As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the U.S. last spring, decisions to close schools in many places came relatively quick. Decisions about child care, however, were another matter. Astute governors recognized that, although we didn’t know much about the impact of the virus on children, essential workers still needed child care – and not just first responders and health care providers, but millions of low-wage workers who are foundational to the functioning of our economy. In Illinois, as in most states, child care programs remained open, even in diminished capacity.

Though programs continued serving children and families across the country, there was significant concern about what impact this health crisis would have on the child care industry and its long-term viability. The sector was already struggling with undervalued and undercompensated staff and slim, complicated budgets often built on a mix of insufficient public funding and private payments from families.

There was also concern for the health and well-being of early childhood caregivers. Although child care providers’ orientation to health and sanitation has shown to help reduce transmission of the virus within child care settings, exploding community spread is challenging decisions to keep programs open. Further, the majority of those who care for children in child care programs are Black and Latinx women who find themselves and their communities at greatest risk for both contracting COVID-19 and experiencing poor outcomes due to the systemic racism that underscores health disparities in our country.

Early in the pandemic, key portions of Illinois’ early childhood system were stabilized with safeguarded funding for services, whether they continued in-person or virtually. Providers serving children in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program were afforded enrollment-based payments, and later modified attendance-based payments. Stipends and rate add-ons were also available to those deemed as “Emergency Child Care.”

While these steps were critical, it was clear that more work needed to be done to reach child care programs who had less of their budget covered by these public funding streams, or who serve smaller percentages of children in Child Care Assistance Program.

Fortunately, Congress acted quickly in the spring to pass federal COVID-19 relief packages, including the CARES Act. In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker worked with the Illinois General Assembly to direct CARES Act dollars to help businesses cope with the loss of revenue they were experiencing and support small businesses through the pandemic so that they could return post-pandemic.

Notably, Governor Pritzker dedicated 50% (i.e., $270 million) of those business interruption funds to a specific program for child care providers, Child Care Restoration Grants (CCRG), to fill the gap between their usual levels of revenue and the resulting impact of reduced enrollment and attendance in classrooms. The program, which kicked off in September, permitted eligibility for all licensed child care programs, both home- and center-based and regardless of source of revenue.

Unfortunately, though, CCRG ended on November 30, with no future federal funding available to continue. Since the programs first grants, more than $250 million has been distributed to nearly 6,000 child care providers in 95 of Illinois’ 102 counties – the majority of which are home-based providers in areas outside of the larger metropolitan Chicago area and its collar counties. Providers who received the grants were more likely to report that private pay from families makes up around 40-50% of their revenue, with Child Care Assistance Program funds making up most of the balance. A much smaller percentage of providers received other state or federal revenue. Fortunately, only a very small number of programs were found to be ineligible for the CCRG funds.

The CCRG program proved to be critical for allowing child care programs to remain open, especially those with less access to public funding. While the state should leave no stone unturned to find a way to continue these grants, the reality of a COVID-19-impacted state budget and the failure of the Fair Tax proposal in the recent election, state dollars are scarce or worst, nonexistent.

To make child care supports available and reliable for the duration of this tragic public health emergency, the federal government must step in. Multiple COVID-19 relief bills drafted this fall have demonstrated that child care funding is a key priority for some. In addition, public polling continues to show that Americans understand–whether due to their own personal challenges or common sense–that strengthening our child care sector is a critical element of economic recovery. However, the longer Congress waits, the more child care programs will close. While some closures are temporary, others are permanent. This number will only increase as this crisis continues without an urgent response from Congress.

Child care programs not only provide safe and enriching settings for children, but also fundamentally allow parents to work and be successful employees, while knowing their children are being well-cared for. Programs also serve as employers and economic drivers – they are small, community businesses that purchase food, supplies and transportation services necessary for carrying out their function and mission.

A fundamental question remains for us. Will we act now to secure the economic health of the child care sector? Or, like our initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will we wait until the problem is so bad that recovery becomes near impossible?

Once we can gain control of the pandemic and begin to return to normalcy, the economic health of our country will depend on the availability of child care for parents to physically return to their jobs. This is true whether you are a middle-income American currently juggling work and caring for your children at home right now, or whether you’re a low-wage worker, who saw your job evaporate during the pandemic.

A robust COVID-19 stimulus package is desperately needed by the American people on many fronts. Congress should make this its top priority – and ensure the passage of a package that directs significant funds to child care programs across our country and invests in young children and their families.

Our Starting Early Begins With… three-part speaker series kicked off with a panel discussion between early childhood experts who shared the true power of advocacy in today’s world. One of the biggest takeaways? As one panelist stated, “… we are all advocates every day for various things, whether it’s for our children, or for some issue in our neighborhood.”

Panelists shared promising examples of advocacy efforts, encouraging individuals from all professional backgrounds and motivating interests to use their voice to influence change at local and large-scale levels. And, by centering and amplifying voices of those most directly and disproportionately affected by inequality, we can collectively inspire systematic change.

At Start Early, we know that federal support is necessary for early education programs and services to not only operate, but also to reach our children and families living in under-resourced communities. One panelist noted that the current pandemic has demonstrated how truly essential child care is and its influence on every American – whether it be through the workplace or in a community. That said, in order to ensure our child care system can rebuild back better, we need to share these diverse stories and perspectives with local, state and federal leaders.

In this blog, Amanda Stein, Start Early director of research and evaluation, shares findings and takeaways from our latest research study of pre-K access and enrollment policies in Chicago which aimed to remove obstacles and drive engagement for children and families in underserved neighborhoods.

Equity-Focused Research and Policymaking
At this poignant time, a public health crisis is both holding a magnifying glass to and further exacerbating racial and economic disparities and systemic injustices for young children and their families. The need for equity-focused policy making and research has never been more pronounced. And the field of early care and education (ECE) is no exception.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), in their 2019 position statement on advancing equity in ECE, defines equity as “the state that would be achieved if individuals fared the same way in society regardless of race, gender, class, language, disability, or any other social or cultural characteristic.” This means eliminating “differences in educational outcomes as a result of who children are, where they live, and what resources their families have.”

The Value of Early Care and Education
Given the well-established body of research evidence, there is no doubt that the type and quality of ECE experiences children receive both inside and outside of the home have an impact on their short-term learning and development and later life success. Furthermore, public investments in early education and intervention programs generate savings that benefit the economy long-term.

Yet children, their families, and the broader society are unable to reap the benefits of high-quality ECE programs if children and families are not able to access them. Existing research evidence shows that differential access is an important contributing factor to inequities in enrollment. The long-term benefits associated with strong care and education in the early years make these disparities particularly concerning.

A Focus on Pre-K Access and Enrollment in Chicago
Recently, Start Early partnered with a group of researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago, UChicago Consortium on School Research and policymakers in Chicago to explore whether and how policy efforts in the city helped to create more equity within the district’s early education system for high priority students. We examined access and enrollment to school-based pre-K in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), before and after significant policy changes that began in 2013-14, with a focus on re-allocating pre-K classrooms to schools throughout the city and increasing the number of full-day pre-K classrooms.

The overall goal was to improve access and enrollment for high-priority groups to help them better prepare for success in kindergarten and beyond – including students of color, students speaking a language other than English and students living in neighborhoods with lower income and higher unemployment.

Adopting A Neighborhood-Centered Approach in Chicago
In addition to examining changes in pre-K access and enrollment, we used a “neighborhood-centered” method to explore patterns of access and enrollment based on the neighborhood where students resided.

Our methodology resulted in a concise set of five neighborhoods groupings focused on the characteristics of residents and variations within communities, which is critical to informing policy decisions about how to most equitably allocate services, supports, and resources.

What We Learned: Evidence of Greater Equity
Prior to Chicago’s policy changes in 2013-14, White students and students living in the highest-income neighborhoods had the greatest number of full-day pre-K classrooms nearby and were most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K.

We found evidence of improvements following the policy changes:

• A larger portion of CPS elementary schools offered full-day pre-K, students lived an average of 0.6 miles closer to a school with at least one full-day pre-K and full-day pre-K enrollment rates grew nearly four-fold during the study.
• Enrollment tripled in school-based full-day pre-K among Black students and students living in lowest-income neighborhoods.
• Latinx students were more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K, at slightly lower levels than other groups.

Head Start offers a critical opportunity to improve the quality of home-based child care and bolster the sustainability of providers, while enabling Head Start to meet its mission to meet the comprehensive needs of young children and families facing the greatest adversity.

Start Early and its partners supported Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders committed to improving the quality of and access to home- based child care, to organize and deliver resources and technical assistance opportunities to potential Round 4 Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCP) applicants to increase the number of high-quality EHS-CCP applications supporting family child care home (FCC) providers.

Individuals from 40 states took advantage of the technical assistance opportunities offered to support new and existing Head Start grantees to include family child care in their EHS-CCP proposals. These included well-attended webinars; an online resource library housed on Home Grown’s website; and technical assistance through group and one-on-one peer learning calls.

Bolstered by recent data demonstrating that more parents are seeking smaller home-based child care settings during the pandemic, partnerships between Head Start and home-based child care providers offer promise for dramatically expanding access to high-quality, comprehensive early care and education services in home-based settings and establishing family child care network models that provide critical supports to sustain home-based providers.

Maia Connors, director of research and policy initiatives at Start Early recently spoke to WTTW about findings from “Closer to Home,” a report by education researchers at Start Early, NORC at the University of Chicago and the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

Overall, the report found policy changes launched in 2013 enabled greater equity in both access to and enrollment in Chicago Public Schools’ full-day, school-based pre-K.

“After these policy changes, these full-day opportunities were expanded greatly and Black students and students living in the lowest-income neighborhoods were the most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K,” Maia Connors, director of research and policy initiatives at Start Early, told WTTW News. “So I think that’s really a drastic change that shows that Chicago really was able to achieve greater equity.”

Connors also spoke to how this additional access to pre-K education can have a lasting impact on students’ lives.

“Prior research really shows that enrolling in high-quality pre-K is really critical for young children’s learning and that children really benefit a lot,” she said. “It can set them on a trajectory to greater academic achievement (and) longer-term positive outcomes as adults.”

Read the full story.

Policy changes to Chicago’s school-based pre-K system enabled greater equity in both access to and enrollment in full-day, school-based pre-K, according to a new study by education researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago, Start Early (formerly  known as the Ounce of Prevention), and UChicago Consortium on School Research. The study, Closer to Home: More Equitable Pre-K Access and Enrollment in Chicago, analyzes access to (distance and number of classrooms) and enrollment in pre-K from 2010-2016, both before and after policy changes occurred. Post-policy, high-priority student groups were up to three times more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K.

“Shifting where seats were located was a primary lever in the district’s policy strategy,” said Stacy Ehrlich, principal investigator and senior research scientist, NORC. “The concentration of full-day pre-K seats increased most on the West and South Sides of Chicago in neighborhoods where children have historically been under-enrolled in pre-K.”

Beginning in 2013, the City of Chicago launched major policy efforts to create more equitable enrollment in pre-K programs. The policies, including increasing the number of full-day pre-K classrooms and reallocating classrooms throughout the city, aimed to enroll more students from “high-priority” groups to help them better prepare for success in kindergarten and beyond. High-priority groups included students of color, students speaking a language other than English, and students living in neighborhoods with lower income and higher unemployment.

Pre-policy, the students most likely to enroll in the small number of full-day Chicago Public Schools (CPS) pre-K options (many of which required families to pay tuition) were White students, students living in highest-income neighborhoods, and students living in mostly-White neighborhoods. Post-policy, full-day pre-K opportunities expanded, and the students most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K were Black students, students living in lowest-income neighborhoods, and students living in mostly-Black neighborhoods.

“While Chicago significantly expanded enrollment in full-day, school-based pre-K, our study shows that there are still many age-eligible students who are not being served in full-day pre-K,” said Maia Connors, director, Research and Policy Initiatives at Start Early. “For example, the enrollment rate is only about 3 percent for Latinx students, so more work is needed to increase full-day pre-K opportunities for these families.”

“As school districts nationwide grapple with limited budget and capacity to expand full-day pre-K, this study offers an example of how to make evidence-based policy decisions to create more equitable and accessible enrollment opportunities for those students who are most likely to benefit,” said John Q. Easton, senior fellow, UChicago Consortium on School Research and former director of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. “The next step in our research will be to examine the relationship between increased pre-K access and enrollment and student outcomes in second and third grade.”

This study demonstrates that increased access was linked to increased enrollment, but access is just one policy lever that districts can use. Chicago implemented other policy changes simultaneously, including: a centralized pre-K application and enrollment process; prioritization of eligibility and placement of students with certain characteristics or experiences (e.g., lowest income); online information about pre-K options and quality; and local outreach efforts with families. “Policymakers may want to explore whether and how similar strategies may be effective in their districts,” said Ehrlich.

Research Questions and Key Findings

Question: Prior to policy changes, what was the association between students’ likelihood of enrollment and 1) their distance to the closest school with any pre-K/full day pre-K, and 2) the number of any pre-K/full-day pre-K classrooms close to their home?

Key Findings

• Pre-policy, enrollment rates in any CPS pre-K were higher for students who lived closer to schools with pre-K and had more pre-K classrooms near where they lived.
• Pre-policy, the associations of likelihood of enrollment in full-day pre-K with 1) distance to a school with a full-day pre-K classroom, and 2) number of full-day pre-k classrooms close to home were strongest for Black students and students living in lowest-income neighborhoods.
• Pre-policy, the students most likely to enroll in full-day pre-K were white students and students living in highest-income neighborhoods.

Question: Post-policy, did access to any pre-K/full-day pre-K change for some or all students?

Key Findings

• For most student groups, distance to a school with any CPS pre-K did not change substantially, and the number of pre-K classrooms available went down slightly.
• In contrast to any pre-K, access to full-day pre-K increased following policy changes for nearly all student groups.
• The portion of CPS elementary schools offering full-day pre-K quadrupled, from 10 percent to 41 percent.
• The concentration of full-day pre-K seats increased most on the West and South Sides of Chicago in primarily Black neighborhoods and neighborhoods with lower income.

Question: Post-policy, when access changed, did enrollment change in corresponding ways?

• Full-day pre-K enrollment rates grew nearly four-fold from 3.2 percent in 2010-2011 to 11.6 percent in 2015-2016.
• Black students and students living in lowest-income neighborhoods were three times more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K following policy changes.
• Latinx students were also more likely to enroll in full-day pre-K following policy changes, but at rates much lower than the city average (2.6 percent for Latinx students compared to 7.2 percent for all students).

Question: Following the policy shift, was access still related to enrollment in the same direction and with the same magnitude as it had been before?

Key Finding

• Post-policy, access continued to predict enrollment in full-day pre-K. However, the association became stronger for Black students, lowest-income students, and for students living in mostly Black neighborhoods.

Cite as: Ehrlich, S.B., Connors, M.C., Stein, A.G., Francis, J., Easton, J.Q., Kabourek, S.E., & Farrar, I.C. (2020). Closer to home: More equitable pre-k access and enrollment in Chicago (Research Snapshot). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, NORC at the University of Chicago, and Start Early.

About NORC at the University of Chicago

NORC at the University of Chicago is an objective, non-partisan research institution that delivers reliable data and rigorous analysis to guide critical programmatic, business, and policy decisions. Since 1941, NORC has conducted groundbreaking studies, created and applied innovative methods and tools, and advanced principles of scientific integrity and collaboration. Today, government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world partner with NORC to transform increasingly complex information into useful knowledge.

About Start Early

Start Early (formerly known as the Ounce of Prevention) is a nonprofit public-private partnership advancing quality early learning and care for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For nearly 40 years, Start Early has delivered best-in-class doula, home visiting and Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Bringing expertise in program delivery, research and evaluation, professional development and policy and advocacy, Start Early works in partnership with communities and other experts to drive systemic change so that millions more children, families and educators can thrive. Learn more at  StartEarly.org.

About the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research

\With the goal of supporting stronger and more equitable educational outcomes for students, the UChicago Consortium conducts research of high technical quality that informs and assesses policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. We seek to expand communication among researchers, policymakers, practitioners, families, and communities as we support the search for solutions to the challenges of school improvement. The UChicago Consortium encourages the use of research in policy action and practice but does not advocate for particular policies or programs. Rather, we help to build capacity for school improvement by identifying what matters most for student success, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.

In this blog post, Melissa Manning, with contributions from Sarah Bergman, share perspectives from the Educare Learning Network’s Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships Community of Practice on rebuilding and recovery post COVID-19. Including, specific thoughts on equitable access to high-quality early care and learning and the need for viewing early childhood systems through a racial equity lens.

In mid-June, after early learning settings were initially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, 12 early learning practitioners from seven states gathered virtually for a Build It Back Better dialogue. The dialogue took place during a meeting of the Educare Learning Network’s Community of Practice for Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grantees and included leaders of Educare schools and child care providers. Below is a summary of what these leaders in the early childhood field shared about their experience with rebuilding and recovery post-COVID-19:

1. What are some of the hopes, dreams and goals for children that were shared during your Build It Back Better dialogue?

A hope is to provide children with the same educational opportunities as children in more affluent communities, as well as resourcing teachers to support their implementation of best practices in service of children’s school readiness and their own personal growth. We hope that all children will have the opportunity to reach their full potential and want to be mindful of what is needed for staff, communities and families to ensure children have those opportunities. We hope that a young child’s family income, race and/or adverse experiences do not predict their later success. Finally, when we see our kids, especially our Black and Latino kids, we want to be able to give them a fair shake in a world we know is not set up for them currently. Kids in our community who came to our programs are no longer living because of street and police violence. There is hopefulness to see changes to systemic racism in our lifetime.

2. What are some of the worries or concerns for children that were shared? What is keeping people up at night?
Children of color are growing up in a society with a long history of structural, institutionalized racism. So many kids are not in quality programs right now as programs start to reopen in limited capacities. We worry about the domestic and child abuse that might be going unreported right now. We are also worried about the social and emotional development and relationship-based work at every level – including physical contact especially with younger children.

Everything we know about child development is seemingly unavailable during this pandemic. We are worried about what the child care landscape is really going to look like for families. There was a teacher who tested positive the night before school was scheduled to reopen. The Remind app was then used to notify parents of a delayed reopening date. There were 55 families who were scheduled to arrive. Four families did not get the information – one uncle even tried to drop off a little girl, who got so upset that school was not open that day. This incident was a reminder that these kids are at home with family members and wanting to come back. Our kids need these environments. In some cases, we are their stability – their constant.

3. According to participants, how did the supports for young children and families respond or fare? Who has been disproportionately impacted by the challenges?
A positive has been that there was some security built in for families through child care subsidies. There was no parent fee, and slots were saved. Another positive has been smaller group sizes. Adults have time to build relationships with each other and kids.

Some negatives? It is up to states to figure out where their money lands, and that really varies. Also, funding that came through in grant form was insufficient in many cases. Head Start and child care in Illinois are not on the same page, and many programs could not open as emergency care because of the loopholes and discrepancies in policies and procedures. The longer a program stays closed, the harder it is to reopen. The Black Lives Matter movement has had a significant impact on the Educare Seattle community. For equity and racial justice to be a part of what we do, we must understand how white privilege plays out in the child care setting.

4. With respect to concerns or challenges shared, what did participants say has or would help alleviate these issues or make things better?
It would be helpful if different sub-systems were firmly aligned and communicating clear expectations. The conversation should also be raised between public school leaders and local child care providers. Providers want to be responsive to school decisions in order to best serve the community. We are still concerned, though, about how do we partner with families to empower themselves as the most important teacher for their child, while also meeting the need for child care and education? Some families are not quite ready to return on-site, but also not quite comfortable being their child’s teacher.

We want to make sure we are supporting families’ mental health situations and ensuring families have access to services and affordable technology. In order to make things better, we need to be able to manage movement effectively in case someone tests positive for COVID-19. Tulsa Educare was operating 7 a.m. – 6 p.m., and to make it work, there were so many substitutes, interns and aides required. So many folks going in and out. They’ve adjusted, so that now, there are three teachers with children all day. It is so calm. That is a solution that children will really benefit from.

5. As we work together to rebuild the early childhood system, what questions should we all be asking to ensure that ALL young children and families thrive?

We need to ask ourselves: what is it we really want? We need to slow down and have dialogues about this. What is it we want our children to experience? What kind of citizens do we want them to become? What is the role of profit in our child care industry? How can we cultivate more respect for teachers, especially our birth-to-age 5 teachers? Who do we want to be taking over this world? What skills do they need? And of course, in each conversation, we need to ask ourselves, how are the children?

To learn more about how Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grantees have faced the COVID-19 pandemic and what policy recommendations they have made, please read the Educare Learning Network’s blog series “A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships.”

Build It Back Better is a project of Start Early (formerly the Ounce) focused on identifying the critical questions that early childhood systems and services must ask as we rebuild after the COVID-19 pandemic. The writings that emerge from the initiative center the experiences and voices of those most directly and disproportionately affected by the pandemic’s impact on early care and learning. Join the conversation at the Early Child Connector’s Recovery and Rebuilding Hub.

Melissa Manning is the Early Childhood Services Training and Professional Development Coordinator at Sunbeam Family Services and Co-Chair of the Educare Learning Network’s Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships Community of Practice. Melissa has been in the field of early childhood education for three decades in a variety of capacities including, Infant/Toddler teacher, Center Director, Health Services Manager, Program Operations Manager, Quality Assessor and her current role as Training & Professional Development Coordinator for Sunbeam Family Services’ Early Childhood department. Melissa has worked with Head Start programs since 2002 and has extensive knowledge about Head Start Program Performance Standards, nonprofit management and best practices in the field.

Sarah Bergman was the Leadership and Educational Equity Fellow at Start Early this past summer. Sarah has her Master’s in Early Childhood Education from Erikson Institute and is a Chicago Public Schools teacher. Sarah’s interests are focused on bringing developmentally appropriate teaching practices to all primary aged students and connecting the dots between policy decisions and everyday life in the classroom.