Money for Early Childhood
I agree with one of the comments from my last entry about the wish that all preschools and daycares can benefit from the stimulus money that has been promised for early childhood. We already know that Head Start and Early Head Start has been promised quite a chunk of the early childhood money. I do hope that there will be grants and child care subsidies that will assist other early childhood programs. At the same time, I hope that there are some checks and balances in place that the money be used to improve the quality of the preschool setting. Research tells us that quality child care and preschools benefit all children attending and it can save the education system around $14 per child. However, we also know from research that poor quality child care can actually be detrimental to young children, especially in social and emotional behavior patterns. So, I do hope that money will be available to good early childhood settings to help them become even better.
posted by John Funk @ Permalink9:03 AM
12 Comments:
good point, john..i agree with you, if this can only be implemented many will benefit from this...
- ledz -
I definitely agree. I work in a child care setting, and we are seriously limited in resources. I believe the educational level of the children would rise quickly if we had more resources. But, how do we get these resources? Well, money is a big factor of course. Whenever I plan curriculum I find that I only have a few books to choose from. It's a sad reality. I know that a grant would help us in our situation.
Sarah H. FCS 5170
Thanks for this good point...
Nice post...
Regards,
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I agree. I think we need better pre-schools. I did my project on observing a pre-school. I called one pre-school in the morning last week to go and observe. They said that I had to talk to the head teacher and that she would be back in an hour. They took my name and number down and said that she would call me back. I waited for a little over an hour and called them back. They said that she should answer the phone the next time I called in 15 minutes. She didn't. I called back again and told the lady that I had called earlier and that I wanted to observe a class in their pre-school. She was very energetic until I said I was a student from the University of Utah. Then she went throught the whole thing of taking my name and number again and said to call back in an hour or two later to talk to the head person. By this time I decided to bag that pre-school because I was getting nowhere with the lady that kept answering the phone. I decided to choose a different pre-school and actually made an appointment within the first phone call! By the time I called the second pre-school, it was almost time for them to close so I had to make an appointment for a different day. If I was a parent looking for a pre-school for my child, I can tell you that I would definitely go with the second pre-school rather than the first because they actually placed a value on my time while the other one wasted it.
Tiffany G. FCS 5170
John,
I've been researching funding for ECE programs to complete an assignment for a class in ECE, and found a blog of yours from 1/13/2006, but the article you refered to didn't appear at the link in your blog, probably too old. Your comment was concerning Great Britains advancement in funding, and how the U.S. at that time was cutting funding for ECE programs.
I've got a couple concerns, one of which was voice on 20/20 recently. If the U.S. provides free pre-K schooling by expanding current public school programs, the ECE element may end up with poor quality ECE. The argument was that they are not doing a great job with K-12, so what's to make us think they will do better with ECE if they have control of that also. In addition, providing free pre-K programs will eliminate the competition that keeps program quality higher.
Another area of funding that I see as detrimental to private ECE programs is that funds are not paid whenever a child does not attend, but the family has signed a contract, which creates the necessity to provide additional food, and hire additional staff to care for these children. However, when the funding isn't paid to the facility, they end up paying out of pocket for the child themselves. If this were a private individual, the facility could take legal action to collect the undue funds. But they have no way of collecting funds for children that were suppose to be covered by government funds. In our town, we only have one private licensed ECE program. We are a very small, low income community. Last year they were left with $5,000. in unpaid tuition from families on gov. funding. This is an inequality that does not foster a desire by private ECE programs to even accept families that would qualify for funding.
I'd like to talk about funding for Head Start too, but maybe I'll wait till I get some comments back.
Thanks for listening
Kate
I actually prefer the government to CUT BACK on full-time institutional child care. When is it the position of the government to interfere with the raising of American babies and toddlers? The parents need to take responsibility till the child reaches preschool/school-age. Babies and toddlers suffer from stress in institutional care. When government takes over the bill, parents can freely continue having children without the concern of the cost of caring for a child. Some may say, "Mom needs to work." Step back for a moment, go through history. Moms headed off to work in about the 80's. Now, we see a large number of woman CHOOSING to be single parent, with the help of the government entitlement money. Now, we have the largest percentage of children living in poverty. Hmmm. Failed social policy. Spend those ELI dollars in public schools, adding an educational assistant in each early elementary grade. Better spent dollars.
More resources will led you to educate your child in a better way .
I think this is a very good point. Preschools need resources in order for children to move forward in their learning and growing process. They need these to help build social skills, language, motor development, and cognitive development. Some preschools just do not have a enough quality resources. It would be great if preschools were able to receive some money for this. The students would benefit tremendously from this and it will affect their education in a positive way. Their is so much available for preschool classrooms that would make a difference in the kids start of education, but schools simply do not have enough money to go out and get them.
It is also a concern for the people who are not so rich and cannot afford their child education.
I am really hoping that the stimulus package helps us to prepare high quality ECE teachers. In my role at Rasmussen College, we hope there is a trickle down effect where students who may not have had the money to go to school can go now. Research shows that teachers with education provide better care and education for young children. Go ECE!
I must comment to the anonymous writer who wishes the government to cut back on money to child cares and preschools. How sad that is that you are so completely ignorant to say such a thing. As a single parent, not by choice, and as an Early Childhood Educator, I am appalled that anyone in this day and age could have such a thought. A child's future is dependent upon him or her getting off to a great start early on. Research proves this. It has nothing to do with someone being a single parent or two parents or grandparents living with children or whatever. Any child will benefit from a preschool program. This helps them learn skills that are essential to succeeding in kindergarten and beyond. This includes not only academic skills, but basic socialization skills as well. There is also the factor of yes, there are indeed single parents out there like myself who need to work and support their families. Who are you to discourage such a thing? Not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford to stay home with their children. Many families require two parents to work now even just to meet basic necessities. I really feel sorry for you for having such ignorant, uneducated ideas about what is best for children today.
True! Head start money for childhood educational system will be definitely helpful. You should take an appropriate care for not only quality of pre-caring school education but also their faculty with experience, students mental comfort and ease and more. Also, children should approach such pre-educational care system very easily.
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