A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Early Childhood Reform in Seven Communities - October 1996

V. Cross-Site Analysis

Policy Influences in Local Agencies

The preceding sections highlight patterns of innovative strategies by staff members and local agency directors working with young children and families. Across the country, in Head Start, child care and school-based initiatives, we found the following:

- Teachers working in a framework of developmentally appropriate classroom practices to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse set of children, incorporating parents as integral participants in classrooms, and struggling to sustain their careers in the face of minimal financial incentives and limited professional development opportunities.
- Early childhood agencies maintaining an amazing array of services, supports, and relationships with parents and family members. Building from their connections with children, staff members encourage parents to increase their skills in supporting child development and learning, in progress in education and employment, in obtaining health, housing and other forms of public services, and in learning to participate in and contribute to their communities.
- Program managers serving as crucial mediators between the world of public policy and the daily engagement of staff members with children and families. Rather than passive implementors of state and federal programs, local administrators are public entrepreneurs, combining resources from a variety of public and private sources and creating new service strategies.

In this section, we discuss findings on how state and federal resources and program practices are influence these seven local programs. We discuss early childhood policy from three angles: as a financing system, as a system for enhancing local program quality, and as an example of federal-state-local relationships.

A Context For Analysis

We will discuss early childhood policy from three perspectives:

- Financing local services. One lens for interpreting early childhood policy is to focus on how resources are allocated and distributed. Presumably, an effective financing system would be equitable and efficient, supportive of quality services and outcomes, and would include incentives for complementary investments from local and private sources. Another desirable feature for a funding system is "transparency" (Barnett, 1993) -- that is, allowing decisionmakers and citizens to easily understand key options and effects of funding decisions.
- Enhancing local program quality. A second perspective in gauging early childhood policy is to view government's role in protecting consumers and leading local agencies to provide effective and high quality services to children and parents.
- Promoting effective federal-state-local partnerships. A third angle for policy analysis is intergovernmental relationships. Here we consider questions of the appropriate balance of authority and responsibility among federal, state, and local decisionmakers; whether external mandates unduly burden or restrict local programs; and whether there are appropriate forums for decisionmaking and communication within and across levels of government.

Policy Effects in Local Early Childhood Agencies

1. Financing: Our present levels of investment are inadequate to support equitable access or quality service; the present system of multiple categorical programs is complex and confusing for local practitioners and policymakers.

Public funding has powerful effects on these local agencies. Six of the seven programs are direct creations of a state or federal program and rely on public funding streams for the majority of their revenue. Local administrators are extremely alert and responsive to signals about changes in the availability of current and new resources. As an initial example, there are important consequences from the "packaging" of resources, in terms of definitions of eligibility, and mandatory features and forms of program services. For example, Head Start services are targeted to three- and four-year-old children from low-income families, while various child care funding streams focus on low-income working families and welfare recipients. These attributes of programs shape the initial design of local initiatives and the ongoing core of continuing services.

From the experience of these seven local agencies, we see three fundamental problems in our present system of funding early childhood services:

- Limits on enrollment - Waiting lists are a quiet but powerful source of pressure in today's early childhood agencies. In the majority of these agencies, agile, entrepreneurial administrators have been successful in expanding enrollments and forms of services. However, in spite of impressive rates of expansion, agencies continue to experience waiting lists larger than their levels of enrollment. Thus, our present set of state and federal early childhood programs constitute a "union of insufficiencies". No single program is funded to serve more than a fraction of the eligible clients and the cumulative total of public investment fails to provide equal access to services for children from low-income families.
- Inadequate support for program quality - Rates and formulas for disbursing funds are often inadequate to support a quality teaching workforce and fall well below the actual costs of delivering comprehensive, quality services (U.S. Government Accounting Office, 1990, Willer, 1990). In addition, local agencies have difficulty in reconciling differing stances on quality and differing rates of reimbursement across different agencies. These local directors have adapted creatively by supplementing public early childhood funding streams with corporate, foundation, economic development and private resources. These extra resources allow programs to attract and retain well- trained teachers and provide family support and involvement services. However, even these agencies struggle every year to maintain their complex mix of revenue sources.
- Complexities in managing multiple programs - These agencies have learned the craft of obtaining and managing multiple resources. However, the diversity of public funding streams makes it costly and complicated for local managers in terms of proposal preparation, reporting, accounting, compliance with standards, and crafting a coherent approach to program services and staffing.

Beyond these detrimental effects in local agencies, our present fragmented funding system makes it hard to gauge our present status in working towards such universal commitments as assuring school readiness for all children. It is difficult to track the effects of public investment, since decisions are made in a number of disconnected forums and at multiple levels of our governance system. Leaders at the community, state, or federal level are unable to size up how present resources are allocated towards children of different ages, families of different incomes, and among programs with different forms of service. Confusion about the cumulative effects of present funding makes it difficult to discern how best to allocate additional resources when they become available. Multiple programs can also lead to charges, difficult to prove or disprove, that the multiplicity of programs may lead to duplication of effort and unnecessary administrative costs.

Thus, as a funding system, early childhood programs provide inadequate levels of investment, via an overly complex and opaque structure of funding streams. The availability and quality of services to local families depends heavily on the skill and effort of local managers, rather than as a result of a predictable and equitable system of public finance.

2. Enhancing Quality: Fragmented authority and inconsistent standards are major weaknesses in our current approach to encouraging quality improvement in local efforts.

Viewed from the top, our nation has a flimsy, inconsistent patchwork of policies regarding the quality of early childhood services. Early childhood services are delivered by schools, Head Starts, child care centers, family day care homes, nursery schools, church-based and for-profit enterprises. While very young, vulnerable children spend the majority of their waking hours in child care, there are no consistent policies to safeguard children against abuse, nor to support the ingredients of environments which will optimize development and learning. There are several major weaknesses:

- Multiple sources of policy. Head Start programs are governed by performance standards set at the federal level, school-based prekindergarten programs by policies set by state departments of education, services to children with disabilities via a set of federal procedural mandates, and child care centers by licensing standards set by state departments of welfare. This structure makes it hard to coordinate consistent standards.
- Inconsistent/inadequate standards. Policies in key areas such as staff qualifications, group size/adult:child ratios, and provision of health services and parent involvement vary widely among states and different types of early childhood programs. For example, school-based programs tend to require teachers with BA degrees and certification; Head Start classroom staff tend to be credentialed through the Child Development Associate program, a national competency-based training and assessment system; and 36 of 50 states require no prior training for staff working in child care centers. Early childhood special education services and Head Start programs are governed by detailed mandates on parent involvement while other forms of programs have few policies covering this important component. States vary as well on key determinants of quality such as ratios of staff to children (Adams, 1990).
- Exemptions from coverage by policy. The Children's Defense Fund estimates that 43% of all children in out-of-home care are in settings which are not covered by any system of public regulation or monitoring (Adams, 1990). These exemptions occur most often for programs operated by religious organizations and smaller home-based child care providers.

In spite of these structural weaknesses, we found evidence that state and federal policies can have positive effects on program quality in these agencies: both in setting the initial stance of programs on quality and staffing and in supporting improvements over time:

- One impressive instance of how external policies enhance program quality is the Bureau of Indian Affair's FACE project. Each local project is supported by substantial funds for training, technical assistance, and external evaluation. The resources support two on-site visits annually of training consultants from the National Center for Family Literacy, Parents As Teachers, and the High/Scope Research Foundation -- as well as two annual conferences of the full set of FACE sites and staff members. Given the fact that most FACE projects have a staff of 5-8 people, this combination of supports provides sustained, intensive opportunities for one-to-one observation, modeling, coaching, and feedback for every front-line staff member. FACE sites also receive considerable attention, via reports, phone calls, and monitoring visits from their BIA Project Officer; and an external evaluation contractor which provides individual site reports on progress and problems. The FACE strategy shows that federal administrators can do more than simply proclaim high standards; the tools of training, technical assistance, monitoring, and networking across programs can be employed to build local capacity to meet standards.
- Jersey City, New Jersey and Covington, Kentucky's programs also illustrate the positive influence of state standards on quality. For example, New Jersey Department of Education guidelines required Jersey City to recruit staff with early childhood training and experience; to employ coordinators for health services, social services, and parent involvement; to provide a substantial, sustained professional development program for prekindergarten, kindergarten and primary grade teachers; and to create a policy advisory board including parent representatives and community agencies. When Jersey City expanded their program, using local school district resources, they continued to adhere to the state's guidelines for program quality. Similarly, Kentucky's complementary state initiatives to create prekindergarten programs, family support centers in public schools, and ungraded primary units created the context for Covington's comprehensive local early childhood initiative.

These local examples also show that program quality is shaped powerfully by influences at the local level. Federal and state policies also allow local agencies flexibility to chart their own approaches in forms of service and approaches to defining and supporting quality:

- A number of these organizations have determined to adhere to higher levels of standards than are represented by governmental policy. For example Sheltering Arms upholds staff to child ratios which are substantially more favorable than the state licensing requirements. They use ratios of 1:4 for infants, while the state allows up to 1:6; and 1:10 for preschoolers, while the state allows up to 1:18. Similarly, Sheltering Arms' commitment to family support coordinators in each center is not required by state or federal policies -- in fact, costs for this staff are not reimbursable in child care fundingren and p
- When organizations are creating new forms and combinations of services, they are operating in territory uncharted by detailed regulations. For example, Inn Circle's initiative combines a wide range of services, including early childhood and parent education within an overarching philosophy of building community among homeless women. Similarly, the Parent Services Project is working to infuse a new philosophy and component of family support services in child care agencies which have traditionally taken a more limited approach to working with parents.
- As agencies mature, the challenge of complying with relatively stable state and federal program standards becomes less demanding. For example, most Head Start grantees have more than 20 years experience with federal performance standards and monitoring systems. While there have been periodic additions to these standards, they have been largely unchanged in core areas. Thus seasoned programs have considerable experience in interpreting how to meet the standards.
- Agencies also draw on professional, non-governmental sources in defining and supporting program quality. For example, several local agencies have invested in seeking accreditation of their programs by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which involves a lengthy self-assessment process, followed by an on- site review by a team of peer professionals. Similarly, a majority of these organizations have been involved in staff development services of the High/Scope Research Foundation. Thus, public policy is not the only source of definitions of quality and technical support for local practitioners.

In summary, while current trends in political rhetoric stress the prevalence and problems of costly, obtrusive government regulation, these case studies show that current policies in the early childhood sector have positive effects on local services, but allow considerable local autonomy in shaping programs to local needs and conditions. Program standards promulgated by the government have played an important but measured role in shaping early childhood practice.

These cases also illustrate the considerable potential of federal and state strategies to directly support program improvement efforts. The examples of the Bureau of Indian Affair's FACE program, as well as Head Start management efforts reveal that training, technical assistance, monitoring, and formative evaluation are powerful tools in assisting local agencies in serving children and families well. Unfortunately, this infrastructure of supports is not present in federal child care policy, nor in many state early childhood initiatives (Adams and Sandfort, 1993).

3. Federalism: Early childhood policy reflects a balance of federal, state, and local autonomy. However, there are few forums for coherent federal, state, or local decisionmaking across early childhood programs and funding streams.

Debates on intergovernmental relationships highlight two questions for early childhood policy:

- Are there appropriate mechanisms for governance and decisionmaking?
- Is there appropriate flexibility and deference in policy to the varying needs and conditions of local communities?

These two queries highlight a tension between the values of coherence in policymaking and adaptability and ownership at the community level.

As we have noted, policy decisions about early childhood services occur in a loosely-knit set of separate fiefdoms, including the Head Start policy system, the child care sector, the education for children with disabilities community, and state prekindergarten program structures. Thus, a major weakness of our current governance system is the lack of forums for coherent decisionmaking (Barnett, 1993). Problems of incoherence can be seen in these seven communities as well. These agencies have had impressive success in garnering local funding and contributions. Yet such local investments are limited to supplementing a single agency which is viewed as a creature of the state or federal government. This pattern of contributions falls considerably short of a community-wide vision, design or funding system for early childhood services. There is no structure which provides access to citizens or general purpose government to be engaged in shaping decisions or contributing core support for services to all young children and parents.

Turning to the criteria of an appropriate balance of national, state, and local influence in decisionmaking, what do we see in the evidence from these seven agencies? Drawing together findings on funding and program quality, we see that governmental policy has powerful influence, particularly in the initiation stage of these programs. However, we also found considerable evidence of local initiative and autonomy across these seven programs. Head Start provided a fiscal and organizational base for CDI and Inn Circle's capacity in working with local families, which led to their present larger scale of operations and more diverse and creative forms of service strategy. FACE was crafted at the federal level by combining three national models, yet local sites have uncovered new challenges and innovations within the framework of the model and pushed against the original assumptions of the BIA regarding standards and practices. Initiatives in Covington and Jersey City were created initially as a result of state department of education resources and mandates, yet have been shaped and accelerated by local initiative and funding.

For those concerned with overly intrusive government influence, several features of early childhood services strengthen the voices and rights of local communities and families:

- Attendance is voluntary in early childhood programs.
- Early childhood program funding is discretionary, giving local communities and individual agencies the option to choose not to participate.
- Policies matter, but they are often a distant, indirect presence in the working lives of local early childhood educators. For example, Head Start programs currently receive an on-site monitoring every three years. Visits from representatives of other funding or licensing agencies are typically annual events on a program calendar. By contrast, the priorities and skills of local managers and supervisors are much more active and powerful presence in the working lives of front-line staff members.

Thus, these case studies creates an appreciation for how policy influences and local leadership interact and intertwine in shaping the daily experiences of staff members, children, and parents. There is considerable evidence of the power of state and federal programs to stimulate change in local communities, just as there are multiple examples of local leaders' adaptations within a given program structure and invention of new approaches to supporting children and families.

Local administrators have impressive amounts of discretion to raise money from different sources, to invest in different levels of quality, to combine various forms of subsidies, and to innovate in the ways their programs work with children and families. The skills, ideas and effort put forth by these local managers make a big difference in terms of how many children and families their agencies serve, in how responsive and effective programs are in enhancing child development and family functioning, and in the working environment and career prospects for staff members. However, these case studies also illustrate the power of policy decisions. Public investment sets parameters for local program operations. Multiple early childhood programs, with separate requirements, forms, and levels of support works against the efforts of local managers to provide comprehensive, stable, continuous, and high quality services in local communities. Local managers operate within a zone of discretion, bounded by policy and finance. To put it another way, the innovative strategies of these local leaders come at a price, they have limits, and they may not be uniformly replicable on the part of other early childhood organizations.
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[Cross-Site Analysis - Management Strategies: Fundraising and Building High Quality Services] [Table of Contents] [Assessment of the Outcomes of Reforms]