DERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — On a bright fall morning last year, a shimmering, human-sized Hershey’s Kiss with bright blue eyes greeted delighted children and their parents outside of the first early childhood education center launched by the Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning.

Inside the new nearly 51,000-square-foot facility, built to accommodate 150 students, children funneled into their bright, well-stocked classrooms. They were welcomed by teachers who had spent 12 months in paid professional development, unusual in a field where teacher training varies greatly. The young students, ranging in age from 6 weeks to 5 years, went about their day in well-stocked, spacious classrooms, playing and learning in small groups. The ample staff provided low student-to-teacher ratios and allowed for large amounts of individual attention.

The day featured visits to the center’s “STEM Garden,” where children could learn about gardening, nature and animals from several interactive displays that offer child-appropriate introduction to science, technology, engineering and math. The kids had abundant time to run, climb and pedal bikes in one of several outdoor play spaces. And they gathered with their classmates to enjoy several family-style meals and snacks, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, Southwest turkey chili and tuna casserole.

On paper, this child care program seems like it would cost parents tens of thousands of dollars a year, rivaling college tuition, as many early learning programs do. But here in picturesque Hershey, Derry Township’s best known community, it’s all free: the first brick and mortar of a new initiative cooked up by stewards of the Hershey billions.

The early learning center, located in a town that engenders Willy Wonka vibes with street names like “Chocolate Avenue,” street lights shaped like Hershey’s Kisses and a faint scent of sweetness that wafts through the air, is one of the most recent examples of billionaires launching child care programs.

Similar efforts to provide free early care and learning are sprinkled throughout the country, including “Montessori-inspired” preschools in six states funded by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, as well as several programs sponsored by hotel magnate Harris Rosen in Orlando, Florida. In Pennsylvania, the Hershey early learning program is one of what will ultimately be six free early childhood education centers around Pennsylvania, at a cost of $350 million, funded by the Milton Hershey School Trust. (Catherine Hershey Schools are a subsidiary of the Hershey-based residential Milton Hershey School.)

Related: Will the real Montessori please stand up?

In a country with exorbitantly priced child care and a lack of available, high-quality options, initiatives like these provide a new opportunity to see the effect that free or heavily subsidized high-quality child care — something that is already the norm in many other wealthy, developed nations — could have in America. The fact that robust federal child care funding legislation has repeatedly been killed by legislators means that foundation funding may be among the few — and the fastest — ways to launch and test certain programs or approaches to the early years.

The hope is that ultimately, private investment will help a community “invest in something and push it forward and … help it move to the point where it gets public attention,” as well as public funds, said Rena Large, program manager at the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC), an organization that helps philanthropists invest in the early years.

In the past few years, private foundations have taken on an outsized role in early learning programs and systems, funding initiatives that raise staff compensation, support existing or new programs and provide emergency funds. Nationwide, the amount of grants aimed at early childhood has increased significantly, from $720.8 million between 2013 and 2015, to $1 billion between 2021 and 2023, according to data compiled by the collaborative from the nonprofit Candid’s philanthropy database. (Data is self-reported and categorized by funders.)

Within the early childhood collaborative, membership numbers have tripled since 2016. “The pandemic brought more people to the table,” said Shannon Rudisill, executive director of the funders collaborative. “There’s been a real blossoming of innovation.” Many of those funders are hopeful that their efforts will lead to federal investment, as well as “policy and systems change,” she added.

At the same time, philanthropic involvement in education overall, including in early learning, raises questions around best practices. Are philanthropists adequately considering the needs of communities? How can and should a philanthropy involve community and existing efforts in the field? Are philanthropies listening to research and experts as they go forth and create? Should philanthropies reinvent the wheel or invest in what already exists?

Some in the early childhood community have criticized Bezos’ efforts, for example, arguing the billionaire should have supported existing, research-backed early learning programs and systems rather than creating “Montessori-inspired” schools based on what he thought children needed. And there could be unintended downstream effects of philanthropic programming or influence. For example, Hershey’s salary and benefits package is comparable to that offered by local school district, which may draw child care employees away from local programs that pay less.

Related: Who should pay for preschool for the middle class?

Hershey’s latest endeavor came from a clear community need identified by officials at the early childhood center. In Hershey — a community about 95 miles west of Philadelphia — and surrounding areas, child care is scarce and poverty is high. Over the past decade, teachers at the nearby Milton Hershey School, a private K-12 boarding school, noticed their youngest students were coming in markedly behind previous cohorts.

“The needs of the children enrolling at 4 and 5 and 6 were more pronounced than they ever were before,” said Pete Gurt, president of the Milton Hershey School and Catherine Hershey Schools. They needed more support with social and emotional, academic, language and even life skills, like potty training.

“When you look at the landscape [of child care] in Pennsylvania, it’s no different than anywhere else. You’ve got high demand, short supply, and of the supply, not as many organizations would be identified as high quality,” he added.

When I visited the Hershey school in October, friends and colleagues delighted in the idea of chocolate billionaires funding child care:

“Do they give them chocolate all day long?” (No, they do not.)

“I hope they give them dental screenings, ha.” (They do, for free.)

“Is it secretly a training pipeline for future Hershey employees?” (Not that I could tell, although officials from Hershey’s hospitality division were in the school’s lobby one morning to provide career information for parents.)

In addition to the trained educators, low ratios and research-based curricula, the Catherine Hershey Schools offer free transportation to its building, free diapers and wipes in classrooms, occupational and speech therapy, an in-house nurse, community partnerships, a parent resource center with individual parent coaches, external evaluators and an in-house researcher from the University of Pittsburgh who is tracking the school’s outcomes to see if all of this is working.

I was mostly curious to see if free child care is as life-changing as many early childhood experts think it could be in America, especially for low-income families — Hershey sets income limits for families at 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $77,460 for a family of three.

Nearly two weeks after the first center launched, I met with Tracey Orellana, the mother of two toddlers at the school. Orellana was delivering packages for Amazon one day when she saw the early learning center, then under construction. She had been considering putting her two youngest children in child care so her husband, who works nights, could rest during the day while she was out working. The potential to get free child care made the decision a no-brainer.

“We were juggling. We were juggling so much,” said Orellana, who also has two school-age daughters. At the time, the family had incurred a mountain of debt and was struggling to afford basic needs like groceries. Now that the toddlers are in child care at no cost to their family, Orellana has been able to increase her work hours to full time, adding to her income and stability. The family is now able to afford food and has almost caught up with bills.

The school “provides the opportunity to build a life for our kids and keep them out of whatever the situation may be, streets, poverty, keep them clothed, keep them fed, keep the electric on, the heat on,” she said. Her daughters also have opportunities they wouldn’t have at home, Orellana added, such as getting to ride bikes, play games and make new friends.

“It gives them a childhood,” Orellana said.

Related: Five elements of a good preschool  

Other parents say they’ve been able to access a higher quality of care for their children now that money isn’t a factor. Allyson Anderson, the single mother of a preschooler, had to return to her job as a therapist at a rehabilitation center a year after giving birth to her daughter, Lilah. When Anderson went back to work, she chose child care using a method familiar to many American parents: “Honestly, just an open space.”

The programs her daughter ended up in were mediocre, Anderson said. While caregivers generally kept Lilah safe, classrooms lacked structure and Anderson was disappointed with the low level of attention Lilah received during the day.

But she had few other options. During Lilah’s first few years, money was tight and Anderson was struggling to cover her mortgage, bills and child care, which cost “the same as a mortgage payment” each month.

At Hershey, Anderson is most impressed by the experience and training of teachers, as well as by the fact that there are three teachers in a classroom capped at 17 children, far lower than the state mandated ratio. “They have more teachers in the classroom. They can pay more individual attention to each kid,” Anderson said. She is no longer concerned about the level of care Lilah receives.  “I don’t really have to worry. I know she’s in good hands.”

Downstairs in a classroom for preschoolers, I watched 3-year-old Lilah, who was hard to miss in a bright red jumpsuit featuring one of her favorite characters (at that moment), the Grinch.

“Did you hear what happened to me this morning?” one of the teachers asked the children who sat, riveted, in front of her for morning circle time. “I woke up and I came downstairs and guess what?”

“What?” a child asked.

“My dog had chewed one of my shoes!”

Several children gasped.

“I was so upset because they’re my favorite shoes. So, I started crying. Then I was so mad at my dog, and I started yelling. Do you think I made a very good choice?”

“No,” the children said in low, disappointed voices.

“What do you think I should have done?”

“Take a deep breath,” one child suggested. The teacher nodded.

Related: How to bring more nature into preschool

While philanthropically-funded programs can benefit those lucky enough to access them, without receiving public funds or partnering with others to expand, experts caution that the reach of these programs will be limited and exist only in areas with willing funders.

Some philanthropically funded early childhood programs, like Educare, have developed a model of launching centers using philanthropic dollars, then pulling in public funding later, a more sustainable model for allowing replication, said Rudisill from the early childhood funders collaborative. Funding sources need to “fit together to solve the problem,” she said. “You could scoop up all the private philanthropy in America … and you cannot make up for the fact that in our country, we don’t fund an early care and education system.”

Senate Alexander, executive director of Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning, said he hopes the centers will ultimately become a model that can be replicated — once the program has the data to show it’s working to improve kindergarten readiness skills and outcomes for families.

“We thought about not wanting to fan out too far and too fast, we’re just starting this,” he said. “We want to get it right … we want to perfect the model.” In the meantime, the program’s first school has invited other local child care programs to attend training with Hershey staff in an effort to share resources and possibly expand their reach.

While Hershey’s funding is limited in scope to programs within the state of Pennsylvania, Alexander said replicating the model in its entirety in other parts of the country is not out of the question. That could bring free childcare and extensive resources to more children. All it will take are a few more willing billionaires.

This story was produced with support by the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship at the Columbia Journalism School.

This story about Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Laura Jackson became seriously concerned about her daughter and math when the girl was in third grade. While many of her classmates flew through multiplication tests, Jackson’s daughter struggled to complete her 1 times table. She relied on her fingers to count, had difficulty reading clocks and frequently burst into tears when asked at home to practice math flashcards. At school, the 9-year-old had been receiving help from a math specialist for two years, with little improvement. “We hit a point where she was asking me, ‘Mom, am I stupid?’” Jackson recalled. 

Then, when Jackson was having lunch with a friend one day, she heard for the first time about a disorder known as dyscalculia. After lunch, she went to her computer, looked up the term, and quickly came across a description of the learning disability, which impacts a child’s ability to process numbers, retain math knowledge and complete math problems. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my kid,’” Jackson said.

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students face challenges learning math due to math disabilities like dyscalculia, a neurodevelopmental learning disorder caused by differences in the parts of the brain that are involved with numbers and calculations. There are often obstacles to getting help.

America’s schools have long struggled to identify and support students with learning disabilities of all kinds: Kids often languish while waiting to receive a diagnosis; families frequently have to turn to private, often pricey, providers to get one; and even with a diagnosis, some children still don’t get the supports they need because their schools are unable to provide them.

That’s slowly changing — for some disabilities. A majority of states have passed laws that mandate screening early elementary students for the most common reading disability, dyslexia, and countless districts train teachers how to recognize and teach struggling readers. Meanwhile, parents and experts say school districts continue to neglect students with math disabilities like dyscalculia, which affects up to 7 percent of the population and often coexists with dyslexia.

“Nobody uses the proper term for it, it’s not diagnosed frequently,” said Sandra Elliott, a former special education teacher and current chief academic officer at TouchMath, a multisensory math program. “We’re all focused on literacy.”

Nationwide, teachers report that up to 40 percent of their students perform below grade level in math. And while students with math disabilities may be especially far behind, math scores for all students have remained dismal for years, showing that more attention needs to be paid to math instruction. Experts say learning the most effective methods for teaching students with math disabilities could significantly strengthen math instruction for all students. “You’ve got a huge number of students that are in the middle ground,” when it comes to math achievement but may not have a disability, Elliott added. Those students could also be helped by having explicit, multisensory instruction in math. “If it works for the students with the most severe disconnections and slower processing speeds, it’s still going to work for the kids that are in the ‘middle’ with math difficulties.”

“It’s not the fault of schools. I think it has to do with the amount of resources schools have to provide intervention to children, and reading takes priority over math.”

Lynn Fuchs, research professor at Vanderbilt University

Covid exacerbated the nation’s problem with math achievement. The number of children who are several years behind in math has increased over the past few years and achievement gaps have widened. For some students, learning struggles may be due to an underlying disability like dyscalculia or other math learning disabilities that affect math calculation or problem solving skills. Yet only 15 percent of teachers report that their students have been screened for dyscalculia.

“There’s not as much research on math disorders or dyscalculia,” as there is on reading disabilities, said Karen Wilson, a clinical neuropsychologist who works with the organization Understood.org and specializes in the assessment of children with learning differences. “That also trickles down into schools.”

Related: Why it matters that Americans are comparatively bad at math

There are a host of reasons why math disabilities receive less attention than reading disabilities. Elementary teachers report more anxiety when it comes to teaching math, which can make it harder to teach struggling learners. Advocacy focused on math disabilities has been less widespread than that for reading disabilities. There is also a deep-seated societal belief that some people have a natural aptitude for math. “A lot of times, [parents] let it go for a long time because it’s culturally acceptable to be bad at math,” said Heather Brand, a math specialist and operations manager for the tutoring organization Made for Math.  

Some signs of dyscalculia are obvious at an early age, if parents and educators know what to look for. In the earliest years, a child might have difficulty recognizing numbers or patterns. Children may also struggle to connect a number’s symbol with what it represents, like knowing the number 3 corresponds to three blocks, for example. In elementary school, students may have trouble with math functions like addition and subtraction, word problems, counting money, or remembering directions.

Still, schools may be resistant to assessing math disabilities, or unaware of their prevalence. Even after Jackson learned about dyscalculia on her own, her daughter’s Seattle-area public school was doubtful that the third grader had a learning disability because she was performing so well in all other areas. Teachers suggested Jackson spend extra time on math at home. “For so many parents, they assume the school would let them know there’s an issue, but that’s just not how it works,” said Jackson. (She ultimately wrote a book, “Discovering Dyscalculia” about her family’s journey, and now runs workshops for parents of children with dyscalculia.)

Experts say universal screening, like those provided in many states for dyslexia, should be in place for math disabilities. Early diagnosis is crucial to provide children a stronger foundation in the early concepts that all math builds on. “Many times, if a student is caught early with the interventions that we all know work … these children can perform math, if not equal to their typically developing peers, they can get very, very close,” said Elliott from TouchMath.

As with other learning disabilities, a diagnosis is only the first step to getting children the help they need in school. In particular, students with dyscalculia often need a more structured approach to learning math that, like reading, involves “systematic and explicit” instruction and provides ample time to practice counting and recognizing numbers, said Lynn Fuchs, a research professor in special education and human development at Vanderbilt University. These students also may need strategies to help them commit math facts to memory, she added. To do this well, they often need small-group or one-on-one teaching, which is non-existent in many schools’ math instruction. “It’s not the fault of schools. I think it has to do with the amount of resources schools have to provide intervention to children, and reading takes priority over math,” said Fuchs.

Part of the problem is that teachers don’t receive the training needed to work with children with math disabilities. Teacher training programs offer little instruction on disabilities of any kind, and even less on math. In a 2023 survey by Education Week, nearly 75 percent of teachers reported that they had received little to no preservice or in-service training on supporting students with math disabilities. At least one state, Virginia, requires dyslexia awareness training for teacher licensure renewal, but has no similar requirement for math disability training. “It’s pretty rare for undergraduate degrees or even master’s degrees to focus on math learning disabilities with any level of breadth, depth, quality or rigor,” said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

Nearly 75 percent of teachers reported in a 2023 Education Week survey that they had received little to no preservice or in-service training on supporting students with math disabilities..

Without more widespread knowledge of and support for dyscalculia, many parents have had to look for specialists and tutors on their own, which they say can be particularly challenging for math, and costly. Even after her daughter received a diagnosis, Jackson felt the girl’s school wasn’t supporting her enough. At school, her daughter’s math teacher demanded “tidy” math notebooks and discouraged drawing or doodling, activities that often helped the girl work through problems. In 2019, Jackson started pulling her daughter out of school for part of each day to teach her math at home. “I am not a math teacher, but I was so desperate,” Jackson said. “There’s no one who knows anything and we have to figure this out.”

Jackson pored over materials online and reached out to math disability experts in America and abroad for help. She started infusing her daughter’s math lessons with games and brought out physical objects, like small wooden rods, to help her practice counting. She worked with her daughter on the core foundations of math, including number sense and basic operations, to help establish the solid grounding that the girl was missing.

Experts say it’s possible to improve math outcomes for those who struggle, if more attention and resources are poured into math in the early years to ensure children do not reach third grade — or beyond — without the support they need.

Yet early childhood teachers are often the least equipped to teach math, especially for children with dyscalculia, said Marilyn Zecher, a dyslexia specialist who created a multisensory approach to math based on the popular Orton-Gillingham approach in reading. Zecher offers training on dyscalculia-related teaching strategies for teachers of all grade levels. Many of her strategies for early educators emphasize that math instruction starts through language. Children learn the basics of mathematics when teachers give them opportunities to verbally compare similarities and differences between objects, and describe how items or activities occur in relation to each other, such as “before” or “after.”

“The early ed teachers are the giants upon whose shoulders everybody else stands,” Zecher said. Early educators, like preschool teachers, not only teach foundational skills, they are also “so critical to identifying children who are having difficulties.”

Related: For teachers who fear math, banishing bad memories can help

At Brand’s organization, Made for Math, intensive tutoring based on Zecher’s approach often stands in for a lack of school-based support. Teachers create individualized lesson plans for students during each tutoring session, employing a variety of items to help students better understand math concepts. Students might use craft sticks bundled together to learn place value, cubes to learn subtraction or addition, and items that can be physically cut apart, like foam stickers, to learn fractions. Math specialists at the organization have found that children with dyscalculia need repetition, especially to understand math facts. Some students attend tutoring up to four days a week, at a cost of up to $1,000 a month. “It’s hard because it’s not something schools are offering, and kids deserve it,” said Brand.

In recent years, a handful of states, including Alabama, West Virginia and Florida, have introduced legislation that would require schools to identify and support younger students who struggle with math. Elliott’s company, TouchMath, introduced a screener earlier this year that can identify signs of math disabilities, like dyscalculia, in children as young as age 3.

“Many times, if a student is caught early with the interventions that we all know work…these children can perform math if not equal to their typically developing peers,”

Sandra Elliott, a former special education teacher and current chief academic officer at TouchMath

Malone, from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said, there are pockets of progress around the country in screening more children for math disabilities, but movement at the federal level — and in most states — is “nonexistent.”

New York City is one district that has prioritized math disability screening and math instruction in the early years. In 2015 and 2016, the city spent $6 million to roll out a new math curriculum featuring games, building blocks, art projects and songs. The district has also introduced universal math and reading screeners to try to identify students who may be behind.

Experts say that there are ways that all schools can make math instruction more accessible. In elementary schools, activities that involve more senses should be used more widely, including whole-body motions and songs for teaching numbers and hands-on materials for math operations. All students, and not only those with dyscalculia, could benefit from using manipulatives to help visualize problems and graph paper to assist in lining up numbers.  

As with dyslexia, figuring out better ways to teach kids with math disabilities will shore up math instruction across the board – and better meet students where they are. “Some kids won’t use [the strategies],” said Wilson, the neuropsychologist. “It’s really about having the option, so the student who’s struggling will be able to find a method that works for them.”

Jackson said her daughter could have benefited from a wider variety of methods at school. After several years of learning math at home, she was ready to try to re-join grade-level math classes. When the teen returned to school-based math classes in high school, she achieved an A in Algebra. “When you really understand what it is to be dyscalculic, then you can look around and decide what this person needs to succeed,” Jackson said. “It’s not just that you’re ‘bad at math’ and need to buckle down and try harder.”

This story about dyscalculia was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, as part of The Math Problem, an ongoing series about math instruction. The series is a collaboration with the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Just over 50 years ago, long before a global pandemic knocked 100,000 Canadian women out of the work force and left child care providers reeling, a national commission urged the Canadian government to underwrite the costs for a nationwide child care system that would also lower fees for families.

Now, an offshoot of that recommendation has come to fruition. In 2021, Canada’s leaders committed $30 billion (about $24 billion in U.S. dollars) over five years to the country’s first federally-funded child care system. The new system aims to provide child care for an average of $10 a day in licensed settings, with plans to create an additional 250,000 spots for children by 2026.

Canadian experts say a host of factors contributed to the country’s eventual success in taking large-scale federal action on early learning. Ultimately, though, it took a pandemic, shutting down businesses and schools, for Canada to invest such a large amount of funds.

This movement came after decades of structured, organized advocacy, much of which started after the commission’s report. Child care has been a cornerstone of the feminist movement in Canada, and parents and various nonprofit groups have partnered to champion the cause. Canadian labor groups have also supported the efforts, something that has recently become a more prominent strategy in the United States, especially after efforts to pass child care legislation faltered in 2022.

More recently, advocates have presented child care as a public good and a right, similar to K-12 education. That argument has helped build support, said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, an advocacy association in Canada. “It’s always been understood that it is good for kids, and it’s good for the economy, and it’s good for society, to have a public led, funded and organized public education system. Why not the same for younger children, especially when we know that early childhood education is as important, if not more important, to the long-term well-being of children?”

Having women in positions of power — including Chrystia Freeland, the nation’s first female minister of finance — was crucial to ushering the proposed program through Parliament in 2021, experts say, despite continued opposition from some conservative lawmakers. Similarly, in Quebec, education minister Pauline Marois helped usher in the province’s child care system two decades ago. “The fact that we had a strong woman in power really, really made the difference both for Quebec in the late 1990s and for Canada in 2021,” said Sophie Mathieu, senior program specialist at the Vanier Institute of the Family, an organization focused on family wellbeing in Canada.

For many years, the province of Quebec has shown the potential benefits of government funding for child care. In 1997, Quebec began offering low-cost, flat-fee child care. While quality can be uneven, the program has contributed to an increase in the number of women in the workforce and a higher domestic income. Quebec also stood out from the rest of the country during the pandemic. “Canada saw that the [child care] system was not really affected by the pandemic in Quebec,” said Mathieu. “Childcare in Quebec is heavily subsidized, so the fact that they didn’t get the parents’ money didn’t really affect them.”

The nationwide child care initiative has embraced some key aspects of Quebec’s flat-fee plan, as well as messaging from British Columbia’s “$10 a Day” child care initiative, which rolled out in 2018 to bring low-cost child care to families in the province. That messaging is easy to grasp and well-liked by parents — more so, experts say, than American proposals to link child care costs to a percentage of a family’s income.

“Our federal government realized the popular success of the ‘$10 a Day’ branding,” said Sharon Gregson, provincial spokesperson for the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC. “I think the federal politicians were smart enough to pay attention and realize not only was this necessary, it’s also something people will vote for.”

These isolated efforts by provinces to pay for child care with public money helped inspire larger change, and could be a strategy for child care advocates in the United States, said Martha Friendly, executive director of the Canadian-based nonprofit Childcare Resource and Research Unit, who previously worked on child care policy in the United States. While a bottom-up approach can’t be the only strategy to ease the challenges in the child care industry, “You can do things incrementally to push things forward locally, on a state level or on a regional level, and sometimes that does have a way of pushing the envelope on something [larger],” she said.

Canada’s example of a federally-supported child care system may be of particular interest in the United States, and one many child care advocates hope to see here. But although the two countries are close — both geographically and in terms of having diverse populations spread out over a sprawling country — there is a key, social difference that Canadian experts point to that helped pave the way for this type of investment in child care. Long before the pandemic, far more Canadians than Americans embraced the idea that the government should offer extensive, universal support to families. Canada provides annual family allowances to support child rearing and the country offers universal health care. It boasts a comparatively generous paid parental leave policy: Young infants are rare in Canadian child care centers because parents can stay home with their children and receive part of their income for a year or more, depending on province.

“We expect government to step up,” said Susan Prentice, Duff Roblin Professor of Government at the University of Manitoba. “There remains, still, a Canadian tradition in believing that government is part of the solution.”

This is my last Early Childhood newsletter before I head out on leave as a fellow with the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship at the Columbia Journalism School, where I will focus on researching and reporting on the consequences of a lack of high quality child care. If you’d like to chat about that topic, feel free to email me at jem2231@columbia.edu. In the meantime, my colleagues Ariel Gilreath and Sarah Carr will be your go-to sources for early childhood coverage. I’ll see you in 2024!

This story about child care in Canada was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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GIBSONS, British Columbia — Two years ago, Marisol Petersen’s family was paying more than $1,200 a month for her son to attend child care in this small, coastal town about 20 miles across the Howe Sound from Vancouver. Despite the cost, which made it hard to put any money in savings, she felt lucky to even have a spot.

Then, in September 2022, the family experienced a dramatic shift in fortune. They were notified that there was a spot for them in a nearby child care center that had recently signed on to a government-led initiative to lower parent fees to just $10 a day. “It’s like I won the lottery,” Petersen said. “I got into child care and a ‘$10 a Day’ site.”

At the new center, the Huckleberry Coast Child Care Society, Petersen’s fees are capped at $200 a month. Without that reduction in fees, Petersen, who works as a social planner for the city of Vancouver, said her family would “be in massive trouble.”

The “$10 a Day” child care initiative, as it’s known in British Columbia, has been life-changing for parents. In the five years since it launched, it has also provided some financial stability for child care programs in the province, which now receive operating funds directly from the government instead of relying solely on family-paid tuition.

This idea — that parents should pay an average of $10 a day for child care and that public funds should underwrite child care programs — is now a cornerstone of a new national child care system rolling out across the country.

During the pandemic, Canada, like the United States, was forced to grapple with the fact that its already unsustainable child care system was on the brink of collapse. In 2021, the country’s leaders committed $30 billion (about $24 billion in U.S. dollars) over five years to the country’s first federally-funded child care system — borrowing ideas from a longstanding government-funded program in the province of Quebec as well as from British Columbia’s $10 a Day program. The new Canada-wide system was “very much situated in the context of economic recovery,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, an advocacy association in Canada.

Canada’s national system is nowhere near finished and is hardly perfect; there are staffing shortages in many parts of the country and still far too few seats available for children. But the new national initiative, known as “Canada-wide,” will bring Canada closer to joining the ranks of countries like Finland, Sweden and Iceland, long lauded for providing robust federal support for child care.

As American child care experts call for more federal investment to salvage a struggling industry, Canada’s experience may hold the most relevant lessons on how to make universal child care palatable to politicians and how to design a program to meet the needs of a diverse, geographically sprawling nation. With its new system, Canada has had to strike a balance between upholding the federal vision and allowing local autonomy over details, and between addressing the financial burden for parents while determining how to directly fund child care programs to ensure their stability.

“Canada shows that transformative child care reform is possible,” said Elliot Haspel, director of climate and young children at Capita, an international think tank, and the author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.” “I don’t think we can copy and paste what the advocates up there did. But I think there’s some real lessons in thinking about messaging of child care and what’s the actual policy.”

Related: With little federal support for families, states are stepping up

Any way you look at it, America’s child care system is in crisis. After years of underinvestment, and an end to pandemic-era aid, the industry is struggling. Child care teachers have fled for higher paying jobs; parents face years-long wait lists; and families face insurmountable costs even for mediocre care. 

The last major effort to significantly expand federal funding of child care in the U.S. — a proposal in President Joseph Biden’s Build Back Better legislation in 2021 — was dropped from the final version of the act. Legislation introduced earlier this year that would have provided $10-a-day child care to many American families failed to progress. Although greater investment in child care has some bipartisan support in the U.S., many lawmakers have balked at the cost. Some continue to say the government should have no place in child care, arguing that it is a private responsibility. Others suggest that universal access to child care is a communist policy, or that mothers should always stay home with their children. That’s in spite of the fact that America relies on working parents to keep schools and many services open.

In Canada, experts and advocates were “very effective at conveying the idea that child care is an important part of the overall well-being of the province and the nation,” Haspel added. “They hammered it home over and over and over again.”

The new national system passed Parliament as part of the nation’s budget in June 2021 and has been rolling out over the past two years. Participation is voluntary for provinces and territories. But all have signed on to access the federal dollars, which are presently given with no requirement that provinces invest their own money. Eventually, Canadian officials hope to achieve a 50/50 cost share with provinces and territories, but no money was required at the onset of the initiative. (America, in contrast, requires states to match funds for its current federal program aimed at lowering costs for low-income families.)

Each province or territory has control over many of the details of the Canada-wide program, like setting annual goals for expanding child care spots and early educator pay scales, as well as deciding whether for-profit centers are included in their system. Money flows to the provincial governments, which then have their own systems for providing funding directly to the child care programs. By 2026, the country intends for Canada-wide to be universal in fact as well as name — with 250,000 new spots and parents paying no more than an average of $10 a day for care.

While the system’s biggest effects likely won’t be seen until it expands, there are signs of progress. Nationwide, nearly half of the provinces and territories offer regulated child care for an average of $10 a day, or less. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the federal funds have also supported the creation of a new, full-day, year-round pre-K pilot program. In New Brunswick, the province upped early childhood educator wages. In British Columbia the federal infusion of funds has bolstered the work the province was already doing to bring more public funding into the child care industry. The province used the federal money it received to pay for 1,271 child care spaces between 2021 and 2022.

Related: The child care crisis is reaching crisis proportions nationally. Could Milwaukee provide the answer?

Child care programs say there are benefits to having access to more public funds. At Huckleberry, the program Marisol Petersen’s son attends in Gibsons, the board of directors saw signing onto the province’s $10 a Day plan as an opportunity to lower fees for parents without having to also lower wages for teachers. Huckleberry was also able to get $32,000 in additional funding from the province to hire a program manager to oversee budgets and support daily operations.

About 68 miles east of Gibsons in Mission, a town of about 39,000 in Canada’s bucolic Fraser Valley, child care provider Lorraine Trulsen said $10 a Day has provided much-needed stability. Before joining the provincial initiative, she was begging families to refer others to her program, the Heritage Park Childcare Centre, even offering half off a month of care. Although her tuition, which cost between $650 and $850 a month, was lower than that of centers closer to Vancouver, “it was a struggle to get full,” Trulsen said. Five years after becoming a pilot program for $10 a Day, Trulsen has a three-year wait list. Many of her parents cried when Trulsen announced her new, lower rate. Some couples decided they could have more children, she added, knowing they could now afford care. 

The publicly-supported initiative in British Columbia, “has given us a feeling of security,” Trulsen said. “We’ve actually never been more financially stable than we are right now.”

Despite Canada’s progress and growing support for the national, low-cost child care plan, the country’s pain points in Canada-wide’s rollout show there’s no quick way to make child care a public, federally-funded service, especially for countries that are late to the game. For example, in Canada, non-licensed, home-based providers have been left out of the system, as have other, more informal kinds of care.

About one-third of Canada’s children are cared for by either a relative other than their parent or by a non-relative in a home, for example. Some provinces plan to tweak their versions of Canada-wide to include more forms of child care in the future, but that is not the case across the country. “We are very concerned that the current plan is not equitable,” said Andrea Mrozek, a senior fellow with the Ottawa-based think tank, Cardus. “Billions and billions are being poured into a system that really helps the few,” she added.

And even some of the programs that have been the biggest beneficiaries of the child care expansion are still struggling with funding. Provinces and territories are financially supporting the budgets of child care programs at levels the programs say are too low. In many cases, the governments subsidize families’ costs, but fail to approve enough new money for child care programs that would allow them to raise teacher salaries. For example, earlier this year, British Columbia rejected a request from Huckleberry for a funding increase that would have raised teacher wages and provided employment benefits for the center’s small staff of two full-time and two part-time teachers.

The Esprit Daycare Centre near Huckleberry also asked program officials in British Columbia for additional funds so it could raise wages. The request was denied. Last year Esprit lost several staff members to a public early learning program that pays more. “The staffing has been the issue,” said Jennifer Braun, manager of Esprit. “Finding enough coverage here is like a unicorn.” 

Related: Finding child care is still impossible for many parents

In some provinces, families’ costs were cut dramatically long before many programs had the stability and staffing to handle the subsequent enrollment surge. And while some provinces have upped educator wages in an attempt to attract and keep teachers, others have been slower to make progress.

“I feel like the government is doing things in the wrong order,” said Trulsen, in Mission. “We’re creating spaces and we can’t find staff. We can’t find staff because we can’t offer decent living wages. So round and round you go.”

Canadian experts say their country’s experience has shown what to do, as well as what not to do, to create transformational change in the child care industry. Some American policy makers have proposed addressing the child care crisis here by sending more money to parents or upping tax benefits, rather than providing direct funding to child care programs. Canadian experts who have seen their system’s roll out are wary of such methods. “It’s absolutely clear that if you want to have a childcare system, you can’t do it only by giving money to the parents, you have to make sure that you have the supply,” said Martha Friendly, executive director of the Canadian-based nonprofit Childcare Resource and Research Unit, who previously worked on child care policy in the United States.

 “If you look at other countries, that’s the way they do it, they fund the operations.” Of most importance, said Friendly, is that countries address affordability, workforce and supply at the same time. “If you want to have a child care system that’s stable … You need to do all these things at the same time, because they’re interlinked,” she said.

In the U.S., some states are likely to balk at the idea of following in the steps of Canada and Scandinavia and setting up a federal “system” of care. Allowing autonomy at a state level is an aspect of Canada’s model America might adopt, said Gordon Cleveland, associate professor emeritus at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “But there also has to be a very strong overall concept,” he said, such as setting goals for parent rates, program expansion or educator wages.

Such a system would be costly: one proposal for a universal child care system by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has also proposed $10 a day child care, estimated the price at $700 billion over 10 years. In Canada, some child care programs have opted out due, in part, due to concern that they won’t have as much autonomy over their operations. And because unlicensed, informal care is popular in America, and the majority of the country’s young children are in non-center-based care, a system focused on formal programs, like Canada’s, could be a point of contention here as well.

Messaging in support of universal child care in the United States will likely need to differ from Canada’s. While it might seem counterintuitive, Haspel believes expanded government spending on child care should be tied to giving American families flexibility to choose and pursue their own destinies. “It’s about family freedom,” he said. “The number of children you can have, where you choose to live. The time you get to spend with your children should not be determined by the availability or lack thereof of affordable child care, yet for far too many families, it is.”

This story about subsidized child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post What America can learn from Canada’s new ‘$10 a Day’ child care system appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In Hopewell, Virginia, about 20 miles southeast of Richmond, Juanterria Browne spends her days providing child care for children with disabilities, a demographic for which it is notoriously difficult to find care. Browne, who opened Kidz with Goals Unlimited, LLC, in early 2020, was hit hard by the pandemic. Parents pulled their children out of care, leaving Browne, a nurse and mother of three, with nearly $15,000 in unpaid tuition bills. She borrowed money from her parents and paid herself a salary of just $500 that year, so she could continue to provide meals for the children in her care, afford rent and utilities for the center and make payroll for her employees. Even that wasn’t enough. Browne also started working night shifts at a nearby hospital, often going to her second job after spending all day at her center.  

Then, in 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law and $39 billion was sent to states to help stabilize the child care industry. Browne received a welcome influx of funds: nearly $83,000 to help keep her business open. Browne used the money to wipe out the debt owed to her by families who struggled to pay after losing their jobs and then had to pull their children out of care completely. She raised staff pay from $10 an hour to $15-$18 an hour. She gave herself a salary of $34,000, which allowed her to quit her night job and work full time at the center. She also used funds to upgrade her playground equipment, buy cleaning supplies and provide a scholarship to a family that was struggling to make ends meet.  

Nationwide, ARPA funds helped steady a rocky industry that has historically been marked by poverty-level wages for educators and high staff turnover.

“Child care, as a field and industry, was already in crisis before the pandemic,” said Michelle Kang, chief executive officer for the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “The pandemic laid bare some of the challenges that already existed.”

While other countries provide support to sustain the operations of child care programs, the United States historically does not. The federal pandemic stabilization funds provided a rare infusion of operating money, a move reminiscent of when the federal government briefly funded child care to support working parents during World War II.

Since the pandemic, nearly 16,000 early childhood programs have shuttered. Between January 2020 and January 2022, around 120,000 child care workers left the industry, many for higher paying jobs, leading to immense staffing shortages and soaring waiting lists for parents who were unable to return to work full-time due to a lack of care. Educators and experts say the federal relief aid prevented the situation from getting worse. Those funds helped keep more than 200,000 early childhood programs open and more than 1 million early childhood educators employed, thus allowing more than 9.5 million children to receive care.

When the federal stabilization funds run out at the end of September and child care providers can no longer rely on this much-needed funding, experts say the consequences could be immense. A recent report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found an estimated 3.2 million children will eventually lose child care if those federal funds are not replaced.

That loss will hit especially hard in Virginia, where Browne works, as well as in a handful of other states, including Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s estimated that up to half of all licensed programs in those states could close. “Providers are going to do everything they can to hang on,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “We saw during the pandemic, they went into personal debt, they stopped paying themselves a salary, they’re going to do whatever they can because they know how important their jobs are for supporting children and parents.”

Experts warn that programs will be forced to make cuts or shut down. “Millions of parents will be impacted and some will have to leave the workforce,” Kashen added. “It matters to children, it matters to their families and it has ripple effects beyond that to the economy and states and employers.”

The effect of losing the funds could be even more grim for family child care providers, whose programs are typically smaller than center-based care and rely mostly on parent tuition payments.

“Most of the family child care educators that we work with are not in a position to raise their prices because their parents just can’t pay,” said Jessica Sager, co-founder and chief executive officer of All Our Kin, an organization that focuses on supporting family child care providers. In the years leading up to the pandemic, these programs were already struggling, with 97,000 closing between 2005 and 2017. “We’re going to lose more programs,” Sager said. “That’s a pretty dire situation to be in.” Ultimately, parents will have fewer choices for child care, she added. “These family child care programs are especially important for infants and toddlers and families working evenings and weekends. They’re going to be especially hard hit in terms of the choices available.”

In Virginia, Browne has already stopped receiving the federal stabilization funds, which means she will now go back to relying on parent tuition and state funding that only covers part of the cost for low-income children to attend child care, as well as any private or public grants and donations she can find. Nearly half of the children she enrolls are from low-income families who pay with state subsidies. But, as is the case nationwide, the reimbursement amount Browne gets per child is far less than the cost of providing care. She recently started working 12-hour nursing shifts at night again, driving straight to her center in the morning to check on her staff and the children before going home to sleep for a few hours. “It’s hard,” Browne said. “My body is not going to be able to take much more of working two full-time jobs.”

By the end of the year, Browne would like to be able to offer benefits to her staff. She is planning to open a second center this fall and hopes to earn enough from the two centers to quit her hospital job for good. Many experts and early childhood advocates say the success of programs like Browne’s, however, depends on more federal support. Congress has yet to take up legislation to allocate the needed funds to the child care industry, even though several lawmakers and the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget have called on Congress to act and voters have showed strong support for the idea in past polls.

“During the pandemic, for this brief moment, we rallied,” Sager said. “We did all these things to make programs sustainable. Now we’re taking that money away, but conditions have not fundamentally changed. The end of this funding really feels to our educators like they are no longer essential. Like they and the families in their care are being abandoned.”

This story about benefits of child care funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post ­­A wave of child care center closures is coming as funding dries up appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

By Jackie Mader

In Hopewell, Virginia, about 20 miles southeast of Richmond, Juanterria Browne spends her days providing child care for children with disabilities, a demographic for which it is notoriously difficult to find care. Browne, who opened Kidz with Goals Unlimited, LLC, in early 2020, was hit hard by the pandemic. Parents pulled their children out of care, leaving Browne, a nurse and mother of three, with nearly $15,000 in unpaid tuition bills. She borrowed money from her parents and paid herself a salary of just $500 that year, so she could continue to provide meals for the children in her care, afford rent and utilities for the center and make payroll for her employees. Even that wasn’t enough. Browne also started working night shifts at a nearby hospital, often going to her second job after spending all day at her center.   

Then, in 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law and $39 billion was sent to states to help stabilize the child care industry. Browne received a welcome influx of funds: nearly $83,000 to help keep her business open. Browne used the money to wipe out the debt owed to her by families who struggled to pay after losing their jobs and then had to pull their children out of care completely. She raised staff pay from $10 an hour to $15-$18 an hour. She gave herself a salary of $34,000, which allowed her to quit her night job and work full time at the center. She also used funds to upgrade her playground equipment, buy cleaning supplies and provide a scholarship to a family that was struggling to make ends meet.   

Nationwide, ARPA funds helped steady a rocky industry that has historically been marked by poverty-level wages for educators and high staff turnover.  

“Child care, as a field and industry, was already in crisis before the pandemic,” said Michelle Kang, chief executive officer for the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “The pandemic laid bare some of the challenges that already existed.” 

While other countries provide support to sustain the operations of child care programs, the United States historically does not. The federal pandemic stabilization funds provided a rare infusion of operating money, a move reminiscent of when the federal government briefly funded child care to support working parents during World War II. 

Since the pandemic, nearly 16,000 early childhood programs have shuttered. Between January 2020 and January 2022, around 120,000 child care workers left the industry, many for higher paying jobs, leading to immense staffing shortages and soaring waiting lists for parents who were unable to return to work full-time due to a lack of care. Educators and experts say the federal relief aid prevented the situation from getting worse. Those funds helped keep more than 200,000 early childhood programs open and more than 1 million early childhood educators employed, thus allowing more than 9.5 million children to receive care.  

When the federal stabilization funds run out at the end of September and child care providers can no longer rely on this much-needed funding, experts say the consequences could be immense. A recent report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found an estimated 3.2 million children will eventually lose child care if those federal funds are not replaced.  

That loss will hit especially hard in Virginia, where Browne works, as well as in a handful of other states, including Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s estimated that up to half of all licensed programs in those states could close. “Providers are going to do everything they can to hang on,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “We saw during the pandemic, they went into personal debt, they stopped paying themselves a salary, they’re going to do whatever they can because they know how important their jobs are for supporting children and parents.” 

Experts warn that programs will be forced to make cuts or shut down. “Millions of parents will be impacted and some will have to leave the workforce,” Kashen added. “It matters to children, it matters to their families and it has ripple effects beyond that to the economy and states and employers.”  

The effect of losing the funds could be even more grim for family child care providers, whose programs are typically smaller than center-based care and rely mostly on parent tuition payments. 

“Most of the family child care educators that we work with are not in a position to raise their prices because their parents just can’t pay,” said Jessica Sager, co-founder and chief executive officer of All Our Kin, an organization that focuses on supporting family child care providers. In the years leading up to the pandemic, these programs were already struggling, with 97,000 closing between 2005 and 2017. “We’re going to lose more programs,” Sager said. “That’s a pretty dire situation to be in.” Ultimately, parents will have fewer choices for child care, she added. “These family child care programs are especially important for infants and toddlers and families working evenings and weekends. They’re going to be especially hard hit in terms of the choices available.” 

In Virginia, Browne has already stopped receiving the federal stabilization funds, which means she will now go back to relying on parent tuition and state funding that only covers part of the cost for low-income children to attend child care, as well as any private or public grants and donations she can find. Nearly half of the children she enrolls are from low-income families who pay with state subsidies. But, as is the case nationwide, the reimbursement amount Browne gets per child is far less than the cost of providing care. She recently started working 12-hour nursing shifts at night again, driving straight to her center in the morning to check on her staff and the children before going home to sleep for a few hours. “It’s hard,” Browne said. “My body is not going to be able to take much more of working two full-time jobs.”  

By the end of the year, Browne would like to be able to offer benefits to her staff. She is planning to open a second center this fall and hopes to earn enough from the two centers to quit her hospital job for good. Many experts and early childhood advocates say the success of programs like Browne’s, however, depends on more federal support. Congress has yet to take up legislation to allocate the needed funds to the child care industry, even though several lawmakers and the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget have called on Congress to act and voters have showed strong support for the idea in past polls. 

“During the pandemic, for this brief moment, we rallied,” Sager said. “We did all these things to make programs sustainable. Now we’re taking that money away, but conditions have not fundamentally changed. The end of this funding really feels to our educators like they are no longer essential. Like they and the families in their care are being abandoned.” 

In this 2020 article, I profiled a child care provider near Austin, Texas, to show the intricacies and difficulties of running a child care program. 

In this 2020 article, Lillian Mongeau and I looked at why federal investment is often heralded as the answer to child care woes. 

Women spend 52 minutes per day on average caring for children and other family members, compared to 26 minutes per day for men, according to an analysis published by the National Partnership for Women & Families and reported on by Bloomberg. If women were compensated for this work at the average rate for child-care workers, they would make an additional $627 billion per year overall, or an extra $4,600 per year each. 

“Why child care prices are rising at nearly twice the overall inflation rate,” The Wall Street Journal 

“Army expands child care options for reserve soldiers and families,” U.S. Army 

“Finland mom gives a glimpse into Finnish daycare vs. American daycare,” Scary Mommy 

The post A wave of child care center closures is coming appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For decades, researchers have debated the long-term impact of early childhood education, sharing evidence that while some children experience positive long-term outcomes, others see initial benefits fade out — or even experience detrimental outcomes. Now, a new study is adding to a growing body of research indicating that high-quality early care and learning programs can positively impact children for years into the future. But there is one caveat: Children need to be enrolled early, in infancy or early toddlerhood, to reap these benefits.

Beginning in 2010, researchers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed a cohort of 37 children who were 19 months or younger when they enrolled in Tulsa Educare, a high-quality early learning program. A team from the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, regularly evaluated the children’s academic outcomes and executive function through the end of third grade. These outcomes were then compared to a cohort of 38 children, serving as a control group, who were unable to get a spot at Tulsa Educare. (Children in the control group were cared for by relatives or family friends, enrolled in family child care homes or attended a public school preschool program or local Head Start program.)

The study, which was published late last year in Education Sciences and released more widely last week, found that children who attended Tulsa’s Educare program, all of whom live below the poverty line, experienced positive effects that lasted well into elementary school. The Educare cohort, who attended the program for an average of 37 months, performed better on all academic measures than their peers who did not attend the program. Parents of the Tulsa Educare cohort also reported fewer behavior problems. (There were no statistically significant differences in social-emotional development or executive functioning skills between the cohorts.) Students from both cohorts experienced similar classroom environments once they entered K-3, but by the end of third grade, the Educare cohort still outperformed the control group and scored at the national average for oral comprehension, math and vocabulary, performing on par with more affluent peers nationwide.

“To me, the results show the importance of starting early if you want to have large and sustained effects from high quality early childhood programs,” said Diane Horm, the founding director of the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa and a George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education. A “sustained and large dose” of a high-quality early childhood program prior to kindergarten, Horm said, seems to be key to the lasting, positive results. “If we start early, we can prevent the achievement gap from forming.”

The Educare model, which is considered to be an “enhanced” Early Head Start program, has some unique aspects that make it high quality. Educare, which receives federal Head Start funding in addition to philanthropic and state funds, meets Early Head Start performance standards that require child screenings and assessments, a research-based curriculum and family involvement. Lead teachers at Educare have bachelor’s degrees, the schools offer regular professional development and staff-to-child ratios are kept low.

Educare also offers family support programs and health resources, full-day, year-round child care and partners with researchers who frequently evaluate each site. Previous research has found certain aspects of the Educare model, such as keeping children with the same teachers for several years in a row, may have positive benefits, helping children improve self-control and form stronger attachments with caregivers.

The infant and toddler classes at Educare are crafted to give each child ample attention and plenty of sensitive, responsive interactions, Horm said. The program keeps a ratio of three teachers to eight children and focuses on individual or small-group interactions as children actively engage with materials in their classroom. The program is a contrast to other early childhood programs that Horm said she has seen, where infants are restrained in car seats, children are largely left to play on their own or there is a “harried, overworked adult” caring for many children, she said. “To me, that picture just contrasts the two extremes. You can make sure babies are safe, or you can make sure you’re enhancing development,” Horm added. “That’s what the teachers at Educare and other good infant toddler programs do. They take their charge of being promoters of development very seriously.”

The findings of the new study echo one of early childhood’s most notable studies, the Abecedarian Project, which found positive, long-term effects of high quality early care and education for children who received full-time, high-quality early childhood experiences as infants up to age 5. Together, these studies suggest that focusing on early access to high-quality programs is critical for long-term positive outcomes.

Previous proposals from the federal government aimed at improving access to high-quality early learning opportunities have focused on universal access to preschool. Many states have poured resources into building and expanding high-quality pre-K programs, rather than emphasizing the quality of care in the first few years of life. Researchers involved with the Educare study say expanding access to federally-funded Early Head Start programs, which currently serve only 10 percent of eligible children, could help expand the number of high-quality early learning programs, such as the Educare model, and benefit more infants and toddlers.

Researchers say the age of enrollment in early learning matters. When children start young, they can reap the benefits of a high-quality program at a time when their brains are growing at a rapid pace. An infant’s brain doubles in size before age 1. During this time and the toddler years that follow, interactions between young children and their caregivers have a profound impact on the brain’s development and wiring. “The infant-toddler period is increasingly recognized as a unique developmental stage that really does set the path for all that follows,” Horm said.

A previous study of Educare children underscored the fact that infants and toddlers are influenced greatly by the type of caregiving they experience. That study, which was released in 2015, found children who entered high-quality early childhood programs earlier, and stayed longer, had better outcomes on language and social-emotional skill outcomes. “Entering Educare as an infant appeared to prevent the early decline in language scores often associated with poverty,” researchers wrote in that study. “In contrast, for children entering at age 3, language scores were already well below the national average.”

Researchers caution there are some limitations to the new study. The sample size was relatively small and several children in the non-Educare group attended some of Tulsa’s respected early childhood education programs. Still, Horm said the results point to a possible antidote to the ever-present, stubborn achievement gap that has plagued America’s education system for generations. “If you are able to enroll children in a high-quality program near birth, they never experience that gap that then has to be made up.”

This story about benefits of child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Infants and toddlers in high quality child care seem to reap the benefits longer, research says appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

By Jackie Mader

*|MC:DATE|*

For decades, researchers have debated the long-term impact of early childhood education, sharing evidence that while some children experience positive long-term outcomes, others see initial benefits fade out — or even experience detrimental outcomes.

Now, a new study is adding to a growing body of research indicating that high-quality early care and learning programs can positively impact children for years into the future. But there is one caveat: Children need to be enrolled early, in infancy or early toddlerhood, to reap these benefits. 

Beginning in 2010, researchers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed a cohort of 37 children who were 19 months or younger when they enrolled in Tulsa Educare, a high-quality early learning program. A team from the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, regularly evaluated the children’s academic outcomes and executive function through the end of third grade. These outcomes were then compared to a cohort of 38 children, serving as a control group, who were unable to get a spot at Tulsa Educare. (Children in the control group were cared for by relatives or family friends, enrolled in family child care homes or attended a public school preschool program or local Head Start program.) 

The study, which was published late last year in Education Sciences and released more widely last week, found that children who attended Tulsa’s Educare program, all of whom live below the poverty line, experienced positive effects that lasted well into elementary school. The Educare cohort, who attended the program for an average of 37 months, performed better on all academic measures than their peers who did not attend the program. Parents of the Tulsa Educare cohort also reported fewer behavior problems. (There were no statistically significant differences in social-emotional development or executive functioning skills between the cohorts.) Students from both cohorts experienced similar classroom environments once they entered K-3, but by the end of third grade, the Educare cohort still outperformed the control group and scored at the national average for oral comprehension, math and vocabulary, performing on par with more affluent peers nationwide. 

“To me, the results show the importance of starting early if you want to have large and sustained effects from high quality early childhood programs,” said Diane Horm, the founding director of the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa and a George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education. A “sustained and large dose” of a high-quality early childhood program prior to kindergarten, Horm said, seems to be key to the lasting, positive results. “If we start early, we can prevent the achievement gap from forming.”  

The Educare model, which is considered to be an “enhanced” Early Head Start program, has some unique aspects that make it high quality. Educare, which receives federal Head Start funding in addition to philanthropic and state funds, meets Early Head Start performance standards that require child screenings and assessments, a research-based curriculum and family involvement. Lead teachers at Educare have bachelor’s degrees, the schools offer regular professional development and staff-to-child ratios are kept low.  

Educare also offers family support programs and health resources, full-day, year-round child care and partners with researchers who frequently evaluate each site. Previous research has found certain aspects of the Educare model, such as keeping children with the same teachers for several years in a row, may have positive benefits, helping children improve self-control and form stronger attachments with caregivers. 

The infant and toddler classes at Educare are crafted to give each child ample attention and plenty of sensitive, responsive interactions, Horm said. The program keeps a ratio of three teachers to eight children and focuses on individual or small-group interactions as children actively engage with materials in their classroom. The program is a contrast to other early childhood programs that Horm said she has seen, where infants are restrained in car seats, children are largely left to play on their own or there is a “harried, overworked adult” caring for many children, she said. “To me, that picture just contrasts the two extremes. You can make sure babies are safe, or you can make sure you’re enhancing development,” Horm added. “That’s what the teachers at Educare and other good infant toddler programs do. They take their charge of being promotors of development very seriously.” 

The findings of the new study echo one of early childhood’s most notable studies, the Abecedarian Project, which found positive, long-term effects of high quality early care and education for children who received full-time, high-quality early childhood experiences as infants up to age 5. Together, these studies suggest that focusing on early access to high-quality programs is critical for long-term positive outcomes. 

Previous proposals from the federal government aimed at improving access to high-quality early learning opportunities have focused on universal access to preschool. Many states have poured resources into building and expanding high-quality pre-K programs, rather than emphasizing the quality of care in the first few years of life. Researchers involved with the Educare study say expanding access to federally-funded Early Head Start programs, which currently serve only 10 percent of eligible children, could help expand the number of high-quality early learning programs, such as the Educare model, and benefit more infants and toddlers.  

Researchers say the age of enrollment in early learning matters. When children start young, they can reap the benefits of a high-quality program at a time when their brains are growing at a rapid pace. An infant’s brain doubles in size before age 1. During this time and the toddler years that follow, interactions between young children and their caregivers have a profound impact on the brain’s development and wiring. “The infant-toddler period is increasingly recognized as a unique developmental stage that really does set the path for all that follows,” Horm said.  

A previous study of Educare children underscored the fact that infants and toddlers are influenced greatly by the type of caregiving they experience. That study, which was released in 2015, found children who entered high-quality early childhood programs earlier, and stayed longer, had better outcomes on language and social-emotional skill outcomes. “Entering Educare as an infant appeared to prevent the early decline in language scores often associated with poverty,” researchers wrote in that study. “In contrast, for children entering at age 3, language scores were already well below the national average.” 

Researchers caution there are some limitations to the new study. The sample size was relatively small and several children in the non-Educare group attended some of Tulsa’s respected early childhood education programs. Still, Horm said the results point to a possible antidote to the ever-present, stubborn achievement gap that has plagued America’s education system for generations. “If you are able to enroll children in a high-quality program near birth, they never experience that gap that then has to be made up.”  

This 2017 story by Aditi Malhotra and Lillian Mongeau looks at high-quality child care and how the United States falls short. 

Earlier this year, I wrote a story about what social and emotional learning looks likes in infants and toddlers and why it’s a mark of quality in early learning programs. 

A new 50-state survey by the First Five Years Fund looks at the state of child care and early learning across America, with details on how many young children need care, access to child care, cost and funding.  

“Airports, racing to hire workers, compete to look after their kids,” NBC News 

“Housing is a nightmare for home-based child care providers,” EdSurge 

“‘God forbid I have to move again’: One home-based child care provider’s experience with housing,” EdSurge 

“In a hostile housing landscape, solutions emerge to support home-based child care providers,” EdSurge 

“Pre-K counts programs aren’t authorized to open this fall because of Pa. budget impasse,” The Philadelphia Inquirer

The post The lasting benefits of high-quality child care appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Parents are under a lot of pressure these days: They need to support children’s emotional development after a traumatic few years of the pandemic, address learning loss and prepare children to be productive, successful members of society. The good news is, research shows there’s a simple way to help kids do well academically and socially—and that involves simply giving them opportunities to play.But not all parents know how to support play or what kind of play benefits children the most, according to the forthcoming results of a recent survey by researchers at Temple University and the LEGO Foundation, which also funded the research.

The survey questioned a representative sample of nearly 1,200 parents of children ages 2 to 12 in the United States about their beliefs and behaviors related to parenting and different kinds of play, including free play where a child is independent, and guided play, where an adult provides support. The initial findings of this survey found huge support for play among parents, but researchers found some misconceptions around how to best use play to support learning.

Earlier this month, I spoke to Charlotte Anne Wright, one of the researchers involved in the survey and a senior research associate at the Temple Infant and Child Lab, to learn more about how parents can support playful learning without getting overwhelmed or overburdened. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What were the biggest findings of the parent survey on thoughts and beliefs around play?

Overwhelmingly, parents are receptive to these ideas. Overall, parents are seeing the value of playful learning over direct instruction, which is very exciting. Interestingly, the most parents reported that children can learn the most from free play, followed by guided play, games and then direct instruction. So these results are showing that we’re hearing more calls to let the children play, and a lot of parents are hearing these messages. Parents are still indicating that free play leads to more learning than guided play, but research is finding guided play is actually leading to the best learning outcomes when there’s a learning goal for children. It seems like parents are receiving these messages about the power of play, but perhaps they’re lacking the nuance and research-backed information to understand what type of play is most beneficial for learning.

So, it sounds like if there’s a learning goal that a parent has in mind, the way to do that is to engage in guided play versus setting a kid free to just do what they would like?

Yeah, definitely. So free play is fundamental to anyone’s life, right? We know that it can help social emotional development, physical development, and executive function development. It’s really important. But research is finding when there’s a learning goal, that guided play yields the best results for that. The reason why guided play is so effective is because it reflects these key characteristics of decades and decades of research of how we know how human brains learn best. We know that we learn best when we’re active, not passive, engaged, not distracted, when it’s meaningful, when it’s connected to what matters what we already know. When it’s iterative, so children can test and try out different ideas, and when they’re interacting socially with others, and when they’re joyful. And so that’s part of why guided play is so powerful.

A benefit to free play is that parents can take a break and know that their children are enjoying themselves, but we are hoping to give advice for or guidance for how to support guided play without it feeling like something extra, and how parents can support that without feeling overwhelmed and like, ‘Oh, now I have to be involved.’”

What would that look like during the day like on a day-to-day basis?

When parents are thinking about bringing this into day-to-day life, it’s really about everyday interactions. For example, when parents are walking through the park with their child, it can spark an experimentation with shadows, or maybe collecting different shapes or different types of leaves or different types of rocks and sorting them. Or a ride on the bus could be an opportunity for searching for different shapes and letters, or maybe creating a creative story based off what you see. Or a trip to the laundromat could finish with a race to match pairs of socks. Or cooking, [which is] something on this survey that parents mentioned sharing with their child often. There’s so much learning and learning opportunity within cooking and parents are probably already doing a lot of the things [that support learning]. The goal is that it doesn’t feel like something extra that requires special skills, but [it’s] a way to change the lens on how we view everyday experiences and share with children to enrich them a little bit more.

So, it’s not that parents need to sit down with their kids and really focus on doing an activity and facilitating that. We can think of guided play as these everyday experiences, but infusing the learning goal within those experiences?

In school, a teacher would prepare the environment and then give children the agency within that environment and the [help] needed to meet the learning goal. And of course, the parent can do a similar thing, if they want to. But I think the research is showing that it can be simpler than that. They can take things that they’re already doing, and just shift the way they view them to think about ‘how can I make this a little bit more meaningful for my child?’ And it can also mean very simple changes to the environment as well. For example, the parent notices their child has really mastered building with regular shaped blocks. Maybe they add differently shaped blocks into their child’s blocks—that doesn’t require too much effort or too much work. It doesn’t require sitting down and teaching their child something. But it’s guided play because parents are [supporting] their child’s learning by adding something.

Guided play can take a lot of different forms, which is maybe why it can be difficult to conceptualize, but it really comes down to an experience or interaction that’s initiated by an adult but maintains child’s agency. With that interaction, children have agency and freedom to explore and discover things on the way to meeting learning goals.

Are there any cultural preferences or personal preferences to keep in mind, for example, if a parent or a culture really values kids being independent or engaging mostly in free play?

Traditionally, certain cultures have valued free play or direct instruction more than others, but things seem to be changing. There seems to be a shift. We did analyze the data according to demographic information, and we did find some interesting differences. We found parents who were older, more educated and had higher incomes, and interestingly, also had older children, were more likely to identify free play as a preferred learning style. And preferences for direct instruction were highest among parents who are less educated and had a lower income.

We didn’t really see any demographics that were strongly associated with preferences like guided play or games, but we are seeing these differences with free play versus direct instruction. We didn’t find any notable differences according to race and ethnicity throughout the survey.

What is your biggest takeaway from this survey data?

Parents are getting messages that play can be a powerful thing. However, parents think free play leads to the most learning, so there’s need for parents to receive clear research-backed messages to understand that free play is really important, but children learn most skills and content best through guided play. We’re really excited to move forward with getting these messages out to parents and helping them understand the different ways play can look and how they can support that without having to feel overburdened.

You can read more about play and parenting in this recent white paper, published by Wright and her co-researchers, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and Bo Stjerne Thomsen, chair of Learning Through Play and vice president of the LEGO Foundation.

This story about guided play was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post ‘Guided play’ benefits kids—but what does that look like for parents? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

By Jackie Mader

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Parents are under a lot of pressure these days: They need to support children’s emotional development after a traumatic few years of the pandemic, address learning loss and prepare children to be productive, successful members of society. The good news is, research shows there’s a simple way to help kids do well academically and socially—and that involves simply giving them opportunities to play. But not all parents know how to support play or what kind of play benefits children the most, according to the forthcoming results of a recent survey by researchers at Temple University and the LEGO Foundation, which also funded the research.  

The survey questioned a representative sample of nearly 1,200 parents of children ages 2 to 12 in the United States about their beliefs and behaviors related to parenting and different kinds of play, including free play where a child is independent, and guided play, where an adult provides support. The initial findings of this survey found huge support for play among parents, but researchers found some misconceptions around how to best use play to support learning.  

Earlier this month, I spoke to Charlotte Anne Wright, one of the researchers involved in the survey and a senior research associate at the Temple Infant and Child Lab, to learn more about how parents can support playful learning without getting overwhelmed or overburdened. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

What were the biggest findings of the parent survey on thoughts and beliefs around play? 

Overwhelmingly, parents are receptive to these ideas. Overall, parents are seeing the value of playful learning over direct instruction, which is very exciting. Interestingly, the most parents reported that children can learn the most from free play, followed by guided play, games and then direct instruction. So these results are showing that we’re hearing more calls to let the children play, and a lot of parents are hearing these messages. Parents are still indicating that free play leads to more learning than guided play, but research is finding guided play is actually leading to the best learning outcomes when there’s a learning goal for children. It seems like parents are receiving these messages about the power of play, but perhaps they’re lacking the nuance and research-backed information to understand what type of play is most beneficial for learning.  

So, it sounds like if there’s a learning goal that a parent has in mind, the way to do that is to engage in guided play versus setting a kid free to just do what they would like? 

Yeah, definitely. So free play is fundamental to anyone’s life, right? We know that it can help social emotional development, physical development, and executive function development. It’s really important. But research is finding when there’s a learning goal, that guided play yields the best results for that. The reason why guided play is so effective is because it reflects these key characteristics of decades and decades of research of how we know how human brains learn best. We know that we learn best when we’re active, not passive, engaged, not distracted, when it’s meaningful, when it’s connected to what matters what we already know. When it’s iterative, so children can test and try out different ideas, and when they’re interacting socially with others, and when they’re joyful. And so that’s part of why guided play is so powerful. 

A benefit to free play is that parents can take a break and know that their children are enjoying themselves, but we are hoping to give advice for or guidance for how to support guided play without it feeling like something extra, and how parents can support that without feeling overwhelmed and like, ‘Oh, now I have to be involved.’” 

What would that look like during the day like on a day-to-day basis?  

When parents are thinking about bringing this into day-to-day life, it’s really about everyday interactions. For example, when parents are walking through the park with their child, it can spark an experimentation with shadows, or maybe collecting different shapes or different types of leaves or different types of rocks and sorting them. Or a ride on the bus could be an opportunity for searching for different shapes and letters, or maybe creating a creative story based off what you see. Or a trip to the laundromat could finish with a race to match pairs of socks. Or cooking, [which is] something on this survey that parents mentioned sharing with their child often. There’s so much learning and learning opportunity within cooking and parents are probably already doing a lot of the things [that support learning]. The goal is that it doesn’t feel like something extra that requires special skills, but [it’s] a way to change the lens on how we view everyday experiences and share with children to enrich them a little bit more. 

So, it’s not that parents need to sit down with their kids and really focus on doing an activity and facilitating that. We can think of guided play as these everyday experiences, but infusing the learning goal within those experiences?  

In school, a teacher would prepare the environment and then give children the agency within that environment and the [help] needed to meet the learning goal. And of course, the parent can do a similar thing, if they want to. But I think the research is showing that it can be simpler than that. They can take things that they’re already doing, and just shift the way they view them to think about ‘how can I make this a little bit more meaningful for my child?’ And it can also mean very simple changes to the environment as well. For example, the parent notices their child has really mastered building with regular shaped blocks. Maybe they add differently shaped blocks into their child’s blocks—that doesn’t require too much effort or too much work. It doesn’t require sitting down and teaching their child something. But it’s guided play because parents are [supporting] their child’s learning by adding something. 

Guided play can take a lot of different forms, which is maybe why it can be difficult to conceptualize, but it really comes down to an experience or interaction that’s initiated by an adult but maintains child’s agency. With that interaction, children have agency and freedom to explore and discover things on the way to meeting learning goals.  

Are there any cultural preferences or personal preferences to keep in mind, for example, if a parent or a culture really values kids being independent or engaging mostly in free play? 

Traditionally, certain cultures have valued free play or direct instruction more than others, but things seem to be changing. There seems to be a shift. We did analyze the data according to demographic information, and we did find some interesting differences. We found parents who were older, more educated and had higher incomes, and interestingly, also had older children, were more likely to identify free play as a preferred learning style. And preferences for direct instruction were highest among parents who are less educated and had a lower income. 

We didn’t really see any demographics that were strongly associated with preferences like guided play or games, but we are seeing these differences with free play versus direct instruction. We didn’t find any notable differences according to race and ethnicity throughout the survey.  

What is your biggest takeaway from this survey data? 

Parents are getting messages that play can be a powerful thing. However, parents think free play leads to the most learning, so there’s need for parents to receive clear research-backed messages to understand that free play is really important, but children learn most skills and content best through guided play. We’re really excited to move forward with getting these messages out to parents and helping them understand the different ways play can look and how they can support that without having to feel overburdened. 

You can read more about play and parenting in this recent white paper, published by Wright and her co-researchers, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and Bo Stjerne Thomsen, chair of Learning Through Play and vice president of the LEGO Foundation. 

Last year, our early childhood team at The Hechinger Report reported a series on play looking at the research behind play, what play looks like in pre-K, how elementary schools are trying to incorporate more play into the day and how play can be brought into middle school so older children can reap the benefits of that time.

• Metropolitan areas with high densities of Hispanic populations saw large declines in child care employment during the pandemic, and those areas recovered more slowly as the pandemic went on. That is the main finding of a new report by the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families. The report also found that in 2022, there were fewer Latino child care workers compared to pre-pandemic numbers. 

• Families spend, on average, 27 percent of their household income on child care expenses, with nearly 60 percent of parents planning to spend more than $18,000 per child on child care this year. That is the main finding of a new report on child care costs from Care.com. 

“Child care disruptions expected as record funding nears an end,” The New York Times 

“Blue state governors are pushing Congress on child care as federal subsidies dry up,” The 19^th 

“Should your job provide child care?” Fast Company 

“State announces $24M investment into early childhood programs,” NBC Montana  

“Colorado free preschool program matches more than 27,400 families, seats still available,” Chalkbeat 

The post Play that helps kids learn appeared first on The Hechinger Report.