On June 20, GWP members heard from Michelle Figlar, executive director of Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children, and Betty Lisowski, executive director of Riverview Children's Center, a leading local provider of early care and education. They described local and state systems for providing early care and education, pointing out the gains Pennsylvania has made in the past ten years as well as gaps in services. Here are some takeaways and recommendations for philanthropy.
The early education system is a wide collection of places. Funding organizations need to bear in mind that early care and education happens in a wide range of settings: for-profit and nonprofit, licensed and unlicensed, center and home-based, privately paid and publicly funded, high quality and bare minimum.
Quality of early care and education matters. In the past decade, Pennsylvania has come a long way by establishing consistent standards for pre-K education (i.e. the Keystone STARS program, development of early learning standards, and investment in state-funded Pre-K Counts) and taking initial steps to align its funding streams to create incentives to meet higher standards.
Only a fraction of the region's children are currently attending quality programs. Most funders - as well as many business leaders and policymakers - understand the positive financial returns on the investments made in pre-K education. However, a statewide Pennsylvania study of 10,000+ children has documented that the optimal return is realized only when children attend pre-K programs that are of demonstrable quality. In Allegheny County, to take one example, only 24% of providers have achieved Keystone STAR 3 or STAR 4 standards ¨C so three-quarters of the children in early education programs are not yet receiving the kind of program that will yield the benefits of that investment.
Parents do not yet understand what comprises quality and how important it is. Figlar contends that the early education field needs to "drive the market better." In other words, advocates for early education need to ensure that parents (especially those who pay privately for early education) understand the importance of quality standards so demand grows for STAR 3 and STAR 4 programs and/or NAEYC Accredited Programs.
Cuts in public funding are putting the last decade of gains in Pennsylvania at risk. After significant improvements with Governor Rendell's leadership, Pennsylvania has lost ground over the past three years with respect to the various funding streams (from both DPW and DOE) for early care and education programs.
Funding uncertainties have consequences. Up-and-down funding (mostly down in recent years) makes it challenging for providers to build enough organizational capacity to offer placements for more children. In the city of Pittsburgh, there are more than 15,000 children under age 5 ¨C but providers are serving only about 1,700 of them with blended public-sector funding (state and federal Head Start, Pre-K Counts and school district funds).
What can be done? The group discussed several approaches:
- Ohio is working on attaching state quality standards to its licensing process - so that providers that don't meet state quality standards are not licensed and therefore are not reimbursable by public-sector funds in the state.
- Continued policymaker education. In just one example, Figlar pointed out that some DPW funding is at constant risk in part because it's called "child care." Because it is positioned as a way to ensure parents can work rather than an investment in the child's readiness to learn, it is easier to cut that funding.
- Build the ways that pre-K providers can share the costs of infrastructure. Grable Foundation, the Heinz Endowments and Richard King Mellon Foundation are supporting PAEYC to work on some shared solutions for providers for functions such as billing and fee collection, fundraising, food services and group purchasing.
- Policy changes to create stronger incentives toward quality: examples are to restrict use of EITC credits to providers that are STAR 3 s and STAR 4s, or to make renewals of licenses contingent upon participation in the STARS standard program and/ or accreditation by the National Association for Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
- Continued advocacy for public funding of early childhood programs.