By Mina Hong and Carrie Gillispie

Amid all the disruption to in-person learning due to the pandemic, it’s time to focus on children with disabilities, which account for 1.2 million young children birth through five. Thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first enacted in 1975, inclusive early care and education (ECE) programs, where children with disabilities learn alongside children without disabilities, is integrated in the federal special education law. Inclusive education has many benefits for all children, regardless of disability status. In fact, inclusion is so essential to child development that it is integrated in federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Under the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) requirement, IDEA calls for young children with developmental delays and disabilities to receive special education and related services alongside typically developing peers in all settings. For young children, LRE includes school-based preschool and community-based settings like Head Start and child care; yet, far too few children with disabilities have had access to these high-quality inclusive options.

Now, Congress has the power to change that with the Build Back Better Act (BBB) and increased IDEA funding in the federal Fiscal Year 2022 (FFY2022) budget. By leveraging these federal investments, states can revolutionize ECE to be truly inclusive and equitable for our nation’s youngest learners with delays and disabilities.

BBB combined with anticipated IDEA funding increases in FFY2022 provides a historic opportunity to expand full inclusion across early childhood settings. BBB significantly invests in expanding equitable access to ECE for families who have been historically underserved — families with lower incomes, families of color, and families of young children with disabilities. Though BBB prioritizes enrollment of young children with delays and disabilities in ECE programs, additional dedicated funding in BBB to support their inclusion is not explicitly defined. Therefore, it is paramount that these expanded early learning opportunities are directed to underserved children with delays and disabilities – particularly children of color – in school and community-based settings that best meet families’ and children’s needs. The anticipated funding increase in the FFY2022 budget will further support the delivery of early intervention, special education and related services to young children under IDEA Part C and IDEA Part B 619. Together, BBB and the IDEA funding proposed in FFY2022 can support the expansion of full inclusion across high quality ECE in all settings.

Despite best efforts, Local Education Agencies (LEAs) face barriers to providing inclusive community-based services outside of school district classrooms including limited guidance, budgetary constraints, and workforce shortages. LEA leaders have expressed the need for guidance and examples of effective service delivery and staffing models to support inclusive special education and related services to all children residing in their districts across ECE settings. Unfortunately, the children who are disproportionately impacted by this are young children from families with lower income, particularly families of color. This group of children are often forced to attend both their community-based program and a school-based program to receive special education services, resulting in multiple bus rides and transitions in a single day. Some families even forego critical special education services to avoid these transitions. Additionally, the workforce crisis that has plagued the early childhood field has led to a staff shortage, which is also acutely felt by the early childhood special education field. While BBB includes provisions to boost compensation for the ECE workforce, funding is also needed to attract and retain special educators. Coupling BBB and FFY2022 funding can support LEAs and their ECE partners as they create equitable systems to ensure programs have the financial resources, workforce capacity, and clear federal guidance needed to support equitable inclusion.

Given this, it is paramount that the U.S. Senate pass the Build Back Better Act in a timely manner while Congress approves the FFY2022 budget with the IDEA Part C and Part B 619 funding increases. Once passed, the federal government should provide clear guidance on how states and communities will ensure children receive special education and related services in all settings. And states, communities, and LEAs should plan how they will collaborate to equitably support young children with disabilities in early childhood settings expanded through new federal dollars. Here’s how:

• Clearly delineating in state plans the ways in which state and local policies and practices will operationalize equitable access and quality in ECE for young children with disabilities and developmental delays across settings. Specifically, plans should prioritize families with low incomes, dual language learners, and from other underserved populations as defined in BBB.
• Prioritizing inclusion in mixed delivery settings, including giving all educators access to resources on high-quality inclusion practices and giving LEAs clear guidance and sufficient funding to do so. This also includes professional development and systems of support for educators to reduce the suspension and expulsion of young children with disabilities and children of color.
• Providing equitable and accessible pathways to obtaining early childhood special education qualifications in order to strengthen the workforce; providing service scholarships and loan forgiveness programs for special education trainees to increase incentives to enter the profession; and most importantly, providing adequate compensation for the entire ECE workforce including special education teachers.
• Collecting and publicly reporting data on district- and program-level adherence to LRE across early childhood settings and disciplinary data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, family income level, gender, dual language learner status, and disability category under IDEA.

Young children with disabilities have always faced systemic barriers to the strong start they deserve. Now is the time for Congress, states, LEAs, and communities to each do their part and collaborate, so that young children with delays and disabilities can access the equitable and inclusive services and supports they need and deserve.

With contributions by Karen Berman, Katie Fisher and Amanda Schwartz

We are excited to share our annual Start Early 2021 Year in Review, which showcases accomplishments and elevates reflections from last fiscal year (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021).

Highlights from this past year demonstrate how the early learning field adapted to continue being fully present for our families and providers regardless of where they were physically and emotionally.

At Start Early, we collaborated across program, policy and research partnerships to gather new perspectives and lessons learned. We implemented new strategies and expanded our innovative and interdisciplinary portfolio, positioning us to transform the field and drive collective action in the years to come.

2021 Year in Review

We are fortunate to have incredible partners in this work, and we are grateful for each of our supporters who make this work possible. We are champions for early learning, and together, we can transform lives.

A Fresh Look at Supporting Your Team This Winter

This is a critical year as programs continue working to offset the effects of the pandemic on early learning. With research-based professional development from Start Early, we can help you get there faster.

During our recent webinar, we explore how Start Early Professional Development can help you navigate a return to live instruction amidst ongoing federal funding opportunities and overwhelmed leaders and teachers who have been working around the clock since the start of the pandemic to serve children and families.

Watch the recording below to learn how Start Early’s portfolio of professional learning opportunities and resources can help you and your team:

• Learn and deploy strategies for workforce retention,
• Support overwhelmed leaders and professionals,
• Discover solutions to under-enrollment and family engagement, and
• Effectively on-board new staff at any experience level

City of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2022 budget, which was approved by City Council last month, aims to take advantage of a “once in a lifetime opportunity to transform” the city.

One such transformative change to celebrate is the decision to invest $25 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to scale the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Family Connects Chicago, an in-home nurse service for families with newborns over the next three years. Family Connects offers a universal approach to supporting families directly following the birth of a child and demonstrates the critical importance of care during a child’s first few weeks of life.

Yet, other early childhood programs and services continue to be woefully underfunded, as reflected in the latest approved budget. Compounded with the reality that families with young children and the programs that provide them with essential services are recovering from the pandemic, the early learning field needs adequate support and investments now more than ever before. Given the circumstances, it would seem to follow that the city’s budget would reflect a greater investment this year in other early childhood services. Yet, the budget line that represents local funds committed to the Children Services Division within the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) was level-funded with last year’s appropriation of approximately $13 million. To put that in perspective, the city allocated roughly the same amount of local funds for rodent control this year. Additionally, while the city’s early childhood programs will receive $6.5 million in ARPA funds, investments pale in comparison to the $213 million in ARPA funds that DFSS has allocated for serving older populations.

It is important to note that DFSS saw a budget reduction of roughly $100 million this year as a result of the federal government’s redistribution of Head Start funds. While those funds will now be received by other agencies who will continue Head Start services for children and families, the reduction for DFSS means a loss of funding for the citywide Chicago Early Learning infrastructure of supports – including the parent hotline, application and community outreach – which assists tens of thousands of families with accessing early childhood programs each year. It also means a loss of funds for the Chicago Early Learning Workforce Scholarship during an early childhood workforce crisis that predates but was greatly exacerbated by the pandemic. Despite the estimated need for 3,000 new early childhood educators across the city by 2024, this scholarship program is currently only able to serve around 130 new students each year, turning away over 500 others who apply due to lack of funds.

Despite the puzzling lack of investment of local and ARPA funds, the announcement last year of Every Child Ready Chicago, a public-private partnership led by the Mayor’s Office in partnership with Start Early suggests that this administration recognizes the need to improve the systems of care that support families in Chicago when their children are young. The initiative seeks to “build the early childhood systems infrastructure needed for thousands more children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.” The timing could not be better, with the state having announced in April their intent to establish early-childhood planning councils in communities across the state. The opportunity to align these initiatives – as well as the redistribution of Head Start funding in the city – creates an opportunity to bring more voices with broader representation and broader reach across communities in Chicago to the forefront of efforts to improve the system of supports that families can access in their children’s early years to ensure they enter kindergarten healthy and ready to learn. Perhaps the influence of a strong coalition focused on this goal will be what Chicago needs to ensure that the city budget reflects the appropriate dedication to children and families in 2023.

By Michelle Bezark, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Judy Reidt-Parker Director of Early Childhood Systems Consultation at Start Early

Exactly fifty years ago, in the fall of 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) with a bipartisan vote. The law would have laid the foundation for federally funded universal child care programs “as a matter of right” for all children regardless of economic, social and family background.” The proposed programs would have been locally run and free for families with income below the poverty line, while available on a sliding scale to families making above that.

The proposal appeared popular with the public in the years leading up to the vote. A July 1969 Gallup poll suggested that 64% favored establishing of federally funded child care centers “in most communities,” while only 30% opposed. Supported by Democrats and Republicans, the CDA’s middle-class appeal made the bill seem like a sure thing in the build-up to the 1972 election season. President Nixon was privately ambivalent about universal daycare, but politicians and advocates assumed that given the programs’ broad appeal, he would not stand in the way of Congress.

The CDA’s sponsor, Senator Walter Mondale, formed a taskforce made up of experts and advocates to draft the legislation and get it passed. In an effort to move quickly through Congress ahead of the 1972 election cycle, the coalition — made up of early childhood experts, labor leaders, civil rights activists, and feminists — opted to rely on a group of advocates and experts rather than take the time to mobilize a grassroots movement. This tactic proved effective in getting the legislation passed through Congress but failed when the final bill hit the President’s desk.

Unlike the experts and advocates that supported the CDA, conservative organizations like the John Birch Society and the Mormon Church organized parents’ groups across the country in letter writing campaigns to oppose the bill. Conservatives saw the CDA as an extension of President Johnson’s War on Poverty programs, which they associated with government largess, and worried the CDA would allow the federal government to intervene in traditional family structures. They were so effective that the Health, Education, and Welfare Department’s Office of Child Development fielded as many as 5,000 letters opposed to the legislation — and subsequent bills like it — every week throughout the 1970s.

Conservatives were so vocal in their opposition that by December of 1971, Republicans who had initially supported the law abandoned it. Moreover, President Nixon not only vetoed the bill but condemned federal subsidies for universal child care in no uncertain terms. In his veto message to Congress he criticized the bill’s “fiscal irresponsibility, administrative unworkability, and family-weakening implications” and claimed that signing the CDA would commit the Federal Government to “communal approaches to child rearing over the family-centered approach.” According to one early childhood advocate, the veto froze the issue for decades.

In the end, Nixon made the political calculation that he had more to lose by alienating conservatives than he had to gain by passing popular, bipartisan legislation. Nixon’s veto message, with its praise for family togetherness and critique of “communal approaches to child rearing,” was carefully worded to appeal to right-wing, anti-communist, anti-feminist activists.

No such letter writing campaign came in support of the CDA either before or after the veto. One CDA supporter reflected that the primary lesson to be learned from the bill’s failure was that supporters spent too much time engaged with each other at the expense of mobilizing grassroots support.

The day after Nixon issued his veto on the CDA, he signed legislation that expanded the 1954 child care tax credit to middle-class families. With these two successive steps, President Nixon shaped the early childhood education system we live with today: a failing market-based system where parents are unable to afford high child care costs, providers operate on razor-thin margins maintaining slim profits, and child care workers earn low wages without benefits, which consequently results in exceptionally high turnover. Even the tax subsidies designed to support the middle-income families proved to be not immediate enough to offset monthly costs, as these families juggle when and how to pay for heating, child care, and housing.

Child care advocates learned the lesson of grassroots mobilization well. They organized large grassroots campaigns in support of federal childcare subsidies in the 1980s. By then, however, most politicians had soured to the idea of universal child care programs based on the CDA’s failure. With so many mothers of young children entering the workforce in the 1980s, members of both parties felt compelled to act on childcare. But, Republicans only supported childcare bills that went through the states and supported the children of the poorest families.

Child care advocates worked tirelessly within these political constraints to increase funding for Head Start, child tax credits, and to pass the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), signed into law in 1990. Today, CCDBG provides block grants to the states to subsidize care for children from families with low incomes.

CCGBD funding has supported many children and families, but it is a far cry from the universal vision laid out in the 1971 CDA. CCGBD has been chronically underfunded from the start. When it finally passed through Congress and President Bush signed it into law, it had less than half the funds the bill’s sponsors originally sought.

While current federal regulations establish parameters for how states can implement the grant, states make policy decisions that impact the quality, supply, and accessibility of child care. Although the recent changes in CCDBG created stronger criteria for health and safety, more consistent payment policies to providers and improved eligibility policies, there is a great deal of flexibility on how states can design their child care subsidy system. For example, many states set the child care subsidy income eligibility significantly lower than the allowed 85%, often only slightly higher than the federal poverty line. Concurrently, although states are recommended to reimburse providers up to the 75th percentile of the child care market rate, many states continue to pay providers in the 40th or 50th percentiles. This leaves many providers questioning the cost-to-benefit ratio of accepting subsidies. Why accept lower payment and a stack of paperwork when there might be another family that can pay the full rate?

The child care sector as it stands today, therefore, may be the only industry in which government subsidy contributes to market challenges, rather than ameliorates them.

Had President Nixon signed the CDA into law in 1971, four generations of children would have had access to comprehensive educational, medical, social and nutritional services. Millions of women would have been able to take jobs, pursue degrees or job training, or start businesses, knowing that they had access to quality and affordable child care programs for their young children.

Things would not be perfect in the early childhood system had the outcome in 1971 been different, but we would be working to solve different and smaller problems — not constantly trying to prop up a system that has been broken from the start. With national program standards in place, it’s unlikely families would be expected to verify their income every six months (as was the norm until recently) or risk losing their child care subsidy if they accept a 50-cent an hour raise. We might instead be tinkering with national standards to make sure they provide universal access to high-quality programs and services. We might be investing in higher education programs to increase the linguistic and cultural diversity of the workforce, instead of hemorrhaging skilled and passionate early childcare workers to lower-skilled jobs that offer higher wages and benefits.

Today, transformational investments in our youngest learners are once again on the table in Washington, D.C., this time preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, supports for families to access high-quality learning and child care, and an extended Child Tax Credit. Once again, voters overwhelmingly support federal investments in child care and preschool, with national polling from September revealing 81% of voters see child care and preschool as a good investment of taxpayer money — including 80% of independents and 66% of Republicans. And once again, claims of fiscal irresponsibility are threatening us from doing something big.

As Congress debates how much to fund different aspects of President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, let’s not miss our chance to pass this historic early childhood legislation and create a comprehensive system that supports children and families when it matters most. Because if the last 50 years has taught us anything, it’s that cobbling together a set of smaller solutions only gets us a broken system that serves no one well.

Today, President Biden announced the Build Back Better framework. In response, Diana Rauner, president of Start Early issued the following statement:

“The proposed $400 billion investment in child care, universal preschool and families through the extended Child Tax Credit would make high-quality early learning options affordable and accessible for families who need them, increase compensation and professional development opportunities for the early care and learning workforce, and ultimately create a stronger, more stable and more equitable system that can support the needs of children and families during the years when these investments matter most.

“When you give families and children access to quality early learning and care during their first five years, you can change everything. This is an exciting moment for families, for children, for early childhood professionals and our nation, one that has the potential to create a brighter future for generations to follow.

“Start Early urges Congress to quickly pass these transformational investments.

“As we celebrate this moment, we realize the work to build an early learning and care system that prioritizes families and supports them from before birth through age 5 is not done. Start Early will continue to advocate for policies that put families first, most notably sustaining federal investments in early care and learning and creating a national paid family leave policy to help all families begin their journey on a strong foundation of caring, responsive relationships.”

Start Early applauds Governor J.B. Pritzker for issuing Executive Order 2021-28, which requires all staff working in child care settings licensed by the state to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. We thank the governor and his administration for recognizing the need to protect this essential workforce and the children and families in their care. This policy will bring immunization requirements for staff at child care centers into alignment with those of Early Head Start and Head Start providers, as well as K-12 educators, who are already required to receive the vaccine.

Throughout the pandemic, Start Early advocated to make sure the early childhood workforce was prioritized as part of the state’s vaccine rollout, along with other educators and essential workers. Then when the vaccine rollout began, Start Early and our advocate partners in early childhood and public health have spent many months engaging diverse stakeholders in a coordinated “trusted messenger” campaign to increase vaccination rates among providers. After reviewing results from surveys and focus groups to better understand the concerns of providers, we focused our efforts on synthesizing and improving accessibility of information on the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as providing opportunities to have non-judgmental conversations with trusted health experts about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

As a direct service provider, Start Early followed a similar approach with our own staff. As soon as the vaccine was made available, we pursued partnerships to assist staff in accessing education related to the vaccine, as well as the vaccine itself. We looked to the expertise of organizations such as the Society for Human Resource Management, The Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for guidance and adjusted our approach as new information became available. Following guidance from the EEOC, we began providing incentives to get vaccinated over the summer. With this patient, persistent, and respectful approach, we reached a voluntary vaccine rate of over 80%. When we later announced our own vaccine mandate in September, this high rate of voluntary vaccination allowed us to focus individual attention on those who were not yet vaccinated. This allowed us to reach our goal of full compliance with our mandate without any staff terminations. With the dates announced by the Governor, it is not too late for other providers to follow a similar approach. Both broad and individualized outreach, education, and access are key ingredients to achieving our shared goal of the highest possible vaccination rates across our field.

By Debra Pacchiano, Vice President of Translational Research and Isabel Farrar, Research Associate at Start Early and Marc Brodersen, Managing Senior Researcher and Joshua Stewart, Senior Researcher at Marzano Research

Whether a tool such as a rubric, assessment, or survey is used to measure teaching practices or academic standards, validation is an important step to ensure users can trust the results. Start Early recently worked with the national education research and consulting firm Marzano Research to examine the validity of a survey developed to support the professional growth and development of early care and education (ECE) staff and administrators.

A growing body of research in ECE and quality improvement shows that strong site-level organizational conditions are key to realizing strong implementation of quality standards and continuous quality improvement in ECE settings. Yet most instruments designed to support the professional growth and development of ECE staff and administrators focus primarily on classroom-level processes, creating a gap that could stifle improvements at the organizational-level related to mindsets and practices surrounding caregiving, teaching and family engagement.

Researchers at Start Early developed The Essential 0-5 Survey to bridge this gap and provide data and actionable information to administrators, teachers, and staff in ECE settings (both school and center-based) serving the families of preschoolers — and now also infants and toddlers. The Essential 0-5 Survey collects teacher, staff and parent experiences and perceptions of the organizationwide mindsets and practices aligned to Start Early’s evidence-based framework of essential conditions: Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Involved Families, Supportive Environment, Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice. Research conducted in both K-12 and ECE settings demonstrates the direct impacts these conditions have on quality practices and children’s immediate and longer-term success. The Essential 0-5 Survey builds on prior research and development efforts between Start Early and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, where 5 Essentials survey and evidence-based framework of essential conditions was originally developed and tested in K-12 settings.

To test the relevance of The Essential 0-5 Survey for infant-toddler settings, Start Early conducted 88 cognitive interviews in English and Spanish with teachers, staff and parents from Early Head Start Child Care Partnership programs in two states, which then informed additional revisions. To prepare for pilot study, the refined survey was translated into Spanish, Arabic and Aramaic, and administered to more than 500 teachers and staff and 1,100 parents in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, and Washington D.C.

Validation and Results

Using data from the survey pilot study, Marzano Research conducted a psychometric validation study to understand the following questions:

1. Does the survey consistently measure the aspects of organizational quality it was designed to measure?
2. Does the survey distinguish sites with different levels of organizational quality?
3. Do users with different background characteristics, such as their primary spoken language or the age of the child served by the ECE program, respond to the survey items in similar or systematically different ways?

Pilot study results confirmed the survey items intended to measure particular aspects of ECE organizational quality do group together as intended, and with few exceptions, each grouping measures a singular aspect of ECE organizational quality. Additionally, a majority of the survey items were found to contribute to the overall functionality of the survey; with only a handful of items found to be redundant to each other, or to potentially address different aspects of ECE organizational quality.

These findings speak to the rigor of the survey development team’s process in adapting, writing and vetting the survey items, and importantly endorse the overall psychometric reliability and validity of the surveys for use in infant-toddler center-based settings. However, preliminary analyses also showed that teachers and parents who completed the survey in Spanish or English respond differently to items on several sections of the survey. In some instances, Spanish speakers would generally provide more positive responses to a selection of items while in other instances English speakers would provide more positive responses to a selection of items. Some differences to a selection of items were also found between teachers working with children from birth to age 2 versus those working with children ages 3 to 5.

Next Steps

Start Early is currently using the results of the pilot study to revise items and conduct additional interviews with teachers, staff, and family members of infants and toddlers. Start Early will conduct a formal validation study in 2022 which will include linking survey responses to additional quality outcomes of concern, for example children’s attendance and developmental progress and the quality of teacher-child interactions and family engagement. Learn more about the research behind The Essential 0-5 Survey.

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) began its hearings–the first step in determining next year’s proposed budget. These hearings provide us an opportunity to help shape the early childhood proposal in the upcoming budget. Please consider participating *virtually* in requesting a 10% increase to the Early Childhood Block Grant for Fiscal Year 2023.

This pandemic continues to add challenges to what children, families and educators are facing.

• Children are young only once. We must act boldly and decisively to invest in their futures.
• The essential work performed by professionals throughout the early childhood system requires compensation parity for teachers and staff, particularly those in community-based settings.

Learn More How to Participate in ISBE’s Budget Process:

• Submit your funding request: Complete and submit ISBE FY2023 Budget Hearing Form. This step must be completed prior to registering to speak at a hearing. Written requests must be received by ISBE no later than October 21.
• Sign up to testify or register to listen: After completing your funding request, you can also sign-up to testify at one of the budget hearings. You must sign up if you wish to speak at a hearing so that you can be included in the official schedule for the meeting. You must also register prior to the hearing if you choose to be a “listener.” Registration links are included below.

Upcoming Budget Hearings:

Submit your testimony

• Oct. 14, 4-7 p.m. CT
  Registration deadline: Registration deadline: 11:59 p.m., Oct. 11
  Register Now
• Oct. 21, 1-4 p.m. CT
  Registration deadline: 11:59 p.m., Oct. 18
  Register Now

Contact us if you plan to testify or have questions. Thank you for speaking up for children and families across the state!

Finding a way to talk about hard things can be challenging and stressful for even the most seasoned home visitor and family support professional. This has been especially true over the past year and a half as we’ve experienced the crises and challenges of the pandemic and more.

In talking to home visitors, supervisors and administrators about how they’re handling the current pressures of their environments, they’ve shared that what they really need right now is incremental support. In response to this need, we are pleased to announce the publication of the 4th edition of the NEAR@Home Toolkit. The NEAR@Home Toolkit is a free, self-study guide for how to safely, respectfully and effectively discuss ACES (adverse childhood experiences), trauma, and other hard things with parents by focusing on hope, respect and resilience. This newest edition features stories and quotes from home visitors to help contextualize the work described in the toolkit, and a framework for thinking about childhood trauma and adversity.