Early Childhood Education

Child care providers are reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression compared to how they felt before the pandemic, according to surveys conducted by the Rapid Survey Project at Stanford University’s Center on Early Childhood.

About half of the child care providers surveyed said they experienced moderate-to-high levels of anxiety symptoms, including feeling nervous or restless/fidgety. About a third of providers said they had moderate-to-high levels of sad, hopeless or worthless feelings.

The data show that more needs to be done to support child care workers, including providing a livable wage and better working conditions, the Rapid Survey Project said in a fact sheet released May 24.

The survey responses — collected from 3,585 providers between March 2021 and July 2023 — also point to a connection between child care providers' mental health and material hardship. When providers struggle financially, they are more likely to report higher levels of emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, loneliness and stress.

Nearly half, or 44% of providers surveyed said they have difficulty affording at least one area of basic need, according to Rapid Survey Project data as of August 2023.

Low pay in the child care profession has been a concern among many for a while, but the issue has gained more attention in recent years due to staff shortages in early childhood programs, rising costs of living, and the cost of operating child care businesses. 

A survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children released earlier this year found that about one-third of early childhood program directors, owners and operators said they were paying more in rent for their businesses compared to 6 months earlier. And nearly half — 49% — reported paying more for liability insurance. 

The end of federal COVID-19 emergency child care funding in fall 2023 is causing more strain on the child care profession, according to several advocacy organizations. 

In response to potential funding cliffs, the U.S. Department of Education released updated guidance in February for how schools, districts and states can use federal Title I funding to expand access to high-quality preschool for 3- to 5-year-olds in a range of settings including schools, Head Start programs and community-based organizations. 

Last fall, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would raise average Head Start teacher wages by more than $10,000 a year, as well as other workplace recommendations. One aim of the salary increase for staff would be to help equalize pay of Head Start staff with other public preschool teachers. The federal Head Start program provides early childhood education services to children from low-income families

About 1,300 comments have been submitted in response to the proposed rule, including from the National Head Start Association, an organization that represents the Head Start workforce. In its comments dated Jan. 19, the association said that while the proposed rule is well-intentioned, HHS's recommendations are overly-prescriptive, and some are too vague.

In a May 22 letter to HHS coinciding with Head Start’s 59th anniversary, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, wrote that the proposed requirements exceed federal authority and would remove local decision-making. The financial burdens caused by the proposed rule would reduce the number of available slots for children by 15%, the letter said. 

"Congress intentionally did not prescribe strict wage scales in statute, ensuring that programs have needed flexibility to serve children, which HHS flagrantly ignored with this proposed rule," the letter said.

Early childhood education yields benefits for children once they enter elementary school, but longer-term benefits are more uncertain, a recent analysis published in the journal Science confirms.

As a result, more research is needed to understand how to design effective early education programs to support the skills children need for success in school and beyond, according to the study published this month on the impact of early childhood education. 

Like the new study, previous research had concluded that center-based preschool programs gave young children an academic advantage early in their elementary school years. But the new study's analysis of recent rigorous studies found that in some locations, those gains were null or dissipated over time. 

“It’s settled that early childhood education is an essential component of any nation’s public policy; children are learning well before kindergarten, and parents are working. What is less settled, however, is how much we should expect preschool to be shaping achievement and well-being later in life,” said study co-author Jade Jenkins, an associate professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, in a statement.

The study's analysis did find that for children entering Boston’s public pre-K program between 1997 and 2003, there were positive impacts on high school graduation, some standardized college admission test scores and college enrollment. The study also showed reduced disciplinary problems in high school for this cohort. 

"Interestingly," however, neither this study nor a subsequent one on the Boston program from 2007 to 2011 "reported positive impacts on academic skills before high school," the authors said.

To better understand preschool's effectiveness into a student's adulthood, follow-up evaluations of existing pre-K studies are needed, they said. The authors also recommend more research into the components that distinguish successful from less successful preschool programs.

Early educators positive about job

In a separate study released May 15, a survey of 2,200 early childhood educators nationwide found nearly all — 97% — report a passion for working with young children. In addition, 87% said they take pride in their job, and three-fourths say they are satisfied with their work, according to the report from Teaching Strategies, an early education resource provider.

But when asked about students' early literacy skills, just 28% of early education teachers said they were "very prepared" to teach early literacy. Most — 83% — said they were either not familiar or just somewhat familiar with the science of reading approach.

Several states have recently expanded instruction and professional development in science of reading practices that emphasizes phonics and the decoding of letters and sounds to learn words.

"In order to build a strong foundation for literacy, we must start in early childhood education, particularly in the critical year before kindergarten,” said Nicol Russell, vice president of implementation research at Teaching Strategies, in a statement on the report.

Enrollment in state-funded preschool programs surged during the 2022-23 school year, but access to quality early learning is uneven across the states, according to The State of Preschool 2023 Yearbook released April 18 by the National Institute for Early Education Research and Rutgers Graduate School of Education. 

The research shows a 7% increase in pre-K participation in 2022-23 compared with the previous year. Enrollment of 3- and 4-year-olds reached an all-time high at 11%, and 6% growth, respectively. 

Overall, 35% of 4-year-olds in the U.S. attended an early learning program in 2022-23. New universal pre-K programs in several states contributed to the growth, NIEER said.

However, the number of children enrolled in state-funded preschools — 1.6 million in 2022-23 —- is still lower than prior to the pandemic. Nearly 25,000 fewer children attended preschool in fall 2022 than in fall 2019. 

The reason the pre-K enrollment percentage is higher but the actual child count is lower is because the percentage is calculated with the overall population of 3- and 4-year-olds, and that population group is declining in numbers.

Still, the percentage increase trend is encouraging for early education professionals and advocates who watched the pandemic wipe out a decade of progress in enrollment increases. In fact, previously reported NIEER data showed a 5% dropoff of 4-year-olds participating in state-funded pre-K between 2019-20 and 2020-21.

"With the pandemic in the rearview, it is time for state and federal leaders to choose whether and how they are going to support high-quality preschool,” said Allison Friedman-Krauss, the report's lead author and assistant research professor for NIEER, in a statement. 

Spending up but uneven across states

NIEER said another notable finding is that state funding for pre-K programs in 2022-23 was at an all-time high. States spent $11.7 billion — including federal COVID-19 relief dollars — on state-funded preschool in 2022-2023, an increase of $1.17 billion, or 11%, from the previous year after adjusting for inflation.

Hawaii, California, Michigan and New Mexico are among states dedicating money toward large-scale expansion of preschool programs.

State spending per child averaged $7,277, which exceeded pre-pandemic amounts but wasn't vastly different from the $6,945 average in 2002. If federal and local reported investments are added into the calculation, the per-child average rises to more than $8,000. With unreported local resources, the per-child average would be $11,300. 

But that figure still falls below estimates of the actual per-child amount needed in many states for high-quality, full-day pre-K for 4-year-olds. For example, those costs would be $12,474 in Arizona, $18,437 in Connecticut, and $13,476 in North Dakota. 

NIEER's yearbook also focuses on the quality of state-funded pre-K programs. It found that nationally, young children are more than twice as likely to attend programs meeting fewer than half of NIEER’s 10 minimum policy benchmarks than programs meeting nine or 10 of the voluntary standards. The organization cites inadequate funding as one reason for this, as well as states' decisions to give local control for pre-K policies to local entities. 

NIEER recommends states take the lead in improving early education policies through commitments to funding, universal access for both 3- and 4-year-olds, and full-day access, among other initiatives. 

"“The research is crystal clear that children who attend high-quality preschool are better prepared when they enter the kindergarten door, laying a foundation for later success,” said Steven Barnett, NIEER’s senior co-director and founder, in a statement.

Early childhood educators can help young students develop a scientific mindset by avoiding rote memorization of facts and by introducing inquiry-based and engaging activities rooted in the sciences, said Cindy Hoisington, a project director at Education Development Center, a nonprofit that seeks improvements in education, health and economic opportunities.

By focusing on concepts — like how light makes a shadow — rather than the memorization of facts and scientific procedures, educators can help deepen young students' foundational learning of science through exploration. 

These accessible activities can also build the confidence of early educators who may think they don't have enough expertise in scientific methods to introduce science lessons to preschoolers, said Hoisington, who is also an early elementary science educator.

This approach also helps build young students' skills in collaboration, critical thinking, communication and creativity, said Hoisington, who wrote about the topic in the journal Science and Children.

Hoisington said she wants young students and their teachers to understand the "playfulness of science" and to see science as "this really dynamic process that we actually all bring a lot of background knowledge that we haven't thought of as being scientific knowledge, and that there are opportunities in our day-to-day lives at home, at school and in the community to really engage with science." 

Much attention in early childhood education is centered on building students’ foundational skills in reading, writing and math. But science instruction should also have a prominent role in teaching and learning, she said.

"For teachers, it's not just the joy of doing it themselves, but when they see their students respond, that just lifts them up and makes them more excited and makes them remember why they went into teaching," Hoisington said.

Some examples of activities educators can use to increase preschoolers’ scientific knowledge include:

• Using balls and ramps to show movement and encourage exploration of how ramps affect how balls roll

• Encouraging students to examine their own shadows outside in sunlight or indoors with flashlights.

• Introducing lessons about weather by making windsocks, which are cloth tubes to show the direction and strength of the wind, and rain gauges, which are tools to collect rainfall amounts.

• Teaching about sound volume by having students whisper to each other at close range and from across the room.

• Digging for worms to explore how they move and how they are different from humans.

Students are "really super excited about everyday phenomena that adults take for granted," Hoisington said. "When you focus on everyday phenomena, kids can explore it. It's not something they can only do in school, but it's something they can explore throughout the day, wherever they are."

These activities can be purposeful with teachers encouraging students to make close observations, ask questions and compare what they are seeing, she said.

Hoisington said there's a research-to-practice gap when it comes to early childhood science instruction. Early elementary instruction is included in the Next Generation Science Standards that were developed to help students have a high-quality K-12 science education, and many states have adopted these standards.

The Early Childhood Science Interest Forum is one way early educators are connecting to share effective strategies and quality materials for teaching science to young students. Additionally, Hoisington recommends the publicly-available Peep and the Big Wide World science curriculum supported by the National Science Foundation.

The University of Northern Iowa Regents’ Center for Early Developmental Education also has a preschool STEM curriculum centered on the movement of objects.

The expiration in fall 2023 of federal COVID-19 emergency child care funding is creating a “child care crisis” as centers face multiple challenges including staff shortages, program closures and rising tuition rates, according to survey results released by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. 

Of survey respondents who identified as center directors and family child care owners or operators, 56% said they were underenrolled based on their current capacity. The reasons for underenrollment included staffing shortages (89%), low pay (77%) and lack of affordability for families (66%).

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 26 released revised guidance for how schools, districts and states can use federal Title I funding to expand access to high-quality preschool for 3- to 5-year-olds in a range of settings including schools, Head Start programs, and community-based organizations. The guidance was last updated in 2012.

According to the NAEYC analysis of survey responses from 10,128 early childhood educators nationwide, 55% of all respondents said they knew of at least one child care program closing in their community in the past six months. Only 30% were aware of a new program opening, and 11% said four or more programs closed in their community.

About 36% of directors, owners and operators said they were paying more in rent compared to 6 months earlier. Nearly half (49%) reported paying more for liability insurance. 

"The results make it clear — significant public investment in child care is needed urgently to ensure programs can retain qualified educators and remain open to serve children and families," said Michelle Kang, CEO of NAEYC, in a statement.

Nearly $24 billion in American Rescue Plan funds for child care stabilization grants to states, territories, and tribes expired Sept. 30, 2023. That money was targeted to the child care industry to meet the challenges caused by the pandemic.

At the time, The Century Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, estimated 3.2 million children would lose access to child care and about 70,000 child care programs would close when the stabilization funds ran out.

In a report last month, The Century Foundation noted efforts in several states over the past two years to prop up the child care sector. The report specifically highlights initiatives in New Mexico that made it the first state to create a permanent fund for child care through a ballot initiative.

Additionally, an analysis from the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit focused on affordable access to quality child care and early learning programs, found this sector was a focal point of governors' state of state addresses. The analysis, released this month, reviewed 40 governors' addresses delivered before February 22, 2023, and found most (82%) devoted a portion of their remarks to child care, early learning and policies that help new parents and babies.

Expanding early childhood education opportunities through the use of federal Title I funding is also the focus of an updated resource from the Education Department. The nonbinding guidance explains that Title I funds can be used to serve eligible children from birth to school age, but acknowledges that, in practice, most of these preschool Title I funds are for programs serving children ages 3 to 5. 

Additionally, the guidance describes how Title I funds can support the professional development and retention of early educators. It also highlights ways to meet the developmental and linguistic needs of preschool students, especially children with disabilities and English learners.

Placing Head Start early learning programs on community college campuses has the potential to support both young children and their college-going parents, said the National Head Start Association and the Association of Community College Trustees, which have partnered on technical assistance efforts for expanded programing.

Called “Kids on Campus,” the five-year project launched with a user guide to help community colleges and Head Start programs connect, negotiate and launch successful partnerships.

Locating Head Start programs on community college campuses could help overcome current barriers to affordable and quality early learning centers for children from low-income families, said NHSA and ACCT. However, they warned that financial and logistical issues will need to be addressed.

Insufficient child care and early learning opportunities present significant barriers for the 1.7 million parents attending community college, said Jay Nardini, chair of ACCT’s board of directors, in a statement. Nardini, who also chairs the board of Iowa's Hawkeye Community College, said single parents in college typically have children under age 5 and would be eligible for Head Start services.

Currently, 130 community colleges house an Early Head Start program for children under age 3 or Head Start programs for 3- to 5-year-olds, according to NHSA. Head Start programs operate out of a variety of locations, including elementary schools, community centers, family-based care centers and colleges. 

"Head Start and community colleges are two perfectly matched pieces of a complex puzzle, coming together to complete the picture of what comprehensive education can — and should — look like," said Yasmina Vinci, NHSA's executive director, in a statement.

Head Start programs operate out of a variety of locations, including elementary schools, community centers, family-based care centers and colleges. The federal Head Start and Early Head Start programs are available to children from birth through age 5 who are from low-income families. 

Nationally, the program has more than 1 million children and 275,000 staff, according to NHSA. 

NHSA and ACCT outlined possible benefits from the service partnerships, including:

• Free, high-quality child care and early education for qualifying community college parents.
• Expertise from Head Start to operate on-site child care.
• Head Start locations near target populations. On-campus sites could have free or drastically reduced rent, with the rent reduction used as an in-kind donation toward the program's required 20% match of federal funds.

The Kids on Campus user guide shares examples from existing partnerships. 

New Hampshire's Manchester Community College, for instance, partners with Head Start provider Southern New Hampshire Services to operate an on-campus child development program with 14 slots for Head Start participants who are 3-5 years old. The child development center offers another 20 slots for children 6 weeks through 5 years old.

Manchester Community College students who are studying early childhood, nursing, psychology and other courses can use the child development center for student observation and practical experience. The Head Start classroom, which exists within the school's child development center, operates part-day services on a school-year calendar. The non-Head Start classrooms, on the other hand, are open on a full-day, full-year schedule.

The challenges to partnerships, according to the user guide, include how to align college and Head Start schedules, as well as confusion from families over eligibility for services between the Head Start program compared to the child development center.

Today's early elementary schoolchildren, who were ages 1-4 in spring 2020 when COVID-19 shut down schools and early learning programs, are continuing to show a lack of school readiness in math and reading skills, according to fall 2023 results from Curriculum Associates, an assessment company behind the i-Ready Diagnostic tool.

More kindergartners in fall 2023 — who were 1-2 years old in March 2020 — began the school year below grade level in reading compared to kindergartners from fall 2019, for example.

The data aligns with other research showing post-pandemic concerns about academic and social-emotional school preparedness among young students. Lower levels of kindergarten readiness are linked to poorer outcomes in elementary through high school academics, according to research.

The Curriculum Associates data includes a nationally representative sampling across fall 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023 of 7.8 million K-2 students for math and 5.9 million K-2 students for reading.

"Though in some subgroups there were only small declines from pre- to post pandemic, the percentage of students beginning the year well below grade level has grown substantially in some grades, with no sign of recovery or return to pre-pandemic levels," the report said.

For students now in 1st grade, and who were 2-3 years old in spring 2020, the analysis shows 12.5% of students performed two grades below in math in fall 2023 compared to 10.5% in fall 2019.

Students in 2nd grade, who were ages 3 and 4 in March 2020, made small increases in average scale scores, but their performances remained behind pre-pandemic levels. About 36.1% are testing two grades below in math compared to 27% in 2019. 

Performance gaps are also evident when broken down by race. In schools where more than 50% of students are either Black or Hispanic, fewer students are entering the school year on grade level. Comparatively, majority White schools show greater proportions of students performing on grade level at school entry. This pattern was seen for both reading and math performances.

The findings are one of the first glimpses into the impact of the pandemic on students in K-2, according to Kristen Huff, Curriculum Associates' vice president for assessment and research. 

"Nationwide, we are seeing that students who were ages one to four at the start of the pandemic are coming to school less prepared, lagging behind expectations, and showing limited signs of recovery, particularly in math," Huff told K-12 Dive in an email.

She added that the data highlights the challenges early childhood educators face. It also underscores that early intervention is critical. 

"We are hopeful that this data can help encourage additional research while also leading to solutions that will help students achieve success in the future,” Huff said.

A bright spot in the report was the increase in phonics performance for reading across all grade levels, with fall 2023 performances making a climb toward pre-pandemic levels. 

However, when looking at number and operations achievement in math, all grade levels show stagnant grade placement results between fall 2022 and fall 2023. In 1st grade, for example, 87.6% of students tested one or two grade levels behind in number and operation skills in fall 2023, compared to 87.5% in fall 2022. In grade 2, 82.8% tested one or two grades behind, which was the same percentage from fall 2022 testing.