Grace Calls for Full Financing of Mississippi Early Education and Care

OCT. 5, 2004 | Cathy Grace, Ed.D., director of the National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives, called on the governor and legislature of Mississippi last week to enact the recommendations of the Mississippi Early Childhood Financing Project.

Grace spoke at a forum convened by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour Sept. 28 in Tupelo, Miss. She praised Governor Barbour and First Lady Marsha Barbour for their interest in improving the quality and accessibility of early childhood education and care. She also called early education the key to raising children who will become “civil, compassionate, responsible adults.”

Grace is a professor in the College of Education at Mississippi State University, director of the MSU Early Childhood Institute, and director of the National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives.

The full text of her speech follows:

The Future Begins Today

“Everyone is well aware of the critical importance of the first years of life in the development of the child. From the first days of life, the young child is learning by observation, through communication, and in relationships with the people around her. The baby learns from observing the smiling faces of her parents, grandparents, big brothers and sisters … and of her caregivers … that she is loved. When the people in her life respond to her earliest efforts at communication – the cries that tell us that she is hungry, or tired, or frightened – she learns that we are listening to her, that we will come to her rescue. She learns that she is safe.

“In these relationships, children learn – from the very first days of life – about cause and effect, about trust, about how exactly it is that we communicate and learn from each other. These first lessons are the foundation for everything that follows: language comprehension; reaching and grasping and picking up objects; walking; and talking – and later on, going to school, reading and writing, math and science, sharing, and respecting others.

“And throughout the early childhood years, those caregivers remain very important to the child’s development. Along with the young child’s parents and extended family members, the professionals and paraprofessionals who deliver the early care and education provide not just lessons about colors and letters and shapes, but lessons about how the child can expect the world to treat her and she the world. The young child’s relationships with adults and with other children in child care centers, family child care homes, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten determine what the child knows and believes about her place in the world, about her ability to understand the world, about her power to influence the world, about her safety in the world.

“So it is not just cognitive development – learning letters and numbers – that is at stake. It is not just physical growth and health that are at stake. It is not just the child’s social-emotional health that is at stake. Our future as a state and collective group of citizens is at stake. It will be played out through the eyes, ears, hearts, hands and minds of the young children residing in Mississippi today and those Mississippians not yet born.

“The education of young children begins at birth with the parent being the child’s first and most important teacher. As other adults enter the child’s life, the learning taking place is most certainly affected and that is why we are here today. We are all depending on the professionals and paraprofessionals, who are devoting their working lives to caring for and educating other people’s children, to teach those children these earliest lessons. We are depending on them to love, care for and teach these children so that when they enter school they will be, in those very weighted words, “ready to learn” – and so these children grow up to be civil, compassionate, responsible adults, adults who will be able to repeat the process of caring for and teaching the next generation of babies.

“This is not about elementary school test scores. This is not about benchmark exams. This is not about ACT scores. This is about preserving and perpetuating what is best in American culture. It is about making sure that children grow up to be good citizens – citizens who believe in their own power to make a difference; citizens who believe each vote counts; citizens who will participate in democracy and defend democracy; citizens who are skilled and earn wages sufficient to support their families, so that Mississippi can advance in every economic and well being indicator used to measure us as a nation – so that our civilization can survive.

“It all starts when that baby finds out that the person holding her will look into her eyes and respond to her tears and echo her earliest sounds, that in relationships with other people, she matters. But in most communities in the United States, these people who have such a great responsibility for the future of our society, the professionals and paraprofessionals who provide early care and education, earn far, far less than K-12 teachers with comparable educational credentials. In Mississippi, preschool teachers earn an average of $8.60 per hour and paraprofessionals earn $6.63 an hour.  And many of these caregivers and early teachers are woefully unprepared for this grave responsibility.

“Teaching and caring for young children is not mere child’s play. It is not just women’s work. Early childhood education is a discipline with a deep body of knowledge and theory, based on the science of child development. It takes years to learn the art and science of early childhood education – and more years to master it. Not only that – it is extremely difficult, stressful work. Done well, tending to the cognitive, physical, and social-emotional needs of young children – children who may have special behavioral or health needs, who may live in poverty, who may routinely witness violence in their homes and communities – is as hard as any work anyone can do.

“And yet the professionals and paraprofessionals making less than $350 per week, before taxes, have little hope of earning more – of being able to care for their own families’ financial needs – even if they continually work to improve their own skills, and acquire better credentials, and do a better job. And so they leave early care and education at phenomenal rates. The annual turnover rate in the child care industry is approximately 40 percent. The people who want to care for and teach our young children leave this important work because there is no incentive to stay. The professionals and paraprofessionals in early care and education deserve more – because our children deserve more.

“Here in Mississippi, a group of civic leaders and representatives of early education programs, school districts, state agencies, parents, higher education, state planning and economic development researchers, and city and state governments worked through much of the year of 2003 and into 2004 to analyze alternatives for improving the quality, affordability, and accessibility of early education and care in metropolitan, suburban, and rural communities alike. The Mississippi Department of Human Services and the Barksdale Reading Institute sponsored the study, called the Mississippi Early Childhood Financing Project. This project reflects some of the best thinking in our state about how a viable, education driven early childhood system would look and cost. Dr.Sharon Lynn Kagan of the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Dr. Richard Brandon, an economist with the Human Services Policy Center at the University of Washington led a team of national experts and compiled the group’s recommendations. The proposed new direction is not a reaction to the present or the past but rather an acknowledgement that the best investment in our state’s future is to be made in educating its youngest citizens.

“The following principles of the plan are key:

• All aspects of the proposed system are voluntary. Parents would be able to choose whether to enroll their children, and where to enroll them. 
   

• Teachers of young children with educational credentials comparable to public school teachers in Mississippi would be paid at the same level but over a 12 month rather than a 9 month period and receive comparable benefits.
   

• State funding for participating programs would be based upon the programs attaining quality—as measured by standards and accountability measures.
   

• The development and funding of the system would be completed in phases.
   

• The system would support early childhood care and education in family child care homes as well as in licensed centers.

“Recommendations made by the group for the first phase of the system are based upon national standards. These standards are derived from research conducted in the field over the last 30 years. The recommendations are as follows:

• The state would implement a revised tiered reimbursement system, based on teacher educational level, director’s educational level, quality of the classroom environment, and child-teacher interactions, for both family child care home programs and licensed centers.
   

• Additional child care licensing monitors would be engaged so that the current 1 monitor to approximately 100 centers would be reduced to 1 to 60, closer to the national standard.
   

• Clearly defined roles, qualifications and career paths for all early care and education staff, including teachers, directors and family child care providers, would be communicated.

“This includes a move to increase compensation so that it eventually becomes commensurate with education qualifications and credentials of public school teachers.

“After these are fully executed, additional components would be added incrementally. Briefly, they would involve a higher number of degreed teachers working with children birth through four years of age, salary increases for teachers and assistants based on years of experience and advanced education, and an increase of support to families in the form of state and federal subsidies so that  families earning wages of up to $73,000 annually would receive a meaningful subsidy to be invested in their young child’s education, with approximately 19 hours of parent education available to every family.

“Of course, these are not cheap proposals. Discussing the elements of a plan for the future without discussing how to pay for them would be irresponsible. We can afford to educate our young children by utilizing partnerships, promoting local involvement through creative financing. Most importantly, Mississippi must draw down all federal funds that are available for child care. If $6.6 million were allocated to match child care quality enhancement funds we would reap the benefit of over $18 million. Additionally, we are allowed to move 30 percent of our TANF funds to be used for child care subsidies. This would increase significantly the number of children qualifying for program entry to be served.

“If there really is going to be a new early childhood education system in our state, then there will have to be a new way to finance it. If we only wink at the current system and puff it up a little, we will fall short of what could be and work force development goals will continue to go unmet.

“The early childhood field in Mississippi will have to accept a greater degree of accountability in return for better compensation. But the hundreds of Mississippians I know in early care and education are ready for more responsibility. They know that a state with more civic participation, less crime, greater educational attainments, and a healthier economy begins in the early childhood years. And so, Governor Barbour, and the esteemed members of the legislature who are here today, we encourage you to take seriously the responsibility we all have to Mississippi’s children to make sure that their earliest learning experiences are the best that we can make them.

“Harold Hodgkinson, our country’s premier demographer, has said “Why do we invest such a pitifully small percentage of our resources and our concern in the early years of people that will inherit our nation, our youngest children?” It is my most sincere belief that we will leave here with a strong indication that Governor Barbour and the legislature understand that our collective future will be decided in the next few months as policy around early childhood education is developed. It is my belief that there will be more than talk and a reshuffling of papers and sentences on a page. I believe that Governor Barbour knows full well that today and the days to come will define our legacy, our future – one way or the other.”

 

Updated 12/01/2006