Ahead of Illinois’ midterm and gubernatorial elections next month, in a recent survey, voters across the state made it clear that they want to see increased attention towards early childhood services. In fact, the vast majority of survey respondents believe that investing in early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars – and most would even be willing to pay more in taxes to fund it.

Start Early conducted this latest survey on behalf of state advocates to measure the level of support for early education among voters. The results were unequivocal – Illinois voters value early childhood education and care and want to see government action.

Eight in 10 voters say investing in early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars. Among key groups like Black voters (55%) and those in Chicago’s suburbs (53%), a majority believe it to be a very good use of tax dollars. A majority of voters (56%), including nearly 75% of Black voters, went even further to say they are willing to pay a little more in taxes if it meant the state had better services for families with young children.

While partisanship continues to divide voters in many other policy areas, the survey’s findings also demonstrated that the early childhood education and care discussion goes far beyond political lines: 90% of Democrats, 73% of Independents and 70% of Republicans support government action and investment in early childhood programs and services.

Home to approximately 800,000 children under age 5, Illinois has a prominent history of investing in early care and education, spanning four decades under leadership of both Republican and Democratic state administrations. As the state prepares for its midterm elections, most timely is the survey’s bipartisan finding that most voters (70%) would feel more favorably towards a candidate who prioritizes an increase in funding for early childhood services.

“While Illinois has long been at the forefront of early learning and care innovations and investments, our system, like that of most states, has its challenges and real shortcomings,” Start Early Vice President of Illinois Policy Ireta Gasner says. “Without decisive action by our elected Governor and state legislators, critical components of the system will collapse – leaving countless young children and those who care for them behind.”

Decades of research have proven that quality early childhood programs can help break the cycle of poverty for generations to come and can change the trajectory of a child’s life toward healthy development and success. Yet, families – particularly those in communities left under-served – continue to face impossible challenges in accessing such early learning experiences.

As Illinois works to mitigate these challenges, often brought on by systematic inequities, voters reported that funding services for children experiencing homelessness and for children with disabilities or developmental delays should be priority focus areas of the state. Voters also ranked early childhood services as the second most important way to address the root causes of crime, a traumatic reality for far too many young children.

Start Early and its advocate partners across the state are passionately working to advance transformational change of the early childhood system in order to reach families and those who provide early learning services. This powerful survey data reaffirms that Illinois voters share advocates’ desires, and offers policymakers a renewed opportunity this upcoming legislative session to redouble efforts to make early learning a reality for all young children.

Conducted in partnership with Global Strategy Group, the survey of 609 registered voters in Illinois took place between September 8 – 12, 2022, and an intentional focus was placed on ensuring diverse demographic and geographic representation among voters. Interviews were conducted over the phone and text to web.

Key Findings:

  • A majority of overall voters say early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars.
    • Eight in ten voters say investing in early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars.
    • Among key groups like Black voters (55%) and those in the Cook suburbs (53%),a majority believe it to be a very good use of tax dollars.
    • Taking action and using taxpayer dollars to invest in early childhood education and care garners bipartisan support across the political spectrum with 90% of Democrats, 73% of Independents, and 70% of Republicans believing it is a good investment.
  • Most voters are even willing to pay more in taxes to fund early childhood and care services.
    • A majority of voters (56%) say they are willing to pay a little more in taxes if it meant the state had better services for families with young children, including nearly three-quarters of Black voters (72%).
    • Half of voters believe the state government is not spending enough on services for young children and their families, even higher among parents (54%), especially parents of color (52%).
  • Voters believe elected officials are not talking about or focused enough on early childhood services.
    • Half of voters believe their elected officials are not talking enough about early childhood services (52%) and believe they are not focused enough on the issue (53%).
    • This is especially true of key groups like Independents, of whom two-thirds (68%) believe their elected officials are not talking enough about the issue.
    • Similarly, parents of those under the age of six overwhelmingly believe elected officials are not talking about (67%) or focused enough (66%) on early childhood services.
  • According to voters, the state government does not do enough to help new parents and families meet their responsibilities.
    • About half of voters overall believe the state government is not doing enough to help new parents and families.
    • This increases to nearly two-thirds of voters of color (65% of Black voters and 66% of Hispanic voters).
  • Support for this issue goes beyond party lines and has widespread support: 80% of Democrats, 58% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans want the state to fund programs aimed at making childcare more affordable
  • There are many other specific services or programs related to early childhood that share support from a majority of the electorate.
    • Helping those who face the steepest challenges, like homeless children and those with disabilities, is extremely popular across partisan lines.
    • Even 69% of Republicans believe the state should be doing more to fund services to care for children who are homeless and 75% of Independents also feel the same way.
  • Early childhood services are seen as a way to address crime.
    • Illinois voters are concerned about crime (32% rank it as their first or second most important issue) and want to prioritize addressing the root causes of crime early in children’s lives (60%), over short-term actions like tougher sentencing.
    • Addressing root causes are prioritized across the board, including independents (55%) and those in the collar counties (60%).
    • Providing early childhood services ranks second as the most important way to address these root causes.

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Each year the Illinois General Assembly passes legislation that can have an impact on families, or the organizations in our communities providing early childhood or related supportive services to families. Start Early leads on some of these legislative changes, often in coalition with others, and in other cases we contribute our early childhood lens and expertise to support the efforts of another lead organization. The 2022 Legislative Summary provides a listing of those bills that became law in the spring 2022 session that we thought would be relevant to families with young children and the field.  We hope that this is a resource you will download and share with colleagues and families alike. We are happy to provide additional information about any of these initiatives or connect you with other advocates where needed. Initiatives that were led by Start Early are marked *. 

The 2022 Illinois Policy Accomplishments report details progress we helped the state achieve toward advancing our Illinois Policy Agenda. In some places, Start Early may have led a charge, in other places we contributed research and advocacy to help advance shared goals of many stakeholders. While many challenges remain to be solved in our fragmented early learning system, this year’s report details the many ways that tangible progress is being made to improve the experience of families and children and providers.

2022 Illinois Policy Accomplishments

Download Our Accomplishments Document

In Illinois, Start Early engages on a variety of topics of importance to the well-being of expecting families, infants, toddlers, their families and professionals who support their healthy development.

Advocating with state agencies, elected officials, and working in partnership with providers, fellow advocates and parents, we work to advance our Illinois Policy Agenda. Work is currently underway for a refresh of our policy agenda to reflect our priorities for the next four years. More updates to come on this exciting work underway at Start Early.

We are excited to publish and offer two new resources relating to policy changes and progress toward longer-term changes that were achieved in Fiscal Year 22.

Fisal Year 2022 Legislative Summary

Noteworthy developments in early childhood policy in Illinois

Learn More

Fiscal Year 2022 Illinois Policy Team Accomplishments

Advancements of efforts represented in our Illinois Policy Agenda

Learn More

One key to our work is that we not only work to pass laws and increase funding, but we also follow-up on those changes and engage on the decisions made by our state agencies as they implement early learning and related programs. We achieve this through advising on implementation of new ideas or program changes, recommending priorities for funding, both in work directly with state agency leaders and at key advisory bodies like the Early Learning Council and Child Care Advisory Council, among others. We share our priorities and undertake policy analysis research and recommendations to support the state in advancing more equitable opportunities for families to access early education and the related services so critical to healthy child development and strong families.

We hope that these documents help early childhood programs, other community-based organizations serving families and anyone else who values these kinds of services and support to become more aware of changes that were passed or implemented in the past fiscal year.

As work is already underway on the current Fiscal Year, including planning for the upcoming spring session of the Illinois General Assembly, and as we develop our next multi-year policy agenda, we look forward to keeping you posted.

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As the largest federal investment in evidence-based home visiting services, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program (MIECHV) is a key pillar in the continuum of services and systems that strengthen the parent-child relationship and connect families to vital community resources to support long-term healthy development and well-being. The MIECHV authorizing statute – the law that describes and authorizes the distribution of federal funds to states, territories, and Tribal grantees by the federal government – expires on September 30, 2022. Now more than ever, advocates need to reach out to their Representatives to elevate the importance of the program in Illinois and urge Congress to reauthorize MIECHV before it expires.

In Illinois, MIECHV funds are critical to the state’s robust home visiting system, enhancing decades of local and state investments in home visiting services. MIECHV funds direct services for nearly 3,000 parents and children in Illinois annually. These high-quality home visiting services help families achieve stronger outcomes in maternal and child health, family economic self-sufficiency, and school-readiness domains.

MIECHV also strengthens the broader Illinois home visiting system by supporting high-quality training and professional development opportunities for home visitors and doulas, promoting coordination across the various funding streams that support home visiting, and supports innovative approaches to improve the ability of home visiting services to support families with child welfare involvement, families experiencing homelessness, pregnant and parenting youth in the care of the child welfare system, and other priority communities.

MIECHV has benefited from robust, bi-partisan support in Congress, including the leadership of Illinois’ Congressman Danny Davis (7th Congressional District) who has been a staunch advocate for MIECHV since the program’s inception in 2013 in his role as Chairman of the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has legislative authority over the program.

Over the past decade, the federal home visiting program has made a real, measurable difference in the lives of children and families in my community in Chicago and across the country, making sure that work continues and that we make the investment to bring these life-transforming programs to more families is a critical priority for me and my colleagues at the Ways and Means Committee this Congress.

- Illinois Congressman Danny K. Davis (7th Congressional District)
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Still, additional advocacy is needed to ensure every Member of Congress is ready to support MIECHV reauthorization. Key priorities for reauthorization are:

  • Pass an on-time, five-year reauthorization for the program
  • Increase funding by $200 million each year over five years, to reach more families and better support the workforce
  • Double the Tribal set-aside
  • Continue to allow virtual home visiting with model fidelity as an option
Keep the Pressure on Congress for a Timely Reauthorization

Your Advocacy is Needed

Here’s how you can get started:

Tell Your Lawmakers: Families Cannot Lose Critical Home Visiting Services

Make Your Voice Heard and contact legislators to help make a greater impact on families with young children across the country at risk of losing critical home visiting services.

Take Action Now

Amplify the Message on Social Media

Share posts from our MIECHV Reauthorization social media toolkit with your networks and follow Start Early’s Illinois Policy Team on Twitter @EarlyEdIL for the latest updates for advocates in the state.

View Social Toolkit

Schedule a Visit (Virtual or In-Person) with your Representative

Use the resources below to help you describe the impact of MIECHV in Illinois and why an on-time reauthorization is critical to families and children.

Resources to Support Your Advocacy

EMAIL OUR TEAM 

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*MIECHV data provided by the Health Resources & Services Administration. HRSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This week, President Joe Biden is expected to approve Congress’ final budget reconciliation package, the Inflation Reduction Act, which does not include one cent for early learning and care programs. This outcome is yet another senseless decision in our nation’s history that leaves countless young children without access to critical programs that can help ensure a brighter future.

This spring, the House of Representatives passed budget reconciliation legislation that included nearly $400 billion for child care and pre-K, which was among the largest proposed investments in the package. However, earlier this month, the Senate unveiled the details of its final package, which included no funding at all for early learning and care.

For a nation’s child care system that is at the brink of collapse, this investment would have considerably lowered child care costs for families, allowed parents of young children to return to work and supported an underfunded and understaffed early learning and care workforce.

Long before today’s ongoing pandemic and societal uncertainty, child care providers, disproportionately women and women of color, have had to bear the burden of an under-resourced child care system to provide critical, quality programs and services to young children.

So, now more than ever, it seemed apparent to finally prioritize American families and child care providers with historic investments. Congress’ failure to do so will result in long-range consequences for our child care system.

Start Early and the Educare Network, however, are and will continue to be constant and persistent champions for our youngest learners. We will:

  • Work with Congress, federal agencies and the administration, as well as state and local leaders, to strengthen early learning and care programs and drive advancements that impact on-the-ground practices and communities
  • Advocate for increased investments in and positive changes to federal early learning programs, including the Child Care Development Block Grant, Head Start/Early Head Start, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Maternal, Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting program
  • Educate and inform the field of provisions within the Inflation Reduction Act that may benefit families with young children

In addition, as co-chair of the Early Years Climate Action Task Force, Start Early President Diana Rauner will play a role in drafting the first ever climate action plan for early childhood in America. This will include recommendations to explore how the country can support young children to flourish, despite facing the impacts of climate change.

In response to this disheartening news, Start Early and Educare Network leaders issued the following statements:

Start Early

“Quality early learning and care in the first five years of life allows every child the opportunity to develop and meet their full potential. This week, Congress ignored common sense and science, allowing the child care system to continue deteriorating and leaving future generations behind.

Start Early stands ready to continue its work with local, state and federal leaders to elevate the dire, diverse needs of American families and ultimately make transformational change in access, quality and outcomes for all young children.”

Diana Rauner, president of Start Early

Educare Network

“Every child, in every community, deserves a strong start in life. This final reconciliation package entirely disregards what matters most: creating supports and systems that work for families, our youngest learners and early care and education providers. With our 25 schools and partner organizations across the country, the Educare Network calls on local, state and federal leaders to take immediate action that rights this wrong and drives transformational change to ensure all families, children and communities can thrive.”

Cynthia Jackson, executive director of the Educare Network

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Last month I had the pleasure of co-leading a session at the BUILD 2022 Virtual Conference: Building Systems, Improving Quality, Advancing Equity.

It was a joy to participate en una charla informal, a coffee talk, with my good friend, and colleague Miriam Calderon. We discussed and unpacked the strength and determination required to lift ourselves, our families, and our communities up in the unforgiving world of policy and politics.

BUILD has been a leader in providing spaces and opportunities for Latine professionals and leaders in the early childhood space to come together both informally and formally to talk and hear about what the Latine community wants and needs.

The Latine community is strong. We know that across this country it is Latinos and Latinas who pick, cook and serve our food, clean our houses and hotel rooms, care for our children, elderly and sick and are part of the backbone of the economy in countless ways.

As I joined with other Latine leaders throughout the week at BUILD and listened to their stories, I was stuck that today in 2022, many still talked about “imposter syndrome”, including me. I have had the privilege and opportunity to sit at many tables at the local, state, and national level but I am sure when I opened my mouth to share a recommendation or idea, there was some eye rolling in the room.

At Start Early, we share a commitment to racial equity and have been working diligently to provide individual staff with the support they need and want to grow and contribute to the early childhood field. For my part, I will be leading and providing a space for Latine individuals to participate in a mentoring circle where we will take time to understand our history as a community in the United States, our personal journeys and culture and how systems impact our progress as individuals and a community.

A common theme we explored was that we need mentorship – ongoing mentorship from people that look like us and understand our culture and values. As I have been reflecting on my own journey, it’s clear that each of has a responsibility to support and mentor the next generation of Latine leaders.

My hope is that through mentorship and in our daily work to change systems, Latine professionals and leaders will sit at any table and confidently speak their truth, represent the needs of their children and communities, despite the eye rolls.

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The Challenge

At Child Care Associates in Texas, the central office team noticed that, after a period of gains, its CLASS evaluations of childcare and Head Start/Early Head Start providers had plateaued.

System leaders decided it was time to change how they approached outcomes improvement and they made three important decisions:

  • Shift ownership of CCA’s education vision from the central office to campus instructional leaders.
  • Recommit to using family experience as a critical performance measure.
  • Implement The Essential 0-5 Survey across 25 campuses to provide leaders with a unified framework to move program improvement forward.

Read Full Case Study

Improving CLASS instructional support scores was important to CCA – but our goal in using The Essential Survey was to focus on how supporting leaders will drive improvement in the classroom.

Karin Scott, Chief Performance Officer, Child Care Associates
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The Impact: Energized Leaders Re-shaping Daily Practice to Improve Outcomes and Equity

Karin Scott, Chief Performance Officer, outlines four key outcomes the CCA team experiences with their annual Essential Survey implementation:

  • Outcome One – Our entire team now uses a common framework to talk about improvement.
    “We transformed campus director meetings to bring people together who are working on common problems of practice – to share out what’s working, lift up people getting better outcomes, and talk about pivots when something doesn’t work.”
  • Outcome Two – We are reducing leader & teacher overwhelm by focusing on where they CAN have impact.
    “It can get overwhelming when you’re dealing with deep root causes to early childhood issues, like a national labor shortage or systemic racism. The Essential Survey toolkit’s root cause analysis allows us to dig down to root causes and build strategies to affect the most change with limited resources.”
  • Outcome Three – Staff at all levels are making proactive, positive changes in daily practice.
    “The Essential Survey got teams into the practice of reviewing data. They’re taking it into their own hands to make easy, accessible processes for people. They’re rethinking how they use their time.”
  • Outcome Four – We have more data to help us drive equity for families of color.
    “There is a huge equity piece to the Essential Survey work. We serve majority families of color and we need to know how they’re feeling about the services they are receiving, as well as how we can improve. This is a great tool to do that.”

We want staff to feel like they are valued and cared for while they’re here – and make sure they keep doing this work because it’s important for our community.

Karin Scott, Chief Performance Officer, Child Care Associates
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Looking Ahead

The Child Care Associates team is committed to implementing The Essential 0-5 Survey annually to sustain a culture that values and supports leaders. “It was important before the pandemic, but now more than ever we need to know how people are feeling,” says Karin Scott. “Our long-term hope is that our staff are supported and feel motivated to do their best work, which in turns leads to better interactions with children and teachers and better outcomes for families.”

Read Full Case Study

Complete this form to read our case study about the Child Care Associates’ rollout of The Essential 0-5 Survey across 25 early childhood campuses.

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On Friday, May 28th, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law legislation that will make it easier for many families involved in the child welfare system to access critical early care and education services, like the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and Early Intervention (EI). Public Act 102-926, formerly HB4242, was sponsored by Representative Lakesia Collins and Senator Julie Morrison.

“Children under the age of six make up nearly half of all kids involved in the DCFS system,” Ireta Gasner, Vice President of Illinois Policy at Start Early said. “Because early exposure to trauma, abuse and neglect can damage the architecture of the developing brain, the state must provide access to comprehensive, high-quality early childhood services, which research show can help mitigate the effects of trauma on our youngest learners.”

Among other key provisions, the legislation extends automatic eligibility to the state’s child care program for Youth in Care who are themselves parents.

“Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Law Project is excited to see this important legislation signed. For thirty years, we have heard from our clients about the importance of child care in ensuring the success of their families post-emancipation from the child welfare system,” said Niya Kelly, Director of State Legislative Policy, Equity and Transformation, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Several of the policy proposals included in PA 102-926 were developed by a special working group of the state’s Early Learning Council, which produced recommendations for how to enroll more young children and families with child welfare involvement in high-quality early care and education programs. The working group, supported by staff from Illinois Action for Children and Start Early, included researchers, early childhood professionals, public agency staff, and parents. The committee’s recommendations, developed over the course of a year, included proposed changes to policy and procedure, improvements to data and research, enhanced and expanded supports to families, and strengthened cross-system collaboration.

“We want to thank the Early Learning Council, and especially those from the All Families Served subcommittee of the Council. The working group gathered input directly from parents regarding their experiences accessing critical early childhood services for their children; this engagement with families was instrumental in highlighting opportunities to improve and expand the Child Care Assistance Program and Early Intervention services to more families in the child welfare system,” said April Janney, President & CEO of Illinois Action for Children.

Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Children’s Home + Aid, Illinois Action for Children, and Start Early applaud the Illinois General Assembly and Governor Pritzker for approving such consequential legislation.

Below is an overview of the key provisions included in the new law:

  • Makes parenting youth in care and families on the DCFS Extended Family Support (EFSP) program automatically eligible for the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), regardless of income, employment, or education status. The extension of eligibility to the CCAP program for parenting youth in care and those on the EFSP program will make child care more accessible. (This provision becomes effective in July 2023.)
  • Makes infants and toddlers involved in the child welfare system automatically eligible for the Early Intervention (EI) program. Expanding eligibility to EI services for infants and toddlers involved in the child welfare system will ease the pathway into the program for a population of children and families who experience structural and situational barriers to services.
  • Requires DCFS to reimburse child care providers at the same rates paid to providers by IDHS for the CCAP program. Requiring parity in reimbursement rates between IDHS and DCFS will encourage more child care providers to accept reimbursement from DCFS, thus expanding the number of child care options for families involved in the child welfare system.
  • Requires DCFS to report out information on its child care program. The sharing out of data on the child care services provided by DCFS will help policymakers improve programs for families and providers.

Teacher burnout, under enrollment, workforce retention and well-being – we know many programs across the US are struggling with multiple problems of practice. Addressing these problems of practice can be overwhelming. How to build trust with staff? How to encourage collaborative practice? How to embed these solutions into our ways of working?

Decades of study by the University of Chicago and Start Early reveals that program conditions at the organization level are more closely linked to child outcomes than what’s happening in individual classrooms. The Essential 0-5 Survey, developed in partnership by Start Early and the University of Chicago, is a measurement system that provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of organizational climate for programs.

At this year’s Shared Services Technical Conference, hosted by Opportunities Exchange, Start Early co-presented with Pre-K 4 San Antonio (Pre-K 4 SA) to share the amazing work Larrisa Wilkinson, Director of Professional Learning and Program Innovation, and her team are doing to make impactful changes in their community.

Data & Goal Setting

The Essential 0-5 Survey data elevated two Essentials as areas for improvement in Pre-K 4 SA’s program – Effective leadership and Collaborative teachers. After completing their first root cause analysis, the leadership team came up with a shared goal: to improve their organizational culture of growth and learning by starting the year developing stronger relationships with educators at both the personal and professional level. Using what they learned about their teachers (interests, needs, etc.), the idea of collective problem solving became integral to moving forward with organizational change.

Our process and what was really integral to that process was making sure that we carved out a dedicated time for reflection and collaboration. So that is really difficult as we all know in organizations where you never have time to sit and reflect but [its] critical.

- Larrisa Wilkinson, Director of Professional Learning and Program Innovation, Pre-K 4 SA
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Small Action Steps

The PreK-4 SA leadership team begin to implement 30-day Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) improvement cycles. Initially, they implemented a “getting to know you” tool with teachers. Directors and Assistant Directors started classroom walkthroughs during the first 30 days of the program year. They looked for and celebrated strong teacher practice and positive classroom environments. Both the South and East Centers dedicated time for peer learning communities (PLCs) to reduce staff meetings. At the South Center, they established a Campus Leadership Team and read receipts to improve two-way communication. The East Center, in addition to increased staff collaboration time, added need-to-know information for staff to their newsletters.

First cycle came and went and we felt so accomplished.

- Belinda Gonzalez, Director of the South Education Center, Pre-K 4 SA
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Results

When staff were asked directly, the overwhelming response was it was an effective practice:

  • Staff felt more ownership in meetings
  • Staff felt increased responsibility and accountability towards continuous organizational improvement;
  • Staff felt connectedness and agency, which strengthened trust with leadership
  • Transparency was key for Pre-K 4 SA leadership to build trust during the PDSA cycles of improvement

Key Takeaway

Start small. You cannot solve every problem in the world at once. Use the Essential 0-5 Survey data and toolkit to build common language, guide your efforts and identify areas that will have the most impact. When staff see even small amounts of progress, they are motivated to keep trying and start to trust that change is possible.

I want to do so much because I want to make all these big changes…that was the hardest part was to narrow it down.

- Tonda Brown, Director of East Education Center, Pre-K 4 SA
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Are you interested in making organizational improvements but are not sure where to start? Contact us to learn more about how Start Early can help focus your efforts to ultimately improve child outcomes.