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2020 Presidential Candidates on Child Care and Preschool

2020 Presidential Candidates on Child Care and Preschool

by | Jan 22, 2020 | Federal Policy, Preschool

UPDATE: Bernie Sanders has released a more detailed plan for early care and education since this post was originally published January 22. The link to that plan is here. 

Wondering about the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ plans for early care and education? So were we!

Oregon’s Early Learning Division reports that 19 percent of Oregon’s investment in early care and education comes from federal resources, which underscores the potential impact of a president’s plans on the 236,000 children in Oregon under 5.  And though public policies that affect young children and families cut across a broad range of categories, including health, housing, and immigration to name just a few, this comparison focuses on child care and preschool access.

We’ve also narrowed the field to the six candidates who are polling above 3 percent nationally and who have expressed substantive views on early care and education. 

Michael Bloomberg, who announced his candidacy in November, doesn’t have enough publicly available information on his plans for early childhood care and education for us to include here, though his website does include a section on maternal health, a focus of his philanthropic work. The candidate websites of Michael Bennett, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Deval Patrick, and Tom Steyer, are linked here as well. Bennett, a former school superintendent from Colorado, and Delaney, a Maryland congressman, have the most to say on early childhood-related topics of the candidates polling below 3 percent.

Following is a summary comparison of the six remaining candidates:  Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang. Keep scrolling to the end for a list of additional coverage and resources if you’d like to learn more. The Democratic primary calendar begins with the Iowa caucuses on February 3. Oregon’s primary is scheduled for May 19, with just four states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands voting after that date.

Joe Biden: A Focus on Social Emotional Health

Universal PreK? Yes for all

Child Care: Supports tripling the child care tax credit to $8000 and limiting household out-of pocket spending on child care to 10 percent of income.

Highlights:

We’ve got to invest in every child— regardless of zip code or race or parents’ income. In a Biden Administration, we’ll provide high-quality, universal pre-K for all three- and four-year-olds to ensure every kid gets a fair shot.

  • Increase in spending on special education and mental health supports.
  • Include an early childhood development expert in community health centers and pediatricians’ offices with a high percentage of Medicaid and CHIP participants.
  • Double funding for home visiting programs, and double the number of psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals in schools.

More at: https://joebiden.com/education/

We will make crucial improvements to early childhood learning so all students are prepared for kindergarten, and resource our K–12 teachers and schools to ensure students can learn and succeed regardless of their family income or zip code.

Pete Buttigieg: Explicit on Equity

Universal PreK? Yes for low-income families.

Child Care: Proposes a $700 billion investment to provide child care for children from birth to 5. Supports a cap on cost to families for early care and education to no more than 7 percent of income.

Highlights:

  • Supports a mixed-delivery child care provider system, home visiting programs, and dual language curriculum in early education.
  • Wants to “appoint federal leadership” that works to coordinate early childhood supports. Supports expansion of Head Start into a full-time program.
  • Invest $2 billion per year in early childhood workforce development and loan forgiveness for early childhood educators, and expand research on child development by providing $5 billion to the National Institutes of Health.
  • Buttigieg is one of the only candidates to explicitly mention equity in the early learning system, including the proposed creation of a $10 billion equity fund to support, test, and scale new practices and innovative policies.

More at: https://peteforamerica.com/policies/education/

Amy Klobuchar: Working Families & Wage Parity

Universal PreK? Yes for low-income families.

Child Care: Create a paid family leave program to provide 12 weeks of paid leave per year to care for a new child or other serious health need. Co-sponsor of the Child Care for Working Families Act. Proposes cap on child care spending to 7 percent of income for families making up to 150 percent of their state’s median income through a new federal-state partnership.

It’s impossible to have a strong economy when it’s too expensive to work because of child care.

Highlights:

  • Provide grants to Head Start and Early Head Start to provide full-day, year-round programming.
  • Increase the availability of child care through competitive grants to states to support the training and retention of child care workers and to build, renovate, or expand child care facilities in areas with shortages.
  • Require wage parity for early childhood educators who have comparable credentials with their elementary school peers.
  • Increase the corporate tax rate one additional point to 28 percent and tighten corporate tax loopholes to pay for cost of her plan.

More at: https://amyklobuchar.com/child-care-and-paid-family-leave/

In a society with our resources, it is unconscionable that we do not properly invest in our children from the very first stages of their lives.

Bernie Sanders: Universal Care for All

Universal PreK? Yes for all.

Child Care: Sanders, who once worked as a Head Start teacher, sponsored legislation in 2011 to provide universal care and early education for children from six weeks old through kindergarten.  The Foundations for Success Act did not make it through Congress. He also co-sponsored the Child Care for Working Families Act.

Highlights: A tax on Wall Street speculation would pay for universal preschool and “educational supportive” programs.

More at: https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-children/

Elizabeth Warren: Specific and Detailed

Universal PreK? Yes, for families earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

Child Care: A co-sponsor of the Child Care for Working Families Act, Warren has also introduced her own plan, the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Plan. Offers a calculator on her website for families to estimate the savings they would receive under that plan.  Supports a cap on child care costs at 7 percent of income.

Highlights:

  • Warren touts her plan for early care and education as the centerpiece of her campaign. She supports a federally subsidized, mixed-delivery provider system.
  • Care settings would be locally controlled, but operate under national quality standards.
  • To pay for her Universal Child Care and Early Learning Plan, she proposes an “ultra-millionaire tax” on households with a net worth of more than $50 million. Warren estimates the tax would generate $2.75 trillion dollars, more than four times the cost of her proposed early care and education plan.

More at: elizabethwarren.com

We’re the richest country in the history of the planet. Access to high-quality care and education during the first five years of a child’s life shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for the rich. It should be a right for every child.

Being a parent is the toughest job on the planet, even with a partner and strong extended family to rely on. It’s even tougher for the 13.6 million single parents out there, most of them mothers… We should be doing more to help them and the approximately 21 million children being raised in single-parent households.

Andrew Yang: Prioritize Single Parents

Universal PreK? Yes. Says he will increase federal funding for preschool programs.

Child Care: In addition to his signature proposal to offer a universal basic income of $1000 a month for all adults, his campaign website says he would provide tax breaks for child care services.

Highlights:

  • Supports the creation of “responsibility networks” that allow single parents to work with each other for child care and other responsibilities.
  • Invest in communal housing specifically for single parents to be able to pool resources and caregiving.
  • Provide loan forgiveness for education majors who volunteer at places that provide pre-K education.

More at: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/early-childhood-education/

Sources and Additional Reading

Who’s in for Universal PreK [Washington Post]

Vox asked Democratic candidates how they’d fix child care

New America’s Policy Reports on Child Care and Universal PreK

The State of Child Care in Oregon

 

Report: The State of Child Care in Oregon

Report: The State of Child Care in Oregon

by | Jan 15, 2020 | Child Care, Oregon Research, What We're Reading

The Oregon Early Learning Division has released its first of three reports on the state of publicly funded child care. The reports are mandated by passage of HB 2346 last March. The State of Early Care & Education and Child Care Assistance in Oregon offers a comprehensive review of state programs and how they currently work to serve children and families.

In painstaking statistical detail, the report reinforces what many families are living every day—the availability of high-quality, regulated child care slots in Oregon has dropped to crisis levels while the costs continue to increase. The lack of available, high-quality care is especially hard on low-income families, those living in rural or non-metro areas and those headed by single parent households. Children of color are disproportionately represented among households earning incomes below the federal poverty line ($42,660 per year for a family of three).

Some highlights of the report:

  • Nearly two-thirds of children under 5 have either both parents or a single parent employed.
  • 72 percent of the $1.3 billion spent on early care and education is directly financed by parents.
  • For children birth to 2, the entire state is a child care desert—defined as a place where there are more than three children for every available child care slot. Things improve only slightly as children age. For all children under 5, 27 of 39 counties in Oregon are considered a child care desert.
  • Only 15 percent of children eligible for subsidized child care are currently being served through state and federal subsidy programs. The median price of full-time child care for an infant is $14,532, substantially more than the cost of public college tuition in Oregon.
  • More than 24,000 people worked as early care and education providers in 2018, with the vast majority employed by center-based and large home care settings (77 percent). The median wage earned for center based care workers was $12–17.05 per hour. Home based providers typically earn less.

What’s Next?

The ELD and Oregon State University’s Child Care Research Partnership are working on a demographic and geographic analysis of supply and demand, and an additional report on barriers to accessing child care subsidies. Both reports are due by June 2020 to the Legislative Task force on Access to Quality Affordable Child Care, a group tasked to review and make recommendations for changes.

Read More

What If We Expanded Child Care Subsidies?

Oregon’s Child Care Crisis

 

 

 

 

CI Presents at COSA Early Learning Conference

CI Presents at COSA Early Learning Conference

by | Oct 29, 2019 | Successful Students, Research and Evaluation, Early School Success

Representatives from Children’s Institute were well represented at last week’s Confederation of Oregon School Administrator’s (COSA) Early Learning Conference in Portland, with staff leading or participating in five sessions—a record!

For those who missed the conference, here’s a roundup of our offerings. Click on the titles to see individual presentation decks. The full conference list and materials are here.

 

Early Learning Leadership Academy

CI’s Director of Programs and former assistant superintendent at Tigard-Tualatin School District Karen Twain co-led an early learning leadership academy session tailored for school administrators.

Twain, along with David Douglas School District principals Kate Barker and Ericka Guynes challenged the historical divide between preschool and K–12 learning. They also discussed how early learning strategies and approaches benefit all students, and offered practical guidance on how to maximize the impact of new and significant funding for early learning coming from the Student Success Act.

The Early Ed Essentials in Action: Stories from Earl Boyles Elementary School

CI’s Director of Research and Strategy Dr. Marina Merrill and principal Ericka Guynes illustrated this foundational approach to early education through examples and stories from Earl Boyles Elementary, the first site of the Early Works initiative.

Informed by data from our Early Works evaluation partners at Portland State University, Dr. Merrill and Guynes shared their experiences and led discussion among participants.

Soobin Oh, CI’s senior early education advisor, led three sessions that focused on various elements of classroom practice and approach:

Anti-Bias Education: Fulfilling the Vision of All Children Feeling Belonging and Significance

Based on a best-selling book by the NAEYC, Oh outlined the four goals of anti-bias education and practical guidance on how to apply these strategies to classrooms, including book and materials selection, how to address the celebration of holidays, and more.

Rethinking Challenging Behavior: Children Do Better When They Feel Better

In this encore performance of last year’s popular session, Oh’s presentation focused on how Positive Discipline and Collaborative Problem Solving can help to address challenging behaviors in the classroom; moving away from a reliance on punitive measures and moving towards a culture of responsibility, teamwork, and compassion.

Children’s Curiosity as a Vehicle for Learning: You Don’t Have to Teach Children to Ask “Why?”

In offering a research-based rationale for how children’s curiosity inspires deep learning, Oh explores how classroom design, material choices, and culture can help support ambitious instruction.

More on Leadership

In addition to CI’s participation in the conference, it’s also worth highlighting the work of keynote speaker, Dr. Steve Tozer, an expert on educational policy from the University of Illinois Chicago. In his review of Chicago Public Schools’ dramatic improvements in student outcomes over the last decade, Dr. Tozer makes a compelling argument for why and how P–3 learning and leadership needs to be a part of any effort that seeks to markedly improve and sustain academic outcomes for all students.  His presentation, Leading for Learning in Early Childhood Education: A Multi-Level Challenge is worth a review.