New York, NY: Committee for Economic Development,1993).

2. CED, Unfinished Agenda, pp. x-xi.

3. National Education Goals Panel, Goals, (October 2001),available at < http://www.negp.gov/page3.htm> AccessedOctober 19, 2001.

4. CED, Unfinished Agenda, p. 1.

5. Hoke County v. State of North Carolina/State Board of Education,95 CVS 1158 (Hoke II, October, 2000); Abbot v. Burke, 748A2d 82 (2000)

6. U.S. Department of Labor, Report on the American Workforce(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2001), pp.126-127, tables 5-6.

7. R. Kent Weaver, Ending Welfare as We Know It (Washington,D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), p. 20.

8. State Policy Documentation Project, Work Requirements:Exemptions as of October 1999, available at<http://www.spdp.org/tanf/exemptions.pdf> AccessedJune 21, 2001.

9. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of EducationStatistics, 2000, NCES-2001-034 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.Department of Education, January 2001), table 48.

10. The Children’s Foundation, Child Care Center LicensingStudy Summary Data, available at < http://www.childrens-foundation.net/> Accessed June 12, 2001.

11. The Children’s Foundation, Family Child Care LicensingStudy Summary Data, available at < http://www.childrens-foundation.net/> Accessed June 12, 2001. Estimate of thenumber of unregulated family care homes provided toCED by Children’s Foundation staff.

12. U.S. General Accounting Office, Child Care: State Efforts toEnforce Safety and Health Requirements, GAO/HEHS-00-28(Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office,January 2000).

13. W. Steven Barnett, “Funding Issues for Universal EarlyEducation in the United States” (draft, Center for EarlyEducation, Rutgers University, March 30, 2001). Figuresupdated for CED by author.

14. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HeadStart Bureau, 2001 Head Start Fact Sheet, available at<http://www2.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/hsb/about/fact2001.htm> Accessed July 5, 2001.

15. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Care Bureau, FY 1999 CCDF Data Tables and Charts, available at <http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/pro-grams/ccb/research/99acf800/> Accessed July 12, 2001.

16. U.S. General Accounting Office, Early Education and Care:Overlap Indicates Need to Assess Crosscutting Programs,GAO/HEHS-00-78 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GeneralAccounting Office, April 2000), pp.13-15.

17. U.S. GAO, Early Education and Care, pp.13-15.

18. Karen Schulman, Helen Blank, and Danielle Ewen, Seeds of Success: State Prekindergarten Initiatives 1998-1999(Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, September1999), p. 13.

19. Schulman, Blank, and Ewen, Seeds of Success; The Center for Career Development in Early Care and Education,Wheelock College, Child Care Licensing: Qualifications and Training for Roles in Child Care Centers and Family Child Care Homes: 2000 Summary Sheet, available at<http://www.nccic.org/cctopics/cclicensing00.pdf>Accessed September 13, 2001.

20. Schulman, Blank, and Ewen, Seeds of Success, p. 16.

21. Schulman, Blank, and Ewen, Seeds of Success, p. 87; TheCenter for Career Development in Early Care andEducation, Wheelock College, Child Care Licensing.

22. Schulman, Blank, and Ewen, Seeds of Success, pp. 33-5.

23. W. Steven Barnett, “Funding Issues for Universal EarlyEducation,” p. 10.

24. Anne Mitchell, Louise Stoney, and Harriet Dichter,Financing Child Care in the United States: An Expanded Catalogof Current Strategies 2001 Edition (Kansas City, MO: EwingMarion Kauffman Foundation, 2001).

25. National Research Council, Eager to Learn: Educating OurPreschoolers, Barbara T. Bowman, M. Suzanne Donovan, andM. Susan Burns, eds. (Washington, D.C.: NationalResearch Council, 2001), p. 31.

26. National Research Council, Eager to Learn, p. 37.

27. National Research Council, Eager to Learn, pp. 307 and 311.

28. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook2000-2001 Edition (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2001).

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Endnotes

29. The Center for Career Development in Early Care andEducation, Wheelock College, Child Care Licensing.

30. Anne Mitchell, Education for All Young Children: The Role of States and the Federal Government in PromotingPrekindergarten and Kindergarten, Working Paper Series(New York, NY: Foundation for Child Development, April 2001), p. 17.

31. Georgia Office of School Readiness, 2001-2002 Georgia Pre-K Program Guidelines, available at<http://www.osr.state.ga.us/FYIGuide2002.html> Accessed October 15, 2001.

32. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook2000-2001 Edition, p.355.

33. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early ChildDevelopment, Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds.(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000), p. 320.

34. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, FromNeurons to Neighborhoods, p. 321.

35. The data in this and the following paragraphs come from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Report, October 2000, available at <http://www.census.gov/popula-tion/socdemo/school/ppl-148/> Accessed June 1, 2001.

36. Rachel Schumacher, Mark Greenberg, and Joan Lombardi,State Initiatives to Promote Early Learning: Next Steps inCoordinating Subsidized Child Care, Head Start, and StatePrekindergarten (Washington, D.C.: Center for Law andSocial Policy, April 2001), pp. 10-11.

37. U.S. General Accounting Office, Early Childhood Programs:Characteristics Affect the Availability of School ReadinessInformation, GAO/HEHS-00-38 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.General Accounting Office, February 2000).

38. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, FromNeurons to Neighborhoods, p. 386.

39. Lynn A. Karoly, Peter W. Greenwood, Susan S.Everingham, and others, Investing in Our Children: What WeKnow and Don’t Know About the Costs and Benefits of EarlyChildhood Interventions (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998).

40. Arthur J. Reynolds, Judy A. Temple, Dylan L. Robinson,and Emily A. Mann, “Long-term Effects of an EarlyChildhood Intervention on Educational Achievement and Juvenile Arrest: A 15-Year Follow-Up on Low-IncomeChildren in Public Schools,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 285, no. 18 (May 9, 2001). Also bythe same authors, Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title IChicago Child-Parent Center Program, Executive Summary, June2001, available at <www.waismann.wisc.edu/cls/cbaexec-sum7.html> Accessed August 2, 2001.

41. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,Administration for Children and Families andAdministration on Children, Youth, and Families, “HeadStart Impact Study Briefing Paper for the ConsultationMeeting with the Advisory Committee on Head StartResearch and Evaluation” Washington, D.C.: January2001).

42. Janet Currie, “Early Childhood Education Programs,”Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001),p. 234.

43. National Research Council, Eager to Learn, pp. 306.

44. Schumacher, Greenberg, Lombardi, State Initiatives toPromote Early Learning, p.7.

45. Examples taken from Schumacher, Greenberg, andLombardi, State Initiatives to Promote Early Learning.

46. Sheila B. Kamerman, “Early Childhood Education andCare (ECEC): An Overview of Developments in the OECDCountries,” Columbia University (background paper pre-pared for thematic review of ECEC policies in OECD coun-tries, revised 2000).

47. European Commission, Key Data on Education in Europe 1999/2000, available at <http://www.eurydice.org/Documents/Key_Data/ En/FrameSet.htm> AccessedSeptember 21, 2001.

48. European Commission, Key Data on Education in Europe1999/2000.

49. Organisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment, Starting Strong: Early Childhood Education and Care (Paris, France: Organisation for EconomicCooperation and Development, 2001), pg. 99.

50. Kamerman, “Early Childhood Education and Care,” p. 33.

51. Candy J. Cooper, Ready to Learn: The French System of EarlyEducation and Care Offers Lessons for the United States (NewYork, NY: The French-American Foundation, 1999).

52. Early education has often been viewed as little more thanchild care, and public subsidies for child care have a longand contentious political history. This history is reviewedin Sally S. Cohen, Championing Child Care (New York, NY:Columbia University Press, 2001).

53. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of EducationStatistics 1999, NCES-2000-031 (Washington, D.C.: U.S.Department of Education, 2000), various tables; NationalCenter for Education Statistics, Projection of EducationStatistics to 2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department ofEducation, August 2001), various tables.

54. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, FromNeurons to Neighborhoods, p. 378; National Research Council,Eager to Learn, p. 181.

55. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, FromNeurons to Neighborhoods, p.401.

56. Jeffery Capizzano, Gina Adams, and Freya Sonenstein,Child Care Arrangements for Children Under Five: VariationAcross States, #B-7, New Federalism: National Survey ofAmerican Families Series (Washington, D.C.: The UrbanInstitute, 2000).

57. William T. Gormley, Jr. and Jessica K. Lucas, Money,Accreditation, and Child Care Center Quality, Working PaperSeries (New York, NY: Foundation for Child Development,August 2000).

39

Endnotes

58. “The Children of Change,” Education Week 20(4),September 27, 2000, p.33.

59. Schulman, Blank, Ewen, Seeds of Success, p.121.

60. Nancy Duff Campbell, Judith C. Appelbaum, KarinMartinson, and Emily Martin, Be All That We Can Be:Lessons from the Military for Improving Our Nation’s Child CareSystem (Washington, D.C.: National Women’s Law Center,April 2000), p.11.

61. Schulman, Blank, and Ewen, Seeds of Success.

62. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, FromNeurons to Neighborhoods; National Research Council, Eagerto Learn.

63. National Center for Education Statistics, Revenues andExpenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education:School Year 1998-99, Statistics in Brief, NCES 2001-321(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, March2001), table 5.

64. Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development,Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2001, table B1.1,available at <www.oecd.org> Accessed October 15, 2001.

65. The Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale(ECERS) is a widely used rating scale designed to assesspreschool classes along several dimensions: curriculum,the environment, teacher-child interactions, and teachingpractices. Based on a 3-hour observation, trained ratersscore each classroom on 37 items, using a scale from 1 to7. A score of 1=inadequate; 3=minimal; 5=adequate; and7=excellent.

66. Data provided to the CED Subcommittee on EducationPolicy by Professor W. Steven Barnett, Rutgers University.

40

Preschool For All

Page 1, JAMES Q. RIORDAN

The report makes clear the need for vol-untary universal free educational programsfor 3-and 4-year olds. Allowing those pro-grams to be handled by a diverse set ofproviders chosen by parents is practical.Vesting primary management responsibilityin the states is wise. Under the recommendedarrangements, it is expected that the pro-viders that best serve the children and theirfamilies will prosper and that their successwill encourage the other providers toimprove their service.

It is hoped that none will argue that thereport’s recommendations constitute anattack on pubic schools or the establishmentof religion (even though many of the pro-viders will likely have a religious affiliation).

The recommended flexible approachmight serve as well if it were also extended tokindergarten and beyond.

Page 3, ARNOLD R. WEBER

I support and endorse the CED policystatement on Early Childhood Education. Asan expression of policy goals, it is well devel-oped and persuasive. However, concern mustbe expressed over the price tag on this initia-tive, a minimum of $25 to $35 billion and"full funding" of $41.5 billion. By any stan-dards and in any economic environment, thisis an ambitious commitment. I believe thatthe client group should be limited by someincome criteria. Children in upper-middleclass and affluent families often receivestrong parental guidance and support,including various preschool programs.

Priority should be given to children in low-income or "disadvantaged" families. Usingthe current methodology governing the dis-tribution of Title 1 or Head Start programsmay be a good point of departure.

Page 5, JOSH S. WESTON

This CED report is a useful, long-termroadmap for federal and state policy makers.Here is a more specific "stalking horse blue-print" that might accelerate near-termprogress. It is one that:

• Permits state initiatives, standards, andalternative approaches.

• Offers and induces choice plus competi-tion between schools.

• Combines simplicity and necessary gradu-alism. (Teachers, oversight, and facilitiesfor all 3-and 4-year olds would requiremany years and much more funding.)

• Provides for a simple, quite affordableincentive grant to induce action by statesand parents.

1. Head Start funding and quality standardsshould be improved to provide more qual-ified teachers, lower staff turnover, betteroutcomes, accountability, and wrap-around care for those parents who needit.

2. The first new step should aim only at 4-yearolds in working-poor families (to bedefined) who don’t quality for Head Start.It could be a federally-offered 3- for 1matching voucher (parent incentive cer-tificate) to any state that simultaneously

41

Memoranda of Comment, Reservation, or Dissent

offers its own $1000-$2000 annual tuitionvouchers for such 4-year olds. UnlikeHead Start, the vouchers could coversomewhat less than full cost, to induceparental involvement.

3. Vouchers would be redeemable in anypublic, private, or Head Start institutionthat obtained state certification as to qual-ity and safety. They would cover part-dayeducation, with higher redemption valuewhen wrap-around child care is providedby the institution. The voucher might be50 percent redeemable at enrollment and50 percent at completion of the enrollee’sschool year.

4. To induce political acceptability andgreater enrollment, a state might have theoption to also offer lower value, federally-matched vouchers to nonpoor families.

5. To induce Head Start quality and competi-tion, Head Start parents might have theoption to opt out of Head Start and applyinstead for a working-poor voucher atanother institution.

6. Since all state and all eligible parentswould not accept the challenge, it is notlikely to initially cost the Federal govern-ment more than 1 million student vouch-ers (only $5 billion per year?), while pro-viding significant stimuli and role modelsfor universal optional pre-K educationand wrap-around child care (wheredesired and needed) at a later date.

7. Given the enduring value of enhancedschool readiness, this pilot investment of0.05 percent of GNP could produce ahuge lifetime return on investment foreach participant.

42

PRESCHOOL FOR ALL

OBJECTIVES OF THE COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

For 60 years, the Committee for EconomicDevelopment has been a respected influenceon the formation of business and publicpolicy. CED is devoted to these two objectives:

To develop, through objective research andinformed discussion, findings and recommenda-tions for private and public policy that will contrib-ute to preserving and strengthening our free society,achieving steady economic growth at high employ-ment and reasonably stable prices, increasing pro-ductivity and living standards, providing greaterand more equal opportunity for every citizen, andimproving the quality of life for all.

To bring about increasing understanding bypresent and future leaders in business, government,and education, and among concerned citizens, of theimportance of these objectives and the ways in whichthey can be achieved.

CED’s work is supported by private volun-tary contributions from business and industry,

foundations, and individuals. It is independent,nonprofit, nonpartisan, and nonpolitical.

Through this business-academic partner-ship, CED endeavors to develop policy state-ments and other research materials thatcommend themselves as guides to public andbusiness policy; that can be used as texts incollege economics and political science coursesand in management training courses; thatwill be considered and discussed by newspaperand magazine editors, columnists, and com-mentators; and that are distributed abroad topromote better understanding of the Ameri-can economic system.

CED believes that by enabling businessleaders to demonstrate constructively their con-cern for the general welfare, it is helping busi-ness to earn and maintain the national andcommunity respect essential to the successfulfunctioning of the free enterprise capitalistsystem.

43

*Life Trustee

ChairmanFRANK P. DOYLE, Retired Executive Vice PresidentGE

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*

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Executive OfficerStatue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.OSCAR G. MAYER, Retired ChairmanOscar Mayer & Co.GEORGE C. MCGHEE, Former U.S. Ambassador

and Under Secretary of StateJOHN F. MCGILLICUDDY, Retired Chairman

and Chief Executive OfficerChemical Banking CorporationJAMES W. MCKEE, JR., Retired ChairmanCPC International, Inc.CHAMPNEY A. MCNAIR, Retired Vice ChairmanTrust Company of GeorgiaJ. W. MCSWINEY, Retired Chairman of the BoardThe Mead CorporationROBERT E. MERCER, Retired ChairmanThe Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.RUBEN F. METTLER, Retired Chairman and

Chief Executive OfficerTRW Inc.LEE L. MORGAN, Former Chairman of the BoardCaterpillar, Inc.ROBERT R. NATHAN, ChairmanNathan Associates, Inc.J. WILSON NEWMAN, Retired ChairmanDun & Bradstreet CorporationJAMES J. O’CONNOR, Former Chairman and Chief

Executive OfficerUnicom CorporationLEIF H. OLSEN, PresidentLHO GROUPNORMA PACE, PresidentPaper Analytics AssociatesCHARLES W. PARRY, Retired ChairmanALCOAWILLIAM R. PEARCE, DirectorAmerican Express Mutual FundsJOHN H. PERKINS, Former PresidentContinental Illinois National Bank and Trust CompanyRUDOLPH A. PETERSON, President and Chief

Executive Officer (Emeritus)BankAmerica CorporationDEAN P. PHYPERSNew Canaan, Connecticut

CED RESEARCH ADVISORY BOARD

ChairmanJOHN P. WHITELecturer in Public PolicyJohn F. Kennedy School of GovernmentHarvard University

JAGDISH BHAGWATIArthur Lehman Professor of EconomicsColumbia University

RALPH D. CHRISTYJ. Thomas Clark ProfessorDepartment of Agricultural, Resource, and Managerial EconomicsCornell University

ALAIN C. ENTHOVENMarriner S. Eccles Professor of Public

and Private ManagementStanford UniversityGraduate School of Business

BENJAMIN M. FRIEDMANWilliam Joseph Maier Professor of Political EconomyHarvard University

ROBERT W. HAHNResident ScholarAmerican Enterprise Institute

HELEN F. LADDProfessor of Public Policy Studies and

EconomicsSanford Institute of Public PolicyDuke University

ROBERT LITANVice President, Director of Economic

StudiesThe Brookings Institution

PAUL ROMERSTANCO 25 Professor of EconomicsStanford UniversityGraduate School of Business

CECILIA E. ROUSEAssociate Professor of Economics

and Public AffairsWoodrow Wilson SchoolPrinceton University

DAVID WESSELAssistant Bureau Chief/ColumnistThe Wall Street Journal

CHARLES E.M. KOLBPresident

CED PROFESSIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

Communications/Government RelationsCLAUDIA P. FEUREYVice President for Communications

and Corporate Affairs

MICHAEL J. PETROVice President and Director of Business and Government Policy

and Chief of Staff

CHRIS DREIBELBISBusiness and Government Policy

Associate

VALERIE MENDELSOHNConference Manager and Secretary of

the Research and Policy Committee

THOMAS NELSONPublic Affairs and Communications

Manager

CHRISTINE RYANPublic Affairs Associate

ROBIN SAMERSAssistant Director of Communications

DevelopmentMARTHA E. HOULEVice President for Development and

Secretary of the Board of Trustees

GLORIA Y. CALHOUNDevelopment Assistant

CAROLINA LOPEZManager, Development

SANDRA L. MARTINEZDevelopment Associate

RICHARD M. RODERODirector of Development

Finance and AdministrationKAREN CASTRODirector of Finance and Administration

HOOJU CHOIDatabase Administrator

SHARON A. FOWKESExecutive Assistant to the President

ARLENE M. MURPHYExecutive Assistant to the President and Office Manager

DENISE SMITHPublic Affairs and Development Assistant

AMANDA TURNEROffice Manager

ResearchVAN DOORN OOMSSenior Vice President and

Director of Research

JANET HANSENVice President and Director

of Education Studies

ELLIOT SCHWARTZVice President and Director

of Economic Studies

MICHAEL BERGResearch Associate

JEFF LOESELResearch Associate

NORA LOVRIENResearch Associate

Advisor on InternationalEconomic PolicyISAIAH FRANKWilliam L. Clayton Professor

of International EconomicsThe Johns Hopkins University

*Statements issued in association with CED counterpart organizations in foreign countries.

STATEMENTS ON NATIONAL POLICY ISSUED BY THECOMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

From Protest to Progress: Addressing Labor and Environmental Conditions Through Freer Trade (2001)The Digital Economy: Promoting Competition, Innovation, and Opportunity (2001)Reforming Immigration: Helping Meet America's Need for a Skilled Workforce (2001)Measuring What Matters: Using Assessment and Accountability to Improve Student Learning (2001)Improving Global Financial Stability (2000)The Case for Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China (2000)Welfare Reform and Beyond: Making Work Work (2000)Breaking the Litigation Habit: Economic Incentives for Legal Reform (2000)New Opportunities for Older Workers (1999)Investing in the People's Business: A Business Proposal for Campaign Finance Reform (1999)The Employer’s Role in Linking School and Work (1998)Employer Roles in Linking School and Work: Lessons from Four Urban Communities (1998)America’s Basic Research: Prosperity Through Discovery (1998)Modernizing Government Regulation: The Need For Action (1998)U.S. Economic Policy Toward The Asia-Pacific Region (1997)Connecting Inner-City Youth To The World of Work (1997)Fixing Social Security (1997)Growth With Opportunity (1997)American Workers and Economic Change (1996)Connecting Students to a Changing World: A Technology Strategy for Improving Mathematics and

Science Education (1995)Cut Spending First: Tax Cuts Should Be Deferred to Ensure a Balanced Budget (1995)Rebuilding Inner-City Communities: A New Approach to the Nation’s Urban Crisis (1995)Who Will Pay For Your Retirement? The Looming Crisis (1995)Putting Learning First: Governing and Managing the Schools for High Achievement (1994)Prescription for Progress: The Uruguay Round in the New Global Economy (1994)*From Promise to Progress: Towards a New Stage in U.S.-Japan Economic Relations (1994)U.S. Trade Policy Beyond The Uruguay Round (1994)In Our Best Interest: NAFTA and the New American Economy (1993)What Price Clean Air? A Market Approach to Energy and Environmental Policy (1993)Why Child Care Matters: Preparing Young Children For A More Productive America (1993)Restoring Prosperity: Budget Choices for Economic Growth (1992)The United States in the New Global Economy: A Rallier of Nations (1992)The Economy and National Defense: Adjusting to Cutbacks in the Post-Cold War Era (1991)Politics, Tax Cuts and the Peace Dividend (1991)The Unfinished Agenda: A New Vision for Child Development and Education (1991)

Foreign Investment in the United States: What Does It Signal? (1990)An America That Works: The Life-Cycle Approach to a Competitive Work Force (1990)Breaking New Ground in U.S. Trade Policy (1990)Battling America's Budget Deficits (1989)*Strengthening U.S.-Japan Economic Relations (1989)Who Should Be Liable? A Guide to Policy for Dealing with Risk (1989)Investing in America's Future: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Sector Economic

Policies (1988)Children in Need: Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged (1987)Finance and Third World Economic Growth (1987)Reforming Health Care: A Market Prescription (1987)Work and Change: Labor Market Adjustment Policies in a Competitive World (1987)Leadership for Dynamic State Economies (1986)Investing in Our Children: Business and the Public Schools (1985)Fighting Federal Deficits: The Time for Hard Choices (1985)Strategy for U.S. Industrial Competitiveness (1984)Productivity Policy: Key to the Nation's Economic Future (1983)Energy Prices and Public Policy (1982)Public-Private Partnership: An Opportunity for Urban Communities (1982)Reforming Retirement Policies (1981)Transnational Corporations and Developing Countries: New Policies for a Changing

World Economy (1981)Stimulating Technological Progress (1980)Redefining Government's Role in the Market System (1979)Jobs for the Hard-to-Employ: New Directions for a Public-Private Partnership (1978)

CE Circulo de EmpresariosMadrid, Spain

CEAL Consejo Empresario de America LatinaBuenos Aires, Argentina

CEDA Committee for Economic Development of AustraliaSydney, Australia

EVA Centre for Finnish Business and Policy StudiesHelsinki, Finland

FAE Forum de Administradores de EmpresasLisbon, Portugal

FDE Belgian Enterprise FoundationBrussels, Belgium

IDEP Institut de l’EntrepriseParis, France

IW Institut der Deutschen WirtschaftCologne, Germany

Keizai DoyukaiTokyo, Japan

SMO Stichting Maatschappij en OndernemingThe Netherlands

SNS Studieförbundet Naringsliv och SamhälleStockholm, Sweden

CED COUNTERPART ORGANIZATIONS

Close relations exist between the Committee for Economic Development and inde-pendent, nonpolitical research organizations in other countries. Such counterpartgroups are composed of business executives and scholars and have objectives similarto those of CED, which they pursue by similarly objective methods. CED cooperateswith these organizations on research and study projects of common interest to thevarious countries concerned. This program has resulted in a number of joint policystatements involving such international matters as energy, East-West trade, assis-tance to developing countries, and the reduction of nontariff barriers to trade.