Hearing Features Bi-Partisan Call for More Focus on Child Care and Early Ed

Today in a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing , both Republican and Democratic senators called on their colleagues to pay more attention to early education and care for young children and left open the possibility for a bi-partisan approach to new policies on childcare and education.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called for changes such as the need for better background checks for childcare providers, as proposed in the Child Care Protection Act, a bill he introduced earlier this year. He also raised the prospect of updating the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the federal legislation that governs the way federal dollars are delivered to states to subsidize childcare centers.

“It’s been 15 years since we reauthorized CCDBG and it’s long past due,” Burr said.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) convened and chaired the hearing for the children and families subcommittee of the Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee of the Senate. The hearing featured testimony from experts in economics and the financial services industry as well as community providers of early childhood education.

It also opened up a wide-ranging discussion between committee members and Joan Lombardi, the deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who is responsible for early childhood development programs.

Lombardi briefly spoke about the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge, the $500 million federal competition that was announced last month.

“I think what Race to the Top will do is amplify and give us models,” Lombardi said. She identified North Carolina and Maryland, for example, as “laboratories of innovation.” But other states “have not innovated as much, or they need to take the next step,” she said, by improving their Quality Rating and Improvement Systems and other initiatives.  What Race to the Top will do, she continued, is give states “the opportunity to compete and expand” on those innovations, and “hopefully we’ll be able to use that knowledge to inform the rest of the states.”

Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) spoke, among other things, about the need for building connections between birth-to-five early childhood programs and kindergarten and the early grades. “That also needs to be supported, because that alignment is critical,” he said.

Other senators on the subcommittee who signaled their desire to bring more attention to early childhood included, in alphabetical order,  Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA), Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT). Yesterday Sen. Casey introduced the Prepare All Kids Act, which focuses on helping states with pre-k, and Starting Early, Starting Right Act, which focuses on childcare. Sen. Mikulski said that she would be introducing an early childhood bill later this week.  And last month, Sen. Murray re-introduced the LEARN Act to focus on literacy programs from birth up through children’s school years.