Early Childhood Education
Opportunity and achievement gaps emerge long before US children enter kindergarten. Income-based differences in verbal interactions, health and nutrition, and the quality of paid care all affect young children’s development. The Broader Bolder Approach to Education promotes public investment in high-quality birth-to-8 policies that can narrow these gaps and boost low-income children’s achievement.
View BBA's Early Childhood Education Policy StatementPolicy Advocacy
Expand access to high-quality pre-k programs
Nearly all states now provide some public funding for pre-k programs, most for at-risk children. Bipartisan support for pre-k at both federal and state levels provides opportunities to enhance these programs.
- One way to accomplish this is by providing state matching funds to communities on a sliding scale, so that highest-need/lowest-income communities are prioritized, and they receive sufficient support to ensure quality programs. (Many states with high-quality pre-k have matching-funds systems. States with small programs might look to Alabama as a model; larger-program states could look to Virginia.)
- In states that have lost early elementary populations due to shifts in population ages, another option is to follow Oklahoma’s lead and use empty kindergarten classrooms (and teachers with strong credentials in early childhood/early elementary education) to provide age-appropriate education for 3- and 4-year-olds.
- States with solid pre-k programs that serve high proportions of 4-year-olds might look toexpand high-quality early education to 3-year-olds and toddlers by devoting a percentage of pre-k funds to younger children (as was done in Illinois).
- States looking to start new programs or expand pilots might explore Social Investment Bonds as a strategy. These rely initially on social venture capital investors, who get a “return” based on the program’s delivery of reduced social costs (grade retention, special education placement, etc). in participants' early school years. The goal is to use documented benefits to spur state policy investment. Pilot SIBs are being explored and/or underway in Utah and Alexandria, Virginia.
Tie teacher/caregiver quality to pay
As more states pilot and expand their Quality Ratings and Improvement Systems (QRISs), they have an opportunity to build into their programs incentives across the 0-8 range for quality. This also helps to professionalize the early childhood workforce and can bring additional state and community dollars to early childhood programs.
- One example of a policy mechanism is Louisiana’s Quality Start program, which uses a set of four household and business tax incentives to increase compensation for teachers (and the centers where they work) as they gain more credentials. The system also supports teachers’ higher education and provides small incentives for parents to choose higher-quality programs in the face of major disincentives posed by higher costs. States that have child care tax deductions can use them for this purpose, others could enact them .
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States can also build into their budgets for high-quality pre-k and other early childhood programs dollars to support connecting their QRIS to higher pay and incentives to increase caregiver credentials. Pennsylvania provides a good example of how a state can do this.
States like North Carolina that have strong T.E.A.C.H programs could establish a five-year-goal to subsidize a given percentage of ECE providers and set incremental increases to attain it.
- State credentialing requirements for early childhood caregivers could be expanded to support informal/family care centers’ shift into regulated/licensed work. Incorporating into education requirements for ECE workers classes that guide caregivers through the system is one way to smooth this transition. CLASP has suggestions for how to engage all regulated settings in the QRIS.
BBA Resources
Policy Statement
This ten-year blueprint lays out the immediate, medium-term, and longer-term policy changes needed to ensure that all children receive enriching, stimulating early care and education from knowledgeable, consistent, nurturing caregivers.
Read the Policy Statement
Bibilography
This short document brings together the extensive research base that supports the Broader Bolder Approach policy statement.
View the Bibliography
Policy Brief
This two-page brief provides a short advocacy-oriented summary of the key points set forth in the BBA early childhood education policy statement.
View the Policy Brief
PowerPoint Presentation
This slide deck, with accompanying detailed notes, provides early childhood advocates with the tools needed to present all of the key points of the Broader Bolder Approach early childhood education policy statement.
View the Presentation
Webinars and Events
ECE Webinar: Paid Early Childhood Caregivers and Educators
Robert C. Pianta, Dean, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia
What constitutes "quality"; the importance of teacher-child relationships; the evidence regarding training, certification, and professional development; and age-appropriate assessment and teacher support tools.
ECE Webinar: Economic Benefits of Early Childhood Investments, K-12 Impacts
Robert G. Lynch, Everett E Nuttle Professor of Economics, Washington College
Understanding and unpacking cost-benefit analyses of early childhood education programs, including their impacts on K-12 schools, and policy implications for K-12 education
ECE Webinar: Domains of Brain Development and Early Childhood Brain Science
Part I | Part II
Todd Grindal, Julius B. Richmond Dissertation Fellow at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child
What research demonstrates about the interaction among cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral development; how early parent- and teacher-child interactions shape subsequent development across domains; the nuances of early disadvantage, toxic stress, and brain plasticity; and implications for a range of policies
ECE Webinar: Parenting and Early Childhood Education: Parents as Children’s First and Most Important Teachers
Jane Waldfogel, Compton Foundation Centennial Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Virginia & Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development & Education, Professor of Pediatrics, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Co-director, National Center for Children and Families, Columbia University
How early parent-child interactions and relationships shape subsequent academic, social, emotional, and behavioral well-being, and the evidence behind and importance of investing in key policies, including paid family leave and nurse-home visits
Other Resources
- For our Babies: WestEd’s campaign, which promotes a holistic approach to developing early childhood care and education systems is closely aligned with that of BBA.
- Race to the Top -- Early Learning Challenge: Whether or not your state won a grant, the policies emphasized can guide ECE policy advocacy. Read comments submitted by the BBA Early Childhood Education working group to the draft RTTT criteria for grants .
- Data Quality Campaign: Improving data collection is key to turning our fragmented ECE programs into a coherent system. The Data Quality Campaign offers resources to help you ask the right questions and involve key players, and it provides strong state examples.
- Community Schools: Many community schools include quality early childhood education as a key component of their comprehensive strategies. The Linkages pilot projects taking place in New Mexico, Oregon, and Oklahoma provide helpful examples.
- Harvard Center for the Developing Child: Better understanding of the impacts of early experiences on children’s odds of life success helps promote investments in young children. Share this short video from the Center that makes a strong case for more early investments
- This video by the First Five Years Fund illustrates the early consequences of poverty and promotes investments to overcome them.
- This short report by BBA Task Force members Sharon Lynn Kagan and Jane Waldfogel presents the benefits Of Quality Pre-School And Health Interventions.
Share the BBA Principles
Learning begins at birth, education should too. By kindergarten, poor children lag behind their better-off peers by as much as two years.
It's time for a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education!
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Provide early parenting supports to prepare all children for school. Every dollar spent on nurse visits can save up to $6 in averted welfare, juvenile-justice, and health-care costs.
It's time for a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education!
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