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Tag: early childhood education

  • Bill to address issues from Ohio’s infant mortality to early childhood education passes legislature

    Bill to address issues from Ohio’s infant mortality to early childhood education passes legislature

    Getty Image

    By:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    Legislation to make improvements to systems ranging from infant care to early childhood education throughout the state of Ohio was passed by the Ohio General Assembly on Wednesday.

    House Bill 7 made it through the lame duck session with passage the day after the measure was favorably passed in the Senate Finance Committee with amendments to remove funding provisions within the bill.

    “We raised awareness, and we are asking to up our game next year,” said co-sponsor state Rep. Andrea White, R-Kettering, when the House concurred in Senate amendments late on Wednesday night.

    Co-sponsor state Rep. Latyna Humphrey, D-Columbus, called it “a good step in the right direction,” and said supporters would be pushing for the funding in the budget.

    “We want people to know that we’re not done,” Humphrey said.

    Other amendments to the bill eliminated doula services for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, and though advocates were disappointed to see funding removed, they expressed hope that next year’s budget would include items to help move forward with improvements to infant and maternal mortality and community resource engagement to bring about better child outcomes in the state.

    The bill still contains a directive for an Ohio Department of Medicaid-led study regarding “reimbursement of evidence-based peer-to-peer programming that supports infant vitality,” and a requirement that the Ohio Department of Children & Youth streamline it’s processes, including central intake and referral to focus on home visiting programs and “encourage early prenatal and well-baby care” as well as parenting education.

    The ODCY will also be required to “rate” licensed child daycare centers and family daycare home operations for Head Start or Early Head Start in the same rating system as Step Up to Quality.

    The bill had bipartisan co-sponsors, unlike other child care bills that seem doomed as the lame duck session comes to an end, including a Democrat-led bill that would have created a tax credit similar to the federal tax credit seen during the COVID pandemic, and a Republican proposal to split costs for child care in Ohio between employers, employees and the state.

    The child care system in Ohio has been criticized as highly flawed, unaffordable and inaccessible to many Ohioans who need the ability to place their children in quality facilities in order to contribute to the workforce.

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    Susan Tebben
    Susan Tebben

    Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Ohio near bottom in preschool spending compared to other states

    Ohio near bottom in preschool spending compared to other states

    BY:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine used his recent State of the State speech to proclaim the importance of child care and education, but a national report released last week ranks Ohio near the bottom of the country in preschool spending.

    The National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual “state of preschool” report showed nationwide disparities in access, quality and funding for preschool, with Ohio sitting at 43rd in total reported spending on the early education.

    “Most states have not committed to serving all children, and even those states that have often fall short,” W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director and founder of NIEER at Rutgers University, said in a statement. “Most states need to increase funding per child substantially to enable providers to meet minimal standards for a high-quality, effective program.”

    The report called inadequate funding “a near universal problem.”

    Barnett did praise a 2023 increase in state-level funding of $122 million over two years as part of the most recent state budget, as well as a $250 increase in per-pupil funding, the first in the state since 2009. Ohio ranked 36th in state-specific spending on preschool in the new report, which specifically studied the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s publicly funded Early Childhood Education program for the 2022-2023 school year.

     Source: National Institute for Early Education Research 

    That boost followed a reduction in the 2022-2023 school year, when state spending dropped $268 per child from the 2021-2022 year.

    “We encourage Ohio to keep up the progress, as much work remains to provide access to full-day, adequately funded early learning opportunities that will help children develop and parents earn a living,” Barnett wrote in a release on the new data.

    Ohio has a total of 18,000 children enrolled in pre-K education, with 35% of the school districts offering a state-funded program. The federally funded Head Start program for ages 3 and 4 has a state enrollment of 24,649. No state contributions go to the Head Start program for 3 or 4 year olds, according to the study.

    Nationally, preschool enrollment rose to 35% of 4-year-olds and 7% of 3-year-olds, with overall state expenditures increasing by 11% compared to 2021-2022 data.

    “However, despite this notable progress, most states still fell short of their pre-pandemic preschool enrollment,” NIEER stated.

    In terms of access, Ohio ranked 36th for 4-year-olds and 26th for 3-year-olds.

    Last year’s report saw Ohio in 36th for 4-year-old enrollment, but slightly lower at 27th for three-year-old enrollment.

    In the 2024 research, Ohio only met half of the 10 benchmarks noted in the report.

    Benchmarks met by the state in the most recent NIEER report included early learning and development standards; curriculum supports; specialized training for teachers; screening and referral; and its continuous quality improvement system.

    Researchers found the state hadn’t met benchmarks in teacher degrees, assistant teacher degrees, staff professional development, maximum class size and staff-to-child ratios. This data was identical to last year’s met and unmet benchmarks for Ohio.

    An associate degree is required in the state for pre-K teachers, but the NIEER benchmark is a bachelor’s degree. For assistant preschool teachers, the Ohio requirement is a high school diploma, though the NIEER sets a benchmark of a child development associate credential or equivalent credential.

    Maximum class size set in Ohio is 24 for 3-year-olds and 28 for 4-year-olds, though NIEER recommends 20 or lower.

    Susan Tebben
    SUSAN TEBBEN

    Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • How can we do higher quality early childhood programs in Ohio?

    How can we do higher quality early childhood programs in Ohio?

    Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

    Commentary by By Rob Moore and Ohio Capital Journal

    One provision in the Ohio Senate’s new $75 million budget passed last week that has garnered plenty of attention has to do with Step Up to Quality, the state’s system for promoting quality in early childhood programs in Ohio.

    The Senate budget removes the Step Up to Quality child care standards mandate, allowing child care providers to continue to get more money for meeting higher quality standards but not stopping payments for programs that don’t meet standards.

    The Columbus Dispatch reports that the Step Up to Quality mandate removal is a step to reduce costs for the state, which Senate President Matt Huffman’s staff estimates will cost the state an additional $640 million by 2024.

    The strange thing is that Step Up to Quality is currently savingthe state money — but not in the way you would think. The same Columbus Dispatch article quotes Allen County Job and Family Services Director Joe Patton. He says the number of child care providers taking public funds has dropped from 60 to 17 in the past decade, something he attributes to the mandate to participate in Step Up to Quality.

    This means that the requirements in Step Up to Quality could be leading providers to stop taking public funds so they don’t have to deal with these requirements.

    The evidence that we have suggests quality in early childhood education matters. We’ve seen positive examples of the impact of early childhood like the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project. We’ve also seen the negative impact of expanding child care without quality controls in Quebec, leading to higher aggression and illness and lower motor and social skills among children and worse parenting relationships and health among parents.

    That being said, the evidence for the effectiveness of programs like Step Up to Quality are mixed.

    A 2019 evaluation of New Mexico’s “Step Up to Quality” equivalent conducted by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee found no evidence child care assistance led to improved educational outcomes. It did find that family income and child well-being improved among providers that participated in the program, but the specific ranking didn’t have any bearing on these outcomes.

    What this means is that, while it helped families to be a “one-star” program, they couldn’t find any difference between “one-star” and “five-star” programs. These programs, at least in this case, were likely measuring and requiring the wrong things.

    So what can we do better? One option is to focus more on outcomes than outputs. The New Mexico study above recommends creating evaluation plans for child care based on “measures of child health and social-emotional development, family economic improvement, and parental employment.”

    Another option is to put the state in charge of assessment of quality the same way it is in charge of assessing health conditions. Having early childhood assessors who go on-site to assess conditions would reduce reporting costs borne by providers and could tie assessment to widely-used measures like the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale.

    While we have good reason to believe early childhood education can grow the economy, reduce poverty, and improve lives, we still have a lot to learn about how to best foster it from a public policy standpoint. This is a system that will likely endure some substantial tweaking in the coming decade.