7th Meeting of the OECD Network on Early Childhood and Care:

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Early Learning in the US and the Economic Crisis

• 7th Meeting of the OECD Network on Early
  Childhood and Care
• Financing ECE Services
• Paris, France
• June 22, 2010
• Jacqueline Jones, PhD
• Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Early
  Learning
• Us Department Of Education
• Washington, DC

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• It will be the goal of this administration to
  ensure that every child has access to a complete
  and competitive education from the day they are
  born to the day they begin a career ... we know
  that the most formative learning comes in those
  first years of life.
• President Obama
• February 24, 2009

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Early Learning Goal

• The Education Departments early learning
  initiative is intended to improve the health,
  social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes for all
  children birth through 3rd grade, especially
  those with high-needs.

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Early Learning A Range of Ages

• Infants and Toddlers - Birth to 3 years
• Pre-Kindergarten (3- and 4-year-olds)
• K3

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Domains of Learning

• Physical health and well-being
• Social-emotional development
• Approaches to learning
• Language and literacy
• Cognitive skills

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Major Public Funding Streams

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Early Head Start
• Head Start
• Child Care
• U.S. Department of Education
• Special Education
• Title I Preschool
• U.S. Department of Defense
• State-funded Preschool Programs
• District/Local Programs

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Interagency Collaboration
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Interagency Early Learning Initiative

• Study Groups
• Encouraging Coordinated State Early Learning
  Systems

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Six Study Groups

• Standards, Curriculum and Assessment
• Program Standards
• Family Engagement
• Health Promotion
• Workforce and Professional Development
• Data Systems

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Components of a Coordinated State Early Learning
Systems

• Aligned early learning and development standards,
  curriculum and assessments
• Program quality and rating system with a review,
  monitoring and improvement system
• Plan for human capital
• Strategies for family engagement
• Systems to facilitate health screening and
  referrals
• Coordinated zero to 5 data infrastructure

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Children in Poverty

• Percentage of children under 18 years living in
  poverty may peak at 21 (15.6M) in 2010 highest
  in 20 years
• Foundation for Child Development
• 2010 Child Well-Being Index

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Impact on Child Care Facilities

• Reduction in the number of children in child care
  programs
• Increased vacancies in child care programs
• Closure of some childcare programs
• NCCRRA Survey

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Statefunded Preschool

• Difficult State budgets in 2010 and 2011
• Dramatic increase in State-funded preschool
  funding may be over
• New Mexico, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, New
  York, Arizona, and others considering, or have
  implemented, cuts to early learning programs

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Head Start

• ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
  2009)
• 1B Head Start
• 1.1B Early Head Start
• FY 2011
• 989 increase in the total funding for Head
  Start, to over 8.2 billion

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ARRA (cont,)

• Teacher Incentive Fund (200M)
• Teacher Quality Enhancement (100M)
• Statewide Data Systems (250M)

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Title 1

• Improving the Academic Achievement of the
  Disadvantaged
• ARRA
• 10B to State Educational Agencies

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Maternal, Infant and Childhood Home Visiting
Program Grants

• 90M The Affordable Care Act
• Evidence-based home visiting strategies that help
  families create a nurturing environment for young
  children and connect to a range of services,
  including
• health,
• early education,
• early intervention and more

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• an early childhood service system in every State
  that supports high-quality, evidence-based
  practice. 
• coordinated services to improve maternal and
  child health and promote healthy child
  development in our communities most in need.
• additional funding to Tribal programs

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Increase the quality and availability of Child
Care

• Child Care and Development Block Grant
• FY 2011
• 1.6B addition to child care funding to extend
  child care assistance to approximately 235,000
  more children (total 6.644B).
•  
• Largest increase in child care funding in over 20
  years. 

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Special Education

• Additional 250M in formula grants for a total of
  11.76 billion to help States pay the extra costs
  of providing special education and related
  services to an estimated 6.7M children with
  disabilities aged 3 through 21 years 
• Maintains 374.1M in additional support to States
  for providing special education and related
  services to preschoolers with disabilities ages 3
  through 5
• Maintains 439.4M investment to help States
  implement statewide systems of early intervention
  services for all eligible children from birth
  through age 2 and their families

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Race to the Top

• ARRA 4.3B - Race to the Top (Rounds 1 and 2)
• FY 2010
• 1.35B (Round 3)
• The initial competition, includes an invitational
  priority for activities that improve outcomes for
  high-need students who are young children (birth
  through 3rd grade)

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Investing in Innovation (i3) Program

• ARRA 650M
• FY2011
• 500M to identify, develop, and scale up
  promising models and interventions.
• The initial competition, funded by the Recovery
  Act, includes a competitive priority for
  activities to improve outcomes for high-need
  students who are young children (birth through
  3rd grade)

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Promise Neighborhoods

• ARRA 10M
• FY 2011
• 210M to provide funding for another cohort of
  competitive planning grants and new
  implementation grants to community-based
  organizations for the development of
  comprehensive neighborhood programs, with
  effective schools at the center.

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Effective Teaching and Learning Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)

• FY 2011 300M
• Supports State and local efforts aimed at
  implementing and supporting a comprehensive STEM
  strategy for the provision of high-quality STEM
  instruction and support to students from
  prekindergarten through grade 12 by funding the
  competitive grant program at

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Effective Teaching and Learning Literacy

• FY 2011 450M
• Supports State and local efforts aimed at
  implementing and supporting a comprehensive
  literacy strategy that provides high-quality
  literacy instruction and support to students from
  prekindergarten through grade 12

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ESEA REAUTHORIZATION
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Overarching Principles

• Raise the bar for all students. Close the gap.
• Tight on goals. Loose on means.
• Foster innovation and reward success.
• Build on the four assurances.

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Four Assurances
Raise standards and improveassessments. Recruit, retain support effective educators, andensure equitable distribution.
Build robust data systems that track student progressand improve practice. Turn around low-performing schools, focusing on dropout factories and their feeder schools.
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Early Learning

• ESEA reauthorization
• Alignment of standards and assessments
• Coordination of professional development
• Integration of high-quality early learning
  programs into school reform efforts

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High-quality early learning approaches

• Continued Title I Support of Preschool
• A Birth-Through-College-to-Career Agenda
• Promise Neighborhood grants
• Comprehensive Education Reforms
• Race to the Top
• Innovation in Early Learning
• Investing in Innovation (i3)

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Supports early learning professionals

• Joint Professional Development
• Expanded Administrators Knowledge of Early
  Learning
• Support for Teachers of Young Children.

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Expands learning opportunities for young children

• Seamless Transitions and Improved Coordination
• Strengthened Literacy and STEM P-12 Plans
• Increased Learning Time for Young Children
• Comprehensive Early Learning Assessment Systems

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Looking at Assessment

• The process of collecting, interpreting and
  evaluating evidence of learning in order to make
  informed judgments

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An Assessment System

• A coordinated system of assessments and
  strategies intended to collect information about
  the process and context of young childrens
  learning and development in order to make
  informed instructional and programmatic
  decisions.

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Purpose

• To monitor the learning and development of
  children prior to third grade
• To monitor program effectiveness and support
  continuous improvement

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Types of Measures

• Screenings
• Diagnostic
• Formative
• Formal
• Observational measures
• Descriptive data

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Questions

• How is Johnny doing?
• Do all children have the basic health, social-
  emotional, and cognitive competencies needed to
  be successful in school?
• Are children progressing along a trajectory that
  will lead to school success?

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Questions

• How is the program doing?
• Does the program have sufficient resources
  (human/financial) to be successful?
• Are program standards being met?
• Are quality measures leading to improved outcomes
  for children?

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• Early Learning Standards A comprehensive,
  well-articulated set of standards that define
  what children should know and be able to do.
• Program Quality Standards A comprehensive set of
  standards that describe program quality.
• Assessments Multiple approaches to documenting
  childrens learning and reviewing program
  quality.

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• Opportunity to learn assessment of the
  environments in which children are spending time.
• Inclusion ensuring that all children served by
  the program will be assessed fairly, regardless
  of their language, culture, or disabilities.
• Resources Assurance of adequate financial
  resources to ensure the development and
  implementation of the system components.

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• Reporting Maintenance of an integrated database
  of assessment instruments and results, accessible
  to potential users, that
• provides information about how the instruments
  and scores relate to standards, and that
• can generate reports for the varied audiences and
  purposes.

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• Professional Development Ongoing opportunities
  at all levels to understand the standards and the
  assessments and to learn to use the data and data
  reports with integrity for their own purposes.
• Monitoring and evaluation Monitoring of the
  system itself to ensure continuous improvement.

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