[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INVESTING IN EARLY EDUCATION: PATHS TO IMPROVING CHILDREN'S SUCCESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND LABOR
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 23, 2008
__________
Serial No. 110-75
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
Available on the Internet:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html
----------
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon,
Chairman California,
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Ranking Minority Member
Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin
Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Virginia Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Lynn C. Woolsey, California Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Carolyn McCarthy, New York Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts Judy Biggert, Illinois
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
David Wu, Oregon Ric Keller, Florida
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Susan A. Davis, California John Kline, Minnesota
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Kenny Marchant, Texas
Timothy H. Bishop, New York Tom Price, Georgia
Linda T. Sanchez, California Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Charles W. Boustany, Jr.,
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Louisiana
David Loebsack, Iowa Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania York
John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky Rob Bishop, Utah
Phil Hare, Illinois David Davis, Tennessee
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Timothy Walberg, Michigan
Joe Courtney, Connecticut Dean Heller, Nevada
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director
Vic Klatt, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on January 23, 2008................................. 1
Statement of Members:
Altmire, Hon. Jason, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of............... 4
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Connecticut, prepared statement of................ 4
Hirono, Hon. Mazie K., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Hawaii............................................ 5
Additional submissions:
DeLauro, Hon. Rosa L., a Representative in Congress
from the State of Connecticut, prepared statement
of................................................. 6
Melmed, Matthew, executive director, Zero to Three,
prepared statement of.............................. 77
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 6
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' Senior Republican Member,
Committee on Education and Labor........................... 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and
Labor, prepared statement of............................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Chun, Elisabeth, executive director, Hawaii Good Beginnings
Alliance................................................... 29
Prepared statement of.................................... 31
Haskins, Ron, Ph.D., senior fellow, economic studies,
Brookings Institution...................................... 43
Prepared statement of.................................... 46
Karolak, Eric, executive director, Early Care and Education
Consortium................................................. 38
Prepared statement of.................................... 40
Kolb, Charles E.M., president, Committee for Economic
Development................................................ 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 36
Phillips, Deborah A., Ph.D., professor, department of
psychology, Georgetown University.......................... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Letter, dated January 30, 2008........................... 20
Priestly, Kathleen, early education coordinator, Orange City
School District............................................ 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 23
INVESTING IN EARLY EDUCATION: PATHS TO IMPROVING CHILDREN'S SUCCESS
----------
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education and Labor
Washington, DC
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mazie Hirono
presiding.
Present: Representatives Kildee, Payne, Kucinich, Holt,
Bishop of New York, Sarbanes, Sestak, Hirono, Hare, Clarke,
Shea-Porter, McKeon, Petri, Castle, Platts, Keller, Kline,
Foxx, and Davis of Tennessee.
Staff present: Tylease Alli, Hearing Clerk; Lynne Campbell,
Legislative Fellow for Education; Denise Forte, Director of
Education Policy; Ruth Friedman, Senior Education Policy
Advisor (Early Childhood); Lloyd Horwich, Policy Advisor,
Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education and Secondary
Education; Lamont Ivey, Staff Assistant, Education; Thomas
Kiley, Communications Director; Danielle Lee, Press/Outreach
Assistant; Stephanie Moore, General Counsel; Alex Nock, Deputy
Staff Director; Joe Novotny, Chief Clerk; Rachel Racusen,
Deputy Communications Director; Margaret Young, Staff
Assistant, Education; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; Stephanie
Arras, Minority Legislative Assistant; James Bergeron, Minority
Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Robert
Borden, Minority General Counsel; Cameron Coursen, Minority
Assistant Communications Director; Kirsten Duncan, Minority
Professional Staff Member; Rob Gregg, Minority Legislative
Assistant; Victor Klatt, Minority Staff Director; Chad Miller,
Minority Professional Staff; Susan Ross, Minority Director of
Education and Human Services Policy; Linda Stevens, Minority
Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel; and Hannah Snoke,
Minority Receptionist/Administrative Assistant.
Ms. Hirono [presiding]. A quorum being present, the
committee will come to order.
Good morning. On behalf of Chairman Miller, I would like to
welcome everyone to our hearing, ``Investing in Early
Education: Paths to Improving Children's Success.''
I cannot think of a more critical issue for us to explore
in our first full committee hearing of 2008 than the need for
expanding quality early education opportunities for our
nation's children.
As we will hear from our panel of experts today, providing
a good educational foundation for our children during their
earliest years of life not only improves student success down
the road, but is vital to building a stronger, more innovative,
and competitive future for our country.
Over the past decade, there has been groundbreaking
research on brain and child development that underscores the
importance of the first 5 years of a child's life. In
combination with their genes, children's experiences in these
critical early years influence brain chemistry, architecture,
and growth in ways that can have lasting effects on their
health, learning, and behavior.
Families are children's first and most important teachers
throughout life, but with nearly 12 million children under the
age of 5, or nearly two-thirds of all American children under
5, in some type of regular child care arrangement, early care
and education providers also play a great role in children's
development and growth.
As a nation, we simply cannot afford to ignore the types
and quality of early care and education settings that are
available to our children. Research shows that the achievement
gap we see in elementary school and beyond exists before
children enter kindergarten. The Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study overseen by the Department of Education, for example,
found twice as many 4-year-olds from upper-income family
households were proficient in early math skills when compared
to 4-year-olds from the lowest-income households. What this
means is that if education reform begins in elementary school,
we are starting 5 years too late.
But the quality of early education is not just an issue for
low-income families. Finding high-quality, affordable care and
education can be difficult for all families. The average cost
of child care averages between $4,000 and $10,000 a year and
usually ranks as the second highest expense for families after
housing.
Federal, state, and local programs have shown us that
investments in high-quality early education can make a
tremendous difference in children's futures both in and outside
the classroom. High-quality early education can improve
children's reading, math, and language skills, strengthen
parenting practices, and help increase school readiness and
lead to better health and behavior.
But we also have a long way to go to ensure that all
children can get a high-quality early education foundation.
Pre-K and child care standards and oversight vary greatly
across states. A vast majority of states have no training
requirements for child care providers prior to working in a
classroom, and 13 state pre-K programs meet five or fewer of 10
key quality criteria.
The first 5 years of life provide us with an incredible
opportunity to ensure that all children have the tools they
need to achieve in elementary school and beyond. Investments in
these programs must be made wisely, and we must ensure that we
target resources to what works.
But it is clear that new and greater investments must also
be made. If we are to succeed at reforming our education system
and ensuring success for all children, then improving the early
care and education settings for our youngest children must be
one of our top priorities, and if we are to maintain our
leadership in this global economy, we must focus on investing
in our children during their most formative years.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today
and look forward to hearing from each of you on what the
science tells us about what is working and what challenges lay
ahead.
Thank you.
Pursuant to Rule 12(a), all members may submit an opening
statement in writing which will be made part of the permanent
record.
I now recognize the senior Republican member, Mr. McKeon,
for an opening statement.
[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Chairman, Committee on
Education and Labor
Good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to our hearing:
``Investing in Early Education: Paths to Improving Children's
Success.''
I can't think of a more critical issue for us to explore in our
first full committee hearing of 2008 than the need for expanding
quality early education opportunities for our nation's children.
As we will hear from our panel of experts today, providing a good
educational foundation for our children during their earliest years of
life not only improves student success down the road, but is vital to
building a stronger, more innovative, and competitive future for our
country.
Over the past decade, there has been groundbreaking research on
brain and child development that underscores the importance of the
first five years of a child's life.
In combination with their genes, children's experiences in these
critical early years influence brain chemistry, architecture, and
growth in ways that can have lasting effects on their health, learning,
and behavior.
Families are children's first and most important teachers
throughout life.
But with nearly 12 million children under the age of five--or
nearly two-thirds of all American children under five--in some type of
regular child care arrangement, early care and education providers also
play a great role in children's development and growth.
As a nation, we simply cannot afford to ignore the types and
quality of early care and education settings that are available to our
children.
Research shows that the achievement gap we see in elementary school
and beyond exists before children enter kindergarten.
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study overseen by the Department
of Education, for example, found twice as many 4-year-olds from upper-
income family households were proficient in early math skills when
compared to 4-year-olds from the lowest income households.
What this means is that if education reform begins in elementary
school--we're starting 5 years too late.
But the quality of early education is not just an issue for low-
income families. Finding high-quality, affordable care and education
can be difficult for all families.
The average cost of child care averages between $4,000 and $10,000
a year--and usually ranks as the second highest expense for families,
after housing.
Federal, state, and local programs have shown us that investments
in high quality early education can make a tremendous difference in
children's futures--both in and outside the classroom.
High quality early education can improve children's reading, math,
and language skills, strengthen parenting practices that help increase
school readiness, and lead to better health and behavior.
But we also have a long way to go to ensure that all children can
get a high-quality early education foundation.
Pre-k and child care standards and oversight vary greatly across
states.
A vast majority of states have no training requirement for child
care providers prior to working in a classroom and thirteen state pre-k
programs meet 5 or fewer of 10 key quality criteria.
The first five years of life provide us with an incredible
opportunity to ensure that all children have the tools they need to
achieve in elementary school and beyond.
Investments in these programs must be made wisely and we must
ensure that we target resources to what works.
But it is clear that new and greater investments must also be made.
If we are to succeed at reforming our education system and ensuring
success for all children, then improving the early care and education
settings for our youngest children must be one of our top priorities.
And if we are to maintain our leadership in this global economy, we
must focus on investing in our children during their most formative
years.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today and look
forward to hearing from each of you about what the science tells us
about what is working and what challenges lay ahead.
Thank you.
______
[The statement of Mr. Altmire follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jason Altmire, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Pennsylvania
Thank you, Chairman Miller, for holding this important hearing on
early childhood education.
As the member of the board of an early childhood education program
in Braddock, Pennsylvania I have been able to see first hand the
incredible benefits that early childhood education provides to
children, families, and communities. Students that participate in high-
quality early childhood education do better in school, are less likely
to commit crimes, and are more likely to attend college or become
gainfully employed after high school, than their peers. In fact,
studies of high-quality early childhood education programs show that
for every dollar invested in these programs they provide an economic
benefit to society of between $1.25 and $17.
Earlier this year, this committee reauthorized the Head Start
Program. I believe that the Improving Head Start for School Readiness
Act of 2007 will significantly enhance what is already a very good
federal program. Today, I look forward to learning more about how the
federal government can help to improve early childhood education and to
hearing where our investment is having the most impact.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I yield
back the balance of my time.
______
[The statement of Mr. Courtney follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Courtney, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Connecticut
Chairman Miller, thank you for convening a hearing today on one of
the most important investments that we can make in our public education
system: early education services. As members of the Committee on
Education and Labor, few things are more important to us than the
success of our children. In light of overwhelming evidence supporting
investments in early education services, it is critical that we act
expeditiously in delivering these services to our Nation's children.
The success of our education system directly relates to the
potential health and prosperity of our Nation. In order for our
education systems to be successful, we must remain vigilant of
effective academic programs and improve and expand investment until
these systems reflect our highest aspirations. In the past decade,
education research has consistently concluded the same message:
investments in quality early education services provide substantial,
sustainable, and cost-effective benefits.
Early education service investments, specifically during the
initial years of life, facilitate mentally, physically, emotionally,
and academically prepared students in the future. This in turn,
provides opportunity for success in institutions of higher education
and ultimately expanded opportunity for professional success in latter
years. These investments reduce the need for disciplinary programs in
primary and secondary school as well as reduce the need for future
social services by expanding potential for professional success.
Early education service investments are especially important for
children from low-income families as the potential for academic failure
is disproportionately higher for this demographic: high school dropout
rates are high and higher education matriculation rates are low.
Federal programs, like Head Start, address the nutrition, emotional,
social, and academic needs of young children from low-income families
and will ultimately prepare the most susceptible children for academic
and professional success.
As we look to further integrate and improve early education
programs in national education priorities, we must reflect on the
successes of public and private programs at the state and local levels.
I am proud to represent a state that has continued to set high
standards for early education funding and quality of programs.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research
(NIEER), Connecticut has one of the highest per pupil expenditure rates
in the Nation. During the 2005-2006 academic year, Connecticut averaged
$7,101 per pupil on early education programs. This funding is used to
deliver quality programs that incorporate physical, language and
literacy, cognitive and intellectual, emotional and cultural focuses in
early education curriculum.
Mr. Chairman, it is clear that investments in early education are
inextricably linked to potential future academic and professional
success. Because these gains are aggregate, it is imperative that we
act now with outreach expansion and program improvement. For these
reasons, I joined with my fellow Connecticut colleagues, Representative
DeLauro and Senator Dodd, in introducing legislation that will
facilitate these efforts.
The Early Childhood Investment Act (H.R. 2616) will establish a
grant program to reward public and private entities that strengthen
collaborative efforts with early education services. Additional health
and education services will be used when the time is most critical in a
child's life: from birth through the age of five. These investments
will produce healthier, happier and better prepared children in both
the short and long term, while sharing federal costs with the local,
state and private entities.
In order to create a mentally, physically, emotionally and
academically prepared student body and in turn, professional workforce,
we must prioritize investments in quality early education services.
______
[The statement of Ms. DeLauro follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Rosa L. DeLauro, a Representative in
Congress From the State of Connecticut
Chairman Miller, Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today. I was glad to join you last year as co-
chair of the Speaker's National Children Summit and I am delighted to
see your committee addressing one of its central issues: early
childhood education. This is one of the most important issues facing
the future of our country and I am glad the committee is investing the
time and energy to examine it closely.
Each of us believes that children should grow up healthy and safe--
they should have the opportunity to learn and participate fully in
society. That is why investing in early childhood education, whether
through pre-k programs or child care, is so critical. With a Majority
in Congress committed to the well-being of our children, I know we can
make that vision a reality.
Today, the parents of more than 55 million school-age children work
outside the home. A third of those children either live in low-income
households or would be poor if their mother did not work. That means
millions of parents are out of the house, and we know that their
children are likely to be cared for in a setting outside the home.
So for many working women, child care and early childhood programs
are the only source of peace of mind that comes with knowing that their
child will be safe and sound during the time they cannot be with their
children. Parents can focus on their jobs, confident that their
children are in safe, responsible hands. Yet, early childhood programs
are critical not only because they keep our children safe, but also
because they provide them the opportunity to learn and be productive
during those hours.
We now know that 80 percent of brain development occurs by age
three, with up to 90 percent of its capacity in the first five years.
Prominent scientists all agreed--the first year is critical in laying a
foundation for future development, with neuroscience pointing the way
to how positive relationships and experiences play a large role in the
development of the child's brain. And while early abuse, neglect, or
trauma can have a profound negative impact on a child's development, we
also know he or she will recover far more quickly with the right care
in the right environment.
We know that the time children spend in a child care or pre-k
programs help to influence lifelong learning patterns. Quality early
care can make a big difference in children's cognitive development and
positively affect children's performance well into their school
careers.
In this area, we must look to states that are leading the way. For
example, Connecticut established school readiness funding in 1997 to
serve three and four year-old children and is now looking at pre-natal
through grade three services with their long-term initiative ``Ready by
5 & Fine by 9.'' They are working on a comprehensive early childhood
investment plan which will coordinate and leverage resources in a
strategic manner.
Yet, despite the work in states like Connecticut, quality early
childhood programs simply are not readily available to the families
that need them most. Three out of five young children are in child care
every day--nearly 12 million children--but only 1 out of 7 children who
are eligible for federal child care assistance receive any benefits
under the Child Care Development Block Grant. Further, the cost is
often extremely high--reaching up to $14, 647 a year for center-based
infant care and $10,920 annually for a 4-year-old in a center.
In the case of early-learning programs, the situation is dire. For
over 4 decades, Head Start, the federal early childhood development
program has provided comprehensive child development, literacy, and
family services to more than 18 million infants, toddlers, and 3- and
4-year-olds from low-income and working-poor families. But today, only
about 45 percent of those eligible receive Head Start services.
We clearly need new thinking in this area. That is why I am proud
to have worked with my colleagues Senator Christopher Dodd and
Representative Joe Courtney, in introducing legislation to create and
enhance public-private-partnerships that will strengthen investment in
early childhood development programs. ``The Early Childhood Investment
Act of 2007'' would establish a grant program to award funding to a
public-private partnership in a state which will then leverage
additional resources to supplement existing state and federal funds in
local community initiatives. It would also improve access to and
quality of early childhood development for children from birth through
age five and their families.
Partnerships can be effective in leveraging funding from nonprofit
or for-profit organizations, private entities and state government to
increase investment in high quality early childhood development
programs including: parent development and support (such as home
visiting), child care, Head Start, preschool and other related early
childhood development activities.
We must recognize the value of engaging the private sector. Public
funding is vital--it must continue and we need to expand it. But the
fact is public investment alone has not been enough to reach all of our
nation's young children and make a lasting difference in their earliest
years. If we want to ensure our children have every opportunity to
succeed, we need to establish public-private partnerships and leverage
resources to begin opening new doors.
Ultimately, Mr. Chairman, we need to confront the chasm that exists
between what we know is good for America's children and what we
actually do as a country to make it happen. We must fashion a public
policy agenda that focuses on the earliest years of life and increases
the quality of care for our children.
Thank you.
______
[The statement of Mr. Kucinich follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich, a Representative in
Congress From the State of Ohio
I would like to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing, and
for continuing the discussion about the importance of early childhood
education. Over the last decade, research has repeatedly shown that
early childhood education has immense benefit for the social and
emotional development of a child, as well as his or her educational and
vocational attainment later in life. These individual benefits
translate to large-scale societal benefits in the form of a healthier
and better-educated workforce and decreased demand on social service
networks, just to name a few.
I am eager to hear the testimony presented today. The Chairman has
assembled an impressive group with decades of experience and ``practice
wisdom'' in the early education field. I am confident that today's
proceedings will bring us significantly closer toward the goal of
ensuring that every child in America has access to high-quality, full-
day, full-calendar-year prekindergarten education.
I am excited that this endeavor is well under way in my
congressional district. Through a year-long planning process, the
Cuyahoga County Board of County Commissioners developed a universal
prekindergarten model. The program addresses all the components of
high-quality early education programming: low child to staff ratios; a
research-driven, proven curriculum; professional and workforce
development; wraparound health and social services; family engagement;
and monitoring and evaluation. I am particularly proud of the fact that
this program was the product of a process that engaged over 200
stakeholders, from researchers and policy experts to program managers
and direct service workers. So often, in our zeal to create effective
programming, we neglect the bounty of research available in the wisdom
of front line staff. I firmly believe that any early education endeavor
must have the input of the direct service staff and others who face the
lived reality of the programs we offer.
Thank you again, Chairman, and thank you to our panel, for all of
your efforts in furtherance of early education. I stand ready and
willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that every child in America
has access to high-quality, full-day, full-calendar-year
prekindergarten education.
______
Mr. McKeon. Thank you very much.
I am pleased to be here examining early childhood
education, an issue this committee knows well.
Last year, we worked together to write and pass a
bipartisan Head Start reform bill that significantly
strengthens early childhood education opportunities for
disadvantaged children. I was extremely proud to be a part of
crafting that legislation which reaffirmed our commitment to
target the federal investment in early childhood education to
serve disadvantaged children, those who are already at risk of
falling behind even before they enroll in school.
Research has shown that early childhood education pays
significant dividends in preparing children for success in
school and in life. Several studies have shown that children
enrolled in early childhood education programs enter elementary
school better prepared than their peers. It is for this reason
that I am a strong proponent of federal programs, such as the
Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, Early
Reading First, and many others which ensure that children are
ready to learn effectively when they enter kindergarten.
At the same time, there is much we do not know about the
long-term effects of early childhood education programs on
student academic performance and whether these educational
benefits continue into middle and high school.
In addition, much more work needs to be done to increase
coordination of the various federal early childhood education
programs at the state and local level.
Before Congress and this committee even consider efforts to
expand the federal role in early childhood education, I believe
we need to focus on the following three principles.
First, any federal program, existing or otherwise, must
preserve and promote the role of parents to choose an education
provider. Children enrolled in early childhood education
programs are benefiting from a diverse group of public and
private providers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through
local school districts and private providers, administers the
Head Start program and ensures that its services are meeting
the unique needs of disadvantaged children. States have
established pre-kindergarten programs aligned with their K-12
systems, and faith-based and private providers offer programs
tailored towards parents' specific goals.
This diversity of programs and providers in which parents
have control over their children's education and choose what
program works best for them is one of the great strengths of
our early childhood education system. Because of that
diversity, we have avoided many of the criticisms of our K-12
education system.
Second, the federal investment should be narrowly targeted
to those students who need it and those parents who can least
afford it. Before enacting any new or duplicative initiatives,
we must focus on serving those children not presently being
served by the Head Start program. Since 1965, our federal
education programs have been focused on ensuring that low-
income and disadvantaged students and parents have access to
those programs that will help them succeed in life. I strongly
believe that any federal childhood education program must
continue this focus.
And, third, the federal investment in early childhood
education must be focused on ensuring that public and private
providers are running high-quality programs. Over the last few
months, a number of legislative proposals have been introduced
that seem to focus on increasing the number of students
enrolled in federally funded early childhood education
programs.
These legislative efforts overlook the fact that the
percentage of 3-to 5-year-olds in the United States enrolled in
some kind of early childhood education program has skyrocketed
over the last decade, even without one-size-fits-all federal
mandates. They also ignore the tremendous effort of the states
in taking a leadership role to create and fund early childhood
education programs.
From Alabama to Florida to Virginia, states are leading the
way in increasing access to pre-kindergarten programs. The
federal role should recognize that fact and focus on ensuring
the quality of these existing programs so that children are
ready to learn when they enter kindergarten.
Five years ago, when we first began the process of
reforming and strengthening the Head Start program, this
committee examined a limited proposal to move administration of
the program to the states in order to better align the federal
program with what is happening at the state and local level.
Ultimately, we did not follow that approach, mainly because of
concerns that doing so would divert federal early childhood
support to state-based systems focusing on educating children.
Given those concerns about moving Head Start to a state-
structured system, I think that it is ironic that most of the
early childhood education initiatives that have been proposed
would mandate federal services administered by the U.S.
Department of Education and provided at the state or local
level. Nonetheless, today's hearing presents us with an
important opportunity to consider how early childhood education
helps put children on the path to success.
I look forward to hearing about the latest research into
how children learn, and I am pleased to have program providers
here with us to share their insight and experience with
successful program operation.
Once again, I would like to commend the chairman for
convening this hearing and thank the witnesses for offering
their considerate expertise.
Our nation's flexible, dynamic, and diverse system of early
childhood education providers helps ensure a strong foundation
for our children's future educational success. I look forward
to hearing more about that system today.
Thank you.
And I yield back.
[The statement of Mr. McKeon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior
Republican, Committee on Education and Labor
Good morning and thank you, Chairman Miller. I'm pleased to be here
examining early childhood education, an issue this committee knows
well.
Last year, we worked together to write and pass a bipartisan Head
Start reform bill that significantly strengthens early childhood
education opportunities for disadvantaged children.
I was extremely proud to be a part of crafting that legislation,
which reaffirmed our commitment to target the federal investment in
early childhood education to serve disadvantaged children--those who
are already at risk of falling behind, even before they enroll in
school.
Research has shown that early childhood education pays significant
dividends in preparing children for success in school and in life.
Several studies have shown that children enrolled in early childhood
education programs enter elementary school better prepared than their
peers. It is for this reason that I am a strong proponent of federal
programs, such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head
Start, Early Reading First, and many others, which ensure that children
are ready to learn effectively when they enter kindergarten.
At the same time, there is much we do not know about the long-term
effects of early childhood education programs on student academic
performance and whether these educational benefits continue into middle
and high school. In addition, much more work needs to be done to
increase coordination of the various federal early childhood education
programs at the state and local level.
Before Congress and this Committee even consider efforts to expand
the federal role in early childhood education, I believe we need to
focus on the following three principles.
First, any federal program, existing or otherwise, must preserve
and promote the role of parents to choose an education provider.
Children enrolled in early childhood education programs are benefitting
from a diverse group of public and private providers. The U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, through local school districts
and private providers, administers the Head Start program and ensures
that its services are meeting the unique needs of disadvantaged
children. States have established pre-kindergarten programs, aligned
with their K-12 systems. And faith-based and private providers offer
programs tailored toward parents' specific goals. This diversity of
programs and providers--in which parents have control over their
children's education and choose what program works best for them--is
one of the great strengths of our early childhood education system.
Because of that diversity, we have avoided many of the criticisms of
our K-12 education system.
Second, the federal investment should be narrowly targeted to those
students who need it and those parents who can least afford it. Before
enacting any new or duplicative initiatives, we must focus on serving
those children not presently being served by the Head Start program.
Since 1965, our federal education programs have been focused on
ensuring that low-income and disadvantaged students and parents have
access to those programs that will help them succeed in life. I
strongly believe that any federal early childhood education program
must continue this focus.
And, third, the federal investment in early childhood education
must be focused on ensuring that public and private providers are
running high-quality programs.
Over the last few months, a number of legislative proposals have
been introduced that seem to focus on increasing the number of students
enrolled in federally-funded early childhood education programs. These
legislative efforts overlook the fact that the percentage of 3 to 5
year olds in the United States enrolled in some kind of early childhood
education program has skyrocketed over the last decade, even without
one-size-fits-all federal mandates.
They also ignore the tremendous effort of the states in taking a
leadership role to create and fund early childhood education programs.
From Alabama to Florida to Virginia, states are leading the way in
increasing access to pre-kindergarten programs. The federal role should
recognize this fact, and focus on ensuring the quality of these
existing programs so that children are ready to learn when they enter
kindergarten.
Five years ago, when we first began the process of reforming and
strengthening the Head Start program, this Committee examined a limited
proposal to move administration of the program to the states in order
to better align the federal program with what is happening at the state
and local level. Ultimately, we did not follow that approach mainly
because of concerns that doing so would divert federal early childhood
support to state-based systems focused on educating children. Given
those concerns about moving Head Start to a state-structured system, I
think that it's ironic that most of the early childhood education
initiatives that have been proposed would mandate federal services
administered by the U.S. Department of Education and provided at the
state or local level.
Nonetheless, today's hearing presents us with an important
opportunity to consider how early childhood education helps put
children on the path to success. I look forward to hearing about the
latest research into how children learn. I am also pleased to have
program providers here with us to share their insight and experience
with successful program operation.
Once again I'd like to commend the Chairman for convening this
hearing and thank the witnesses for offering their considerable
expertise. Our nation's flexible, dynamic, and diverse system of early
childhood education providers helps ensure a strong foundation for our
children's future educational success. I look forward to hearing more
about that system today. Thank you, and I yield back.
______
Ms. Hirono. Thank you, Mr. McKeon.
Now I would like to introduce our panel of witnesses, all
of whom have very impressive backgrounds. More extensive bios
will be made part of the record.
The first witness is Deborah Phillips. Dr. Phillips is
currently professor of psychology and associated faculty in the
Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. She is also
co-director of the university's research center on children in
the U.S. Prior to this, she was the first executive director of
the Board of Children, Youth and Families of the National
Research Council's Commission on Social and Behavioral Sciences
and the Institute of Medicine.
She co-edited ``From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science
of Early Child Development'' and is now a member of two
organizations that were created to continue the work of
``Neurons to Neighborhoods,'' the National Scientific Council
on the Developing Child and the Forum on Early Childhood
Program Evaluation based at Harvard University. Her research
focuses on the developmental effects of early childhood
programs, including both child care and pre-K settings.
Current studies are focusing on how children who vary in
temperament are differentially affected by child care
experiences and on an evaluation of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, pre-K
program as it affects both cognitive and social-emotional
development. Dr. Phillips has also served on numerous task
forces and advisory groups.
Kathleen Priestly will be introduced by Congressman Payne.
Mr. Payne?
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
It is really an honor for me to introduce someone from my
congressional district, Kathleen Priestly, who is the
supervisor for early childhood education in Orange, New Jersey.
As supervisor, Ms. Priestly has the opportunity to
supervise not only preschool and kindergarten teachers and
teaching assistants, but also to support a team of early
childhood master teachers, social workers, nurses, preschool
intervention specialists, inclusion teachers, and fiscal
administrative assistants. She also collaborates with
principals, Head Start, and center directors, and other
district administrators.
Prior to her current position, she has worked for the New
Jersey Department of Education in the Office of Early Childhood
Education focusing on professional development and technical
assistance for district administrators expanding preschool
education throughout New Jersey. Before that, Kathleen was a
teacher of young children for more than 25 years. After
graduating from Boston College, she came to New Jersey and
attended Rutgers University where she pursued her master's and
other advanced graduate degrees.
Currently, she is an advocate for early childhood education
through her work and outside committee and organization work.
She has been committed to the implementation and expansion of
preschool education in New Jersey and continues to lead and
participate in local and national committees and organizations.
So we are so pleased to have you with us today.
Thank you.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
It gives me great pleasure to introduce my friend from
Hawaii.
And thank you for this beautiful lei, Elisabeth.
Elisabeth Chun is the executive director of the Good
Beginnings Alliance, Hawaii's statewide 501(c)3 intermediary
organization, legislatively named to spearhead efforts to
create a coordinated early childhood education and care system.
Ms. Chun received a BA in history from Carleton College and a
master's of education in educational psychology with a special
education focus from the University of Hawaii.
Prior to joining Good Beginnings in 1997, Ms. Chun was in
the governor's Office of Children and Youth as a program
manager for Hawaii's Federal Child Care and Development Block
Grant. In early 1996, she transferred to the Department of
Human Services, the new lead agency for the Child Care and
Development Block Grant, the Child Care Development Fund. From
1997 to 1998, Ms. Chun served as president of the Junior League
of Honolulu and was involved in coordinating various volunteer
efforts centered on positive parenting.
She currently serves on the Samuel N. and Mary Castle
Advisory Board as well as the Hawaii Children's Trust Fund
Advisory Council and the Hookakoo Corporation supporting
conversions, charter schools, and early education in Hawaii. In
2007, Ms. Chun was recognized for her work in Hawaii's early
childhood movement by both the Hawaii Pacific Business News and
the University of Hawaii College of Education.
Charles Kolb. Since September 1997, Charles Kolb has served
as president of the Committee for Economic Development, CED,
with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. Prior to
joining CED, he served as general counsel and secretary of
United Way of America from 1992 to 1997.
During nearly 10 years of government service, he held
several senior-level positions, including high-ranking
positions with the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to
government service, Mr. Kolb practiced law at two Washington,
D.C., law firms, Covington & Burling and Foreman & Dyess.
He holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton University,
a master's degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from
Oxford, and a law degree from the University of Virginia School
of Law where he was editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of
International Law. He is also the author of a book on
policymaking in the Bush White House and numerous law review
and op ed articles.
Eric Karolak--am I pronouncing your name correctly?
Karolak--thank you.
Dr. Karolak directs the efforts of the Early Care and
Education Consortium, ECEC, an alliance of more than 7,600
early learning programs providing care and education for nearly
800,000 children in 49 states and the District of Columbia.
From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Karolak led the National Childcare
Information Center, the largest federal clearinghouse and
technical assistance center, focused on child care and early
education for low-income families. He has worked closely with
states developing the technical aspects of child care
assistance programs, quality rating systems, and partnerships
across early education programs.
He has conducted policy research and fiscal analysis in the
areas of child welfare, child care, and public housing. Dr.
Karolak also has served on the boards of a national policy
initiative, a nonprofit child care center, a local government
agency, and a metropolitan United Way. He is a graduate of the
Ohio State University.
Last but not least, Ron Haskins. Dr. Haskins is a senior
fellow in the economic studies program and co-director of the
Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution
and is senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in
Baltimore. He is the author of ``Work Over Welfare: The Inside
Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law,'' Brookings, 2006.
Prior to joining Brookings and Casey, he spent 14 years on
the staff of the House Ways and Means Human Resources
Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff,
then as the subcommittee staff director. From 1981 to 1985, he
was a senior researcher at the Frank Porter Graham Child
Development Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill. He also taught and lectured on history and education at
UNC-Charlotte and developmental psychology at Duke University.
Dr. Haskins has edited and co-edited several books and is a
contributor to numerous books and scholarly journals on
children's development and social policy issues. He holds a
bachelor's degree in history, a master's in education, and a
Ph.D. in developmental psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill.
Thank you all for being here.
Before we begin, let me briefly explain our lighting
system. The light is green when you begin to speak. When you
see the yellow light, it means that you have 1 minute
remaining. And when the light turns red, your time has expired,
and you need to conclude your testimony.
Please be certain as you testify to turn on and speak into
the microphone in front of you.
We will now hear from our first witness, Dr. Phillips.
STATEMENT OF DEBORAH PHILLIPS, PH.D., PROFESSOR, PSYCHOLOGY,
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Ms. Phillips. Thank you very much. Those were wonderful
supportive opening statements. Thank you so much.
And I am really delighted to be here this morning to talk
with you about this topic that I have been studying for 35
years and is very near and dear to my heart, as well as to
yours.
In my written testimony, I have three sections where I talk
about brain development, trajectories of early achievement, and
investments that work. But in my spoken comments, I am going to
really focus on brain development and early education, focusing
on what we did not know or know very firmly when I last
testified for you 7 years ago.
With regard to early brain development, brains are built
over time, neural circuits are wired in a bottom-up sequence
with simple circuits and skills providing the scaffolding for
more advanced circuits and skills, and the capacity for change
decreases with age.
From the moment that we are conceived, our brains greedily
recruit information from their surrounding environment like a
sponge to shape their underlying architecture and
neurochemistry. But like a sponge, they are not at all
discriminating about what they soak up. If what surrounds them
is toxic--prenatal alcohol exposure, child abuse, maternal
depression, so on--they will soak this up. If that environment
is responsive and stimulating, the brain will absorb this. And
no mistake about it, these two brains will look and respond
very differently.
This is not a random process. Brain circuits that process
basic information, like differentiating the sounds of your
native language, are wired earlier than those that process more
complex information like learning to read and to write.
Once a circuit is up and operating, it participates in the
construction of later developing circuits. A sturdy early
foundation leads to a well-functioning efficient brain. A weak
early foundation leads to a fragile over or underreactive
neural system.
The developing chemistry of the brain also matters greatly.
During the infancy, toddler, and preschool years, the brain's
stress response system gets calibrated, just like you calibrate
the thermostat for your home heating system. Under most
circumstances, these systems learn to ramp up very quickly in
response to threat and then to ramp back down and return to
baseline levels of functioning when the threat has passed.
But under conditions of what we have come to call toxic
stress, the architecture and chemistry of the developing brain
are disrupted. Not only does the stress system get activated at
a lower threshold of stress--in effect, a kitten becomes a
tiger--but it has a much harder time calming back down to
baseline levels of functioning.
What we see in the short term are children who are highly
reactive to stressful events, who have trouble reading social
cues, and who interpret social interactions that are otherwise
innocent, like a bump in the hallway, in suspicious ways, like
a taunt, and they have substantial learning and memory
difficulties.
In the longer term, we see greater susceptibility to
physical illness and mental health problems.
This is all quite recent work. What is very new and
relevant to today's hearing is that child care experiences,
especially during the toddler years, appear to affect this
developing stress response system.
I am going to jump ahead to early investments, in the
interest of time.
The question of whether we can intervene successfully to
foster early learning of both cognitive and social skills has
been answered in the affirmative and should be put to rest.
Evidence from the small modeled, tightly controlled Abecedarian
and preschool programs that I am sure you know well has been
widely cited. It tells us importantly what is possible.
But this evidence begs the question of whether and how more
typical early childhood environments affect important
developmental outcomes. Can the levers that can reasonably be
pulled by public policy make a meaningful difference in the
life chances of young children across the nation? Absolutely.
This goes to what is feasible and effective.
Significant variations in the quality of more typical early
care and education programs have the potential to produce
lasting repercussions for both children and society as a whole.
Evidence repeatedly points to beneficial impacts at the highest
end of the quality spectrum and to detrimental impacts at the
lowest end.
Very recent evidence from research on typical child care
settings has linked the healthy or unhealthy development of the
stress response system in toddlers and young preschoolers to
the amount of attention and stimulation they receive from their
child care provider, to the nature of the peer interactions
they encounter in child care, and to child-adult ratios.
Combined with children's extensive exposure to child care
in the United States, typically starting around 4 months of
age, developmental and neuroscientists alike approach child
care as a massive sustained intervention in the lives of young
children. The U.S. military has figured this out and has
supported extensive ongoing training and accreditation of all
of its child care programs as pivotal to military preparedness
and ensuring a next generation of effective soldiers.
Pre-kindergarten programs represent another form of
increasingly typical early childhood education programming. I
have been involved in a 5-year-long evaluation of the Tulsa
pre-K program which is universal. Seventy percent of 4-year-
olds in Oklahoma and in Tulsa go to this program. In brief,
three findings that are important to you, and then I will stop
if that is all right with you.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Ms. Phillips. First, students who participated in this
Tulsa pre-K program experienced an 8-month gain in their
letter-word identification scores, an 8-month gain in their
spelling scores, and a 5-month gain in their applied problems
or pre-math skills.
Tulsa public schools contracts with Head Start. Head Start
has to comply with all of the same quality standards. The
children in Head Start experience a 5-month gain in prereading,
a 3-month gain in prewriting, a 5-month gain, just like the
public school kids, in pre-math. These gains place Tulsa Head
Start programs on a par with other states' pre-K programs that
have been evaluated.
Why? We cannot say for sure, but they all employ BA-level
early childhood credentialed teachers who are paid the same
wages as the elementary and secondary teachers in Tulsa.
[The statement of Dr. Phillips follows:]
Prepared Statement of Deborah A. Phillips, Ph.D., Professor, Department
of Psychology, Georgetown University
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am delighted to be
here this morning to talk with you about Investing in Early Education:
Paths to Improving Children's Success. I have had the opportunity to
testify for you in the past and it's nice to be back. I also had the
opportunity to help plan the Speaker's Summit on America's Children
held last May, which addressed many of the issues that are likely to
arise here today. I am especially encouraged that both the Summit and
your discussion today start with scientific knowledge as your departure
point for considering the next policy steps.
I am a developmental psychologist who has studied the effects of
early environments on young children for the past 35 years. My central
focus has been on early educational settings and their effects on
children's well-being and development, including child care, Head
Start, and pre-kindergarten programs. Before joining the faculty at
Georgetown University in September 2000, I spent seven years at the
National Academy of Sciences, the last three of which were devoted to
writing the comprehensive report on early development titled, From
Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. I
am now involved with the follow-on to this work under the banner of the
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, which is
continuously updating the knowledge base and policy recommendations
that we synthesized in Neurons to Neighborhoods. My remarks today will
draw heavily upon the work of the Council, as well as upon my own
NICHD-funded research on child care, longstanding work with Head Start,
and recent multi-year evaluation of the Tulsa, Oklahoma Pre-K program.
There has been a virtual explosion of research in neurobiology and
the behavioral and social sciences that bears directly on this hearing.
What we now know about the conditions that start children along
promising or worrisome pathways is leaps and bounds ahead of where we
were even a decade ago. I will focus my remarks on what is new * * *
what didn't we know or know firmly when I testified in 2001.
They are directed to three points: (1) Brain Development: Brains
soak up the environments around them like a sponge and what they absorb
makes the difference between a sturdy or fragile foundation for
subsequent development. What is new is that we now understand, in great
detail, how this works and what neurological systems and thus which
aspects of development are most profoundly affected. (2) Trajectories
of Achievement: Income-linked disparities in what children know and can
do are clearly evident well before they enter kindergarten and are
predictive of later school success and life achievements. The evidence
linking a child's location on the early learning curve to his or her
trajectory through school and beyond is firmer than ever before, and
(3) Investing in Early Education: Children's experiences in early
education settings display astonishing variation with significant
implications for development. What is new is that we now have
documented impacts on early brain development and we know more about
the active ingredients of these experiences.
Early Brain Development
Brains are built over time, neural circuits are wired in a bottom-
up sequence with simple circuits and skills providing the scaffolding
for more advanced circuits and skills over time, and the capacity for
change decreases with age.
In the first few years of life, our brains are creating 700 new
synapses every second. Synapses are the life-line of our neural
systems, supporting communication from one neuron to the next, just
like phone lines used to connect one home to another. They determine
which neurons are activated (thus, what our brain knows and can do) and
how efficiently our brain processes information. From the moment we are
conceived, our brains--guided by the instructions provided by our
genes--greedily recruit information from their surrounding environment
in order to know which synapses to keep and which to discard. The
synapses that get activated a lot, whether they are those that
establish a well-working or compromised visual system or that tell us
to speak English rather than Ukranian or that prime us to be fearful or
trusting of others, create the underlying architecture of the
developing brain. Those that don't get used, whither away through a
process called ``pruning''.
This is not a random process. Brain circuits that process basic
information (like the visual and auditory and motor systems) are wired
earlier than those that process more complex information (like reading
emotions, or doing algebra, or running a marathon). Once a circuit is
up and operating, it participates in the construction of later-
developing circuits. The shaping of higher-level circuits thus depends
on the successful, strong wiring of the lower-level circuits. A sturdy
early foundation leads to a well-functioning, efficient brain; a weak
early foundation leads to a fragile, over- or under-reactive neural
system.
The developing chemistry of the brain also matters greatly.
Notably, during the infancy, toddler, and preschool years, the brain's
stress response system gets calibrated, just like you would calibrate
the thermostat for your home heating system. In the first five years of
life, these systems learn to ramp up rapidly in the face of stress, and
to ramp back down and return to baseline when they have done their job.
But, under conditions of what we have come to call toxic stress, such
as child abuse or neglect, severe maternal depression, parental
substance abuse, or family violence, persistent elevations of stress
hormones and altered levels of key brain chemical produce an internal
physiological state that disrupts the architecture and chemistry of the
developing brain. Not only does the stress system get activated at a
lower threshold of stress (e.g., a kitten becomes a tiger), but it has
a much harder time calming down to baseline levels of functioning.
Over time, associated disruptions of the immune system and
metabolic regulatory functions lead to a lifetime of greater
susceptibility to physical illnesses and mental health problems. What
we see in the short term are children who are highly reactive to
stressful events (that would not bother other children), who have
trouble reading social cues and interpret social interactions in
``suspicious'' ways (e.g., an innocent bump in the hallway becomes a
taunt), and who have learning and memory difficulties. This is all
quite recent work. What is very new and relevant to today's hearing is
that child care experiences, especially during the toddler years,
appear to affect this developing system.
Today, we also have a much more nuanced understanding of why early
experiences hold a special place in the equation of brain and skills
development:
1) When neural circuits are first forming, the molecular and
cellular mechanisms that guide neural plasticity are highly active,
enabling circuits to undergo substantial changes in architecture,
chemistry, and gene expression in response to experience. The
information-processing circuits of our young brains are eager to be
customized * * * to react to the lessons--both positive and negative--
that early life experiences have to teach.
2) It is far easier to form a pattern of connections in a neural
circuit that does not already have an established configuration. When a
circuit first develops, our genes dictate the blueprint of what goes
where, but in a relatively imprecise and weak way. It is the brain
activity set in motion by experience that sharpens and strengthens
these innate patterns of connection. One these connections stabilize,
it is more difficult for subsequence experience to change the initial
formation. Early experience trumps later experience.
By the same token, skills beget skills. All capabilities are built
on a foundation of capacities that are developed earlier. It follows
that:
Early learning confers value on acquired skills, which
lead to self-reinforcing motivation to learn more.
Early mastery of a range of cognitive, social, and
emotional competencies makes learning at later ages more efficient and,
therefore, easier and more likely to continue.
Early intervention, in effect, lowers the cost of later
investment.
This is true for the brain and it is true for society. This
explains both smart rats and the cost-benefit ratios that are linked to
strong early childhood programs. This is why both neuroscientists and
economists (and business leaders) have singled out high-quality early
education as their best bet for an early investment of public dollars.
Trajectories of Achievement
One of the most significant insights about educational attainment
in recent years is that educational outcomes in adolescence and young
adulthood can be traced back to capabilities seen during the preschool
years and the experiences in and out of the home that foster their
development. For example, reading scores in 10th grade can be predicted
with surprising accuracy from knowledge of the alphabet at kindergarten
entry. Differences in high school completion can be traced back to
preschool achievement test scores. Children thus embark on successful
or unsuccessful pathways through school during the preschool years.
Moving a child who has embarked on a pathway towards failure onto one
that guides him or her toward success becomes increasingly difficult
and costly over time.
By the preschool years, however, the gap in what children living in
impoverished environments and those who escape these environments know
and can do has already emerged. Low- and higher-income children are
already moving along different trajectories well before school entry,
not because their brains are different or because they have different
capabilities, but because their early environments in and out of home
do not constitute a level playing field. This is not new knowledge.
But, today, we have yet more evidence documenting this troubling fact,
we have documented specific deficits not only for early literacy
development, but also for early numeracy development, and there are
exciting new efforts to develop curricula that address these specific
deficits in early learning.
We know, for example, that children living in poverty hear, on
average, 300 fewer words per hour than do children in professional
families, and these differences predict 3rd grade vocabulary and
reading comprehension scores. Children whose mothers have less than a
high school degree test, on average, at the 38th percentile in
kindergarten-level letter recognition, while those with college-
educated mothers test at the 69th percentile. Differences in vocabulary
growth between children in low socio-economic households and high
socio-economic households begin to appear as early as 18 months, the
age at which the ``word-learning explosion'' (when children learn, on
average, 9 words a day) begins.
Low-income children are also not exposed to the board games and
other math-related experiences (e.g., Which is bigger? Which pairs of
socks go together?) that foster early understanding of numerical
concepts. We see the impact in the fact that low-income 5-6 year olds
show the same knowledge of numbers as do middle-income 3-4 year olds.
Exacerbating these trends is the fact that children living in
poverty who cannot avail themselves of programs such as Head Start are
in some of the nation's poorest quality child care settings in which
ample and rich language, let alone counting games, are rare to non-
existent. Children growing up in working poor and modest income
families, who fall between the cracks of eligibility for programs like
Head Start and affordability of high-quality child care also experience
developmentally stunting early childhood settings.
By age 4 or 5, children all over the world have mastered the
fundamental grammatical system of their native language, including verb
declensions, gender agreement, embedded clauses, and the like. They can
understand other people's points of view, experience emotions that are
important to the development of conscience (e.g., shame and guilt), and
can sit quietly with a group of children and pay attention for at least
brief periods of time. Many preschoolers have also learned amazingly
sophisticated numerical and scientific concepts, and love the sense of
discovery that comes from acquiring this knowledge. Having entered the
crucible of peer groups, on average, by 1\1/2\ to 2 years of age, they
have also acquired a large repertoire of early social skills * * * or
deficits. This fact has led experts in the development of aggressive
behavior and delinquency to refer to early childhood experiences as the
headwaters of susceptibility to health and mental health problems,
aggression, and enduring victimization. There is a great deal at stake
here.
Investing in Early Education
The question of whether we can intervene successfully to foster
early learning of both cognitive and social skills has been answered in
the affirmative and should be put to rest. Evidence from the small,
tightly-controlled Abecedarian and Perry Preschool programs has been
widely cited. It tells us, importantly, what is possible. But, this
evidence begs the question of whether and how more typical early
childhood environments affect important developmental outcomes. Can the
levers that can reasonably be pulled by public policy make a meaningful
difference in the life chances of young children across the nation?
Absolutely. This goes to what is feasible and effective.
Significant variations in the quality of more typical early care
and education programs have the potential to produce lasting
repercussions for both children and society as a whole. Evidence points
to beneficial impacts at the highest end of the quality spectrum and to
detrimental impacts at the lowest end.
We do, however, have firmer evidence than ever that, for children
whose life circumstances lead to greater vulnerability, the nature of
their out-of-home experiences is particularly important and the impacts
of variation in quality are greater. Combined with children's extensive
exposure to child care in the U.S. (starting around 4 months of age on
average) and our growing knowledge of environmental influences on early
brain development, it is critical to approach child care as a massive,
sustained intervention in the lives of young children. From the child's
point of view, child care is no less an early intervention program than
is the Abecedarian or Perry Preschool program or Head Start program,
although most child care settings are not designed or funded with this
in mind.
For example, from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, we have
learned that:
Children in center-based classrooms that were in
compliance with American Academy of Pediatrics and American Public
Health Association guidelines for ratios, group size, and caregiver
training, and whose teachers had a college education performed at age
level on a school readiness test, while children from classrooms that
did not meet these guidelines performed 14 percentiles below this
norm--not an inconsequential gap. This translates into children who
know substantially more words, who can correctly identify the letters
of the alphabet, can count and can understand instructions on a par
with their age group versus children who cannot.
Not only did higher quality child care--defined by the
more proximal indicator of sensitive and stimulating adult-child
interaction--predict higher levels of pre-academic skills and language
performance during the infant, toddler, and preschool years, but in
third grade, higher quality early childhood care continued to be linked
to higher scores on standardized tests of math, memory, and vocabulary
skills and, the effects on vocabulary endured through sixth grade.
From other child care research, we have recently documented that:
Quality of child care affects the developing stress
response system. Specifically, during the toddler and young preschool
years, when the anterior cortical regions of the young brain are
undergoing rapid development, exposure to long days in child care with
peers can disrupt normal patterns of cortisol (e.g., a stress hormone)
metabolism for some children, notably those with more immature social
skills and those who experience peer rejection. Importantly, these
effects were reduced for children who received high levels of attention
and stimulation from their child care providers and who were in
programs with smaller peer groups and child-adult ratios. We do not yet
know if these findings have long-term consequences or whether they are
a blip on the long path to maturity.
Thus, variation in the quality of typical early child care has
important and enduring effects on child development. The military has
figured this out and has supported extensive, on-going training and
accreditation of all of its child care programs as pivotal to military
preparedness and ensuring a next generation of effective soldiers.
Pre-Kindergarten programs represent another form of increasingly
typical early childhood education programming. I have been involved in
a 5-year long evaluation of the universal, school-based pre-
kindergarten program in Tulsa, Oklahoma with several colleagues from
the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (Professors William Gormley, Ted
Gayer, and Carolyn Hill). Oklahoma has the largest pre-kindergarten
program in the country, with the highest penetration rates among 4-year
olds (currently hovering around 70%), and Tulsa is the largest school
district in Oklahoma. Here are some of our latest findings:
Students who participated in the Tulsa Public Schools
(TPS) pre-K program in 2005-06 experienced an 8-month gain in their
letter-word identification scores, an 8-month gain in their spelling
scores, and a 5-month gain in their applied problems (pre-math) scores,
relative to students who had not attended the program. This is the
third time we have found significant gains for pre-K students.
These substantial positive effects characterize Hispanic,
African American, White, and Native American children. Similarly, we
are documenting sizeable gains for disadvantaged, near-poor, and
middle-class children. We have further discovered bigger effects on
Spanish-speaking Hispanic students (and children who have a Mexican-
born parent) than on English-speaking Hispanic students (and children
who have a U.S.-born parent).
The Tulsa Head Start program, which contracts with the
Tulsa Public Schools and must comply with all of their pre-K standards
(including a BA-level, credentialed classroom teacher whose wage
matches the TPS wage), is also producing substantial learning gains for
four-year-olds, though effects are less dramatic than for TPS students.
For Head Start, pre-reading skills are boosted by 5 months, pre-writing
skills by 3 months and pre-math skills by 5 months. (Note that our
research was not designed to make a direct comparison across these two
programs (e.g., children were not randomly assigned to TPS and Head
Start classrooms) and it is likely that the populations of children
served by these two programs differ in meaningful ways.)
Our data also speak to the issue of universal versus
targeted preschool. Specifically, the presence of middle-class peers
has positive effects on the cognitive development of disadvantaged
children. Effects are much more noticeable in half-day classrooms,
where students are more heterogeneous socio-economically.
Why do we get these powerful effects, which are surprisingly
comparable to those found for the Abecedarian and Perry Preschool
programs? We have begun to address this question and can point to a few
clues:
First, the Tulsa pre-K program's classroom quality is superior to
other school-based pre-kindergarten programs on multiple measures and
the Tulsa Head Start program's classroom quality is superior to other
Head Start programs on multiple measures. It is probably not
coincidental that every pre-K program--whether TPS or Head Start--must
employ a BA-level teacher with an early childhood credential, sustain a
classroom size of no more than 20 students, and employ an assistant
teacher to establish a 1:10 teacher:student ratio. It is a mixed
delivery system (although the vast share of pre-K classrooms are in the
public schools), but not with mixed quality standards. Every child is
guaranteed a floor of quality below which his or her classroom will not
fall, and it is a relatively high floor.
Second, Tulsa pre-K teachers (in TPS and Head Start classrooms) are
paid at the same level, with the same benefits, as elementary school
teachers in Tulsa, so there is no incentive for the best teachers to
migrate to elementary classrooms if they don't want to. As in
elementary education, wages and working conditions affect our ability
to attract and retain the very best teachers. I strong suggest that
these incentives be a centerpiece of your policy discussions.
Third, as we've begun to look at what predicts higher quality
interactions and more time on instruction in the pre-K classrooms,
cutting across TPS and Head Start programs, the important elements that
are emerging are: (a) the teacher's classroom experience, (b) the
teacher's Grade Point Average in college, (c) and reliance on a
relatively structured, clearly paced curriculum (perhaps especially for
children who have not been exposed to early learning opportunities at
home). As a next step, we will be examining which elements of classroom
experience and teacher qualifications predict the students' test
scores.
Conclusions and Implications
What can we conclude from this work on typical early childhood
programs about the wisest investments in early education? Neuroscience
and economic evidence point to investments in high-quality early
childhood programs as a promising avenue for fostering healthy
development, a strong start in school, and, ultimately a productive
citizenry. Developmental and education science point to specific
avenues for ensuring that these investments fulfill their promise.
First, what happens inside the classroom door, whether it is called
child care or Head Start or pre-K, is where the action is. Mixed
delivery systems are fine, they are the norm, and they offer working
parents the range of options they need. The challenge is one of
ensuring equity of access to developmentally-supportive educational and
social experiences for all children across these systems. This is an
especially compelling message having just celebrated Martin Luther
King's birthday. Today, poor children, who are disproportionately
children of color, are not treated equitably in our early childhood
system. This involves looking across child care, early education, and
Head Start legislation to begin the task of ensuring that each strand
of funding supports the healthy development and early education of
young children--not in a cookie-cutter way, but to the same extent. In
this context, the disparity between the 4% set-aside for quality
improvements in the Child Care and Development Block Grant and the 40%
set-aside in Head Start is impossible to justify. Young children and
notably young children's brains are blind to these distinctions. They
have the same needs whether they walk through a door labeled Head
Start, Pre-Kindergarten, or Sally's Super child care center or Hannah's
Happy child care home.
Second, classrooms that work depend on well-designed curricula
based on the latest knowledge about how children learn and develop, and
on a qualified and stable workforce of early childhood teachers who
know how to bring these curricula to life to foster early learning and
development. Programs that show promising evidence of success with low-
income preschoolers, in particular, blend age-appropriate content tied
to what children are ready to learn with forms of instruction that
transmit this content in ways that excite and motivate young children.
A curriculum is only worth the paper it is printed on unless it
penetrates the classroom and affects the quality of teaching that
children receive every day. National concern has galvanized around
teacher shortages, large class sizes, and poor teaching quality at the
elementary level. Comparable concerns need to be directed at the
preschool level.
Third, teaching quality depends on the teacher and his or her
working conditions. This is precisely why we require elementary school
teachers to have Bachelor's degrees, specialized training, and a
teaching credential. Yet, the vast majority of preschool children are
in programs and settings with adults who have little more than a high
school education and a fingerprint that clears them of a criminal
record. You have addressed this in the Head Start program and I applaud
your efforts. While there is no magic in a B.A. or a credential, they
do increase the odds that children in Head Start will be exposed to the
kinds of early learning environments that will get them ready for both
the cognitive and behavioral demands of school. But, there is large
variation among teachers with all of these qualification and so the
next step is to ensure that the best teachers who want to teach young
children are drawn into and retained in early child classrooms. As
Oklahoma discovered, this involves minimizing the separation between
preschool and elementary education policies, perhaps especially with
regard to wages, benefits, and working conditions. I hope you will keep
this in mind as you embark on re-authorizing No Child Left Behind. You
have a rare opportunity, in this legislation, to support state efforts
and research aimed at building effective early childhood programs and
to ensure that these mostly-fledgling programs, like the brain, are
built on a sturdy--rather than a fragile--foundation of effective and
committed teachers, age-appropriate instruction that instills knowledge
and excitement in young children, and equity of access to these
opportunities.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify. I'd be happy
to answer any questions today and in the crucial months that lie ahead.
______
[Additional submission from Dr. Phillips follows:]
January 30, 2008.
Hon. George Miller, Chairman,
Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Miller: I am writing to clarify comments I made at
the hearing on Investing in Early Education: Paths to Improving
Children's Success regarding financing for early education. In response
to a question, I noted that we are spending billions of dollars on
child care and early education in this country ($24.8 billion of
federal and state dollars according to the testimony provided by Dr.
Haskins--and this does not include the Dependent Care Tax Credit or
Dependent Care Assistance Plans) and posed a hypothetical question
regarding the return on investment these dollars are reaping. In this
context, I noted that ``* * * the challenge is not spending more money;
it is spending what we have wisely.''
To clarify, this statement expresses my concern about existing
federal and state early childhood programs that all too often do not
put children first; that do not invest in early education in ways that
have been proven repeatedly to foster early learning and development.
Consider the Child Care and Development Block Grant that requires only
that funded providers have a fingerprint that clears them of a criminal
record. This stands in start contrast to the Head Start program, in
which your reauthorizing legislation supports enhanced teacher
education, training, compensation, and career ladders.
These disparities fly in the face of what we now know about both
early brain development and the ingredients of early education programs
that promote school readiness, as described in my testimony. This is
the context in which I expressed my concern about adding funding to
these programs as presently configured, rather than using what we are
spending to ensure that all children receive developmentally
beneficial, effective care and education, whether funded via the CCDBG
or Head Start or any other public ``early education'' program. From the
child's standpoint, the funding stream is irrelevant. What matters is
what happens once he or she walks through the door. This mirrors the
recommendation made in Neurons to Neighborhoods regarding child care
and early education, which involved ``reviewing the entire portfolio of
public investments in child care and early education'' to ``ensure the
following priorities: (a) that young children's needs are met through
sustained relationships with qualified caregivers, (b) that the special
needs of children with developmental disabilities or chronic health
conditions are addressed, and (c) that the settings in which children
spent their time are safe, stimulating, and compatible with the values
and priorities of their families.''
There is no question that your goal of supporting the kinds of
preschool education that will ensure that all children are ready for
school will require an infusion of new funding. The Committee on
Economic Development has estimated that full-day, full-year universal
high-quality preschool (not including infants and toddlers) will
require $38.7 billion in new funding (Committee on Economic
Development, 2006). I cannot imagine a more credible estimate of
necessary new funding. And, I cannot imagine a more proven, cost-
effective vehicle for ensuring that young children receive a solid
foundation for early learning, a firm hand hold toward this nation's
promise of equal opportunity, and the start they need to help America
compete in a global market as they grow up.
I am very grateful to have had this opportunity to testify before
you. I would be happy to address any questions you have as you continue
the remarkably important work of the Committee.
Sincerely yours,
Deborah A. Phillips, Ph.D.,
Professor of Psychology and Public Policy, Georgetown University.
______
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Ms. Priestly?
STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN PRIESTLY, EARLY EDUCATION COORDINATOR,
ORANGE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
Ms. Priestly. Thank you, Ms. Hirono and members of the
committee.
I am proud to represent the New Jersey educators who have
passionately worked for universal access to high-quality
preschool education programs. As we have all said, we know that
children who attend preschool education programs that meet high
standards will experience greater success in elementary school
and well beyond.
In my 30 years of work as a teacher of young children in
general and special education, as a staff developer, and in my
work at the Office of Early Childhood Education, my primary
responsibilities there included the coordination and delivery
of professional development for preschool teacher leaders,
which had a big impact on all of our children, and I also
provided implementation support to local district
professionals.
I experienced the growing pains of our preschool movement
from all angles, but I truly have seen the remarkable benefits
from high-quality preschool. The 33,000 residents in my
district include 75 percent African-American children, 13
percent white, and 12 percent Hispanic, the vast majority from
low-income families. I oversee the education of 765 3-and 4-
year-olds in multiage inclusive classrooms at 10 different
sites.
The Orange Board of Education offers preschool education
through a mixed delivery system that includes classrooms in
public school buildings, at Head Start facilities, and private
child care centers. We contract with Head Start and child care
providers partly because of space constraints, but more
importantly because we appreciated the experience of the
existing local Head Start and child care providers. Our
district applies the same high standards to classrooms at all
of these sites.
Preschool education in Orange is now looked upon as part of
a continuum of early childhood education, preschool to grade 3,
and part of the larger whole school reform plan for preschool
to grade 12.
Since the initiatives have been put into place, Orange has
experienced remarkable growth and achievement. Five years ago
in 2002, only 55 percent of our fourth-graders scored
proficient on New Jersey's state test of literacy. Now, in
2007, 83 percent scored proficient, a 50 percent increase
overall. Similarly, in math in 2002, 37 percent were
proficient, while in 2007, this increased to 86 percent, a 70
percent increase.
This improvement in test scores corresponds to improvements
in access and quality of preschool education for our children.
These scores are comparable to districts throughout the state,
many serving more advantaged families and some right in our
neighboring communities.
In addition to the evidence of this progress, we have
results of a statewide evaluation on the effects of providing
increased access to high-quality preschool and children's
achievement in kindergarten and first grade in districts
similar to ours across New Jersey. The National Institute for
Early Education Research at Rutgers University has found that
the pre-K group made substantially larger gains in language,
literacy, and math than did children who did not attend pre-K,
and gains from 2 years of pre-K beginning at age 3 were nearly
double for language and 70 percent larger for math.
In addition, parents tell me stories regularly about what
their children have learned, and kindergarten teachers and
principals marvel at the difference between the children who
have attended and those who have not.
But how are we achieving these results? Recently, on visits
to some of my preschool classrooms, I was extremely proud to
see children engaged with materials and interacting with their
peers in well-organized learning environments. I saw teachers
supporting and stimulating children throughout their group
times and individual work.
The children were learning about the physical properties of
liquids and solids, talking about sounds that were in the
nursery rhyme they read, graphing how many children were in
class and how many were absent, discussing how many blocks they
would need to carry out their plan to build a castle, and
signing in to work at the computer.
This learning went way beyond the traditional academics and
included learning to think ahead, negotiate play with others,
take turns, and solve conflicts with the help of their
teachers.
We did not achieve this, though, without some critical
components, the most important of which is that the child comes
first in every decision. Our preschool teachers are college
educated and hold state licenses in early childhood education,
and they receive the same pay as any public school teacher,
regardless of where they work. They understand child
development and the components of high-quality preschool
education.
We implement a comprehensive research-based curriculum that
emphasizes teaching to the whole child--cognitive, social,
physical, and emotional. We have small class sizes of 15 with a
teacher and an assistant. We provide mentoring to new teachers
to support their success as they learn to individualize
strategies to maximize children's learning. We involve parents
and help parents receive social services when needed.
We engage in systematic planning and evaluation at every
level--the child, the classroom, the center, the district, and
the state--to strengthen what works best and improve what did
not. In addition to adequate financial support from the state,
we benefit from regular implementation support from the
Department of Education both of which are crucial to our
success.
Given the clear and impressive success of this and other
preschools throughout the nation, I would recommend that NCLB
reauthorization recognize the benefits of a high-quality
education for young children and include a preschool education
component.
Further, I recommend that the committee immediately take
steps to help states increase preschool education access and
quality.
I applaud all three pieces of legislation currently being
considered for their strong provisions to help states implement
high-quality programs and their rigorous attention to the
elements that make these programs so beneficial for young
children. Pre-K legislation would mark a major accomplishment
for this committee as states across the country struggle to
raise or maintain the quality of their programs in spite of
impending deficits and as several governors have put their
administrations on the line on behalf of pre-K.
This investment can literally change children's lives. I
have spent my entire career in the field of early childhood
education, and I cannot think of any other better use of our
tax dollars.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Priestly follows:]
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Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Ms. Chun?
STATEMENT OF ELISABETH CHUN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GOOD
BEGINNINGS ALLIANCE
Ms. Chun. Aloha. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here
today to present to this committee on the importance of early
education. I will give Hawaii's perspective on an issue, and I
come with a strong belief that there is a great potential for
our nation when we focus our resources on our youngest
children.
The Good Beginnings Alliance was created in 1997 to provide
leadership in our state and our communities around early
childhood education because we believe we need to have an
integrated early childhood system, first to five, that supports
parent choice and also supports quality early education
programs from family child care, from center-based, and on to
something called family-child interaction, which happens in our
communities where parents come with their children and learn at
the same time.
I was just on the Island of Kona last weekend, and I was
driving down to a beach community where there, I could see,
were no preschools, and I was wondering what happens to the
young children in these communities before they come to
kindergarten, and as I was leaving that road, I looked up and
there was a sign that said, ``Come register for Keiki Steps.''
That is one of our major programs that invites parents of young
children to come with a quality early education educator to
learn how they can best support their children's learning. This
is what this is all about.
As states strive to implement quality early education
programs, the results of this investment are apparent, but few
states and communities have the resources necessary to deliver
high-quality programs. They need support to increase the
quality of programs as well as making programs affordable to
our families.
Right now, I would like to encourage and support and thank
Congresswoman Hirono for the Pre-K Now Act, which provides
incentives for states to ensure that, as they rush to increase
capacity, they also address the quality of early childhood
programs.
We also know that states face specific challenges in
developing early childhood educators. We have a lack of early
childhood teachers, and we are very pleased at the recent loan
forgiveness fund for early educators, and we encourage them
also to focus on expanding access to early childhood courses.
From the Hawaii perspective again, we have been a leader in
early education. In 1943, we were among the first states to
implement statewide public free kindergarten for all 5-year-old
children. That came with the acknowledgement that education
must begin early and that our economy depended upon a strong
future workforce, and our current workforce depended upon
families who knew that their children were in strong early
learning environments while they were working.
We are now grappling with how do we support children under
the age of 5. Forty percent of our current families with young
children cannot afford preschool attendance, and we know that
those programs that receive federal and state subsidies now
have long waiting lists. If our families are to work and to
support their families, they need safe, quality places for
their children in order to make sure that they lift themselves
out of poverty.
We are also so concerned about Gap Group families, those
families which do not qualify for early education programs with
federal or state subsidies, but yet cannot afford preschool
tuition. They often have to make choices of programs that are
not always stable or in places that are not stable and of
unknown quality.
We have made progress in Hawaii. In 2001, the Pre Plus
program, which was envisioned by our then Lieutenant Governor
Mazie Hirono, implemented state-funded preschool facilities on
elementary school campuses. This program, now known as Pre
Plus, built 16 programs on elementary school sites. This is a
public-private partnership; private programs run the programs
that are located on elementary schools. Over 300 children are
now served by these programs.
We know more investment is needed. In my testimony, you
will see that in our outlying areas especially, over half the
children of low-income do not have access to programs, and if
we would develop those programs, we do not have capacity yet to
fund places for those children.
We also know, as we are developing right now our Keiki
First Early Childhood Program, that when we look to expand our
early childhood programs, we need more teachers. If we are to
serve 80 percent of our 4-year-old children, we know we need to
double our current workforce. We need 370 new early education
teachers, and 310 of our existing teachers will require more
education, and 200 need to go from an associate's degree to a
bachelor's degree.
So I will end where I began, in that we do need federal
support for early education in our state. We need to help our
teachers maintain scholarships and loan forgiveness. We need to
help our universities create incentives for early education
programs, and we need to help our early education programs
maintain quality.
Our Keiki First program estimates that $170 million will be
needed annually in order to support a 4-year-old program. That
is for direct services and other programs. I urge you to
consider your ability to support the state's expansion of
quality.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Chun follows:]
Prepared Statement of Elisabeth Chun, Executive Director, Hawaii Good
Beginnings Alliance
As Executive Director of Hawaii's Good Beginnings Alliance I am
honored to present testimony as to the importance of investing in early
education as a critical path to improving children's success. I bring
Hawaii's perspective on this issue and a strong belief that there is a
great potential benefit to our nation when we focus our resources on
children.
The Good Beginnings Alliance (GBA) is a statewide, non-profit,
community organization created in 1997 by the Hawaii State Legislature
(Act 77) to provide state and community leadership for the development
of an integrated early childhood system in Hawaii.
Since 1997, Good Beginnings Alliance as Hawaii's designated early
childhood intermediary organization has followed its mission to ensure
that all of Hawaii's children are safe, healthy and ready to succeed by
shaping public will and public policy; mobilizing action; and
maximizing resources. Our goal is to improve results for young children
birth through the first eight years of life--the most critical time of
a child's life.
GBA as an organization has 14-member Board of Directors
representing each county (Big Island, Kauai, Maui, and Oahu), business,
philanthropy, early childhood and early care (ECEC) professionals,
consumer of ECEC services, health, resource and referrals, the
University of Hawaii, early intervention, Head Start, and the
Interdepartmental Council.
The board's composition encourages a public-private partnership in
order to collaborate and pool local resources to meet defined needs.
The partnership works together to support local community planning
efforts, develop policy, build a sustainable resource base, coordinate
the early childhood education system, and advocate for comprehensive
services for children and families.
Why Quality is Important
Brain research now tells us that children begin their learning even
before they are born and that nearly 85% of a child's intellect,
personality and social skills are developed by the time a child is five
years of age.
It is evident that by age six years there are large and preventable
gaps between the development and academic abilities of high and low
income children. Research has shown that high quality early childhood
education programs make a difference in the educational, social,
emotional, and physical outcomes, especially for high-risk, low-income
children. As researchers and noted economics have demonstrated,
investing in our youngest children's quality early experiences has
short and long term savings for us as a society.
As more states strive to implement quality early learning programs,
the results of this investment are apparent. High quality child care,
Head Start and Early Head Start, and other early childhood learning
experiences exist, but few states and communities have a large supply
of high quality programs because resources remain hugely inadequate
both for quality of the program and to keep programs affordable for
families.
What do we mean by quality? There is no single component, just as
children do not develop in silos of cognitive, social, emotional and
physical development. What we do know from research on programs such as
the child care in Abecedarian, the preschool programs of High Scope,
and high quality state prekindergarten programs is that there must be
in place standards for programs, such as accreditation and Head Start
program performance standards, and standards for children's learning
and development, such as state early learning standards and the Head
Start Child Outcomes Framework, the model for many states' standards.
Specifically in a program we know there must be:
Teachers with education, including ongoing professional
development, that allows them to select and use appropriate curriculum
to individualize instruction to support children meeting the state's
early learning standards and to support children's social and emotional
development;
Learning environments with appropriate teacher-child
ratios and groups size, health and safety conditions met, and
developmentally appropriate materials for important play and
instruction; and
For those children who need more services, the
availability and collaboration with health, social services, and other
supports for them and their families;
We also know from the research of programs that had long-term
outcomes for the participating children that quality does not come
cheaply, regardless of the setting of the program. If we care enough to
invest in the education of our young children it will make a life-long
difference for them and for all of us.
Critical Role of Federal Support
The federal investment in early childhood education is critical.
The federal Child Care & Development Block Grant provides most of the
funding for child care assistance as well as quality initiatives for
all programs regardless of the family's income, such as licensing,
professional development and education scholarships, and resource and
referral. Head Start and Early Head Start are key programs in our
states, and yet many eligible children are unable to attend for lack of
funding. Special education for infants, toddlers and preschoolers has
had its funding cut at the federal level. These programs provide the
foundation for early childhood education in Hawaii as in every state,
and yet none have had a significant increase in funds for six years.
Given what we know from the research on the value of the investment in
high quality early childhood programs, they should be made Congress'
first priority for increased investment starting now.
While increased federal funding is a top priority, I know that this
is not the appropriations committee. It is also important to look for
new ways to encourage states to focus on quality. This is especially
crucial right now, as state policy makers are feeling political
pressure to serve more children. Legislation such as Congresswoman
Hirono's PRE-K Act would provide incentives for states to ensure that
as they rush to expand capacity, they do not do it at the expense of
quality.
One of the specific challenges states are facing around the country
(including Hawaii) is a lack of qualified early education teachers. I
am encouraged by the actions this Committee has already taken this year
to provide loan forgiveness for early educators, and encourage you to
continue to focus on increasing access to training in the field of
Early Childhood Education.
Hawaii's Progress and Challenges
I'd like to take a moment now to talk from a state perspective.
Hawaii was an early leader in the promotion of early education. Led by
advocacy from our philanthropic leaders, Hawaii in 1943 was one of the
first states to implement a full day public kindergarten program for
all five year old children. This action was prompted by the
acknowledgement that children's educational journey must begin early
and that our Hawaii economy depended upon an educated future workforce
and a current workforce that could be confident that its youngest
children were in the best nurturing environment while the parents
worked.
Today we, like many states, are grappling with how to best serve
our children in the years before kindergarten. Almost 40% of our young
children live in families who cannot afford to send their children to
early education programs. The early childhood programs that do receive
federal and state subsidies--such as Head Start--are filled to capacity
and have waiting lists. This is troubling because low-income families
require this support for their youngest children if they are to seek
employment and lift themselves out of poverty.
We also recognize an increase in the number of ``gap group''
families. These parents earn too much to qualify for federal or state
need-based subsidies or programs such as Head Start, and yet do not
earn enough to pay for preschool tuition. Their choices of placements
for young children are limited, often not stable, and of unknown
quality.
We have made some progress in increasing capacity. The 2001
Legislature with the support of then Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono
allocated $5 million dollars for the biennium to build preschool
facilities on elementary school campuses. This program known as Pre
Plus is now a very successful public/private partnership. Private
agencies are contracted to operate the preschool programs on public
school land. PrePlus resulted in the construction of 16 new preschool
sites allowing over 300 preschool children to be served.
Hawaii is also envisioning its four year old program to be
available in three different types of settings: center-based preschool;
family child care; and family child interaction learning programs in
which the adult caregiver remains with the child and also receives
education as how best to support the child's learning.
But even with the three options, more investment is needed if we
are to accommodate the growing demand for early education. We must
increase the capacity of the current system to address the expanded
need for early education programs, as the graphs attached show. One
illustrates the number of low-income four year olds now receiving
subsidized preschool or tuition payments as well as the estimated
percentage of four year olds that could be served in 2009 given
Hawaii's current capacity by school district. Both of these graphs
demonstrate the lack of enrollment for our low-income children as well
as the lack of capacity to increase enrollment.
Of course, preschool is about more than just providing a safe place
for children while parents work. In Hawaii, as in states across the
country, we are constantly struggling to improve academic achievement.
We know that young children are entering kindergarten not prepared for
success in school. The 2007 Hawai'i State School Readiness Assessment
report reflects that only one out of every five children entering
kindergarten classes possessed adequate early literacy skills. And, in
70% of these classes the majority of entering kindergarteners did not
possess skills in critical pre-math concepts.
While 61% of entering kindergarten children attended some preschool
or formal early learning experiences before kindergarten, a significant
percentage of children had no such experience. In Hawaii, we estimate
that 5,530 four year old children are currently not being served in any
type of program.
Even for those children lucky enough to attend preschool, the
quality of their early education programs is not even. In Hawaii we
estimate that 6950 children are currently in programs that need quality
improvements to instruction and program. Approximately 22% of our
preschool programs are nationally accredited mostly by the National
Association for the Education of Young Children. Hawaii has been
fortunate to have an ongoing mentoring program for early childhood
programs seeking National Association for the Education of Young
Children accreditation. However, Hawaii needs new investment to
encourage programs to seek such accreditation and to gradually address
program improvements leading to higher quality.
Hawaii, like other states, recognizes that we need early childhood
teachers who are well-prepared and qualified to teach and inspire
others to follow their path. I do not want to imply that we have not
made progress in this area--we have. But there is still substantial
room for improvement. In order to deliver quality early education
services to the over 83,000 children under six years of age in Hawaii,
our current teacher resources are woefully lacking. .
In order for Hawaii to serve 80% of its four year old children in
an early education experience with a teacher who has a bachelor's
degree and training in early education, 370 new early education
teachers need to be recruited and trained with an additional 470 new
recruits for associate teachers. Furthermore, 310 of our existing
teachers will require more early childhood education courses, and 200
existing teachers will need to attain a bachelor's degree. These
numbers may sound small to those of you from larger states, but
consider this: we essentially need to double our early childhood
educator workforce immediately if we are to provide universal,
voluntary four year old program.
This brings me back to where I began my testimony: the need for new
federal support. Our teachers will need scholarships and loan
forgiveness. Our public universities will need incentives to provide
expanded access to early childhood education courses. Our early
childhood programs will need quality improvement funding.
Hawaii's early learning community, plus business and state and
county departments have come together in a legislatively created Early
Learning Task Force to describe the needs and recommend solutions for
Hawaii's early education system. This Task Force's plan ``Keiki First''
estimates that Hawaii will need $170 million annually to deliver a
quality early learning program to approximately 12,640 four year olds.
This figure includes funds for direct services, infrastructure, and
capitol investment for facilities. Every state is working to make these
large scale investments--some are further along than others--but as
we--the advocates--push the states to fund these crucial programs, we
need federal support as well.
Our children, and ultimately our communities and our country, will
benefit greatly from a visionary and holistic approach to expanded
federal support for quality early education.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify, and I look forward to
answering any questions you might have.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Kolb?
STATEMENT OF CHARLES KOLB, PRESIDENT, COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Kolb. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
I would like to thank you and the fellow members of your
committee for focusing on the importance of early education.
` First, a little bit about the Committee for Economic
Development. We are a business-led public policy organization
with over 200 senior business leaders from across the country
and about 25 university presidents who make up our board of
trustees, and it is our trustees who decide to get engaged in
issues, such as campaign finance reform, health care,
globalization and trade and, of course, education, which has
been one of our major projects really for much of our now 66-
year history.
Some of you will remember that in 1989, the first President
Bush convened a summit in Charlottesville with just about all
of the nation's governors, and out of that Charlottesville
education summit, with bipartisan leadership from then Governor
Bill Clinton, Governor Roy Romer, and others, came a series of
six national education goals, and these arose in the first Bush
administration, and they were continued through the entire
Clinton administration, and one of those goals--I believe the
first goal--was that, by the year 2000, all of our children--
not some, but all of our children--would arrive at school ready
to learn. It did not happen. You have to ask yourself why it
did not happen.
Well, when CED 6 years ago went into the issue of early
education reform, we began with that question, why didn't it
happen and what would it take to make it happen, and beginning
in 2002, we produced two reports.
The first was called ``Preschool for All: Investing in a
Productive and Just Society,'' and I believe that the day we
released this report, we came up to the Congress and met with
Senator Kennedy and also with Congressman Castle to talk about
the importance of investing in early education.
In 2006, we released our second report, ``The Economic
Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool.'' Now we are a
business group, and we chose that word ``investing'' for a
reason, because business leaders understand that if you make
the right investments at the front end, you tend to get better
results in the future. Or to put it differently, a business
leader who has a problem with his or her product or service
does not fix it at the end, does not fix it in the middle. They
fix it up front, and there is a reason for doing that.
We have tried over the last several years to explain,
really to explore deeply, the issue of the economic returns to
these front-end investments in early education. Now, you know,
we often like to tease the French for a variety of reasons--and
they are teasable--but they get it right. If you look at how
France as a country invests in early education, they get it
right. The British get it right.
But when you look at where the United States of America,
the richest country ever in the history of the world, if you
look at where we stand in the OECD rankings, we are not first.
We are not fifth. We are not 10th. We are near the bottom. Why
is that? You get out what you put in.
And so our effort over the last several years has really
been to try and influence the debate so that more and more
people in this country, including leaders in the Congress, will
focus on the importance of these front-end investments.
We have a problem in this country when it comes to making
investment decisions. We have triple deficits, trade, budget,
savings. We do not invest enough in our infrastructure. We do
not invest enough in foreign languages. Oddly, we overinvest
when it comes to caloric consumption. That is why we have an
obesity epidemic.
But we do not seem to be able to get these investment
issues right from the start, and I would hope that one of the
things that your committee can do--and your fellow colleagues
in the country--is to demonstrate the leadership that we need
to make these investments in early education a national
priority. In my view, if you want the No Child Left Behind Act
to succeed, whatever you think of it, if you want it to
succeed, it is not going to get there unless you get it right
up front. I mean, when you go to test the fourth-graders and
the eighth-graders, if these young people have not gotten what
they need up front, you are not going to be getting 100 percent
proficiency.
So let me conclude by asking you to help this country make
early childhood education the number one domestic priority.
Investing in our children is not only the right thing to do, it
is investing in our future and it is investing in our
democracy. CED, as a group of business and academic leaders, is
ready to help.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Mr. Kolb follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles E.M. Kolb, President, Committee for
Economic Development
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for this
opportunity to present the views of the Committee for Economic
Development on the importance of early education to ensure our
country's economic competitiveness and growth.
CED was founded in 1942 by a group of business leaders and
university presidents who were deeply concerned about the postwar
economy. Our founding Trustees were worried about the ability of the
U.S. economy to evolve from a wartime to a peacetime footing without
experiencing another major recession or depression. They were also
concerned about the strength of various postwar international
institutions and began galvanizing business community support for what
became the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the Marshall Plan. One of our founders, Paul Hoffman,
then the CEO of Studebaker, was asked by President Truman to serve as
the first Marshall Plan administrator.
For more than 65 years, CED has been an important voice in the
American business community in supporting sound economic and fiscal
policy. We now have some 200 Trustees--Democrats, Republicans, and
Independents--on our board. Most of them are senior corporate
executives and presidents of some of this country's greatest colleges
and universities. Our policy work, which ranges from campaign finance
reform, health care reform, and education reform to global trade and
macroeconomic policy, is strictly nonpartisan. We begin each of our
projects with no ideological axe to grind and no political leanings.
Each year our Trustees decide the issues we study, and it is the CED
Trustees who actually determine our findings and recommendations.
Our mission has been to propose policies that ensure steady
economic growth at high employment and reasonably stable prices,
increased productivity and living standards, greater and more equal
opportunity for every citizen and an improved quality of life for all.
In short, I think of CED as representing the best of business thinking
in the nation's interest.
It was with that background that CED trustees have addressed the
issue of early childhood care and education. Since the 2002 release of
our groundbreaking early education report, Preschool for All: Investing
in a Productive and Just Society, CED has been engaged in a national
campaign to build momentum surrounding investments in early education.
The Committee for Economic Development followed that report with
several issue briefs and the 2006 policy statement, The Economic
Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool.
Early learning programs have long prepared children for early
educational success, but investing in high-quality early education also
offers promising ways to strengthen the future economic and fiscal
position of states and the nation. High-quality early education
programs have long-lasting effects, improving students' outcomes well
into their adolescent and adult years. Economically, the long-term
impacts of high-quality early learning programs translate into
significant public and private benefits, with returns far exceeding the
costs.
Today's business leaders appreciate that early childhood education
is important to future U.S. economic competitiveness and a worthwhile
investment. A December 2005 poll of business leaders shows that more
than 80 percent agree that public funding of voluntary prekindergarten
programs for all children would improve America's workforce. Business
leaders see these programs as investments in human capital formation,
and CED has been working with economists and others to quantify the
solid economic returns associated with early care and education.
Access to early education, however remains limited and uneven.
Because the United States still views financing the care and education
of young children as primarily a family responsibility, many children
do not have early learning opportunities available to them. Children of
higher-income and better-educated parents are the most likely to have
the advantage of formal early education.
Investing in children early is crucial. Learning is cumulative, and
children develop skills during their early years that facilitate later
learning. Currently, America is spending billions of its education
dollars on remedial efforts. Gaps in student ability are already
apparent by kindergarten, and those gaps are often difficult and costly
to correct later. When a business has a problem, it tries to fix it at
the front end, not at the back. Moreover, to guarantee positive
outcomes--such as the success of the No Child Left Behind Act--America
must work harder to educate our youngest citizens.
Children who participate in high-quality early education programs
demonstrate higher academic achievement, are less likely to repeat a
grade or require special education classes, and are more likely to
graduate from high school and enroll in college. Students are also less
likely to participate in criminal activity during their juvenile or
adult years, or be victims of child maltreatment or neglect. Adults who
have had the benefit of an early learning opportunity are also less
likely to be unemployed and more likely to have higher earnings than
similar students who do not participate in these programs. These adults
are also less likely to depend on public assistance, become teenage
parents, or endanger their health by smoking.
The positive impact of early education programs on students' lives
increases the likelihood that these students will become net economic
and social contributors to society. Implementing preschool programs for
all students whose parents want them to attend is expected to generate
significant public and private benefits, producing $2 to $4 in net
present-value benefits for every dollar invested. Federal, state, and
local budgets will improve significantly when governments can dedicate
more resources to productive endeavors, rather than to remediation,
incarceration, and welfare. For every preschool dollar spent, states
are projected to recoup 50 to 85 cents in reduced crime costs and 36 to
77 cents in school savings.
Sustained investments in early education are also a cost-effective
way to improve long-term economic growth and living standards. By 2080,
preschool programs could boost America's gross domestic product by 3.5
percent, as well as raise long-run state employment levels by 1.3
percent.
The United States also lags other countries in early education and
care investments. While the United States continues to debate about
increasing its investments in young children, other industrialized
countries have already done so. Many nations far surpass us in making
early learning opportunities available to all. The United States has
the highest child poverty rate of the 20 developed countries belonging
to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Forty-
three percent of infants and toddlers in America live in low-income
families with incomes below 200 percent of poverty, and a fifth live
below the poverty line. High-quality early education and care can help
lift these families out of poverty.
CED believes that broadening access to early care and education
programs for all children is a cost-effective investment that will pay
future dividends. And while early education must be an economic and
educational priority, it is also part of a continuum of necessary
childhood investments, beginning in the prenatal months and spanning
the infant, toddler, and later school years that together will have the
greatest impact on children's development, and ultimately, America's
economic well-being.
CED recommends that communities, states, and the nation make access
to publicly funded, high-quality early education programs an economic
and educational priority. The economic benefits of early learning will
be greatest when all states implement high-quality, publicly funded
early education programs and make them available to all three- and
four-year-old children whose parents want them to attend. Early
learning programs should provide adequate classroom hours to ensure
improvements in student learning that will translate into economic
benefits. States should embrace diverse providers that meet quality
standards and the needs of the communities they serve. Maximizing
program access and efficiency will require federal and state
governments to coordinate publicly funded prekindergarten, Head Start,
and child-care programs. Business should support early education
programs and other complementary childhood programs and services,
emphasizing the strong returns on investment and the leveraging of
current expenditures.
Furthermore, CED recommends that publicly funded early education
programs meet the quality standards necessary to deliver their
potential economic benefits. To provide the greatest economic benefits
possible, state prekindergarten programs and the federal Head Start
program should assess their existing program standards and realign them
with the factors known to contribute to improved early childhood
learning and development. Early learning programs should adopt an age-
appropriate, research-based curriculum that embraces whole-child
development and is aligned with content standards in kindergarten and
elementary education. All publicly funded early learning programs
should employ high-caliber teachers with bachelor's degrees and
specialized early-education training. A national board should be
created to review and report on state early education and care
standards.
Finally, CED recommends that federal, state, and local governments
consider the broad economic benefits of early care and education when
deciding how to allocate resources in the face of competing uses and
demands. Funding provided for early learning programs should be
commensurate with the cost of providing a high-quality education to
fully capture the economic benefits of these programs.
CED believes that the implementation of these recommendations in
all our states and the nation will strengthen our democracy and ensure
U.S. economic competitiveness and growth through a highly-educated and
skilled workforce.
The Committee for Economic Development's early care and education
policy statements are available online at www.ced.org.
Preschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society (2002):
http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report--preschool.pdf
The Economic Promise of Investing in High-Quality Preschool (2006)
http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report--prek--econpromise.pdf
______
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Dr. Karolak?
STATEMENT OF ERIC KAROLAK, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EARLY
CARE AND EDUCATION CONSORTIUM
Mr. Karolak. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you
today.
I am Eric Karolak, the executive director of the Early Care
and Education Consortium, an alliance of America's leading
providers of quality early learning programs. As Representative
Hirono mentioned, we reach more than 800,000 children every day
in almost every state in the union. Increasing national
investments and improving outcomes for young children are
essential for America's continued wellbeing and our national
competitiveness.
Now, based on our experiences educating young children, I
have four points I would like to make today. First, investing
in young children is cost effective and it makes sense. Second,
there is no single program or investment that works, no one
right answer. Third, investing early is key. We cannot wait
until just the third and fourth year of life to improve a
child's chances in life and in school readiness. And, fourth,
quality counts and quality costs.
In the interest of not repeating testimony--Mr. Kolb and
Dr. Phillips have done quiet well on several of these points--I
would like to skip to my second point, if you are following, in
the written testimony, and that is that there is no single
program or type of investment that works, no one right answer
to this issue. Rather, there are multiple programs, multiple
pathways to achieving outcomes for children.
America cannot afford to view child care as just a way to
get parents to work and early education as something altogether
different. In reality, as parents and children experience this,
there is s a continuum of early care and education. It spans a
range of settings--child care, Head Start, public school pre-K,
family child care--and levels of quality, dependent in large
part on locality, on what parents can afford, and what public
support is available. We should be investing in multiple
programs and at all age levels.
But when investing, rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all
institutional framework, leveraging community-based providers
and their existing resources is the most cost-effective way to
do this. Millions of children are already in these programs,
often in facilities designed for young children. We have a long
history and expertise, as my colleague from New Jersey
referenced, in delivering programs to young children. Working
parents especially look to our centers for something they
cannot find elsewhere, and that is full-day, full-year programs
that serve children birth to school age.
States are seeing the value of this community-based
approach, especially in delivering state-funded pre-K, although
not without challenges for providers, and most recent research
has emphasized the benefits that accrue both to local and state
education agencies and to early learning centers when this kind
of collaboration occurs.
My third point is that investing early is key. Dr. Phillips
has referenced that brain development begins from inception and
that really no moment is too early. I would like to simply
emphasize that. As Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman
concluded, ``The longer we wait to intervene in the lifecycle
of the child, the more costly it is to remediate or to restore
the child to its full potential.'' That means the return on
investment that Mr. Kolb spoke of begins to decline.
Still, infants and toddlers are everywhere--everywhere--the
most expensive age group to provide with quality services and
typically the most difficult kind of care for parents to find
and afford. The situation in California is dire, as I am sure
Mr. McKeon and Mr. Miller knew, with annual costs approaching
$11,000. Nationwide, we in our centers have infant-toddler
waiting lists in many communities, both suburban and inner city
low-income. America cannot afford to keep these kids waiting.
Lastly, I want to emphasize that quality counts and quality
costs. Research that you have heard referenced today is
predicated on program quality. No one is coming here asking for
money for nothing. It is money for quality. Yet investing
responsibly then means supporting effective programs that are
well implemented, well funded, and continuously improved.
We invest in our centers in curriculum, in facilities, in
educational materials, and especially in our workforce. But
these and other elements of quality are costly, more expensive
than what most parents alone can afford. Recognizing that high-
quality standards must be backed by sufficient public resources
is essential to making sure these investments in young children
are successful.
Take workforce qualifications. Now, while the consensus in
research has been elusive concerning the necessity of a
bachelor's degree for producing quality outcomes, we understand
that expectations around the early childhood workforce are in
flux. In our experience, we have qualified, effective, and
committed early childhood teachers who have bachelor's degrees,
and we have qualified, effective, and committed early childhood
teachers who do not.
In either case, recruiting and retaining such qualified,
effective, and committed staff is a challenge. I hear this from
my nonprofit members, from for-profit corporate and proprietary
child care providers, from Head Start agency directors. This is
a universal issue. It affects schools as well because they,
indeed, hire away from many of our centers.
So teacher qualification requirements must consider the
significant resources necessary to competitively recruit and
retain qualified teachers, to support the current workforce in
its rich diversity in obtaining bachelor's degrees or other
credentials, and in building the capacity of higher education
to produce more graduates in education.
The federal government's interest in America's global
competitiveness and future wellbeing of our citizens warrants a
greater investment in early childhood, one that is sufficient
to reach the quality standards our youngest children deserve.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Karolak follows:]
Prepared Statement of Eric Karolak, Executive Director, Early Care and
Education Consortium
Good morning, Chairman Miller, Representative McKeon, and members
of the Committee on Education and Labor. Thank you for inviting me to
testify today on investing in young children.
I am Eric Karolak, Executive Director of the Early Care and
Education Consortium, an alliance of America's leading national,
regional, and independent providers of quality early learning programs.
Consortium members operate more than 7,600 centers enrolling more than
800,000 children in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Our members
include private non-profit organizations and for-profit companies who
offer full-day/full-year programs for children birth through age 12,
state-funded prekindergarten, before- and afterschool programs,
extended day, and summer programs with enrollments that reflect the
rich diversity of our communities and nation.
Increasing national investments and improving outcomes for young
children are essential for America's continued well-being and our
national competitiveness.
Based on our experiences educating children--recruiting teachers,
meeting parent needs, collaborating with community partners, and
managing budgets--I have four points to make today:
1. Investing in young children is cost effective and makes sense.
2. There's no single program or type of investment that works alone
to the exclusion of others; rather there are multiple pathways to
achieving outcomes for children.
3. Investing early is key. We can't wait until children are age 3
or 4 to improve their chances for school and life success.
4. Quality counts and costs. Policymakers must recognize the
connection between standards and financing when developing programs.
First, investing in young children is cost effective and makes
sense. Research by Nobel laureates and Federal Reserve economists,
drawing on 40 years of longitudinal studies on early learning programs,
has demonstrated conclusively that investing in early childhood
development especially for at-risk children yields extraordinary annual
rates of return--ranging in real terms between 7 and 18 percent--far
exceeding the return on most investments, private or public. If early
childhood education was a stock, many are fond of saying now, it would
be wildly undervalued.\1\
And the benefits don't just flow from focusing on cognitive
development: the ``ABCs''. Researchers emphasize that a balanced
approach to emotional, social, cognitive, and language development will
best prepare children for success in school and later in the
workplace.\2\
We see these benefits and their promise daily, in the achievements
of young children as they become literate, numerically adept, socially
competent, and responsible through experientially rich, active learning
environments. And we see it in the faces of parents, knowing that their
children are safe and receiving stimulating experiences from committed
teachers that prepare them for school and life.
Second, it's important to remember that there's no single program
or type of investment that works alone to the exclusion of others;
rather there are multiple pathways to achieving outcomes for children,
and the devil really is in the details.
America can't afford to view ``child care'' as just a way to get
parents working and unrelated to ``early education.'' There is a
continuum of early care and education from birth. It includes learning
centers like those of the Consortium, Head Start agencies, school-based
early childhood programs, and family child care homes, and it spans a
range of settings and levels of quality, dependent in large part on
what parents can afford and what public support is available. We should
be investing in multiple programs and at every age level.
Rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all institutional framework,
leveraging community-based providers and their existing resources
produces the greatest and most cost effective benefits. Millions of
children are already in community-based programs, in facilities
designed for young children. We have a long history and expertise in
working with young children. Parents look to our centers to meet
diverse needs and in turn we are responsive: our centers provide full-
day and full-year programs; parents are always welcome; they're
considered full partners in their child's learning and development;
parents talk with their child's teachers every day, and often
participate in parent activities and on advisory boards.
States are seeing the value of this community approach as well. All
but three state prekindergarten initiatives allow preK to be offered in
community-based centers, and one-third of children enrolled in state-
funded preK are served in settings outside schools.\3\ We find that
local school administrators are more likely to prioritize collaboration
with community-based organizations when states require a percentage of
funds be used for community-based delivery.
State-funded preK programs are not typically structured around the
schedules of parents. Taking advantage of existing community-based
providers is less disruptive for children who do not have to be moved
from one location to another each day, and allows their parents to
focus on work and parenting rather than carpooling or worrying about
their very young children being bussed about. Recent reports have
documented additional benefits including efficiencies from investing in
existing centers with experience working with young children, more
stable sources of funding for participating community-based early
learning centers, and spillover beneficial effects beyond the preK-aged
classroom or program hours.\4\ It is now accepted that the best way to
accomplish preK is through a mixed delivery model that taps the
existing capacity and expertise of early care and education
providers.\5\
Early Care and Education Consortium members participate in more
than 20 state-funded prekindergarten programs, in many cases
contracting directly with school districts or state education agencies
to provide these services. Our members also have informal partnerships
with many public schools and in some cases kindergarten teachers come
to our centers for school readiness training, and we are then able to
send our staff to local public schools for in-service training for K-3
or other related issues. Our centers also work in many states to link
students to services at the public schools, but still receive education
and care in our centers.
This brings me to my third point, investing early is key. If we
wait until age 3 or 4, it may be too late for some children and in
general the public investment will be less rewarding.
``The basic principles of neuroscience and human capital
formation,'' researchers at Harvard's Center on the Developing Child
tell us, ``indicate that later remediation will produce less favorable
outcomes than preventive intervention.'' \6\ As a result, the return on
later intervention is much lower. Nobel laureate economist James
Heckman concludes, ``Life cycle skill formation is dynamic in nature.
Skill begets skill; motivation begets motivation. * * * The longer we
wait to intervene in the life cycle of the child the more costly it is
to remediate to restore the child to its full potential.''
We know this from working with the children, especially from our
experience with infants and toddlers and their families. Babies are
growing and learning all of the time. The first two years of life are a
critical period for language and the development of self. Providing
rich learning experiences, supportive learning environments, and
positive relationships with children during the first three years is
crucial to creating a foundation for learning. Failing to do so is to
miss opportunities for improving school readiness and life success.
Despite the importance of investing early, there is a dramatic need
for funding for infants and toddlers. It is everywhere the most
expensive age-group to provide with quality services, and typically the
most difficult kind of care for parents to find and afford. In
California, for example, average costs statewide run nearly $11,000 for
an infant in a licensed center.\7\ Nationwide, we have waiting lists
for infant and toddler programs in many communities, both suburban and
inner city low-income.
Lastly, we can't underemphasize that quality counts and quality
costs. The research on the benefits of investing in young children is
predicated on program quality. Investing responsibly means supporting
effective programs that are well-implemented, well-funded and
continuously improved.
We constantly strive to build in better quality in our centers. We
invest in curricula and the research to demonstrate its effectiveness,
in facilities and educational materials and, most importantly, in the
workforce. We all have programs to invest in staff, often linked to
public-funded efforts like T.E.A.C.H.(r), and with the goal of helping
the existing workforce obtain credentials and degrees.
These and other elements of quality are costly. The cost of quality
care and education is more expensive than most parents alone can
afford. More federal investment is needed.
For many early learning centers, Child Care and Development Block
Grant funding is a foundation for quality. But current funding levels
are inadequate and over time many states have increased income
eligibility levels, raised parent copayments, and/or reimbursed
providers at lower rates. In 2007, only 9 states set child care
assistance reimbursement rates at the federally-recommended level.\8\
As a result, we've seen families receiving child care assistance
forced to leave our programs and seek cheaper, lower quality
arrangements when income eligibility levels were raised or copayments
increased. And we've been forced to make difficult decisions regarding
whether to continue enrolling families receiving child care subsidies
and even whether to keep centers open in certain areas. In 2007, one of
the nation's largest providers had to close 20 percent of its centers
in Texas.
States are addressing quality with limited funding. Recognizing
that community-based providers reach the largest number of young
children, states like Pennsylvania have invested in voluntary, quality
improvement strategies that include financial supports for reaching
higher quality levels, and program ratings for parents.\9\ Others like
Minnesota are piloting an innovative endowed fund that finances the
cost of quality preschool through outcomes-based scholarships to
families of at-risk children.\10\
Recognizing that high quality standards must be backed by
sufficient resources is essential to making successful investments in
young children. Take the issue of workforce qualifications. While a
consensus in research has been elusive concerning the necessity of a
Bachelor's degree for quality outcomes, we understand that expectations
concerning the qualifications of the early childhood workforce are in
flux.\11\ Our experience is that there are qualified, effective, and
committed early childhood teachers who have Bachelor's degrees, and
there are qualified, effective, and committed teachers who do not have
Bachelor's degrees. In either case, recruiting and retaining qualified
staff is a challenge. The range of qualified teachers reflects regional
labor market conditions, what parents are able and willing to afford,
and the infrastructure of state and community programs for developing a
pool of early childhood educators. Teacher qualification requirements
must consider the resources necessary to competitively recruit and
retain teachers, support the current workforce in obtaining a degree or
other credential, and build the capacity of higher education to produce
graduates in early childhood education.
In conclusion, the federal government's interest in America's
global competitiveness and future well being warrants a greater
investment in early childhood, one that is sufficient to reaching the
quality standards our youngest children deserve.
Thank you for the opportunity to brief you today.
endnotes
\1\ Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald, ``Early Childhood Development:
Economic Development with a High Public Return,'' Fedgazette (December
2003), p. 7; James Heckman, ``Catch 'em Young: Investing in
Disadvantaged Young Children is Both Fair and Efficient,'' Wall Street
Journal, January 10, 2006, p. A14;; and Rolnick and Grunewald, ``The
Economics of Early Childhood Development as Seen by Two Fed
Economists,'' Community Investments (Fall 2007), pp. 13-14.
\2\ Jack P. Shonkoff, ``A Science-Based Framework for Early
Childhood Policy,'' presentation at the Council of State Governments
Eastern Regional Conference, Boston, September 7, 2007.
\3\ W. Steven Barnett, Jason T. Hustedt, Laura E. Hawkinson, and
Kenneth B. Robin, The State of Preschool 2006: State Preschool Yearbook
(National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006), pp. 196-197.
\4\ Karen Schulman and Helen Blank, A Center Piece of the PreK
Puzzle: Providing State Prekindergarten in Child Care Centers (National
Women's Law Center, November 2007).
\5\ For example, PreK Now, a leading national advocacy organization
that advances high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten for all three
and four year olds, strongly supports offering preK in diverse
settings. Visit its policy position, School Choice in PreK, online at
http://www.preknow.org/policy/choice.cfm.
\6\ Shonkoff, ``A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood
Policy.''
\7\ California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, 2007 Child
Care Portfolio (December 2007).
\8\ Karen Schulman and Helen Blank, State Child Care Assistance
Policies 2007: Some Steps Forward, More Progress Needed (National
Women's Law Center, September 2007).
\9\ More than a dozen states have established quality rating and
improvement systems, and many more are developing them. For an
overview, consult Anne Mitchell, Stair Steps to Quality: A Guide
(United Way: Success by 6, 2005). The rating system in Pennsylvania is
Keystone STARS, and more information is available online at http://
www.dpw.state.pa.us/PartnersProviders/ChildCareEarlyEd/
KeyStoneStarChildCare/.
\10\ The Minnesota Early Learning Foundation's pilot program is
designed to reward performance and encourage high quality and
innovative practices among providers by empowering at--risk parents
with resources to access high-quality early education. Visit the
Minnesota Early Learning Foundation website (http://www.melf.us/) for
more information.
\11\ See, for example, Diane Early et al., ``Teachers' Education,
Classroom Quality, and Young Children's Academic Skills: Results from
Seven Studies of Preschool Programs,'' Child Development (March/April
2007): 558-580. Among other issues, the impact of a Bachelor's degree
where an effect has been found has not been isolated from other
variables like compensation.
______
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Haskins?
STATEMENT OF RON HASKINS, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, ECONOMIC
STUDIES, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Haskins. Representative Hirono, Mr. Castle, members of
the committee. Thank you for inviting me here today.
This committee, as I suspect all of you know, has been at
the forefront of almost every significant development in early
childhood education or child care in this country for the last
half-century and, as shown by last year's Head Start
reauthorization, it would be expected the committee would
continue to play that role.
I just want to make three points. The first one has already
been made. I think everybody on this panel agrees and, indeed,
I think almost everybody who knows the research agrees that
preschool packs a powerful punch. There is no question, based
on the Perry Preschool, Abecedarian, Chicago Child-Parent
Centers that we have all seen, that compared to almost any
other intervention, the only intervention I can think of that
can produce the range of benefits of preschool is adoption, but
I have studied intervention programs most of my adult life, and
nothing is as powerful as preschool.
Second point: Just because preschool worked in several
instances, it does not follow that people who pour money into
preschool necessarily get a return. Several witnesses have
already made this point, but I think it bears repeating, and I
think the best example of what we would get from a national
program, which, of course, is the interest of this committee,
is what we are getting from Head Start.
There is a lot of room to disagree. I think we probably
disagree on this panel. But I would say on the whole, Head
Start has turned in a mediocre performance after more than 40
years of existence. I base that on the national random-
assignment study that was ordered by this committee in 1998
that shows very modest effect sizes, much more modest, for
example, than the state preschool programs and not even on the
same continent with the Abecedarian program and the Perry
Preschool program and also on the FACES study that has been
reported to this committee in the past.
So I think, on the whole, the evidence shows that Head
Start is not producing the results that we would really like to
have, namely big impacts on children, powerful impacts on
school performance, and powerful impacts on other developmental
measures, like finishing school, going to college, avoiding
teen pregnancy, avoiding crime and delinquency, all of which
have been shown by one or more of the other studies to be
possible.
Therefore, since we have been doing this for roughly 40
years with modest changes--and some of the changes in last
year's bill I strongly support. I think they were very wise
decisions about coordination and so forth--I think we need to
think fairly radically.
Now, first, I would not change the Head Start statute and
willy-nilly make all sorts of changes in Head Start and turn it
over to states or anything like that. But I do think that we
should give the states much more flexibility than they now
have.
If you look at the chart in my testimony on spending on
preschool, you will see that there is a host of programs and
three very, very big programs--Head Start is one of them, state
preschool which is a relatively new entry and growing rapidly,
and then the Child Care and Development Block Grant--all of
those spend billions and billions of dollars, and yet there is
very little coordination around the country. There are even a
number of people--we had a meeting on this at Brookings a
couple of years ago. I believe you might have been there--and
there were several people in the states who said it was
difficult to get cooperation between these various programs.
So I think the only way that we can get cooperation and
have a focused, unified strategy in some state or locality--it
would not necessarily have to be a state. It could be a city.
It could be a county--is to give the Secretary the authority to
allow a state or locality to have the control of Head Start
funds as well as the other funds, which they basically already
have, and to create a unified program under several conditions.
We make a deal with them. If you will conduct this
experiment, we will give you additional funds, but you must
first ensure that all kids at 150 percent poverty get at least
a 4-year-old program. Secondly, that there be a third-party
evaluation. And, finally, that the state or locality would
increase its spending by a certain amount--I said 5 percent per
year over inflation in my testimony, but it could be whatever
you select--to show that they are really serious about this,
and if the federal government would match that and pay for the
evaluation.
I think if we did something like this that we might really
find out that localities can do a very good job of coordinating
this money and increasing the quality to Head Start. I think
that this committee and the Congress have focused too much in
the past on just increasing the number of kids who are getting
into preschool programs. That will not do it. If more kids get
what is offered by Head Start, we will have very modest
impacts. We need much bigger impacts.
So we not only need to increase coverage and increase the
number of kids in the program, we also need to increase quality
at the same time, and I do not think we can necessarily control
that from Washington.
I would point out to the committee--I give some examples in
my testimony--that there is a new program in Minnesota that is
being funded by donations from business and other
organizations. They intend eventually to build a $1.5 billion
fund, and they are going to fund preschool programs for kids
ages 3 and 4 plus a home visiting program for kids who are
seriously disadvantaged, and they are going to allow parents to
make the decision. It is going to be a competitive system.
That is the kind of thing that I think we need to have. We
need more experiments like that in the country, and this
committee and the federal government could play a role.
This is a time of permanent child care, and in preschool
programs, it is the time to get the most out of what we have,
and we need new ideas and new approaches at the local and state
level. I hope this committee will decide to be adventurous.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Haskins follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
------
Ms. Hirono. Thank you all for your testimony.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
For Mr. Kolb, I am very glad, representing the business
community, as you do, that you say, I believe, that investing
in quality early education is a number one priority for your
organization and the people with whom you work. You also
mentioned that other countries are doing far better than we
are. Is it because they are investing much more financially in
preschool programs? You mentioned France and Great Britain.
Mr. Kolb. Congresswoman, I am not sure that it is a
question of absolute dollars. I think in cases like France and
the U.K., there has been a national commitment.
A couple of years ago, we held a conference on early
education in New York, and I remember at the time Beverley
Hughes, who was the minister in Tony Blair's Cabinet in charge
of early education, said that this issue had been a priority
for the Blair government. Now I suspect, if you look at the
numbers, they probably spend less than we do, certainly in the
aggregate, and quite possibly on a per student basis.
But we are not there yet as a country. And I think Ron
Haskins' point about looking at ways to coordinate all the
dollars that are being spent--federal, state, local, and
private--is a very interesting issue for us.
Ms. Hirono. At the same time, though, we know that all
across our country, there are various kinds of preschool
programs taking place in both the public and the private
sector, and I would like to ask all of you whether or not you
think that the federal government's involvement in this area in
supporting preschools should be more in supportive as opposed
to supplanting what is going on in our various states and
jurisdictions, if you can all briefly respond to where and how
the federal government involvement should be.
Ms. Phillips. Do you want me to start?
Ms. Hirono. We will start with you.
Ms. Phillips. I will go first.
I think, going back to the point that was just made, it is
very important--we are spending billions--billions--of dollars
on early childhood education in this country. Sometimes we call
it the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Sometimes we
call it Head Start. You know, sometimes we call it pre-K.
Sometimes we call it Title I. I mean, the dollars are being
spent, and the question is how to make sure we are getting the
return on investment that we are hoping to get and that we know
we can get.
And so the challenge is not spending more money; it is
spending what we have wisely. We know so much more now about
how to direct those dollars. You have heard it from every
single one of us. I am so impressed by how consistent this
panel is. It is about the quality of the teaching force. It is
about keeping them in their jobs with livable wages that are on
a par with elementary school teachers so that you do not have a
brain drain off of pre-K into the kindergarten classroom which
is often right next door.
It is about working with parents effectively. It is about
making sure that those teachers are armed with knowledge about
child development and about instruction in academic and social
skills that really produces learning. We have curricula that
work. We know how to do this at the pre-K level. We just have
to arm the teachers with that information and make sure that
they are qualified and know how to bring that curricula to
life.
To me, those are the bottom line, and figuring out how the
federal government can foster those ingredients is the key to
the castle, no pun intended.
Ms. Hirono. Ms. Priestly, would you like to add to that?
Ms. Priestly. Sure. I would like to relate it to my own
experience in that whether it is the State of New Jersey's $800
million--or whatever we are at right now--for investment in
preschool or my $8 million in my own district, that is a big
responsibility, and I take it very seriously.
I was speaking to the assistant commissioner of early
childhood the other day, and, you know, she said the same
thing, and we said we know now how to be effective and
efficient, and it is, you know, very important.
In my own case, I have a large Head Start center that I
work very closely with, and our state dollars are added to the
federal dollars to help that program meet the standards that we
have. So, whether it was reducing class size or hiring teachers
with BA's, whatever we needed, the--Dr. Phillips said without
the retention of teachers, we have seen a big difference.
Since we have been able to provide professional development
and in-class support, their turnover has dropped dramatically.
So it is supporting those classrooms in other ways, the
adoption of the curriculum. We are using the same model
throughout. So I think it is an almost independent, you know,
case-by-case situation state by state as to where the money is
needed.
Ms. Hirono. My 5 minutes is ending, so if everyone else
could just respond with maybe two sentences, I would appreciate
it.
Ms. Chun?
Ms. Chun. Well, very quickly, I do not believe it is
supplanting. I think it is supporting what the state is trying
to do and encouraging the states. Federal money can encourage
the states to maintain quality in their work. We all know we
need a quality workforce, and we do need new investments. Many
states have not been able to invest large sums of money as yet,
and the federal encouragement will help us greatly.
Thank you.
Ms. Hirono. Mr. Karolak?
Mr. Karolak. You can tell Ms. Chun and I are close to the
ground.
I would also say it is not just the federal government. It
is the federal government and the state. Some of the solutions
are extending loan forgiveness to early childhood teachers so
they have the same benefit that public school pre-K teachers
would have in getting a BA.
I have to say, though, to be a realist, if my bosses, all
18 of them, came to me and said, ``Do this, that, and the other
thing, and do it with no new money,'' it would be a challenge,
and I think that we have to be careful in not simply saying it
is a matter of reshuffling the dollars, but thinking carefully
about what those dollars are going to buy and where they are
going to buy it and that there may be some offsetting factors
in terms of access and accountability.
You know, one of the issues that is closest to us in terms
of the child care assistance program is subsidy reimbursement
rates, and they are dire. They are incredibly low in some
states. Last year, in Texas, the largest early learning
provider in the State of Texas closed 20 percent of its
locations because it could not make the subsidy reimbursement
work for its budgets. That is a problem, and I think at some
point resources are a part of that.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Haskins?
Mr. Haskins. The role of the federal government is to
support states, parents, and localities in developing the
system that best meets their needs, and there are five ways we
do it.
The first is research. We have magnificent research on
preschool programs, and it is largely because of federal
investments.
Accountability: The federal government should demand
accountability from anybody that has its money, and that should
include measures of child performance. In fact, that is the
key.
We should focus our resources on the poor and try to get
the states to do the same thing, make sure the poor are covered
under some definition. I would go with 150 percent of poverty.
And, finally, whatever we do should involve parent choice.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you very much.
And now I would like to yield 5 minutes to Mr. Castle.
Mr. Castle. Thank you very much. And I am pleased to be
here. And I am pleased with the panel.
And I agree with the bottom line that all of you, as far as
I can ascertain, that is the importance of early education. I
do not think there is any question in our minds about that, but
I also agree with what, I think, virtually all of you have
said, and that is that there is some real confusion, if you
will, as to exactly what works in early education.
And here is part of my confusion, my deja vu. We just spent
5 years working on Head Start and Early Head Start here in this
committee, and we finally got a bill passed. It was signed
about a month ago or something of that nature, and I visited a
number of the Head Start operations in Delaware where I am
from, you know, to see what they are doing, and I think we have
done some good things in that bill. I mean, we have demanded
higher credentials for the teachers and those kinds of things.
But Head Start and Early Head Start clearly conflict with
pre-kindergarten in terms of age. I do not think conflict, but
they run across the same populations to a great degree.
And there are other programs as well. There is a program
called KinderCare--you are probably familiar with it--in
Newark, Delaware, and I saw what they are doing, and they are
doing some very good--that is the private enterprise--things,
and I appreciate your work on that. That is something else
which helps a far as kids are concerned.
But, you know, I worry about this. I worry. We just got
through Head Start, and all of a sudden, we are talking about
another federal expansion perhaps in doing more in terms of
pre-kindergarten or whatever, and now are we doing perhaps what
Dr. Haskins has asked? Are we stepping back and looking? Are we
spending our money wisely? Are these the things that we should
be doing? Are we coordinating well as far as our states and
school districts are concerned? These issues are of great
concern to me.
And I have another abiding issue, and that is the role of
the parents and what longitudinal studies do we have with
respect to the parenting, that is how kids do in households
with both parents in the household. What are the income
circumstances? Clearly, lower income is probably going to mean
lower education for the parents, which means lower
opportunities for the kids. Do we have studies that really show
that?
Or do we have a problem here in this country right now in a
lack of coordinated focus on what we are doing in all of these
early education programs that we need to go back and revisit
rather than just continuing to create the next best thing that
seems to work in some way or another?
That is really just a very general discourse I just went
off, but I would be interested in any comments you may have on
the need to get a sharper focus on what we are doing in our
early education programs. If there are no volunteers for that,
I----
Mr. Kolb. Thank you.
Sometimes in Washington, Congressman, my sense is that
there is a great tendency to focus on programs and less so on
people. Now that is a broad generalization.
But when I served in the Education Department under Reagan
and Bush I, I remembered when I oversaw the Budget Office, I
was surprised to find that the people in the Education
Department who ran--I think it was called Even Start at the
time--a program called Even Start and then Chapter I, now Title
I, never talked with the people two buildings over who ran Head
Start, and yet if you look at the continuum, the age continuum
of the children being served, there was no excuse for that, and
so you had a lot of good programs, well-intentioned programs,
but not so much effort, particularly on the part of the
bureaucracy, to focus on serving the people.
So I would agree with you on the point that we need to
think about spending wisely, better, more flexibly, but we do
make a point in the CED report that--in the first one--access
to early education is limited in this country, and it is
uneven, and part of that has to do with the amount of resources
being spent, and we also indicate that--and we believe quite
strongly in this--public investment still remains inadequate.
Now that, in my view, does not take anything away from your
point about spending wisely, spending better, and more
flexibly, and focusing on the young people and getting out of
this sort of categorical programmatic mindset.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Mr. Haskins. I think, first of all, yes, we have a big
problem, the same problem we had in 1964 and 1965 when we
declared a war on poverty, and that is that a lot of children
live in poverty and deep poverty, and their parents' child-
rearing practices are not conducive to adequate child
development. That is the whole philosophy behind Head Start.
We are much better off as a nation because of Head Start
and our investments in preschool programs, but on a 10-point
scale, we are 3 or 4. We could do a lot better, and I do not
think we can put out, you know, a formula saying, ``If you do
these five things at the county level, everything is going to
be fine.''
I think you have to follow the same approach--it is
probably not very popular on this committee--that we followed
in No Child Left Behind. We have to let the states and
localities figure it out for themselves. We have to set up a
system that they have incentives to do so and reward good
performance and punish bad performance, and that is the kind of
system that I outline in my testimony. I think that is the only
way that we are really going to produce change across the whole
country.
There will be places that figure it out gradually, like the
Minnesota example I gave you, and there are others around the
country as well. But if we want to affect change in the whole
country, we have to put a system in place that rewards good
programs and punishes bad programs or defunds them.
Ms. Phillips. Can I chime in briefly on this?
Mr. Castle. It is up to the chairwoman.
Ms. Hirono. The time has expired.
Mr. Kildee?
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Madam Chair.
You know, it is incredible that our predecessors in 1965
wrote such a bill as Head Start, and they did not really
realize that the actual--at that time--physical development of
the brain depended so much upon that external stimulus. They
were really very prophetic. They wrote a great program without
the knowledge that we have now on that.
Well, we now know that physical stimulation is an essential
part of that development, and we tried to incorporate that
knowledge into the recent reauthorization of Head Start, which
was a bill which I introduced, and what more can we do because
we are really have made some major breakthroughs understanding
how the brain is physically developed by that external
stimulus? What more can we do?
Obviously, more students would be helpful. How about more
Early Head Start? Is there anything to be gained by having the
inclusion of maybe some more nonpoverty students in that mix.
Dr. Phillips, would you start responding to that?
Ms. Phillips. I would be happy to. Thank you.
And thank you for your decades of tireless work on these
issues.
In Tulsa, we actually looked at classrooms that had mixed-
income groups of children versus classrooms that were primarily
low-income children. It is a universal pre-K program, so we
find, you know, dramatic impacts across the income spectrum,
across every single racial group. We cannot find a child hardly
who is not positively affected by the program.
So we have a situation there where we have low-income
children who are, just because of their neighborhood, in
primarily low-income classes and low-income children who are in
mixed classrooms with middle-and upper-income children. The
low-income children who are in the mixed-income classrooms do
better than the children who are in exclusively low-income
classrooms.
In all of these classrooms, you have a BA-level teacher,
certified teacher, well-paid teacher, and so, you know, there
is research in the field at the elementary level as well,
though with mixed findings, about the effects of mixing low-
income children into a more socioeconomically diverse group. We
do always assume that targeting is the right thing to do, and I
understand that from an economic perspective, but there are
peer group effects, and they do matter. So, you know, that is
where the evidence is now.
Mr. Kildee. I certainly want to keep that focus upon those
who are, you know, locked in poverty. This has been one of the
great aspects of Head Start.
But there is an interaction. There is child society out
there, isn't there, you know, certain things that adults really
never have to impart to children. They impart certain things
one to another. You know, I will use the home example. My
parents never taught me how to play hide-and-seek. My brother,
a year older than I was at that time, taught me that.
There is a certain child society out there, and perhaps
without losing the emphasis about the special need that poverty
children have, perhaps a mixture might be helpful because of
this child society that does exist.
You know, we are talking about No Child Left Behind now,
and we are wondering how a child going from the fourth to fifth
grade or the fourth grade, from one year to another year meets
adequate yearly progress, right? There must be some direct
relationship between what happens with those Head Start kids
and their ability to, in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade, meet
adequately progress.
And, Mr. Kolb, you mentioned the interrelation which very
often we do not see often enough, right, or do not talk to one
another often enough. Do you see Head Start really helping No
Child Left Behind as that program is improved and implemented
more?
And any of you may respond.
Ms. Phillips. I can give a quick answer just from the FACES
data, for example. Dr. Haskins talked about the FACES data, but
also in the FACES data is a wonderful chart showing what
happens to the children who are in Head Start at the end of
kindergarten, and the children who made more progress in Head
Start made additional progress and greater progress than the
children who in Head Start made less.
In other words, you create this sort of push, and if the
push is stronger in Head Start for whatever reason, then they
go a little farther and a little faster in kindergarten as
well. So I think, right there, just even in that little short-
term window, you have pretty compelling evidence that strong
gains in Head Start can boost your gains in No Child Left
Behind.
Like others have said here, I would love to see greater
attention to preschool education in No Child Left Behind. I
think you have a remarkable opportunity here with a piece of
legislation that is in place to invest where everyone on this
panel is telling you you are going to get the greatest
investment for your dollar.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much.
And, again, in case I do not get a choice towards the end
of the program, I really appreciate, Madam Chair, the panel we
have here. I think we have a really great cross-section of
expertise out there, and I very much appreciate this.
Thank you.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you.
I want to agree with my colleague, Mr. Kildee. I think we
have an excellent panel, and I appreciate the comments that you
have made.
I want to give you just 30 seconds on my background because
I know a little bit about a lot of things, and so I am sort of
a dangerous person, but I have a background in education. I was
on the school board. I was on the original Partnership for
Children Board in North Carolina, the Smart Start program, and
I have not heard any of you mention that, and my doctorate is
in higher education and curriculum and teaching, so I have done
a little bit of work in the area of human development.
I am very curious that none of you have mentioned something
that I think we should do in this country, even having come
from a higher education background. We do it exactly backwards.
Why is it we pay university professors $150,000 a year for
teaching the best and the brightest who make it to the
universities, and we are paying people in child care minimum
wage?
I think we have it exactly backwards in this country, and
how in the world we change that value system, I do not know.
But I have always felt that the system is backwards in that
respect, and none of you have made that recommendation. So I
would like you to think about that in the future.
I also want to say that I am extremely impressed with most
of you talking about the issue of accountability, and that is
coming from witnesses on both sides of the aisle, and that,
again, has been one of my big issues here in the federal
government. I think whatever program gets money from the
federal government, we need strong accountability.
Now I am hearing a little bit of mixed comments from you.
And I am going to quit talking in just a minute and ask my
question. I do not believe that there is much debate in what
works and does not work in early childhood programs. Now you
all might correct me on that, but, again, with my limited
background in this area, I think we know a lot about what works
and does not work.
I believe that, to a certain extent, you should give some
flexibility, but I also think that if you are going to give out
money for programs, you have to make people justify the
flexibility that they have because if they are going to go off
on tangents, if they are going to ignore the excellent research
that is out there, then there has to be a justification for
that, and I do not see how you can, again, allow wide latitude
if you are going to do this. And the other is I agree about the
silos that we have.
Now I would like to ask this question. Has anybody done
anything to look at what the cost would be to bring the
programs to where you think they should be? And this could be a
pretty short answer. You can tell me any billions you are
talking about. But what I would like to know is, has anybody
looked at putting all those programs into one program,
eliminating the administrative costs that exist out there?
I know we have 43 worker training programs in the State of
North Carolina. I think there are 73 at the federal level. I do
not even know how many early childhood programs, but let us say
you collapse all the early childhood programs into one and you
say to the states, ``We will continue to give you the amount of
money the federal government is giving you, but you have to
have one administration and one plan,'' which could have many
parts, and then see what happens. Who has done that study or
who needs to do that study?
We will start at the end and come up, and please answer
fairly quickly.
Ms. Phillips. I have been talking a lot, so I sort of
wonder if others would like to go first.
Mr. Kolb. Also, if I had had a sixth minute, I would have
gone on to Smart Start and Jim Hunt, Jr., who is one of our
heroes at CED, and when we released our first report, Jim Hunt
was the keynoter. So we are a big fan of what you all have done
in North Carolina.
Second, on the compensation, I could not agree with you
more. I have a 10-year-old fifth-grader at home. She had the
benefit of having a really good pre-K experience. I have had a
lot of education, big consumer. I could not begin to do what
those teachers did, and I would come home, and I would say to
my wife, you know, ``They do not pay those men and women enough
for what they do.''
On the third point, I do not know if anyone has done it. It
needs to be done. But I keep hearing analogies to welfare
reform where you actually did break down some of these
categories, gave states some flexibility, and you got some--
with waivers and other things here in Washington--creative
results.
Mr. Haskins. The major pieces the states already control,
and they could do a pretty good job of coordinating those if
they would do it. Some states, especially North Carolina, and a
few others have done that.
The biggest piece that they cannot control is Head Start
because it is funded from the federal government directly to
the Head Start authority. In some states like Washington, at
least for over a multiyear period, they had success
coordinating all those programs. The person that ran the state
preschool program was a former head of the Head Start
Association in the state, and that helped a lot. But many
states, notably North Carolina, have had a lot of trouble, and
they have not been able to coordinate the program. So, if you
want them coordinated, I think that is a key.
But a second point I would make: There is another way to do
it completely separate, and that is have competition and only
allow federal funding for programs that have produced success,
and then they can figure out how to coordinate it themselves.
Ms. Foxx. Nobody is answering how much money.
Ms. Phillips. I will.
Mr. Kolb. $35 billion was what we estimated.
Ms. Foxx. $35 billion?
Mr. Kolb. For universal pre-K. This was 6 years ago. That
is in our report, Congresswoman. It is probably larger than
that at this point.
Ms. Hirono. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mr. Hare, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hare. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to see
you sitting in the chair this morning.
I would just like to maybe ask two questions, one for Mr.
Kolb. Many times before this committee, you know, I have talked
about the decline in manufacturing jobs as a result of trade
policies that do not work, and in 2004--a city in my district,
Galesburg, Illinois, had a Maytag plant--we lost 6,800 workers
to Senora, Mexico, and it had a devastating impact, as you can
imagine, on the community and the local economy.
My question is, in your testimony, you mention the economic
promise of investing in early education, and I am wondering can
investments in high-quality pre-K serve as a long-term economic
development solution for trade-impacted communities looking to
create jobs and build, you know, a productive workforce, such
as the City of Galesburg?
Mr. Kolb. I think that it is part of the answer. I do not
think it by itself will do that, but I think if you do not
start at the beginning, you are not likely to get those
results.
CED has looked at the whole issue of trade and the impact
of globalization, and what we also do not do well as a country
is to provide sufficient assistance to those people who, for no
reason of their own, are adversely affected by free trade.
On balance, open borders, free trade, going back to Adam
Smith who got the arguments right, you know, in 1776, has been
a plus for this country, and there have been lots of people who
have benefited, but there are also lots of people who have been
hurt, as I said, through no fault of their own, and we need to
do a better job through adjustment assistance, through
insurance, or other programs that CED has talked about in other
reports.
But this, I would see, as part of the strategy of trying to
make the front-end investment in future productivity.
But if you go through and you train for one thing and then,
through no fault of your own, you find out that your skill is
no longer valuable, then we need to think about how to help
those people with income support and other types of assistance
because it is not their fault.
Mr. Hare. Thank you.
My other question is for Ms. Priestly and Ms. Chun, if you
could maybe talk about this a bit. According to the National
Center for Education Statistics, they report the status of
education in rural America, and it says rural areas maintain
the lowest level enrollment in pre-K programs when compared to
urban and suburban areas.
My congressional district has a lot of rural areas, and,
you know, sometimes you would swear that if you do not live in
Chicago or Rockford or Peoria that you do not have kids that
need pre-K, you do not have people that need health care in the
rural communities, and so, you know, in your experience in
hard-to-serve areas, what are some of the major barriers in
expanding access to pre-K programs?
In other words, what can we do to expand those, and what
strategies would you recommend for improving and delivering
services pre-K, particularly in the rural communities?
Ms. Chun. I can start that. In Hawaii, as I demonstrated in
my chart, we have a number of rural communities where
developing new facilities will be very difficult. We are
bringing together families and young children in something, as
I said earlier, called parent and child early learning
interaction programs in which they come to a neighborhood
place, very much donated sometimes by the elementary school,
and they have a quality educator. In fact, our Keiki Start
program recommends that person actually have beginning with an
associate's degree.
But they are from the community and they come up from the
community so the families and parents know them, and through
this program, we are actually developing new people to go into
the field as well as expanding access. We are lucky they can be
on the front lawn all year round of the elementary schools, and
they do quality interaction activities. So they increase the
early education as well as get them ready to go into elementary
school and use a good provider as well as we are building the
field at the same time.
Ms. Priestly. And I would just say while I happen to live
and work in the very populated area of New Jersey, and New
Jersey being a small state, we do have rural areas that were of
high consideration during our expansion in New Jersey, and I
have colleagues who work in those areas.
So, while we are following the same guidelines and
accountability measures in how we are implementing it in their
areas, everybody has to address it according to the needs of
the area, and the first thing we do is, obviously, find the
families and find the children and see what the needs are. But
we are providing those programs.
Transportation becomes an issue in our rural areas. We have
to look at that differently. I am in a walking district, two
miles square. Everybody can get there, you know, some way. So I
think that is one of the big hurdles.
The support staff, the teachers, everybody--just making
sure we have enough staff--is important, as you mentioned, and
then training them well to be able to go out in the field
there, but it certainly, I think, extends from making sure we
are finding all those children who need it.
Mr. Hare. One last comment. I will not go into this. I
think you mentioned teacher mentoring programs in your remarks.
I think those are wonderful things to do. If we are going to,
you know, A, recruit and then retain teachers, regardless of
whether it is pre-K all the way up, I think those are wonderful
things, and we need to do more of them, and I am hoping as we
do the NCLB that we can, you know, really bump up the teacher
mentoring programs.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Keller, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
And as I was listening to our experts, I was reflecting on
my own life. I have three very small children and a fourth on
the way in a couple of weeks. So, frankly, I am just happy to
be out of the house right now. [Laughter.]
But I was thinking about why they had a good early
education experience, and in each case, they had a very high-
quality teacher, and it pretty much turned out to be luck on
our part that we just ended up with someone who is a great
teacher.
Mr. Karolak, can you tell me if parents are out there today
and they are looking at early childhood programs, what would be
the top three elements that you would recommend to a parent as
to what they should be looking for in an early childhood
education program?
Mr. Karolak. Thank you for the question.
You know, there is no question that the most important
determinative quality is the staff. I mean, on some level, all
you have are your staff. They are the folks who work with
children every day. They meet parents every day. They talk
about the learning and development of the child with the parent
every day. There is no doubt that is the most important element
of quality.
Besides that, though, there are other factors, having a
solid curriculum, an intentional curriculum that is backed by
research. When I took this job about a year ago, I was, I have
to say, surprised. I did not realize how much money was put
into curriculum development by the various providers that I
represent who are very much large-scale providers, for-profit
and not-for-profit.
So having a plan of action for that staff person, the
teacher to work with is very important, and I think there are
many other factors as well.
Mr. Keller. So, if we had the top three, it would be
teacher quality, number one, a solid curriculum, number two. Is
there a number three?
Mr. Karolak. I hesitate to rank further down, but I also
think that it is really important that you have a
developmentally appropriate early learning environment that is
experientially rich, that is aimed at young children. We see on
both the child care and in some cases in public school pre-K
that those environments are not quite right.
Mr. Keller. What does that mean? Like puzzles that have
ABCs? Or what type of environment are you looking for?
Mr. Karolak. It is a fallacy to think that focusing on
cognitive development alone is the best way to prepare children
for school and life. Researchers have found--and we see this
every day in our classrooms--that a balanced approach, that is
focused on cognitive, social, emotional development, language
development, that is what prepares children best, and, indeed,
that includes----
Mr. Keller. Okay. I am just trying to get through that. I
do not want to cut you off, but I do not have a--so good
teacher quality, good curriculum, some type of positive
environment that focuses on lots of things--academics, social
development, the whole package?
Mr. Karolak. Well, part of that experientially environment
is materials, educational materials. Children need to have
things to work with, and they need to have people who can
encourage them to work collaboratively with other children.
That is part of that social-emotional development.
Mr. Keller. I appreciate that. And you have a doctorate,
but if I was going to talk to a regular parent and say, ``I
want you to pick an experientially enriched environment with
collaborative skills,'' they would say, ``What the hell are you
talking about?'' I mean, the average parent is not going to
know what you are talking about. But you know what you are
talking about.
Mr. Karolak. Well, you should be going to look at that
center----
Mr. Keller. Right.
Mr. Karolak [continuing]. Wherever that location is, and
you should be evaluating that on your own, but there are
resources available through a number of national organizations,
also some federally funded----
Mr. Keller. Thank you.
Mr. Kolb, you said that the federal government sometimes
tends to focus on programs instead of people, and I agree with
that, and the teacher quality issue is a perfect example. How
does a parent know on the front end when you go to interview
different early childhood education programs whether this
program is going to have a good teacher? And as a parent, I
just looked around and asked people, but maybe you have some
ideas.
And then, second, do you have any ideas, if quality is so
important for the teachers--and I think we agree it is--on how
we attract the higher quality folks and, I guess, weed out the
folks who are not so high quality? I would love to hear your
thoughts on that.
Mr. Kolb. As you asked the question about your three things
you would look for, I have first quality of the teachers and
the curriculum; second, the environment, just the overall
environment. You know, is it playful? Do the children interact?
Do they get the curriculum?
The third thing I put down was openness to parents because
remember a lot of what happens during a child's life is not
just in a preschool or early education environment. It is in
the home, and so I think you need to look for what the
environment of that school is and if the teachers are open to
engaging the parents in what is going on in that young person's
life throughout the day and also kind of taking those
principles home.
On the issue of quality, I think you have to look at it
from a pipeline perspective. I mean, there is a story in the
Washington Post this morning, I believe, about what bond
traders are making in New York, you know, and some of them are
in their early 20s. It is multiples, frankly, of what we pay
people in early education. So we need to value those skills and
put a higher price tag on those skills, if you will, and then
encourage people early on in their careers to look at becoming
engaged in early education.
Mr. Keller. Thank you.
Mr. Kolb. You are welcome.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Payne, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Let me thank the panel. I think this has been a very great
discussion, and I really had a revelation here. I did not think
that Ms. Foxx and I would really be on the same page that much,
but I find today with your profound statement about the
necessity of having quality people at the early end I could not
agree with you more. I knew the longer we stayed here, there
would be something that we are going to find in common.
As a matter of fact, from experience, I taught school for a
number of years, and I started out as a secondary school
teacher, like most men do, and was a coach and all that, but
then I was disappointed at the preparation that the kids had,
and I said, ``Well, let me just try junior high school level,''
and I went the opposite direction.
And after 3 years in high school, 3 years in junior high,
decided I still was not satisfied, so I actually went to
elementary school for about 3 or 4 years and taught a sixth-
grade level, and I agree that, believe it or not, the necessity
to have strong, positive teachers in elementary school and just
getting down to preschool is just as important, and so I would
hope that we could do something with No Child Left Behind.
I agree that preschool somehow should be--or pre-K--
involved in NCLB. I do not think it will happen as we
reauthorize it, but I would like to see something come up
perhaps as soon as possible to deal with that.
I coached on the high school level, but then I also coached
a little Pop Warner where you take the kids at 7 or 8 years
old, and you teach them the fundamentals. Those kids usually
avoid injuries, and when you teach them properly at the early
age, they become better participants.
So I guess my time is running out.
Let me just ask, Ms. Priestly, in your opinion--and anyone
else could jump in if there is any time left--what immediate
steps do you think we can make, this committee can make, to
increase high-quality early education for all children? What
would be some things that you would like to see or you would
recommend?
Ms. Priestly. Well, first of all, along with Ms. Foxx, I
know now that you said you agree on certain things. The
accountability part, the leadership part is so important. We
keep talking about, you know, the people in the relationships,
and I think the support has to stem, you know, with our
collaboration, our collaboration with Head Start and other
private providers, just like we are doing today.
I think that has made a big difference in our small
district, that the collaboration, having that time to be able
to get together and see what we bring to the table and how we
can support each other, and what we need, and so, of course,
the dollars are important. We need the dollars to support every
level right down to those classroom materials that the children
interact with every day along with their relationships with the
adults.
As the committee, of course, you are looking, you know,
nationally, as the Congress, and, of course, the dollars and
the laws that follow it. You know, even on our local level, we
say if we did not have the guidelines and certain things in
code, it would be a lot harder to make sure these programs are
of quality because, as you start out and build those
relationships, those guidelines from the experts are really
important, and it is easier to implement the program.
So, again, I think in your capacity, that is where it
stands, provided those regulations are appropriate for young
children and the teachers that work with them.
Mr. Payne. Great. I thank you very much. I think that the
environment, as it was mentioned by Mr. Kolb, is very
important, but we do have differences.
The Kerner Commission report, you know, written 50 years
ago, I guess, almost, talked about, you know, two societies,
poor and rich. We really have to somehow deal with the whole
question of poverty, the environment, where kids will learn
better. The facilities, the community, the housing, the
nutrition, all of these things, I think, go into having a
strong education at a beginning level.
And so I would just like to once again, since my time has
expired, really thank all of you for your wisdom and,
hopefully, we will be able to get it straight. One thing, I
never hear a cry for vouchers in very good school districts.
You know, they do not ask for them because the public school is
doing the job. I would like to see that really in every school
district.
Thank you.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Davis, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Davis of Tennessee. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
I would like to thank the panel for being here today. Thank
you for your involvement and your concern in educating young
children.
Just a small background, my father has a sixth-grade
education. I came out of the mountains of Tennessee. My father
grew up in the Depression Era, and I was able to put myself
through college. I was able to come to Congress, started
several business. So just because you are poor does not mean
you cannot succeed, and I hope everybody understands that.
The person that started Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford,
once said, ``If you think you can do a thing or think you can
not, you are right,'' and I use that a lot when I talk to young
people back in my district. So I think it is important that we
understand that having a family atmosphere, having people
around you that want you to succeed, as well as programs at the
federal and state level, community level, are all important.
So thank you for your interest in young children.
And with that, I would like to yield the remainder of my
time to my good friend from North Carolina, Ms. Foxx.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Congressman Davis.
If you believe in mental telepathy, we have a great example
of it right here. I was going to make the same comments about
poverty that my colleague just made.
I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina in the 1950s
and 1960s--I graduated from high school in 1961--and I can tell
you that everybody in my class was extraordinarily poor, and I
was among the poorest of those. My dad had a ninth-grade
education; my mother, a sixth-grade education. They were not
unintelligent people. They did not have formal education, just
like most of the people in my area.
And when I reflect a little bit on my background and the
people that I grew up with, we were all poor, and yet we did
not have any government programs at all to help us get out of
poverty or to learn, and yet I would put my class that
graduated in 1961, of all poor people, up against any high
school graduating class right now in terms of their ability to
learn and what they did learn.
So I wanted to make that comment about the fact that it is
not always poverty, and I see well-to-do people right now whose
children are not getting the kind of educational stimulus and
background that a lot of poor children are getting. So I think
it is wrong that we always focus this on the issue of poverty
because there are lots of different ways that you can be
impoverished, and you can be impoverished right now, not just
with material things, but with the environment.
So that was sort of leading up to the question that I have.
I am very much a small government person. However, I am
realistic enough to know that we are not going to get rid of
most of these government programs that we have. So it seems to
me that what we have to do is to look at how do we balance the
role of the government and the role of parents here.
And I will tell you again I taught in a university for 15
years. I told my students everybody could make an A. Not until
I had been teaching for a long time did I reflect back. I had
almost a perfect bell-shaped curve in grading every single
semester. Now it made a believer out of me that it exists. I
did not believe it when I started teaching.
So we are going to have that. I do not think we can deny
the fact that we are going to have differences in ability and
differences in performance, but how do we balance the role of
the parents and these well-intentioned government programs in
helping our children do better? So any kinds of responses that
you can give, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Priestly. Well, I would just start by saying--and then
passing it along--we include parents every step of the way,
from the very beginning with a family or parent interview, to
home visits, to parent education, parent workshop, programs in
the classroom, out of the classroom. It is a major, major
component where I am, and I think that is important for
everyone in whatever way when we are dealing with children who
exhibit challenging behaviors or other learning delays that the
parents are included in everything we are dong.
Ms. Chun. I think this goes back to the discussion earlier
on what is a quality program, and a quality early education
program recognizes that the parent is the child's first
teacher, and what they need to do is stem from the home
experiences, build on the home experiences, and encourage the
parents to remain involved with their young child.
The reality is, in Hawaii especially, and I think around
the country, 75 to 76 percent of the parents of our young
children are working and need a place for their child to be.
So, as this is a workforce reality, we have to make sure that
as we develop the programs, we maintain the component. That is
the strength of Head Start.
And in the Keiki First program that we are doing in Hawaii,
we maintain that role, that parents come with the child. They
come in a way that they are involved. If they cannot be there
during the day, they are involved and knowledgeable about their
child's program, and they are part of the whole picture for a
young child.
When I look at later education and we go back and wonder
what can we do with families----
Ms. Hirono. Can you wrap up? The gentlewoman's time has
expired.
Thank you.
Mr. Sarbanes, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I salute you for
your work on this issue and convening the hearing today.
I had a couple of questions that are sort of scattered
around, but, Dr. Phillips, I am very intrigued by all the brain
research that you alluded to, and I was wondering when does the
kind of impediment to good brain development get to the point
of warranting characterization as brain damage in a sense.
I mean, nobody talks about it in that way, but I imagine
you could point to at least an analogy there to brain damage,
and maybe brain damage is when circuits that have already been
built are broken as opposed to circuits that do not get built
in the first place, but if you could just react to that prism,
if you would----
Ms. Phillips. It is a hard question because, in a way, you
are asking, I think, about thresholds. At what point, you know,
is the damage so severe that you cannot turn it around. Is that
a fair characterization?
Mr. Sarbanes. Fair enough, yes.
Ms. Phillips. You are right. It is not that circuits are
not getting built. What is happening is that they are getting
built in a very fragile way. So I think the stress literature
is very instructive here. So what happens with a child who is
growing up with a persistently depressed parent, for example,
going to the importance of parents, who is not able to get
beyond that depression to interact in responsive kind of serve-
and-return ways, what happens with that child, if you look at
their brain, is that their brain looks like the brain of the
depressed mother, okay, in terms of its electrical activity. It
looks like our brains look when we see a very sad movie. The
difference is that our brains recover very quickly when we walk
out of the movie, you know, but, you know, you have to fix the
mother to fix the baby's brains. Otherwise, they are in that
persistent environment.
There is really minimal evidence, except in the visual
system and so on, for example, that there is a window that
slams shut at some point and there is no point of return where
damage cannot be repaired. The brain story is more one of it
just gets harder and harder and harder to fix damage that is
done when children are young. Going back to fetal alcohol
syndrome, you know, I mean, that is the challenge.
That is the neuroscience equivalent of the economist and
businessperson saying invest early. It is just more efficient
because those circuits have not gotten solidified yet.
Mr. Sarbanes. Okay. I am also curious how you see the
interplay of early childhood development with this whole new
technology era that we have living in, particularly how much
technology young children are consuming today, and I would like
you to answer--and anybody can answer--in a couple of ways.
One is, you know, what is the harm that is presented by
that, but, also, do you envision good uses of technology by
young children and starting at what age and at what levels of
consumption, because we are certainly moving in a direction
where using those tools, I think, effectively to help children
learn and to spur cognitive development makes sense.
But trying to find what that happy medium is, is, I think,
tricky.
Ms. Phillips. So I have a colleague who actually studies
this. I would be happy to give you her name, a couple actually
who look at technology with very, very young children,
toddlers, and uses of technology. It can be a curse, and it can
be a blessing, and it all boils down, like a curriculum, to
what happens in whose hands is that technology being put, and
in terms of young children, you know, what is the role of the
adults who surround them in sort of introducing them to that
technology, you know, working with them around that technology.
It depends. I know I sound terribly like a researcher saying
that, but, actually--and I am sorry Mr. Hare is not here--
technology is also part of the answer to rural families and
children.
Mr. Sarbanes. Right, right.
Ms. Phillips. You know, huge, tremendously exciting,
advancements are being made in long-distance learning that can
be applied for teachers, that can be applied to early childhood
classrooms. So, again, it is----
Mr. Sarbanes. Right. I have run out of time. Thanks very
much.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Sestak, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
` SESTAK: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I walked in, Dr. Phillips, when you were mentioning a
comment--and I am sorry I did not catch it, therefore--on the
military and some impacts.
Ms. Phillips. Oh, yes.
Mr. Sestak. What was that statement?
Ms. Phillips. So the four branches of the U.S. military----
Mr. Sestak. I did not see it in your testimony, but dare I
just----
Ms. Phillips. It is buried somewhere. I can tell you.
Mr. Sestak. That is okay.
Ms. Phillips. I do not talk about it very much in this
particular testimony, but the four branches of the military
require every single one of their child care homes and centers
to be accredited, NAEYC accredited. This is a voluntary
program, but they are a set of comprehensive guidelines. You
may be familiar with it.
Mr. Sestak. Yes, I did note there was some study done.
Ms. Phillips. Yes.
Mr. Sestak. There are so many studies.
I spent yesterday, you know, at a community pre-K or
whatever, with a lot of people talking about this issue. I am
quite taken by, as my colleague was, by a lot of the research
you have done.
I had to spend the time about 2 years ago with my young 4-
year-old daughter in an oncology ward, brain tumor, and I
watched, and we were discussing the impact upon these various
2-, 3-, 4-, 5-year-old kids as they went through brain tumors
and chemotherapy and radiation and all, and, you know, sat down
with some doctors afterwards, and they almost speak like you do
about, you know, how is the support from the families and what
the impact is upon them, you know, like your analogy, you know,
like watching a bad movie, and are they able to come out of it
or not. It depends upon the support system.
And I am quite taken in the area here of pre-K, and I very
much do agree with the issue of the colleague on the other side
about parents and support, but the fact of the matter is our
families are being structured as they were 50 years ago, back
in the 1960s and the other areas. I spent 31 years in the
military, so I am very familiar with what we do there.
My take on all of this is that--and I am not so much asking
a question--I am just so taken with what I consider a minimal
investment in order to have the cognitive ability of these
children to garner so much for our economy for themselves. I
mean, every study I read varies, but if it is $1 in, it is
either $7 out or $8 or $6 out or $16 on the outside.
And, you know, as I was sitting here yesterday, I was so
struck, you know. No Child Left Behind, up until last year, $54
billion underfunded or $51 billion, and, you know, college
affordability going out of sight, and to get attention to this
issue is hard because you do not see the deficits that you are
creating. It is not a negative impact, so to speak, right there
where your kid cannot go to college. It is, you know, so
obvious, it is a deficit you are building up in the future.
So I do not have much to add, except I thought all your
testimony was tremendous. I have the kids into military all the
time. On long-distance learning, you are absolutely right, and
there is a lot to learn from it. I have nothing more to add,
just I think this is where I would put the marginal dollar when
and if we get it.
Thank you.
Ms. Phillips. Thank you.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Ms. Clarke, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. This has been
a really stimulating discourse.
It is a very important issue, and as the child of a mother
who started her early career as an early childhood educator, I
can truly, truly relate to where we are today. It is actually
kind of dumbfounding that we are not much further advanced
because the daycare movement has been going on for quite some
time, and that has evolved into our early childhood education,
and in a city like New York, you know, we had really, really
struggled around that. I remember parents taking buses to
Albany, and I am on there with my lunchbox because my mom is in
the movement, and we are trying to make sure that mothers,
families have access to early childhood education.
So I want to direct my question, first of all, to Ms.
Priestly. Everyone acknowledges the importance of parental
involvement, and I want to make sure that we are really talking
about all parents because, you know, I come from a very
fortunate, two-parent household, and I have had it all my life,
but I think oftentimes we do not look at the fact that there
are a lot of younger parents out there, there are a lot of
caregivers, foster care, grandparents, there are single-parent
households, and we know that their involvement in early
childhood education is critical. Head Start, for example,
prides itself on the success of the participation of parents in
the Head Start program.
Can you describe successful parental outreach strategies
used by your school district, and I am particularly interested
in the strategy used to reach out to parents of English
language learners and other parents who have traditionally been
less involved in their children's school.
Ms. Priestly. Thank you.
Everything you said is what I experience every day. I
actually have a social worker who is under me. That is her
role, and I say her role. It is all of our role. That is the
thing. It never ends. She helps coordinate. Because we have
family workers that are in each of our child care centers in
Head Start, we treat that like everything else that we do on a
tiered level where we just brainstorm. We get together and we
brainstorm, and nothing is thrown out.
Whether we are reaching two parents or we have 100 parents
at anything we do, whatever we need, and that is where I
started to list between home visits, the parent interviews. It
is not about the quantity of time with the parents, the quality
of the time from our end, whatever we can do to bring that
parent in, not waste their time, go to their homes, meet them
on neutral turf. You know, again, we never say, ``Oh, we are
not going to have any more of those workshops or meetings
because only six parents came.'' Those six parents go out and
tell six more parents----
And you mentioned English language learners, especially the
cultural aspect of that. At our local Head Start, our numbers
have increased dramatically of the English language learner
families, and we were not reaching them as well, so, again, we
had to sit down and brainstorm, and we started to have--you
know, we always have translators--families who came together.
They walked the children together. We started with that group,
asked them to get some other people, promised child care at
night, what time works best for you. We found Friday nights
when they pick the children up from aftercare, they will stay.
You know, again, I have lists and lists of things that we
have tried, what works, what does not. We always reflect back
on what works, who did we reach, and then at our own meetings,
I meet with the center directors in Head Start, everybody. We
all meet once a month in a, you know, regular structured
meeting, and at that time, that is what we share, you know, how
were you successful with your parents.
And then we also have a big movement with transitioning
families from early intervention into preschool, from preschool
to kindergarten, and then we make sure that we are bringing in
people from the community as well as foster parent groups. We
cover it all. It is an integral part of our program.
Ms. Clarke. Very good. That is very encouraging, and
perhaps that is a model that can be built out upon across the
nation.
Ms. Priestly. I can get you more information.
Ms. Clarke. Yes.
Much of the testimony today highlights the benefits of
early childhood education for all children and its linkage,
therefore, to the long-term success of the county. In
particular, it is noted that children from low-income
households benefit the most from quality early childhood
education. Can you explain why children from low-income
households seem to benefit the most from early childhood
education compared to children from other socioeconomic groups?
Mr. Haskins. I would say the reason is that the increase in
quality----
Ms. Hirono. Excuse me. If you can just keep your answer
very brief because we are out of time. Go ahead.
Mr. Haskins. Okay. I would say that the answer is somewhat
straightforward. The environment in which they are reared in
terms of the language they hear, the discipline, the order
compared to the high-quality child care center--the high-
quality child care center is much better on all those
dimensions relative to their home than it would be for middle-
class kids.
A lot of people do not like that, but there is a ton of
research to show that that is the truth, and, in fact, that is
the basic idea behind Head Start, that Head Start can put kids
in a center and give them experiences with teachers and
curriculum and so forth that they would ordinarily miss out on
in their home and that will affect their development, and it
turns out that is true.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Mr. Holt, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Holt. I thank the Chair and commend her for holding
these hearings, and I must say all the witnesses have presented
articulate and really useful testimony.
But we all feel this frustration. Whenever we talk with
constituents who speak their minds to us, they accuse us of
being shortsighted and not spending time on or devoting
appropriations to what is really important to Americans or
making the most efficient use of their resources, and this is,
of course, probably best example, when you look at the
cognitive benefits and the social benefits and the behavioral
benefits. $33 billion calculated some years ago or, say, $100
billion today should not seem like too much, and, in fact,
considering the way we have been spending money in the last few
years only to hurt ourselves, no one can ever say to me again
for a social program, ``We just do not have the money,'' or for
an educational program.''
But let run through three questions I would like to have
answered. I will lay them on the table, and recognizing the
limited time, I would like you to run through them quickly.
There is, as Dr. Phillips and others have pointed out,
quite a bit of research. One of the questions is are the
training programs at the college and university level behind
the curve, or are they really up to date in teaching? And this
would be for teacher training as well as for teaching those who
go into parent training. Are they up to date on the research?
And I would like to ask, Ms. Priestly, what would you say
are the most important lessons that New Jersey has learned that
we should share with the country, and specifically in special
education? Is recognition of the special needs and
differentiation more or less important in the pre-K years, or
is it, say, equally important as later? In other words, should
we have special programs for special students in these years?
Let me let it go at that because there is probably not time
for my other questions.
Ms. Priestly. Okay. If I start with your last one about
special needs children, I will never stick to the time, but
just let me briefly say because, you know, that is one of my
pets of this.
I pride myself on the fact that we have--we will fall into
the lessons of New Jersey, too. One of the biggest and most
important parts of the whole early childhood movement in New
Jersey is that--and, in my case, right in my district right
now--we have inclusive programs. Our 3-and 4-year-olds--you
know, identifying those learning differences and social
disabilities and everything is very important, but it is how we
handle it.
It is working with the parents, it is the early
intervention strategies, it is training the teachers, and what
we have done is our children are all--except for a couple of
self-contained special education classes where the needs at
this moment cannot be met in the general education classes, our
3-and 4-year-olds with disabilities are included in the general
ed preschool classrooms, but not without support. We have
preschool inclusion teachers who go into those classrooms and
work alongside of the classroom teacher.
We use it as a consultation model as well. We do teacher
training so that they are modeling for those classroom teachers
because we know that all the intervention strategies need to
happen on a regular basis to make a difference at the same time
we work with the parents to see what else can be done at home,
and so, again, that teacher education part is very important,
and the training is very important.
And then whatever other needs, as I said, are not met in
the general ed class, then we provide those services, whether
it is additional speech and language therapy, occupational
therapy, whatever is identified in their individual education
plan.
So that to me is one of the lessons.
The other thing we did is we--I always talk about the
tiered approach because you cannot do it all quickly. So, when
we worked with the leaders, the supervisors and master teachers
and everybody in New Jersey so that they would be able to go
back to their districts, get the training and go back and make
sure things happened, one of the other things we did was create
a preschool intervention and referral specialist team not to
identify children and send them to special programs, but to
work with the parents and the teachers.
Mr. Holt. Thank you. Let me ask the others, particularly on
the preparation in the teacher training and parent training
programs, whether we are current.
Ms. Phillips. I cannot directly address that because I have
not looked specifically at that. I know there are concerns
about that, but I can give you a couple of observations.
Ms. Hirono. Can you be sure to keep your response short
because we are also going to be called for a vote on the floor
in a few minutes.
Ms. Phillips. Okay. Then I will just give you two
sentences. The teachers in Tulsa who provided more time on task
and provided better instruction for their students got higher
grade-point averages out of their BA's in early education and
education. That suggests that the teachers who are really
getting the most out of their undergraduate educations are
doing the best are doing well.
So, clearly, those schools are doing well. We are talking
about, you know, schools in Oklahoma. We are not talking, you
know, better excellence, but they are not your Harvard School
of Education. So, yes, they can do a perfectly good job.
Mr. Holt. I think Ms. Chun is trying to get a word in here.
Please.
Ms. Chun. Just real quickly, in Hawaii, we are expanding
our distance learning, and with the distance learning, we know
we must combine that with mentoring in the classroom. We also
realize we must increase the preliteracy abilities of our early
education teachers to be able to teach preliteracy concept
along with strong child development. We are looking closely at
our courses right now with our community college and how they
articulate to our higher education.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
I would like to once again thank all of our witnesses for
coming today and enlightening us. I think we are all on the
same page on the importance of quality early education.
I would like to add, though, that there was a lot of
testimony and discussion about the need for coordination of
early childhood services, and that is important, which is why
we took numerous steps in the new Head Start law to improve
coordination at the state and local levels.
At the same time, though, we know that it is not just
coordination. When we look at the fact that 39 states do not
require child care providers to have any training before
entering a classroom, that oversight and accountability of
child care is generally minimal, and, in fact, in California,
the Chair noted that programs are only inspected once every 5
years. One-third of the state's pre-K programs do not meet more
than half of the key quality criteria. And Ms. Chun explained
that Hawaii has literally half of the necessary workforce to
provide high-quality care and that low-and middle-income
families are priced out of quality child care and preschool
experiences.
So, when we look at the national picture of standards and
quality of child care and pre-K education, we conclude that the
big solution is not just about coordination, that is
oversimplifying, that we really need to look at standards, and
we need to provide, I think, more funding--appropriate
standards, and funding and federal support.
So, with that, if there are no objections, the members will
have 14 days to submit additional materials or questions for
the hearing record, and without objection, this hearing is
concluded. Thank you.
[Additional submission by Ms. Hirono follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matthew Melmed, Executive Director, Zero to Three
Chairman Miller and Members of the Committee: My name is Matthew
Melmed. For the past 13 years I have been the Executive Director of
ZERO TO THREE, a national non-profit organization that has worked to
advance the healthy development of America's babies and toddlers for 30
years. I would like to start by thanking the Committee for its
continued interest in early childhood education. I would also like to
thank the Committee for providing me the opportunity to discuss the
importance of investing in early education, particularly for our
nation's infants and toddlers.
The Importance of the Earliest Years
Some may wonder why babies matter in public policy. While almost
every social policy--from education to welfare reform to substance
abuse and mental health--affects infants and toddlers, the impact of
these policies on very young children is seldom sufficiently addressed.
Instead, policies often focus on the effects of ignoring the needs of
infants and toddlers, for example, by having to address the cognitive
gaps between low-income preschoolers and their more affluent peers or
providing intensive special education services for problems that may
have begun as much milder developmental delays left untreated in a
young baby.
Science has significantly enhanced what we know about the needs of
infants and toddlers, underscoring the fact that experiences and
relationships in the earliest years of life play a critical role in a
child's ability to grow up healthy and ready to learn. We know that
infancy and toddlerhood are times of intense intellectual
engagement.\1\ During this time--a remarkable 36 months--the brain
undergoes its most dramatic development, and children acquire the
ability to think, speak, learn, and reason. The early years establish
the foundation upon which later learning and development are built. If
experiences in those early years are harmful, stressful, or traumatic,
the effects of such experiences become more difficult, not to mention
more expensive, to remediate over time if they are not addressed early
in life.
All babies and toddlers need positive early learning experiences
and consistent quality caregivers to foster their intellectual, social,
and emotional development and to lay the foundation for later school
success. The years during this most critical of developmental stages
may be even more crucial for young children living in poverty.
Of the 12 million infants and toddlers living in the United States,
44%--a staggering 5.4 million--live in low-income families (defined as
families with incomes at or below twice the federal poverty level or
$41,300 for a family of four).\2\ What is particularly troubling, in
addition to the rise of childhood poverty, is the fact that very young
children are disproportionately impacted by economic stress--that is,
the negative effects of poverty are likely to be more severe when
children are very young and their bodies and minds are still
developing. Infants and toddlers in low-income families are at greater
risk than infants and toddlers in middle- to high-income families for a
variety of poorer outcomes and vulnerabilities that can jeopardize
their development and readiness for school, including learning
disabilities, behavior problems, mental retardation, and developmental
delays.\3\
Mr. Chairman, my message to you is that babies can't wait! We know
that investing in quality early care and education programs for our
nation's infants and toddlers promotes healthy development in young
children.
Investing Earlier
Although there is a growing interest nationwide in early childhood
services in the years immediately preceding kindergarten, for our most
vulnerable at-risk infants and toddlers, the achievement gap often
emerges long before they reach the preschool door. We know that high
quality early learning experiences during the infant and toddler years
are associated with early competence in language and cognitive
development, cooperation with adults, and the ability to initiate and
sustain positive exchanges with peers. With high quality, effective
services, those infants and toddlers who are competent, yet at-risk for
compromised development, will be better equipped to reach their full
potential in life. Without increased investments focused on the
availability and accessibility of quality early care and education
experiences, many infants and toddlers will continue to be left behind.
Not only do infants, toddlers, and their families pay a price for
our failed policies, so does all of society. Effective, evidence-based
early childhood policies, programs, and services go a long way in
supporting stronger families and communities. They are also fiscally
sound investments which can reduce the need for more expensive reactive
interventions and governmental supports in the future. In fact,
economists have found that for every dollar invested in early childhood
programs, savings of $3.78 to $17.07 can be expected.\4\ While many of
these savings benefit individuals, the public reaps far more of the
benefits in terms of reduced crime, abuse and neglect, and welfare
dependency while increasing educational performance and job training,
leading to higher incomes and a more productive workforce. Playing
catch up later in life is expensive and inadequate. We need to address
the needs of vulnerable infants and toddlers today. Children who start
behind, stay behind!
High quality early care and education programs provide protective
buffers against the multiple adverse influences that may hinder a young
child's development in all domains. Therefore, it is extremely
important to invest in programs such as Early Head Start, the Child
Care and Development Fund (CCDF), and Part C of the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Early Head Start
Early Head Start is the only federal program specifically designed
to improve the early education experiences of low-income infants and
toddlers. The mission of Early Head Start is clear: to support healthy
prenatal outcomes and enhance the intellectual, social and emotional
development of infants and toddlers to promote later success in school
and life. It does so by offering early learning experiences, parent
support, home visitation, and access to medical, mental health and
early intervention services. This comprehensive approach supports the
whole child--physically, socially, emotionally and cognitively--within
the context of the family, the home and other child-serving settings.
Research demonstrates that Early Head Start is effective. The
Congressionally-mandated Early Head Start Research and Evaluation
Project--a rigorous, large-scale, random-assignment evaluation--
concluded that Early Head Start is making a positive difference in
areas associated with children's success in school, family self-
sufficiency, and parental support of child development. For example,
Early Head Start produced statistically significant, positive impacts
on standardized measures of children's cognitive and language
development.\5\ Early Head Start also had significant impacts for
parents, promoting family self-sufficiency and parental support of
child development. Children who participated in Early Head Start had
more positive interactions with their parents than control group
children--they engaged their parents more and parents rated their
children as lower in aggressive behavior than control parents did.\6\
Early Head Start parents were also more emotionally supportive and less
detached than control group parents and provided significantly more
support for language and learning than control group parents.\7\
Furthermore, a follow-up wave of research demonstrated that a
number of the positive impacts of participating in Early Head Start are
still demonstrated two years later, showing that children who attended
Early Head Start and pre-kindergarten between the ages of three and
five experienced the most positive outcomes.\8\
Unfortunately, Early Head Start is reaching only a small proportion
of at-risk children and families--only three percent of all eligible
children and families are served.\9\ Increased funding for Early Head
Start will ensure that we reach the most at-risk infants and toddlers
early in life when we have the best opportunity to reverse the
trajectory of poor development that can occur in the absence of such
supports. It will also help us ensure that parents have the supports
they need to sufficiently nurture the healthy development of their
infants and toddlers.
The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)
Second only to the immediate family, child care is the context in
which early childhood development most frequently unfolds, starting in
infancy.\10\ According to 2005 data, 42 percent of one-year-olds and 53
percent of one-to-two-year-olds have at least one regular non-parental
care arrangement.\11\ The increase in the number of working parents
with babies and toddlers comes at a time when science has demonstrated
the critical importance of supporting the development and learning of
children ages birth to three, and makes the need for quality child care
even more significant. However, more than 40 percent of infants and
toddlers are in child care rooms of poor quality.\12\
The evidence associating the quality of infant and toddler care
with early cognitive and language outcomes ``is striking in
consistency.'' \13\ High quality child care is associated with outcomes
that all parents want to see in their children, ranging from
cooperation with adults to the ability to initiate and sustain positive
exchanges with peers, to early competence in math and reading--all of
which are key ingredients to later school success.
While hours of care, stability of care, and type of care are all
associated with developmental outcomes, it is the quality of care, and
in particular, the quality of the daily interactions between child care
providers and infants and toddlers that most significantly impact
development.\14\ Elements of high quality infant and toddler child care
include: small groups; high staff-to-child ratios; a consistent
caregiver; health and safety; and cultural and linguistic
continuity.\15\ Quality child care is also contingent upon the special
training that caregivers receive in the profession of early childhood
development.\16\ High quality child care where providers are both
supportive and offer more verbal stimulation creates an environment
where children are likely to show more advanced cognitive and language
development.\17\ It provides environments and opportunities for
socialization, problem-solving, empathy building, sharing and relating.
Research indicates that the strongest effects of quality child care
are found with at-risk children--children from families with the fewest
resources and under the greatest stress.\18\ Yet, at-risk infants and
toddlers who may benefit the most from high quality child care are
unlikely to receive it--they receive some of the poorest quality care
that exists in communities across the United States.\19\ The results
can be devastating. Poor quality child care for at-risk children may
diminish inborn potential and lead to poorer developmental
outcomes.\20\
CCDF is a block grant that provides funds to help improve the
quality and supply of child care for low-income children and their
families. Through the use of subsidies, CCDF helps working parents make
informed choices about the most appropriate child care for their
children. The infant-toddler set-aside of CCDF, currently prescribed
through the appropriations process, has helped states focus on the
unique needs of infants and toddlers by investing in specialized
infant-toddler provider training, providing technical assistance to
programs and practitioners, and linking compensation with training and
demonstrated competence. The quality set-aside, currently 4% of the
total amount provided under the law, allocates funds to states in order
to support and develop innovative strategies for improving the quality
of child care. Despite modest increases in federal child care funding,
CCDF funds are insufficient to serve all eligible children.
Congress should ensure that all babies and toddlers, particularly
those living in poverty, have access to quality child care when their
parents are at work. An increase in federal funding for child care
would lead to increased investments in quality and would help to ensure
that more low-income infants and toddlers have access to quality child
care settings. More funding needs to be directed specifically at
improving the quality of care for infants and toddlers, including
professional development opportunities with infant-toddler content for
early childhood staff who work with this age group.
Part C of IDEA
Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
authorizes federal support for early intervention programs for babies
and toddlers with disabilities and provides federal assistance for
states to maintain and implement statewide systems of services for
eligible children, birth through age two, and their families. For young
children with disabilities, early intervention provides intensive
services and supports to promote the highest possible level of
developmental competence. For young children at significant risk, early
intervention can protect them against influences that may compromise
their development.
Under Part C, all participating states and jurisdictions must
provide early intervention services to any child below age three who is
experiencing developmental delays or has a diagnosed physical or mental
condition that has a high probability of resulting in a developmental
delay. In addition, states may choose to provide services for babies
and toddlers who are ``at-risk'' for serious developmental problems,
defined as circumstances (including biological or environmental
conditions or both) that will seriously affect the child's development
unless interventions are provided. Early intervention services under
Part C may prevent or minimize the need for more costly services under
Part B of IDEA later in a child's life.
Despite the promise it holds for the future, there is a wide
variation in the percentage of infants and toddlers enrolled in Part C
programs across states. Currently, states carry a significant burden to
fund Part C programs, in part, because of inadequate federal funding.
The result is that many eligible infants and toddlers do not receive
the early intervention services they desperately need in order to reach
their full potential in school and in life. Increased investments in
early intervention programs will go a long way in addressing
developmental delays at a time when we can have the greatest impact on
a child's future.
Building the Capacity of our Nation's Early Childhood Workforce
Our nation's early childhood workforce is facing a major crisis.
Finding and supporting well-trained early childhood professionals who
work with children age birth to five is a challenge; it is particularly
difficult for professionals working with children birth to three. There
is tremendous variability among the teachers and providers who make up
the early childhood workforce (child care providers, Head Start and
Early Head Start teachers, child welfare workers, and infant and early
childhood mental health professionals). According to the U.S.
Department of Education, training for infant/toddler professionals is
minimal, contributing to overall personnel problems.\21\ The need for
more and better qualified providers cuts across a range of disciplines
and professions.
One of the most consistent findings in developmental research links
the quality of care that young children receive to virtually every
measure of development that has been examined.\22\ This is particularly
true for low-income children who are at-risk for early developmental
problems and later educational underachievement. However, unlike
programs that exist for elementary and secondary education teachers,
the U.S. higher education system lacks a robust infrastructure to
develop the next generation of early childhood professionals. We must
build the capacity of our nation's early childhood workforce by
creating economic incentives--including adequate compensation and loan
forgiveness--to enable early childhood providers to seek out training
opportunities which will allow them to provide the care needed while
reducing the harmful staff turn-over currently plaguing the system.
Likewise, it is imperative that colleges and universities are afforded
grants in order to infuse infant and toddler coursework into their
programs and develop and disseminate distance learning courses.
Conclusion
During the first three years of life, children rapidly develop
foundational capabilities--physical, social-emotional, and cognitive--
on which subsequent development builds. These areas of development are
inextricably related. Yet, too often, we ignore the early years of a
child's life in making public policy, waiting until at-risk children
are already behind physically, emotionally, or cognitively before
significant investments are made to address their needs. We must change
this pattern and invest in at-risk infants and toddlers early on, when
that investment can have the biggest payoff--preventing problems or
delays that become more costly to address as the children grow older.
All young children should be given the opportunity to succeed in
school and in life. Ensuring that infants and toddlers have strong
families who are able to support their healthy development will help
lay the foundation for a lifetime of success. We must increase federal
investments so that infants, toddlers and their families have access to
developmentally appropriate early learning programs such as Early Head
Start, quality and affordable child care, and early intervention
services to help ensure that they are ready for school.
I urge the Committee to consider the very unique needs of infants
and toddlers as you invest in early childhood programs.
Thank you for your time and for your commitment to our nation's at-
risk infants, toddlers and families.
endnotes
\1\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington,
DC: National Academy Press.
\2\ Douglas-Hall, Ayona and Chau, Michelle. 2007. Basic facts about
low-income children: Birth to age 3. http://www.nccp.org/publications/
pdf/download--217.pdf (accessed December 10, 2007).
\3\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development.
\4\ Heckman, James, Grunewald, Rob, and Reynolds, Arthur. 2006. The
dollars and cents of investing early: Cost-benefit analysis in early
care and education. ZERO TO THREE Journal 26 (6): 10-17.
\5\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration
for Children and Families. 2002. Making a difference in the lives of
infants and toddlers and their families: The impacts of Early Head
Start. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/ehs/ehs--resrch/reports/
impacts--exesum/impacts--execsum.pdf (accessed October 23, 2006).
\6\ Ibid.
\7\ Ibid.
\8\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration
for Children and Families. 2006. Research to practice: Preliminary
findings from the Early Head Start prekindergarten followup. http://
www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/ehs/ehs--resrch/reports/prekindergarten--
followup/prekindergarten--followup.pdf (accessed October 23, 2006).
\9\ Note: 61,243 is the exact number of children under three served
by Early Head Start in Fiscal Year 2005. Head Start Program Information
Report for the 2004-2005 Program Year, Early Head Start Programs Only.
Retrieved October 23, 2006. Note: 2,552,000 children under three in the
U.S. live below the federal poverty level. U.S. Census Bureau. 2005.
Current population survey, 2006 annual social and economic supplement.
POV34: Single year of age--Poverty status: 2005. http://
pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/pov/new34--100--01.htm (accessed October
23, 2006).
\10\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development.
\11\ Schumacher, Rachel, Hamm, Katie, Goldstein, Anne, and
Lombardi, Joan 2006. Starting off right: Promoting child development
from birth in state early care and education initiatives. Washington,
DC: Center for Law and Social Policy and ZERO TO THREE.
\12\ Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team. Cost, Quality and
Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers, Public Report, 2nd edition.
(Denver Economics Department, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995).
\13\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development.
\14\ Ibid.
\15\ Lally, J. Ronald, Griffin, Abbey, Fenichel, Emily, Segal,
Marilyn et al. 2003. Caring for infants and toddlers in groups:
Developmentally appropriate practice. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.
\16\ National Research Council. 2000. Eager to learn: Educating our
preschoolers. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
\17\ Ibid.
\18\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development.
\19\ Ibid.
\20\ Ibid.
\21\ U.S. Department of Education. 2001. 23rd Annual Report to
Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act. http://www.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/osep/2001/
index.html (accessed December 29, 2006).
\22\ Shonkoff, Jack and Phillips, Deborah. 2000. From neurons to
neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development.
______
[Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]