Social development in childhood day-care programs and research

Children in the Chicago Child-Parent Centers study had significantly higher math and reading scores, and by age 20 were more likely to have completed high school and to have lower rates of juvenile criminal activity than children not in the program. Existing studies linking employment and child care focused on affordability.

Clearly, higher-quality care is likely to be more expensive, and a parent facing that choice may elect to forgo or limit employment 47, That is no longer an option for women in welfare-to-work programs. There is only limited evidence on the relationship between child care quality and employment, but it suggests that among low-income women, higher-quality child care may increase the likelihood and stability of employment and hours or work 49 and improve mothers later educational achievement 50, Mothers in an intervention program providing center-based care for low-birthweight infants, the Infant Health and Development Program, were significantly more likely to be working than women in the control group, and the effect was greater for less-educated than for better-educated women There is complementary evidence of the negative effects of poor quality care on labor force participation.

Nearly a third of teenage mothers participating in one experiment, the Teenage Parent Demonstration, reported that unsatisfactory quality of child care led them to stop working or to change hours or activities Is high-quality care the norm or the exception? Unfortunately, there are no nationally representative studies to help us answer this question, and we must rely upon suggestive data from multisite studies. In the Cost, Quality, and Outcome Study 54 , centers in four states that varied in child care regulations were identified.

Of the sites that were studied, 12 percent were rated "less than minimal" in quality and 15 percent "good. This may represent a rather optimistic picture, for the sites that did not consent to the study seem likely to have offered lower-quality care. Only 52 percent of the sites consented to the observational studies. Perhaps the best available estimate for children 3 years old and younger is provided by the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, which conducted observations of over nonmaternal child care settings of all kinds grandparents, in-home care, child care homes, and centers in nine states 9.

In this study care was most often judged to be only fair in quality; over all, only 11 percent of the settings were considered excellent. Poor-quality care was most likely in centers serving infants and toddlers 10 percent than in centers serving older children 4 percent. Their estimate8 percent of settings for children under 3 poor, 53 percent fair, 30 percent good, and 9 percent excellent in process qualityled them to conclude that care is neither outstanding nor terrible, but that plenty of room for improvement remains.

Quality of child care in the United States can also be estimated by the degree of adherence to recommended guidelines in areas such as child:adult ratio and caregiver training.

Very few states currently have child care regulations that meet the age-based guidelines established by such professional organizations as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association For example, only three states have standards as strict as the recommended ratio for infants.

Some states are at substantial odds with recommended standards. Eight states, for example, permit ratios of for infants see Table 10 of the report. Nationally representative surveys also indicate that recommended standards for structural characteristics are often not met.

The Profile of Child Care Settings 56 found that the average center and child care home had child:adult ratios that did not meet standards that are linked to positive developmental outcomes. In , caregivers in centers, but not child care homes, did tend to be well-educated and trained. Nearly half had completed college, and 90 percent had received at least 10 hours of in-service training.

Regulated home child care providers had less education and training: 34 percent had no schooling beyond high school and only about two-thirds had received any in-service training.

More recent data from the NICHD study suggests there has been some decline in the educational background and training of child care staff over the decade Table 12 of the report. Just a little over half of infant and toddler caregivers had received specialized training during the preceding year and about two-thirds had more than a high school degree.

The decline may well be related to the generally low wages in the child care field, which have not improved over the s. It is not surprising that turnover is high, with 20 percent of centers losing half or more of their staff in the course of a year Economists define market failure as "a situation in which a market left on its own fails to allocate resources efficiently.

The first is lack of information. In part because the market is made up of small providers, it is difficult for parents to acquire information about the comparative quality, cost, and availability of care, and they are unsure how to evaluate the information they acquire. Considerations of convenience, time, and access mean that parents may limit their search to small geographic areas; these problems may be particularly acute for low-income families and for those who need care for odd-hours employment A second cause of market failure in the child care sector is what economists call "externalities" effects beyond the primary consumers.

The benefits of high-quality care accrue not just to the parent and the child but to society generally. They include lower costs for later schooling, as children enter school better prepared to achieve; future reductions in crime as juvenile delinquency diminishes; increased productivity and lower need for social services as working parents face fewer child-related absences or terminations and remain more securely attached to the labor market.

The family and social costs of poor-quality, unsafe, and unhealthy child care are equally apparent. To these major causes of market failure, we may add a thirdan "imperfect capital market. When markets fail, public-sector intervention may improve the performance of that sector of the economy. Such intervention may also be justified by the goal of equality of opportunity.

If high-quality child care improves cognitive ability, school readiness, and social behavior, children in low-income families should be given the same opportunity to benefit as children in high-income families. To accomplish this, government subsidies or direct provision of care are necessary. Research tells us that difficulty in obtaining high-quality care above all affects low-income families, especially those with intermittent work or nontraditional work hours.

As a result, such parents are more likely to rely on a patchwork of providers, including flexible and often unstable arrangements with relatives, friends, and neighbors 59, Lack of stability is itself a measure of poor-quality care. Thus market failure perpetuates itself. Because the demand for high-quality care is too low, compensation is too low, and the more highly trained seek employment in other spheres.

As a result, quality declines, unless intervention occurs. We believe that the compelling social arguments that justify the role of government in providing or subsidizing schooling from the elementary grades through college are equally applicable to the first five years.

Many of the benefits of child care are like those of primary schoolingchild care is, at its best, early childhood education. Just as primary schooling prepares children for secondary schooling, so good child care readies children for primary schooling. The community at large benefits from the cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral competencies that are associated with higher-quality child care. A variety of public-sector interventions may be used to improve child care. They include the provision of information, licensing requirements, placement activities, financial incentives, and training programs for child care workers, tuition subsidies and tax credits for parents, incentives for employer-provided care, and direct provision of care.

At a minimum, the public sector should provide information on available child care slots, hours of operation, structural quality, costs, and staff training. It might also establish training programs and mandate certain minimum requirements to improve quality, for example, reducing child:adult ratios and group sizes and establishing and enforcing safety regulations and certification requirements.

More ambitiously, the public sector might seek to increase the pool of well-qualified individuals who enter and remain in the field of early childhood education through the kinds of tuition subsidies and incentives traditionally used in nursing, physician, and teacher training when shortages appear. It seems especially important to raise salaries for child care providers, given how low they are compared to other occupations.

Government might play a role by providing increased information or tax credits to parents, by expanding subsidy programs, or by directly paying providers. A universal, coordinated high-quality child care system for preschool children of working parents might combine direct provision of services as part of local school district and community-based programs with vouchers that would be accepted by certified providers. Part of the costs could be offset by eliminating current tax credits and subsidies for 3- and 4-year olds.

Incentive and subsidy programs of many kinds exist, but they are not sufficiently widespread. Although federal funds are available to improve the access of lower-income families to child care, in October only about 1. States have been slow in making these funds available or have set up programs that have low take-up rates.

If states were to expand eligibility criteria to the federal maximum and establish better outreach programs, the demand for high-quality care would clearly increase.

Given the opportunity, parents receiving federal subsidies most frequently chose center-based care. A study of six community programs by the Urban Institute 60 suggests that subsidy programs enabled parents to access care that was as high in quality as that chosen by better-off, unsubsidized parents. What level of investment is necessary to improve the quality of nonparental child care in the United States?

This topic has received less attention than the relationship between quality of care and child outcomes. Several existing studies do, however, provide some useful information on the relationship between quality of care and cost, although they are limited in scope and not of recent date. Two studies using data from a General Accounting Office survey of accredited early childhood education centers that included measures of structural quality were able to estimate the costs associated with changing the child:adult ratio, the size of the group, and staff characteristics average education, average experience, and turnover rate 63, In each case they found statistically significant relationships.

For example, decreasing the average child adult:ratio by one is associated with increased costs of roughly 4. A one-year increase in the average educational level of the staff is associated with a 3.

A one-year increase in average staff experience is associated with a reduction in costs of 0. Finally, the impact of high turnover rates is clear: the departure of an additional 20 percent of the centers teaching staff increases costs by 6.

These data include only accredited centers in the Midwest and South, accepting children aged 4 and 5. Moreover, neither study included a short-term, readily available approach to improving the quality of child care: better training of caregivers, including in-service training.

We must, therefore, be cautious in applying these findings elsewhere and should bear in mind that the relationship between improving quality and cost for centers that provide care for other age groups may vary. Future work that incorporates current and nationally representative data will be crucial in evaluating public policy strategies designed to improve the quality of child care.

Researchers Richard Brandon of the University of Washington and Sharon Lynn Kagan of Yale University are now conducting research that will make it possible to estimate the costs of improving child care using varied measures of quality; their estimated completion date is Fall Child care quality matters, in terms of childrens everyday experiences, of their cognitive and linguistic competencies and school readiness, and of their later school achievement and social interactions.

Studies of child care quality in the United States suggest there is room for improvement. Process quality on average is only "fair" or "minimal. Both aspects can be improved, through additional public-sector resources and the application of federal standards or higher state standards. From an economists perspective, the clear evidence of market failure in the child care sector indicates a need for public-sector intervention. This includes literature reviews and meta studies that draw together findings from a number of studies.

Includes a record of the views and behaviours of the players — it studies the world from the perspective of the participating individual. Uses a range of methods in one study, such as participant observation; in depth interviewing of participants, key stakeholders, and focus groups; literature review; and document analysis. High quality qualitative research requires high levels of skill and judgement.

Sometimes it requires pulling together information from a mosaic of data sources and can include quantitative data the latter is sometimes called mixed mode studies. From a public official perspective, the weaknesses of qualitative research can include a the cost-it can be very expensive to undertake case studies if there are a large number of participants and issues, b the complexity — the reports can be highly detailed, contextually specific examples of implementation experience that while useful for service delivery and front line officials are of limited use for national policy development, c difficultyin generalising from poor quality and liable to researcher bias, and d focus, at times, more on political agendas of child rights than the most cost-effective policies to support the economic and social development of a nation.

It has proved hard for qualitative research to deliver conclusions that are as powerful as those from quantitative research. In fact, the strengths of qualitative ECEC research are many, and their importance for government, considerable. Qualitative research has been done in all aspects of ECEC operations and policies, from coordinating mechanisms at a national level OECD, , curriculum frameworks Office for Children and Early Childhood Development, , and determining the critical elements of preschool quality Siraj-Blatchford et al.

Qualitative research underpins best practice guides and regulations Bink, Cross country comparative studies on policies and programs rely heavily on qualitative research methods. For public officials qualitative components of program evaluations are essential to understanding how a program has worked, and to what extent variation in outcomes and impacts from those expected, or between communities, are the result of local or national implementation issues or policy flaws.

In many ways the contrast between quantitative and qualitative research is a false dichotomy and an unproductive comparison. Qualitative research complements quantitative research, for example, through provision of background material and identification of research questions. Much quantitative research relies on qualitative research to define terms, and to identify what needs to be measured.

For example, the Effective Provision of PreSchool Education EPPE studies, which have been very influential and is a mine of information for policy makers, rely on initial qualitative work on what is quality in a kindergarten, and how can it be assessed systematically Siraj-Blatchford et al. For example, quantitative research indicates that staff qualifications are strongly associated with better child outcomes, but it is qualitative work that shows that it is not the qualification per se that has an impact on child outcomes-rather it is the ability of staff to create a high quality pedagogic environment OECD, Systematic qualitative research focused on the design and implementation of government programs is essential for governments today.

Consider some of the big challenges facing governments in early childhood development note this is not a complete list :. Creating coordinated national agendas for early childhood development that bring together education, health, family and community policies and programs, at national, provincial and local levels The Lancet, Strategies and action focused on ethnic minority children, such as outreach, ethnic minority teachers and teaching assistants and informal as well as formal programs.

Enhancing workforce quality, including reducing turnover, and improved practice OECD, Effectively integrated services focused on parents, children and communities can only be achieved when professions and agencies step outside their silos Lancet, This would include redesign of initial training and professional development, and fostering collaborations in research, policy design and implementation.

Identifying and developing effective parenting programs that work in tandem with formal ECEC provision. Experiments to determine if there are lower cost ways of delivering quality and outcomes for disadvantaged children, including the merits of adding targeted services for these children on the base of universal services.

Making research literature more accessible to public officials OECD, Indeed it can be argued that some of the most critical policy and program imperatives are in areas where quantitative research is of little help.

In particular, qualitative research on effective strategies for ethnic minority children, their parents and their communities, is urgently needed.

In most countries it is the ethnic minority children who are educationally and economically the most disadvantaged, and different strategies are required to engage their parents and communities. This is an area where governments struggle for effectiveness, and public officials have poor skills and capacities. Research that is systematic and persuasive to governments is needed on for example, the relative effectiveness of having bilingual environments and ethnic minority teachers and teaching assistants in ECEC centres, compared to the simpler community outreach strategies, and how to build parent and community leadership.

Many countries are acknowledging that parental and community engagement is a critical element of effective child development outcomes OECD, Yet public officials, many siloed in education and child care ministries delivering formal ECEC services, are remote from research on raising parent awareness and parenting programs. They do not see raising parental skills and awareness as core to their policy and program responsibilities.

Improving parenting skills is particularly important for very young children say 0—3 where the impact on brain development is so critical. Other areas where qualitative research could assist are shown in Table 1 see p.

Much of the suggested qualitative research in Table 1 is around program design and implementation. It is well-known that policies often fail because program design has not foreseen implementation issues or implementation has inadequate risk management. One difficulty is that there is a lack of a common language and conceptual framework to describe ECEC implementation.

There is a need to derive robust findingsof generic value to public officials, for program design. Some CWDs pay those providers directly for the services performed. In addition to the services that CDE provides, small portions of the services in Stage 2 are administered by the California community colleges through its centers or an AP delivery system for the benefit of students. Resource and referral programs provide information to all parents and the community about the availability of child care in their area.

The programs assist potential providers in the licensing process; provide direct services, including training; and they coordinate community resources for the benefit of parents and local child care providers. These services are available in all 58 California counties. California's commitment to early childhood education and child development spans five decades and continues to promote a positive child- and family-focused philosophy. Service to low-income families remains a priority, and state program goals demand that high-quality child development programs and services be made available.

Quality improvement plan projects are described in detail on the Quality Improvement Activities webpage. Local child care and development planning councils LPCs support the overall coordination of child care services in each of the 58 counties. The LPCs are mandated to conduct assessments of county child care needs and to prepare plans to address identified needs. These assessments must contain information on the supply and demand for child care, including the need for both subsidized and nonsubsidized care.

California Department of Education. General Child Care and Development General child care and development programs are state and federally funded programs that use centers and family child care home networks operated or administered by either public or private agencies and local educational agencies.

Migrant Child Care and Development Migrant child care and development programs provide services to families who earn at least 50 percent of their total gross income from employment in fishing, agriculture or agriculturally related work during the twelve month period immediately preceding the date of application. Migrant Program CMIG Migrant child care and development programs use centers and family child care home networks operated or administered by either public or private agencies and local educational agencies.

Migrant Alternative Payment Program CMAP Migrant Alternative Payment programs issue vouchers to eligible, migrant families that can be used to purchase child care and development services at legally operating child care providers throughout California's central valley. Severely Handicapped Program The severely handicapped programs located in the San Francisco Bay Area provide care and supervision, age and developmentally appropriate activities, therapy, youth guidance, and parental counseling to eligible children and young adults from birth to 21 years of age.