The Children's Agenda for California
Defining the goals of
The Children's Movement
Goal 3:
Implementing a comprehensive, high-quality early learning and development system for all children from birth to age five to ensure children’s life-long success, and improving the system’s alignment with early elementary through the use of such tools as a kindergarten readiness observation assessment.
Specific policy components to consider:
- Implementing a strong core curriculum and aligned assessments.
Less than 4% of public investments in education and development are targeted at children from birth to age four, despite research showing that most brain growth occurs before age five and the fact that higher income families spend major sums to ensure their own young children are receiving high-quality developmental and early educational support prior to kindergarten. Unless the state’s leaders want to limit California’s future economic success by not ensuring children are prepared to succeed in school and life as well as abandon the goal of equal opportunity, they must work towards every child having access to high-quality early learning and development programs. As an immediate step, funding that was eliminated by Governor Schwarzenegger for child care programs must be restored and steps must be made to ensure that more children currently served have access to quality programs.
The assurance that basic health and safety standards are being met by early learning and development programs is an essential step toward creating more high-quality learning opportunities. Currently, California ranks among the bottom five states on licensing standards and oversight provisions. To remedy this, the state must:
» Evaluate the current structure of the Community Care Licensing Division, the state agency responsible for ensuring the basic health and safety standards of licensed family child care homes and centers;
» Expand the existing state licensing website so that parents and providers have access to accurate licensing information;
» Review and modify current licensing protocols in order to streamline the process for obtaining licenses, including the possibility of allowing local agencies to conduct licensing reviews and site visits to support the state system.
Implementing recommendations from the Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) to pilot a state Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) would move the state closer to ensuring that young children have access to quality early learning and development programs. The ELAC secured $7 million in new federal funding to pilot a QRIS, which can be combined with funds from local and state quality improvement efforts in order to sustain the system statewide.
The state must also support efforts to strengthen its early learning education and professional development delivery system. Ensuring the workforce is well trained is critical because the quality of interaction between the teacher/provider and child is a key factor in program success. CDE, First 5 California and other stakeholders are working to create early learning educator core competencies that describe key workforce knowledge and skills. These competencies, which are to be released this year, should serve as the foundation for streamlining the education, training and professional development of the early learning and development field. - Identifying and addressing children’s needs earlier in their lives through ongoing, developmentally-appropriate assessments in early learning settings and kindergarten, including the adoption of a statewide kindergarten readiness observation assessment.
Numerous local counties have used kindergarten readiness observation assessments effectively to determine how best to help young children succeed. Readiness data gathered through developmentally-appropriate assessments that look at multiple domains of development, including socio-emotional factors, can be utilized to help parents focus on how to better support their children’s development, inform the instructional practices of preschool and kindergarten teachers, and assist preschools and elementary schools in addressing the needs of students transitioning into kindergarten. Readiness data could also play an important role in implementing new transitional kindergarten programs. Additionally, aggregated data can provide policymakers with information about the overall level of kindergarten readiness of the state’s children. - Including statewide early childhood data that tracks school readiness indicators from birth to kindergarten entry, connects to California’s K-12 data system, and enables the evaluation of quality improvement and workforce development efforts.
The Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) recently secured $1.8 million in new federal funds to support the development of an early learning data system. The state needs to ensure that timely, accessible and appropriate data regarding children, families, teachers/providers, programs and funding is available to support continuous program improvement, increased access and better childhood outcomes. A unified data system would allow the state to accurately assess the impact of early learning programs and provide the information necessary for further coordination between agencies. - Bridging birth-to-three, preschool, K-12 and health in an integrated birth-to-five strategy that more completely reflects the developmental needs of the state’s youngest children and supports their well-being.
In order to ensure children’s development of strong social and emotional skills that support academic success and proficiency in reading and math by the end of third grade, the state must work toward building a pre-kindergarten to third grade early education system, including infant and toddler care, to support quality early learning experiences and seamless supports throughout children’s early years. Promising local practices connecting infant/toddler care, preschool and early elementary should inform the state’s pre-kindergarten to third grade policy agenda.
Additionally, the state should advocate for increased flexibility and efficiency in its utilization of federal funding, including the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), Early Head Start and Head Start, Title I and IDEA. More flexibility in federal funding, which comprises the majority of dollars for state services impacting young children, would help California serve this population more comprehensively and effectively. For example, many programs have distinct eligibility and reporting requirements, making it difficult to blend and braid available funds to cover the true cost of high-quality early learning and development programs and provide the coordinated, integrated services that young children need. - Promoting maternal, infant and early childhood home visitation.
California should fully support the timely implementation of the federal home visitation program and ensure its effective coordination with early learning programs. The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) appropriates $1.5 billion over five years for home visitation grants to states that provide pregnant and newly-parenting families with culturally-competent information about newborn care and enriching home environments. Evidence-based home visitation programs improve child well-being, health and cognitive outcomes. California’s Department of Public Health’s Maternal and Adolescent Health Program must have support in developing a robust home visitation program.
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