Regional Education Group Recommends ECE Improvements

We’ve written previously about how many southern states are leading the way in expanding access to state-funded pre-K and full-day kindergarten programs. Our newest report, From Crawling to Walking: Ranking States on Birth-3rd Grade Policies that Support Strong Readers, ranks all 50 states and Washington, D.C. on 65 indicators in seven policy areas and finds that Oklahoma and West Virginia, for instance, rank second and third overall when it comes to developing young children’s literacy skills -- and it’s largely because of pre-K and kindergarten.

A report released last month by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) outlines the steps it believes southern states should take to improve early education overall. The SREB is made up of a coalition of 16 states, covering a wide region that stretches from Texas and Oklahoma all the way up to Maryland and Delaware. The Board’s work is chaired by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, a longtime proponent of investment in early childhood education. The report highlights just how far the region has come in expanding pre-K access over the last 15 years while simultaneously pointing out the challenges that remain in a region still characterized by high rates of child poverty.

In 1989, only six member states funded pre-K programs and these programs combined served only about 80,000 children. Today, all 16 member states have state-funded pre-K programs that together serve about 725,000 children. These pre-K programs are badly needed in a region plagued with high child poverty rates. From 2000 to 2012, the percentage of school-aged children living in low-income households in the region increased from 46 percent to 54 percent, four points higher than the national average. Nationally, we know that child poverty rates are even higher among children under age six.

The SREB report details five priority areas where states should take a leadership role: program quality, teacher quality, accountability, access, and governance. The report recommends increasing program quality by establishing effective quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) in each state to enable families to find high-quality programs and to provide incentives for programs to improve. The report highlights Kentucky as a leader in this area for passing a bill requiring all publicly funded early education programs to participate in its STARS QRIS.

In order to improve teacher quality, the SREB report recommends that teachers receive specialized training for working with young children. This is a move in the right direction, but not strong enough. States should follow the recommendation made in a recent Institute of Medicine’s Transforming the Workforce report calling for a minimum of a bachelor’s degree with specialized early childhood knowledge for all lead teachers of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. In North Carolina, a state that ranked third overall in pre-K access and quality in our state rankings, lead pre-K teachers are required to have a bachelor’s degree and specialization in ECE. But this requirement of a bachelor’s degree and ECE specialization for lead pre-K teachers is currently only mandated in twenty other states.

When it comes to accountability, the SREB report recommends incorporating early childhood program data into state longitudinal data systems to promote effective data sharing. An example of a state already doing this is Georgia. The state’s Department of Early Care and Learning has data-sharing agreements with 100 percent of the state’s Head Start providers. This data sharing enables teachers to plan instruction more effectively by having a greater understanding of the prior educational experiences of their new students. The goal should be to connect information from all early childhood programs. Currently, Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that is able to link child-level data across across all early childhood programs and to the state’s K-12 data system.

In order to improve access, the SREB report suggests setting goals to serve a high proportion of at-risk children in each state and then setting a clear timetable to reach those goals. Oklahoma is a model when it comes to program access as it currently enrolls 76 percent of four-year-olds in state-funded pre-K, though its program could be improved by extending access to three-year-olds.

Finally, on the topic of governance, the SREB report recommends simplifying an ECE funding system that can be diverse and fragmented by creating a statewide cabinet or coordinating council that is charged with the planning of early education in each state. Maryland has become a national leader in coordinated governance by consolidating numerous funding streams and early childhood programs under one office, the Division of Early Childhood Development. This coordinated governance allows states to set a statewide vision for early education and better ensure that all available financial resources are being utilized.

The SREB report lays out a thoughtful blueprint for building upon the region’s past success in expanding pre-K access through policies aimed at improving all facets of early childhood education, from improved teacher qualifications to a more streamlined governance structure. Most of the policy areas addressed in the SREB report and many more can be examined for all 50 states via Atlas, New America’s interactive data visualization and policy analysis tool that accompanies our recent report examining 65 indicators from birth to third grade that are fundamental to building strong readers in the early years.  "