Is child care harmful?

You have probably seen the newspaper articles this week about the recent study on child care. The lead in the vast majority of the stories tends to be about "problem behavior". The Seattle PI story had the headline "Study Links Child Care to Problem Behavior".

The lead paragraph states that the research shows that the more time that children spent in child care, the more likely it was that their sixth grade teachers reported problem behavior. The second paragraph stated that if the children were in high quality child care they had better volcabulary scores in fifth grade than children in lower quality child care.

The headline in the the Science Daily was different "Early Child Care Linked To Increases in Vocabulary, Some Problem Behaviors in Fifth and Sixth Grades."

There are also some discrepancies in the articles themselves re: the findings. The bottom line is that the increase in vocabulary and in problem behaviors was small and that the quality of parenting is much more important in predicting a child's behavior and the size of his vocabulary.
The research itself is an NIH, (National Institutes of Health) funded longitudinal study of 1,364 children who have been tracked since birth and are now in fifth and sixth grade. It is important to note that the researchers evidence of problem behavior was within the normal range. You would not be able to walk into a classroom and pick out the children who had been in child care.

What I find disturbing is the fact that this was big news for several days and that so many people only saw or heard the words "Child Care" and "Problem Behaviors". Most likely, few people took the time to read the article -so many parents are left with doubts and concerns about whether they should keep their children in child care.

What was lost in the Seattle PI article was the difference between the children in high quality child care and low quality child care. The Science Daily article was much more accurate and balanced and I suspect it was read by a much smaller audience.

Those of us in the field of Early Learning need to be pro-active and prepared when these stories come out so that we can re-assure parents they are making the right choices and are doing the right thing for their children.

Where are the four year olds?

A recent article in the Seattle Times talked about a report issued from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University showing states spent at least $3.3 billion last year on pre-kindergarten. This is up from $2.8 billion in state funding in 2005. The report also states that 20% of the four year olds in the United States (approximately 1 million children) were in state pre-K last year. That figure is up from 17% from the year before. Another 35% of four year olds are in private preschool or childcare centers and 31% are at home.

Historically, most of the pre-K programs funded with state and federal dollars were for children from low income families. Recently, three states-Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma-have begun to offer pre-K to all children and other states are considering the concept.

Here in Washington State six percent of our four year olds are in state sponsored pre-K.

Experts see many benefits for a child who attends pre-K and feel that if pre-K is offered to every child that there will be a better chance of getting political support for the program.

The article goes on to mention the fight that went on in the 1970s over access to full day kindergarten. At that time only 20% of kindergarten children went to all day kindergarten. Today the figure is approximately 65%.

We still have a long way to go. Washington State schools primarily offer half day kindergarten but there is legislation this session to make kindergarten full day for all children. There is quite a bit of momentum in our state around early learning and there is every possibility that in the near future our children will all have high quality child care, pre-K and full day kindergarten.