Financing for ECE Quality & Access for All (F4EQ)

The project team is conducting a nationwide descriptive study of financing in ECE programs, including (a) surveys of Head Start program directors and state ECE administrators and (b) case studies. To inform the development of the surveys and design of the case studies, the project team completed a review of the existing knowledge base, conducted an environmental scan of policies and regulations around the use or coordination of multiple ECE funding sources at the state and program levels, interviewed key informants, and consulted with technical experts.

Key findings include:

• Many Head Start programs seem to use multiple funding sources. This includes some common sources such as child care development fund (CCDF), state pre-kindergarten (pre-K), city or regional pre-K, foundation grants, program endowments, local prevention initiatives, and family co-pays. However, we do not know the prevalence of this nationally.
• Equity was not commonly highlighted or integrated into program approaches to combining funding or research design. We define equity in early childhood systems as “providing access to a full array of high-quality comprehensive services and supports to all children and families that result in positive outcomes regardless of race, socio-economic status, language, disability, or any other social or cultural characteristic”. There is a need for research that explores if and how Head Start programs use multiple funding sources to reach or better support populations that have been marginalized.
• Programs seek out multiple funding sources to implement comprehensive, high-quality care, improve access, and better meet the needs of local communities and some priority populations. However, we do not yet know how programs plan for equitable access and experiences for specific priority populations and use multiple funding sources to meet these goals.
• Challenges in combining multiple funding sources appear to increase administrative burden, costs, and effort for providers.
• Governance structures and integration of Head Start with other state ECE funding sources (e.g., state pre-K or CCDF) seem to affect whether and how programs used multiple funding sources. However, there is little documentation of the relationship between state governance structure and Head Start integration into the broader ECE system or the availability and quality of guidance and direct supports.

Methods:

These early project activities and findings informed the design of the first nationwide surveys of Head Start program directors and state ECE systems leaders examining financing policies and practices, which were fielded in early 2024

Additionally, project’s case studies, projected to be completed in 2025, are designed to supplement the state- and program-level surveys by providing a more detailed and nuanced picture of on-the-ground ECE funding approaches and decision making. The case studies aim to shed light on the intersections between state-, local-, and program-level decisions about the use of multiple funding sources by more deeply investigating:

1. how state-level governance and funding structures inform local Head Start programs’ decisions and approaches to using multiple ECE funding sources;
2. the role that local coordinating entities that some states have formally established through statute to support ECE programs play in Head Start programs’ funding decisions; and
3. Head Start programs’ approaches to and implementation of the use of multiple funding sources and whether and how their decisions and strategies are shaped by state and local policies, supports, or enabling conditions.