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NWLC Federal Update
Congressional leaders have finally come to an agreement on defense and non-defense spending (the "top-line number") for FY24 appropriations and will hopefully avoid a government shutdown. Unfortunately, the agreement does not retain the ECE increases that were included in the bipartisan Senate LHHS Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations Bill. Therefore, it’s important that we continue to make the case that any additional funding considered by Congress includes our ECE priorities. More: Congress reaches spending deal that could help avoid government shutdown | AP News.
Our country needs Congress to push past the chaos and focus on the basics: keeping the government running and passing funding bills that place the needs of women, families, and children first.
Supplemental Federal Child Care Funding Update:
As the timeline for passing the national security supplemental request continues to draw out, we are now focused on ensuring that any domestic supplemental that is considered includes $16 billion for child care and early learning.
Updated Report - State Child Care and Early Education Updates 2023: Continuing Progress
From the National Women’s Law Center:
State Child Care and Early Education Updates 2023: Continuing Progress - National Women's Law Center (nwlc.org)
Child care and early education is vital to parents’ work and educational opportunities, children’s development, and the economy’s growth. Yet, families struggle to find and access affordable, high-quality child care, and the child care workforce struggles with inadequate compensation. These challenges will likely only worsen with the end of the child care relief funding provided during the pandemic under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)—including $24 billion in child care stabilization grant funding for child care providers that expired at the end of September 2023, and $15 billion in supplemental funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) that is set to expire at the end of September 2024—unless additional long-term federal funding is provided.
While federal investment is crucial to ensure a strong child care system across the country, states can also play an important role in supporting progress on child care through investments and innovative policies. As shown in the state-by-state summaries in this report, many states made progress in 2023, adopting policies and/or allocating resources to expand families’ access to child care and early learning opportunities and better support the child care workforce:
- A number of states provided funding to increase early educators’ wages, benefits, and professional development opportunities in an effort to boost recruitment and retention.
- Some states expanded eligibility for child care assistance so that more families could receive help paying for care.
- Several states expanded their prekindergarten programs to serve more children and enhance quality.
- A few states were able to either reverse past child care policies that were detrimental to families or block new legislation that would have a negative impact on child care programs and the families they serve.
The new investments and policy changes approved and/or implemented in 2023 are essential to ensuring families, child care programs, and early learning educators have the necessary support to succeed. Although many states improved their child care systems, not all states had success in 2023. Several states missed opportunities to increase funding or pass legislation that would enhance early care and education for their families. Further sustainable, long-term investments and policy improvements across all states are necessary to create a child care system that works for all families, children, and child care providers.
Take Action - New NAEYC Workforce Survey
From NAEYC:
I wanted to share some exciting information about NAEYC's newest ECE field survey, which we began fielding on Monday. We would greatly appreciate your support in lifting this up within your networks, to help ensure we receive the robust response needed to provide state-based and localized data and stories about the impact of the expiration of stabilization grants. More information below, as well as links to the survey in English and Spanish.
NAEYC’s ECE Field Survey
Take 15 minutes to complete NAEYC’s newest survey of the ECE field in English or Spanish (and have the chance to win 1 of 20 prizes, including a $100 gift card or a free registration to NAEYC’s 2024 Virtual Public Policy Forum!).
Federal child care stabilization grants ended on September 30, 2023. Through our partnership with the RAPID EC Survey Project, NAEYC has shared some data about the impact on the national child care landscape, but completing and sharing this new survey ensures we can get updated, state-based, and localized data and stories, about the up-to-the-moment realities of what is happening across our sector so we can collectively share those with you, advocates, policymakers, the press, and the public.
Webinar - Building a Comprehensive State Child Care Agenda
From the Center for American Progress:
Join the Center for American Progress’ Early Childhood team on Thursday, January 18, for a virtual event 2:30 - 3:30 pm ET exploring how state policymakers and advocates can utilize the team’s recently published Child Care and Early Learning in the U.S. Data Dashboard and State Policymaker Toolkit.
RSVP HERE.
As many states embark on their 2024 legislative sessions, this event will provide state policymakers and advocates with the resources to make an effective case for increasing investments in child care and early learning programs in their states. You’ll have the chance to hear from these members of CAP’s Early Childhood Team:
- Anna Lovejoy, Director of State Early Childhood Policy, co-author of the State Policymaker Toolkit
- Hailey Gibbs, Senior Policy Analyst, co-author of the Data Dashboard & State Policymaker Toolkit
- Allie Schneider, Policy Analyst, co-author of the Data Dashboard
- Erin Grant, Policy & Outreach Specialist
Join the conversation.
Lecture - Expanding Our Views of Marginalized Students’ Identities, featuring Mesmin Destin
From The Duke Center for Child and Family Policy:
The Duke Center for Child and Family Policy invites you to the Early Childhood Initiative Lecture, Expanding Our Views of Marginalized Students’ Identities, featuring Mesmin Destin from 3-4:30 PM EST on February 13. A Zoom option is available.
Abstract: Significant advances in psychological science have shed insight on how to best support the achievement and well-being of students from a diverse range of backgrounds. This talk covers research on specific factors shaping the experiences and outcomes of students from marginalized communities. Recent studies provide evidence regarding the effects of strengths-based messages about students’ marginalized identities. A series of experiments demonstrate the importance of strengths-based messages from various levels of social and contextual forces surrounding students.
Mesmin Destin is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is also a fellow of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research and the inaugural faculty director of Student Access & Enrichment. He completed his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Michigan in 2010. Destin uses experiments and other methods to investigate factors shaping the experiences and outcomes of students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. He received the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution in 2019 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2021.
The Early Childhood Initiative seeks to bring together scholars to address early childhood challenges and produce world-class scholarship that will help maximize the potential of all children during their early years.
Resources - Reimagining Parent Leadership
From The National Center for Family & Parent Leadership:
The National Center for Family & Parent Leadership has launched its new website, parentleadership.org. The site will serve as a launching pad for states, organizations and communities to learn about how to embed family and parent leadership in helping shape decisions and become more equitable, culturally relevant and customer-centric. The National Center offers an array of capacity-sharing opportunities and resources. Learn more about the Center, and how to authentically engage families in the creation of more equitable early childhood systems by visiting their website and sharing it with others.
Survey Analysis - Mississippi child care workers earn below 'survival wage'
From The Hechinger Report:
Mississippi child care workers are strained by low pay and lack of training — but an additional $5 an hour in salary would prompt around half of those workers to stay in their jobs and to seek additional education, according to a new survey by state child care advocates.
The coalition Mississippi Forum for the Future surveyed nearly 700 child care workers, most of whom provide care in centers, to draw attention to the precariousness of the child care sector in the state. Early childhood educators are facing strain across the nation, but Mississippi is in a particularly difficult position: Workers reported an average hourly wage of $10.93 and typically have no benefits. In contrast, a “survival wage” in the state for a single adult is $12.28 an hour, according to the report.
Nationally, child care workers earn $14.22 on average, according to federal labor statistics.
Additional information gathered from the survey:
- Just under 70 percent of child care workers said they worked 40 or more hours a week.
- More highly educated workers earned more, but the differences were not large: Child care employees with a high school diploma reported earning $10.22 an hour on average, but those with a bachelor’s degree or higher said their salary averaged $12.79 an hour.
- Close to half, or 48 percent of the workers surveyed, said they did not have training beyond high school. A similar percentage of child care workers — 47 percent — reported that they are working with children who have mental, physical, or emotional disabilities.
- About 36 percent said they relied on public support programs such as Medicaid or the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.
- A little more than a third reported they had looked for a new job, and of that group, most of them were looking for jobs out of the child care sector.
In the midst of these stresses, demand for child care in the state is still quite high.
More: Mississippi child care workers barely earn ‘survival wages’ - The Hechinger Report
Report - State Medicaid/WIC Opportunities
From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Georgetown Center for Children and Families:
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Georgetown Center for Children and Families are pleased to share our new report: State Medicaid Agencies Can Partner With WIC Agencies to Improve the Health of Pregnant and Postpartum People, Infants, and Young Children.
The report focuses on three ways that state Medicaid agencies can coordinate with state WIC agencies to enroll as many eligible people as possible:
- Share Medicaid enrollee data with WIC agencies to identify eligible families who are not enrolled in WIC, conduct targeted outreach to them, and simplify their enrollment.
- Support a community-based health workforce that can strengthen connections to WIC.
Work with health care providers and Medicaid managed care organizations to include WIC enrollment as a strategy to improve quality and address health-related social needs.
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