How to rebuild the foundation of Minnesota’s education system

Guest blog post by Ready 4 K President Todd Otis for LearnmoreMN.

How do we know if things are getting better or worse in the world of early childhood? Early childhood education is a complex field with many players and components. In order to help the state move in a positive direction, and to gauge the impact of an array of programs and settings that young children find themselves in, it is important to have an agreed upon way of “keeping score.” In this case we need to “keep score” of our youngest children’s school readiness.

Our state conducts an annual “Minnesota School Readiness Study,” an assessment based on the observations of trained kindergarten teachers who know what to look for in terms of the skills and attributes of entering kindergarteners. The study provides a statistically valid sampling of school readiness. The assessment tool used is called the Work Sampling System and it turns out that it is a pretty good predictor of future school achievement, such as third grade reading skills. Ready 4 K’s mission is to “move the needle” of the number who are fully proficient from the current 50% to 100% — a goal the state of Minnesota shares.

A coalition of early childhood organizations* that Ready 4 K has helped to organize, has met regularly since March 2009 to develop a policy game plan for achieving that goal. This unified effort is the first time the early childhood community has come together this way. We have called our plan Minnesota’s Future, because we think that is exactly what is at stake in how well we provide early learning opportunities for our youngest citizens.

We are guided by this vision:

• Children have access to high quality early childhood experiences  
• Parents are recognized and supported as their children’s most important teachers
• Families and other adults in a child’s life are supported in helping children succeed
• Communities embrace a collective responsibility for children’s success

It all boils down to providing a lot more children with access to quality early learning settings when they are in the care of others, and a lot more widespread parent education and support in raising their children.

The appropriate focus is on children in the lowest income families because the annual state assessment correlates not being ready closely with low income. Moreover, if at-risk children have access to quality programs, that is where the biggest return on investment occurs, according to Dr. Art Rolnick.

Perhaps the most important words in describing any meaningful policy agenda that will actually improve school readiness are “access to quality early learning.” A powerful demonstration of the importance of quality came in a study done by the Minnesota Department of Human Services five years ago, in which children in 22 accredited centers were assessed for their school readiness, using the same Work Sampling tool that the Department of Education uses in its annual assessment. Instead of numbers in the 40s or 50s, the percentages were in the 70s and 80s, for measurements of proficiency in language, literacy, social emotional development and all the other key indicators that go into school readiness. Quality really matters.

*Coalition members: Child Care Works, Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children/Minnesota School Age Alliance, Minnesota Association of Family and Early Education, Minnesota Child Care Association, Minnesota Child Care Resource and Referral Network, Minnesota Coalition of Targeted Home Visiting, Minnesota Community Education Association, Minnesota Head Start Association, Ready 4 K.

Quality early learning pays dividends

Guest blog post by Ready 4 K President Todd Otis for LearnmoreMN.

Quality early learning pays dividends

By Todd Otis, December guest blogger

I am going to start with a story about my mother 40 years ago, sitting in a dentist’s chair in New York City, shortly after she had moved there from St. Paul. The dentist was staring into her mouth, muttering small exclamations of approval and finally he blurted out, “Louise, are you from Minnesota?” My mother said that yes indeed she was. The dentist replied, “This is the finest dental work I have ever seen. I figured you were from Minnesota.”

Apparently our dentists were (and probably still are) world class. My dream is that not too long from now people will be able to say that about Minnesota’s system of education. Not that it is just solid, but that it is the best. So Minnesota graduates on the job anywhere in the world would be identifiable by their outstanding skills and personal qualities.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota “feeder system” for higher education is facing major challenges.

The red flags for education in Minnesota include the fact that only one-half of entering kindergartners start school fully prepared for success; annually 100,000 Minnesota students do not graduate from high school on time; and Minnesota has one of the worst achievement gaps between white students and students of color in the entire United States. Minnesota, which had prided itself on major investment in education, has fallen to the middle of the pack among the states.

A startling percentage of the budget in higher education in Minnesota goes toward remediation. I am totally convinced that if all children started school fully prepared, that number would go down dramatically. K-12 will perform markedly better when all the children are “Ready 4 K.”

Minnesota needs to regroup and move again toward educational greatness, and it all begins in the youngest years. The mission of my organization is to move the needle from 50% to 100% of entering kindergartners, ready for kindergarten. It is important, because quality early learning pays dividends, both to the students and to society, for years to come. Let me share a few facts from one of the longitudinal studies, the Abcedarian Project in North Carolina, to show the impact quality early learning can make on higher education.

The Abcedarian Project was a carefully controlled study with 57 infants from low-income families randomly selected to receive high quality early care and education and 54 children from a non-treated group. The treated children received full-time high quality care from infancy through age 5. The Executive Summary of the longitudinal study found that:

• “Young adults who received early educational intervention had significantly higher mental test score from toddlerhood through age 21.”
• “Reading achievement score were consistently higher for individuals with early intervention. Treatment effect sizes remained large from primary school through age 21.
• “Those with treatment were significantly more likely to be in school at age 21 ? 40% of the intervention group compared to 20% of the control group.
• “A significant difference was also found for the percent of young adults who ever attended a four-year college. About 35% of the young adults in the intervention group had either graduated...or at the time of assessment were attending a four-year college or university. In contrast only about 14% in the control group had done so.”

The bottom line is that quality early learning has benefits that last for life. In terms of private and public benefits, economist Dr. Art Rolnick maintains that investment in quality early learning for at-risk kids provides the highest return on investment of any public investment. Period. His claim has not been rebutted.

Entering kindergartners are the “raw material” our K-12 system must work with. It is unconscionable that Minnesota permits half the children to enter without the skills and attributes they need to succeed educationally. Minnesota only devotes 1% of the state budget to what are arguably the most formative years in any person’s life. While parents are of paramount importance as their children first and most important teachers, Minnesota does an inadequate job of providing economically challenged, working parents access to quality early learning for their children.

In my next blog post I will tell you what Ready 4 K and our allies doing to solve the problem. For now let me leave you with this thought and/or question:

Why can’t Minnesota start to think of our education system as one, coherent whole, with three components that need to coordinate and cooperate better: early childhood; K-12; and post-secondary (public and private)?

Why can’t we identify milestone goals and metrics to chart progress, and then cooperatively go about meeting the goals, measuring our success? Rather than fighting one another for funding at the Capitol, why can’t the three systems work together? For example, Ready 4 K wants 100% children ready for kindergarten and Growth and Justice wants a 50% increase of Minnesota students who successfully complete higher education by 2020. To quote Paul Wellstone: “We all do better when we all do better.”

Let me know what you think.

Comment on this post.

Good News for Early Childhood

While the Minnesota Legislature is in recess and our attention is focused on summer vacations – and the upcoming statewide elections, of course – the U.S. Congress is busy debating the federal budget for the next fiscal year.

Early Childhood Legislation Moving through Congress

A particularly exciting development concerns the Early Learning Challenge Fund (ELCF).  As you may remember, the ELCF was under consideration earlier this year, to be funded from reforms to higher education student loans.  In the end, the ELCF was left out of student loan reform bill, but with continued pressure from advocates and a commitment from the Obama Administration, positive action is being taken. 

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education of the Committee on Appropriations approved a proposal that would provide $300 million for the Early Learning Challenge Fund.  The ELCF would establish a competitive grant process for states to develop comprehensive quality early learning systems for children birth to five, particularly those who are at risk of starting school not fully prepared. Minnesota is well-positioned to apply for this funding, should it pass Congress, given the existing efforts of the Governor's Early Childhood Advisory Council and others.  You can learn more about the ELCF from this Ready 4 K Policy Brief.

The bill approved by the subcommittee also includes a $990.3 million increase for Head Start and a $1 billion increase for child care—exceeding the Obama Administration’s request and fully maintaining increased levels of funding secured with federal stimulus dollars. The bill still has a long way to go before it becomes law (it must be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, passed by the Senate and then approved by the House as well), but this is really good news.  Neither of Minnesota's Senators serve on the Appropriations Committee.  Stay tuned for an action alert when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

Minnesota 2020 Touts Early Care and Education

Ready 4 K has known since our inception that investing in high quality early care and education has tremendous social, economic and educational benefits--indeed, it's our raison d'etre for existing. So it's always welcome news when other organizations, especially ones whose raison d'etre is not early childhood, touts its benefits and encourages policy makers to embrace it.

Recently, Minnesota 2020, a progressive, non-partisan think tank, issued a series of communications on the topic, concluding that:

"The question isn't whether these services are needed. They clearly are. We must ask: Why is Minnesota compromising its future prosperity by refusing to properly invest in early childhood education? If Minnesota children consistently start behind at Kindergarten, it undermines the state's long history of K-16 investment that has propelled us above our prairie competitors. The path to a strong, vibrant, nimble future for Minnesota's economy starts on rubber-tiled floors with miniature plastic chairs and trained educators delivering researched-based lessons that advance cognitive development, not in front of grandma or a neighbor's television."

Read their perspective on how the 2010 Legislative Session fared for early childhood here, a featured story here and their in-depth report here.

They also put together a wonderful video summarizing their findings.




Welcome, Minnesota 2020, to the growing array of voices advocating for high quality early care and education!

This week's candidate forums

We at Ready 4 K were happy to be part of two Gubernatorial Candidate forums this week. Early childhood education was discussed at both forums and candidates expressed their support for investing in our youngest Minnesotans.




On Tuesday at a forum sponsored by Growth and Justice, Matt Entenza, Tom Horner, Mark Dayton and Rob Hahn gathered at Open Book in Minneapolis to discuss issues related to education. You can catch the audio of the forum here or watch the video thanks to The Uptake.

Minnesota Minority Education Partnership, Minnesota Rural Education Association, Parents United for Public Schools, and Ready 4 K co-sponsored this event.

A Political Forum Focused on Issues Affecting Women

On Wednesday the YWCA of Minneapolis and Minnesota Women Lawyers hosted a forum at the downtown YWCA building. Mark Dayton, Tom Horner, Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Matt Entenza were present to speak to issues affecting women. Video from this forum is also available on The Uptake.

This event was co-sponsored by Child Care WORKS, Ready 4 K, Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, Minnesota African Women's Association (MAWA), Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers (MABL), Pay Equity Coalition of Minnesota, and Civil Society.

We look forward to a busy summer of meeting and connecting with candidates. As you meet candidates in your area, you can use the Minnesota's Future agenda to guide your discussion on early care and education.

Ready 4 K is working with our allies to promote a set of shared policy recommendations for Minnesota's next Governor that will improve children's development and readiness for school and for life. Learn more at www.ready4k.org/minnesotasfuture

Poverty now, lasting impact later

A recent article on MinnPost describes the challenges children face during a recession. (Recession taking a toll that may last a lifetime for many children throughout the nation and Minnesota)

Economic recession and the poverty it can cause for children and families can have lasting impact on their lives and on our society as a whole. Children who live in poverty are susceptible to “toxic stress” that impacts the very structure of their brain. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University describes toxic stress as:

... when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support. This kind of prolonged activation of the stress response systems can disrupt the development of brain architecture and other organ systems, and increase the risk for stress-related disease and cognitive impairment, well into the adult years.

MinnPost highlights the Children’s Defense Fund Minnesota’s annual Kids Count report (PDF) that shows the percentage of children living in poverty grew by nearly one third between 2000 and 2008. The challenges of living in poverty affect children the most as their developing brains absorb everything going on around them. These affects can significantly hinder a child’s ability to be fully prepared for school when they enter kindergarten.

The key to mitigating toxic stress is to have a strong support system of adults surrounding the child. We can encourage these support systems by advocating for home visiting, parent education and other programs that can ease these stressful situations. You can learn more about toxic stress at Toxic Stress Response: the facts.

Ready 4 K promotes policies that support the ability of parents, providers and community members to positively interact with children to help lay a stable foundation for later school achievement, economic productivity and responsible citizenship. Learn more about our policies at www.ready4k.org/minnesotasfuture.

End of Session @ the Capitol

What a weekend! You've probably read in news reports that the 2010 Legislative Session wrapped up this morning, with a brief special session called in order to complete the work in a timely matter. The good news for early care and education is that there were no permanent cuts made to early childhood programs, most notably to child care assistance. A brief update is below, and we'll send out a more complete summary soon.

Saturday's session of the Legislature began with the good news that the Governor had signed the Early Childhood Policy bill into law, despite some heavy lobbying to veto the bill by key Republican members. For once, common sense and a commitment to continue to build an effective high quality early care and education system prevailed. See our Omnibus Bill Tracker for a complete summary of the new law.

The weekend was marked by fits and starts of floor sessions, conference committees and leadership meetings. Disagreements and clarifying of positions between all bodies over early enrollment of childless adults from General Assistance Medical Care to Medical Assistance, which would qualify for federal matching funds, was at the crux of the debate. As negotiations continued, the House and Senate passed an Omnibus Supplemental Budget bill late Saturday/early Sunday morning, which included a mix of cuts, K-12 payment shifts, medical surcharges and no tax increases. This set in motion a series of offers and counter-offers by the DFL-controlled legislature and the Republican Governor throughout the day on Sunday.

At nearly 11:45pm, legislative leaders and the governor announced a deal requiring a brief special session, which was called at 12:01am on Monday, to pass the contents of the agreed-upon bill.  The bill was approved by both legislative bodies at 10 AM today and is headed for the Governor's signature.  In the end, child care fared pretty well, given the challenges of the budget deficit and the legislative-governor politics.  The legislation will take the Basic Sliding Fee underspending, but that is only a one-time move and no permanent cuts were made to child care. In addition, no reductions were made in other early childhood programs.

A successful albeit messy legislative session. We'll get out a complete legislative wrap up in the coming days!
 

Look for an end-of-session summary the early part of next week. And thank you for all you’ve done this year. Early care and education certainly wouldn’t faired as it has thus far without your support!

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - May 14, 2010

This week at the Capitol, the Health and Human Services Conference Committee finished their work, the House E-12 Education Budget bill passed the full House, and the conference committee report for the Omnibus Early Childhood Policy bill passed both bodies. While it feels like a lot happened this week, it seems we’re at virtually the same place as we were last week in terms of budget negotiations.

The Health and Human Services Conference Committee met throughout the past weekend late into the night, and wrapped up their bill Wednesday morning at 2am. Child care was in play up to the last budget offer, with its funding being pitted against other worthwhile budget areas, but in the end, the House position prevailed and no permanent cuts to child care were made. The final bill did include using the $7.5 million of “underspending” in the Basic Sliding Fee child care program, but it’s a one-time cut that will not result in families being kicked out of programs. Rep. Nora Slawik is owed a lot of credit for holding the line against permanent cuts. 

Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed the HHS bill, adding yet another issue to be dealt with in the waning days of the 2010 Legislative Session. Read his veto message here.

Even though education budget bills have passed both bodies, the differences between the House and Senate bills seem impossible to resolve in the next two days, and it is unlikely that a conference committee will be appointed. There is of course the matter of the K-12 funding shift, which could end up in a separate final budget package as well.

We have some initial indications that the Governor may indeed sign the Early Childhood Policy bill. The conference committee report passed by wide margins with bipartisan support in both bodies, and we can expect action on the bill today or tomorrow. Follow Ready 4 K on Twitter for breaking news on the bill.   Our Omnibus Bill Tracker includes a summary of the provisions in the bill. 

As we head into the final weekend of the Session, much is still unknown. Closed-door negotiations are taking place, with key legislators making appearances in the Governor’s office at times. Even though the Governor is at his Fishing Opener today and tomorrow, his staff and Republican leaders continue to meet with DFLers to hammer out a deal. Because it’s the second year of the legislative session, they cannot pass bills on Monday, the final day, so we expect a solution to emerge by Sunday. There is speculation that this may not happen, which would likely mean that legislators would be called back for a special session. And given that all 201 legislators are up re-election, this is not an attractive prospect.

Look for an end-of-session summary the early part of next week. And thank you for all you’ve done this year. Early care and education certainly wouldn’t faired as it has thus far without your support!

Family Home Visiting: A Proven Strategy for School Readiness

Today's StarTribune and MinnPost both featured a articles on a critical program reaching some of the families most at-risk for sending children to school unprepared. The Minnesota Visiting Nurses Association (MVNA) sends nurses to visit with pregnant teens and teen mothers and new research is showing the important role these visits have in helping these babies one day start school fully prepared.


The nurses visit with the young moms and work with them to answer questions, connect them with resources and share important information about what to expect with their new baby. The Wilder Foundation has completed the first of a two year study on the program in Minneapolis. From the report, MVNA's nurses met with 523 pregnant and parenting teens in the city between Jan 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. Of these mothers, 83 percent were first-time moms and 27 percent were foreign born. The largest ethnic groups represented were African-American (43%) and Hispanic (27%). Ninety-five percent of these babies were born at a healthy weight (compared to 90% in the control group) and 95 percent were born at full term (compared to 89%). Both of these are key early indicators for future health and development.

The value of such a program is how it serves some of the hardest to reach families as early as possible and can connect them with other services that will help them get their children prepared to learn, which leads to an even greater return on investment.

Ready 4 K has long advocated for voluntary home visits to be viewed as a critical piece of a quality early learning system. We made significant progress in 2007, when Ready 4 K was successful in securing additional resources for Minnesota's Family Home Visiting Program and making changes to the law to include school readiness as a goal of the program. As a result of our efforts, Ready 4 K is a member of the Minnesota Dept. of Health's Family Home Visiting Steering Committee, which oversees the implementation and evaluation of the program.

We continue to form alliances and work with a diverse group of stakeholders to ensure that this funding remains intact, and thus far we've been successful. One important step in doing this has been to join forces with the Coalition for Targeted Home Visiting, whose mission is to find a secure and stable funding source for targeted home visiting. The Coalition includes members from public health, schools, community programs, and other deliverers of home visiting, and keeps a watchful eye on the legislative process, both federally and at the state level.

The Coalition is also a member of Minnesota's Future, an alliance of early childhood advocacy organizations advancing a set of shared policy recommendations to Minnesota's next Governor that will improve children's development and readiness for school and for life. In fact voluntary home visiting and parent education programs for every first-time parent is one of the five points on Minnesota's Future platform for the next governor.

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - May 7, 2010

This week at the Capitol finally feels like it should in early May at the Capitol: conference committees began meeting, new funding cuts came forward, and twists and turns are keeping everyone on their toes.

The Health and Human Services Omnibus Budget Bill was finally sent to conference committee yesterday, and conferees began reviewing the side-by-sides. They pledged to get their bill done by Sunday evening, meaning those Saturday evening plans and Mother’s Day celebrations will likely take a back seat to the legislative process. If your Representative or Senator is serving on the HHS conference committee, look for an action alert today. Conferees include: HOUSE: Huntley, Thissen, Clark, Abeler, Hosch, Murphy, E.; SENATE: Berglin, Sheran, Lourey, Prettner Solon, Dille, Lynch.

Your calls and emails made a big difference this week, as the Omnibus Early Childhood Policy bill passed the House and Senate early in the week and was approved by the conference committee today. We expect the final bill to be approved by both bodies and hopefully signed by the Governor in the next few days. Check out the Ready 4 K home page and the Omnibus Bill Tracker for more details.

Early in the week, we learned that the Senate had proposed a $1.3 million cut to Head Start to help minimize a proposed cut to the school districts of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth. We were of course shocked that the Senate would play politics with low-income families, and again, your calls and emails to the Senate are helping to put a stop to the proposal. It’s not wrapped up yet, but we feel somewhat confident that, at least for now, the cut to Head Start is not on the table.

The big news of the week was that the Supreme Court ruled that Govenor Pawlenty’s unallotments last year exceeded the authority granted by the state’s unallotment statute. The Minnesota Budget Project sums it up nicely by saying, “It is still unclear whether the Governor’s other $2.7 billion in unallotments are immediately impacted. If the other unallotment actions aren’t reversed by this ruling, it at least opens the door for affected parties to bring forward additional lawsuits to overturn other unallotment actions. There is already a lawsuit pending regarding the Governor’s unallotment of the Renters’ Credit. So, we’ll have to wait and see what the budget implications will be.” Read their full article on the decision here.

Ready 4 K and our allied organizations will be holed up in a stuffy hearing room all weekend, and likely into next week, fighting for young children. Feel free to call, email or stop by with any questions. And of course, follow our activity on Twitter.

Ready 4 K @ The Capitol - April 30, 2010

This week at the Capitol was marked by a flurry of activity, as committees reviewed and moved several of the omnibus bills we are watching. Having faced two shortened weeks sandwiched between the DFL and GOP endorsing conventions, and with a little more than two weeks remaining in the 2010 Session, Legislators and those following their work certainly feel the crunch of time.

The plan for early childhood is to move an Omnibus Early Childhood Policy bill in the House, as well as to place all of the provisions in each corresponding omnibus budget and policy bill. Please note the links may not include the most up-to-date version of the bill.

• The House Omnibus Early Childhood Policy bill passed out of House Finance with little fanfare this week and will be heard again in Ways and Means on Monday.
• The House Health and Human Services Omnibus bill, which includes the Basic Sliding Fee child care under spending cut, the realignment of quality improvement dollars with QRIS and the CCAP teen parent provision, passed Finance and will also be in Ways and Means on Monday.
• The House K-12 bill will likely be amended in Finance this week to include the provisions which expand the duties of the Governor’s Early Childhood Advisory Council and the Dept. of Education-recommended changes to the School Readiness and early screening statutes.
• Over in the Senate, the Education Budget Committee released their Omnibus Budget bill, which includes no cuts to early childhood. The policy bill will be out on Tuesday.
• This cannot be said for the Senate HHS Budget bill however, as it includes not only the use if the BSF under spending, but also a 5% cut to the base of BSF, or about $5 million. The policy portions will be released on Monday.

The House and Senate omnibus budget bills should be up for a vote by both bodies next week, with conference committees getting underway shortly after, setting the stage for a busy final week of the session. It’s a lot to follow, so track the bills on our Omnibus Bill Tracker, and follow the action by following Ready 4 K on Twitter.

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - April 23, 2010

This week at the Capitol, you could almost just read last weeks’ update, as not much has changed. With the DFL State Convention this weekend in Duluth, and the Republicans heading to Minneapolis to endorse their state-wide candidates next weekend, the pause button was still pressed at the Capitol this week.

We did learn this week that the House is moving forward with an Omnibus Early Childhood Policy Bill, which will include all the non-budget items in the previously-passed Omnibus Early Childhood Finance and Policy bill. (The only budget item is use of the $7.5 million Basic Sliding Fee “under-spending.”)

How will this happen? The language will be amended onto the Senate companion for the “getting-ready-for-QRIS” bill, which passed the Senate last week and landed in House Finance, which will take it up on Tuesday. It will then go to House Ways and Means, then the floor of the House for a vote sometime in the next couple weeks, eventually back to the Senate for comparison, and, should the Senate not accept the amendments, onto conference committee. It’s exciting to have an Omnibus Early Childhood Policy bill this year! View the proposed House bill here.

The capture of the BSF under spending will move forward in the House Omnibus Health and Human Services bill, and line up with the Senate HHS bill in conference committee. This also means that, depending on what the Senate recommends, early care and education may not be a part of the Education Conference Committee.

The Conference Committee Tracker has been updated with notations about which pieces specifically are included in the House Omnibus Early Childhood Bill.

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - March 26, 2010

This week at the Capitol, the House Early Childhood Committee released their omnibus bill. It was unveiled on Monday, testimony was taken Tuesday, and it was amended and voted out on Thursday. It includes the following provisions:

• A one time cut of $7.5 million, accomplished by capturing the underspending in Basic Sliding Fee child care;
• Re-purposing $500,000 of existing quality dollars at DHS for providers to use to get ready for a quality rating system;
• Ensuring parents who receive child care assistance, and are under the age of 21 and in high school or pursuing a GED are eligible for CCAP for the full school year. This was a recommendation of the CCAP Simplification Task Force;
• Several new duties were added to the Governor’s Early Childhood Advisory Council, including adding a representative of the Dept of Health, requiring the Council to make recommendations on screening and assessments, requiring the Council to create and implement school readiness report card, and creating a task force to develop recommendations by January 2011 for the creation of an Office of Early Learning;
• Requiring that charter schools that provide early childhood screening must inform families that apply to the charter school about the availability of the program;
• Clarifying who is eligible to participate in School Readiness programs.

The bill passed out of the committee and was re-referred to the full House Finance Committee, where it will be divided and the child care portions will be amended onto the Omnibus Health and Human Services bill, and the education provisions will be amended onto the Omnibus Education bill. We expect this to happen in the next couple weeks, after legislators return from Spring Break. The full bill can be read here.

The Senate has yet to release their Education and Human Services Budget.

Read our full mid-session report, which aligns Ready 4 K’s policy agenda with corresponding legislation.

Our bill tracker may also be a useful resource for you, and it has been updated to reflect action on the House Omnibus Early Childhood Bill. However, once we have omnibus bills from the Senate, we will no longer update the tracker and will focus our attention on tracking the omnibus bills and conference committee activity.

In federal news, the Health Care Reform Package that passed Congress this week includes $1.5 billion over five years for a new grant program for evidence-based home visiting services. Within the next six months, states will have to conduct a needs assessment, develop three-to-five year outcome benchmarks to measure improvements, and to choose program models that meet certain criteria as evidence-based models. The first $100 million in federal funds will be distributed before the end of the current federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2010. The Minnesota Department of Health has announced that it will be taking the lead in collaboration with the Departments of Human Services and Education to do the planning that will be required for Minnesota to prepare a grant application. There is still much to learn much about what will be required from states, and through our continual involvement with the Minnesota Coalition for Targeted Home Visiting, we will stay abreast of news and share what we learn with you.

Coming up @ the Capitol

Over the weekend, it is expected that the conference committee on the first budget balancing bill, which includes essentially everything except health & human services and education, will complete their work and each body will take up the bill on Monday, March 29.

The Legislature goes on a week-long break starting at the end of the day on Monday, March 29, returning Tuesday, April 6. So what does this mean? Your legislator will be back in their district for a full week, and should be expecting to hear from you, their constituents. So take a moment to call, write or find your legislator at the local café and tell them how important it is to hold early care and education harmless.

Have a good break, and we’ll see you next month!

Ready 4 K@ the Capitol - March 19, 2010

It's been a couple weeks since we posted the updates here. If you'd like past updates, please contact Eric Haugee, eric at ready4k.org

March 19, 2010

This week at the capitol, we received the disappointing news that the Governor once again line-item vetoed bonding for Early Childhood Facilities, and again, gave no indication why. It was one of dozens of projects he eliminated from the bill, cutting it from $1 billion to $680 million, well below his suggested $725 million level. It seemed he had hoped that the Legislature would pass another, smaller bill to get funding for some key projects that the Legislature hadn’t included in their bill, but Capitol Investment conference committee chairs Sen. Keith Langseth (DFL-Glyndon) and Rep. Alice Hausman (DFL-St. Paul) have shown little interest of doing a second bill thus far.

Ready 4 K President Todd Otis said recently that “if ever there were a dramatic example of why we need to pay attention to the person we elect as Governor, this is it.” Read his full statement here.

In more positive news, several bills Ready 4 K is supporting moved further along in the process, with the Senate Education Committee dedicating an entire hearing this week to early care and education legislation. The wonderful folks from Invest Early in Grand Rapids came down to testify in support of the Early Childhood Community Partnership bill, a key initiative of the Minnesota’s Future early care and education allies group. As Blandin Foundation Program Officer Mary Kosak testified, “It was as if [bill author] Sen Tom Saxhaug, after his many visits to Invest Early, carefully crafted this legislation from what he learned.” Committee members gave helpful feedback about some of the provisions in the bill, most notably about the geographic area for grants to be made in and how the collaboration should take place. Given the fiscal challenges that the state faces, it is unlikely these grants will be funded, but it’s always good to keep this issue in front of committee members.

Other bills the committee heard included the legislative package put forward by the School Readiness Funders Coalition. The bills—making recommendations on screening and assessments of children, creating and implementing a statewide school readiness report card, and creating the Office of Early Childhood Care and Education—all received favorable comments from the committee and were re-referred to other committees for further action. The final bill the committee heard creates a program for at-risk four-year-olds, and allows school districts to levy up to $9,000 per eligible pupil to pay for it. Ready 4 K believes this bill moves the state in a positive direction by allowing districts to levy for early care and education programs.

The big news on the House side was the announcement of “budget targets” for each of the House Finance Committees. This year, since we are facing a budget deficit, the budget targets are the amount of funding committees must cut from their budgets. The House Early Childhood Policy and Finance Committee was given a target of $7.5 million. While we won’t know until next week how the Early Childhood Committee plans to allocate this cut, the $7.5 million is equal to the “underspending” in Basic Sliding Fee (BSF) child care assistance. While this would mean fewer low-income families would be served, at least it wouldn’t be a permanent cut to the program. The best of the worst, really. Click here for more information about this.

The House Early Childhood Committee this week began winding things down in preparation for their omnibus bill to be released. On Tuesday, the committee heard a proposal to allow programs that receive three or four stars on the Parent Aware quality rating and improvement system pilot to receive a 15 percent rate increase. While a step in the right direction, we would agree with Child Care WORKS Executive Director Susie Brown, that “this bill does not present a perfect long term solution as it rewards 3 and 4 stars at the same level, consistent with other Parent Aware quality incentives. We would like to eventually see in the statewide QRIS a higher rate for each star, creating incentives to move to the highest level of quality.”

At the same hearing, members heard a presentation on potential federal funding for home visiting programs. Maggie Diebel from the Mn Dept of Health was joined by Jill Briggs and Jane Kretzmann, co-chairs of the Targeted Home Visiting Coalition (which Ready 4 K is a part of). They assured the committee that the state is fully prepared to act quickly, once it becomes clear what the grant process is going to be.

The House companion bill creating an at-risk four-year-olds program was heard Thursday in the same committee, as were a presentation on Minnesota’s application for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Funding for Early Childhood State Advisory Councils and a presentation of the MN Parents Know website.

Finally, we learned just today that federal funding for the Early Learning Challenge Fund was removed from the US Senate’s budget bill, essentially signaling that it will not happen in this go-around of federal budget negotiations. Stay tuned.

Track all the early care and education bills here.

Coming up @ The Capitol

Next Friday is the third and final legislative deadline, which is for divisions of the House and Senate Committees on Finance to act favorably on omnibus appropriation bills. We haven’t heard yet what the plans are in the Senate, but the House Early Childhood Committee will be posting their omnibus bill on the committee’s webpage at 11a.m on Monday. Amendments and testimony will follow on Tuesday and Thursday. Please show up and show your support (but note the new time below)!

The legislature goes on spring break Tuesday, March 30 to Tuesday, April 6. As such there will be not be a Ready 4 K @ the Capitol next week. Instead, as is the tradition, we will send out and post here a mid-session update.

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - March 5, 2010

March 5, 2010

This Week @ the Capitol

This week at the Capitol, committees ramped up their work, as deadlines loom in the near future. The Capitol Investment Work Group (formerly Conference Committee) continued to meet and try to reach an agreement on the overall size of the bonding bill. The pace of the session makes it feel like late April, with the warming temperatures not helping—even though we know there are three more months left and more snow eventually on the way.

The week kicked off with hundreds of parents, children and providers raising their voices for continued investments in early care and education. The twelfth annual “Voices for Children” advocacy day on the hill sent a powerful message to legislators and the Governor that an economic recession is exactly the wrong time to cut your best performing stock, our children. Photos and more can be found on the “Voices for Children” Facebook page.

The February Forecast was released this week with little fanfare, showing a small decrease in the state deficit from $1.2 billion to $994 million. There is no sign that the Governor plans to reduce any of his proposed cuts based on the forecast.

On Tuesday, the House Early Childhood Committee took up a bill to fund local early childhood partnerships to collaborate to get the best outcomes for young children and their families. Ready 4 K Policy and Civic Engagement Director Karen Kingsley joined Rep. Sandy Peterson, author of the bill and co-chair of the Early Childhood Caucus, in reviewing the legislation, which is the product of months of work of Minnesota’s Future, a collaborative effort of several early care and education organizations to put forward an agenda for Minnesota’s next governor. We are encouraging organizations from across the state to endorse this effort, and you can join by visiting the Minnesota’s Future website and completing the online form.

Providing an example of local collaboration, Jane Patrick, Early Childhood Initiative Coordinator from Fergus Falls and Nancy Jost, West Central Initiative Early Childhood Coordinator, gave wonderful testimony about the success they’ve had in their communities bringing people together from health, schools and early childhood to give children and families the support they need to be successful. The bill was laid over for possible inclusion in the omnibus bill. Watch the hearing here.

The committee also heard a presentation of the Child Care Assistance Simplification Task Force, which laid out a series of recommendations to improve the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and make it easier for families and providers to participate. Legislation to implement one of the recommendations —to allow teen parents to have continuity of care for their children for up to one year—was also heard and laid over for possible inclusion in the omnibus bill.

On Thursday, the House Early Childhood Committee heard presentations about evaluations of the School Readiness Connections program, Pre-K Allowances and the Early Childhood Scholarship program. All evaluations showed largely positive results, however the evaluations did generate some lively discussion in the hearing about the best way to finance increased access to high quality early learning.

Over in the Senate, the bill to designate $500,000 of current child care quality dollars specifically to help providers get ready for QRIS passed another committee and was sent directly to the floor of the Senate. During the hearing, members of the committee had good questions about the quality dollars, but did note that of the nearly $10 million total dollars set aside for quality efforts, $1.3 million of those are state dollars. The lack of any increase in the state allocation in the past several years—in fact it was cut by two percent in 2008—will hopefully deter any further erosion of these important resources.

Also, the Senate Higher Ed Budget Division presented its budget, and thankfully did not accept the Governor’s $500,000 cut to child care grants for low-income college students.

In a chess-like maneuver, the Bonding Work Group passed a slightly trimmed down bill, adding some of the Governor’s key priorities and removing some of theirs that he had objected to. Expect it to be passed by both bodies next week and sent to the governor. This differs from “normal” negotiations, which usually involve trading written offers between the conference committee and the Governor, before passing a final agreed-upon bill. While early childhood facilities grants remain intact, given the size of the bill, we anticipate the overall bill will have the same fate of the first bill and be vetoed. So, we'll have to keep fighting to make sure early childhood facilities remain in the (really) final version of the bonding bill.

Check out the updated bill tracker here.

Coming Up @ the Capitol

The first deadline is Friday, March 12, meaning that committees must act favorably on bills in the House of origin. All of the bills we are working on have or will have met first deadline.

Visit the legislative schedule page for the most up-to-date hearings.

"Leaving the Little Ones Behind"

Marian Wright Edelman, President and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, shares this article with the Huffington Post.

Leaving the Little Ones Behind

When people talk about the "achievement gap" at-risk children face, they often think of it in terms that apply to school-age children -- but that gap can start much earlier than most people might guess. A recent report by the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group Child Trends showed that disparities actually begin appearing before a child's first birthday. The report, "Disparities in Early Learning and Development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort," was funded by the Council of Chief State School Officers. It found that gaps in child development are already apparent when babies are just nine months old, and grow even larger by 24 months. These disparities in infants' and toddlers' development can be measured across cognitive, social, behavioral and health outcomes.

Read more...

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - February 12

This week at the Capitol, the bonding bill was the focus of most of the activity, passing the full Senate on Tuesday and clearing all the committees in the House. The $2 million for early childhood facilities remains intact in both bills; however, in the House Finance Committee hearing, the grant program language was amended to the increase the amount that projects may receive. Under current law, a grant for an individual facility must not exceed $300,000 for each program that is housed in a facility, up to a maximum of $750,000 for a facility that houses three programs or more (programs include Head Start, School Readiness, Early Childhood Family Education, licensed child care, and other early childhood intervention programs). The amendment changes the amounts to $500,000 and $2 million, respectively.

The full House is expected to take up the bill on Monday. Upon passage, the House and Senate will work out the differences between the two bills, and submit it to Governor Pawlenty, where he can sign it, line-item veto individual projects, or veto the entire bill. We will be working to ensure that the facility grants do not end up as a casualty of the veto pen, so if have any connections to the Governor, please use them!

The House Early Childhood Committee held their first two hearings of the 2010 Legislative Session this week. On Tuesday, the committee had an update from the Department of Human Services and the Head Start Association on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009 funding. Yasmina Vinci, national Head Start Director, had been in town for a previous engagement and thankfully for the committee, her return flight to Washington DC was delayed due to the winter storms. She was able to tell the committee about federal budget activity, and in particular speak about the recent Head Start Impact Study findings , which showed, among other things, that “providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children’s preschool experience.”

On Thursday, the committee heard from Kathryn Tout, project director at Child Trends, on key findings from the Year 2 Evaluation Report of Parent Aware, as well as two providers—Nicole Joy Frethem from Lexington Kids Christian Childcare and Shelly Thunborg from New Horizon Academy—about their experience with the rating system. The committee members engaged in a thoughtful discussion about the research methodology and the next steps with Parent Aware.

Our bill tracker is up! While only two bills relating to early care and education have been introduced, expect more in the coming days.

Coming Up @ the Capitol

The big news next week is that the Governor’s budget will be released on Monday. While he outlined in his State of the State that he would hold programs for the military, veterans, core public safety functions and K-12 classrooms harmless, he declared that “nearly all other areas will be proposed for reduction.” Many committee hearings next week will be focused on hearing from the administration about the governor’s budget. We are bracing for the worst, and hoping for the best.

Ready 4 K @ the Capitol - February 5

This week at the Capitol, legislators returned to St. Paul with essentially two tasks: solve a $1.2 billion budget deficit and pass a large bonding bill in the hopes of putting Minnesotans back to work. The deficit is expected to balloon to $5.4 billion in 2012-13, and there is some interest in starting to take a whack at this future deficit as well. And, with legislators running for re-election this fall and several of them running for Governor (current Governor Tim Pawlenty is not seeking re-election), it could get very messy.

So what’s in store for early care and education? As you may remember, last session, thanks in large part to your efforts, funding for early childhood programs was held harmless. Our top priority this session will be once again to make the case that an economic downtown is exactly the wrong time to cut funding for early care and education. However, even with Senate and House leadership acknowledging that early care and education is one of their top priorities, it may be difficult to withstand cuts in this environment. But that doesn’t mean we won’t fight!

Our other priorities this session are to encourage and support efforts happening at the local level, by giving communities the authority to fund early childhood initiatives through local revenue options and by encouraging the establishment of local early childhood community partnerships. We are still developing these initiatives and will be seeking your feedback and support soon.

We will also continue to support ongoing efforts to develop the voluntary Quality Rating and Improvement System. In addition to tracking what is happening with the Parent Aware pilots, Ready 4 K is supporting a bill to realign current funding to provide additional resources for providers to help them get ready for the statewide expansion of the QRIS. Once this bill is introduced we will let you know.

Ready 4 K is taking the lead again to secure bonding dollars for communities to build early childhood facilities, and we’re happy to report that $2 million for these grants was included in the House and Senate bonding bills! As you may remember, the Governor has vetoed this funding the past two years, so we’re focusing most of our efforts on reaching out to him for his support. Please talk to your local legislator and urge them to contact the Governor about this funding.

Check out our full 2010 Legislative Session Policy Recommendations here. We are still developing this years’ bill tracker, and you can expect it to be up and running by next week.

Take Action!

Now is the time to send your legislator a note to welcome them to session. Let them know that we must continue to make early care and education a top priority. Visit our Take Action page to send a message to the governor and your legislators.