"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.

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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.