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IMPROVING EARLY CHILDHOOD 

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND PRACTICES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, 

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 19, 2009 

Serial No. 111–9 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 
(II) 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Paul Tonko, New York 

Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico 

Gregorio Sablan, Northern Mariana Islands 

Dina Titus, Nevada 

[Vacant] 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California, 

Senior Republican Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana 

Tom McClintock, California 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Sally Stroup, Republican Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, 

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 

DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan, Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico 

Gregorio Sablan, Northern Mariana Islands 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

Dina Titus, Nevada 

[Vacant] 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware, 

Ranking Minority Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana 

Tom McClintock, California 

Duncan Hunter, California 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on March 19, 2009 ............................................................................ 1 

Statement of Members: 

Castle, Hon. Michael N., Senior Republican Member, Subcommittee on 

Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education .......................... 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Kildee, Hon. Dale E., Chairman, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education .............................................................. 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 5 

Payne, Hon. Donald M., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of New Jersey, prepared statement of ......................................................... 57 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Adams, Gina, senior fellow, Urban Institute ................................................. 29 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 31 

Responses to questions for the record ..................................................... 58 

Dichter, Harriet, Deputy Secretary, Office of Child Development and 

Early Learning, Pennsylvania Departments of Education and Public 

Welfare ........................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 11 

Responses to questions for the record ..................................................... 61 

Lowery, Lillian, Secretary, Delaware Department of Education .................. 35 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 37 

Responses to questions for the record ..................................................... 64 

Russell, Susan, president, Child Care Services Association ......................... 25 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 27 

(1) 

IMPROVING EARLY CHILDHOOD 

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND PRACTICES 

Thursday, March 19, 2009 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, 

Elementary and Secondary Education 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dale Kildee [chairman 

of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Kildee, Payne, Holt, Davis, Loebsack, 

Hirono, Polis, Woolsey, Hinojosa, Kucinich, Altmire, Titus, Castle, 

Petri, and Platts. 

Staff present: Tylease Alli, Hearing Clerk; Fran-Victoria Cox, 

Staff Attorney; Adrienne Dunbar, Education Policy Advisor; Curtis 

Ellis, Legislative Fellow, Education; Ruth Friedman, Senior Education Policy Advisor (Early Childhood); David Hartzler, Systems 

Administrator; Lloyd Horwich, Education Counsel and Policy Advisor, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secretary 

Education; Fred Jones, Staff Assistant, Education; Jessica 

Kahanek, Press Assistant; Joe Novotny, Chief Clerk; Margaret 

Young, Staff Assistant, Education; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; Stephanie Arras, Minority Legislative Assistant; James 

Bergeron, Minority Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Robert Borden, Minority General Counsel; Cameron 

Coursen, Minority Assistant Communications Director; Kirsten 

Duncan, Minority Professional Staff Member; Susan Ross, Minority 

Director of Education and Human Services Policy; and Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel. 

Chairman KILDEE [presiding]. A quorum being present, the hearing of the subcommittee will come to order. Pursuant to Committee 

Rule 7 (c), any member may submit an opening statement in writing, which will be made part of the permanent record. 

I now recognize myself, followed by Ranking Member Castle, 

Governor Castle, for opening statements. 

I am pleased to welcome my fellow subcommittee members, now 

some are second-termers here with us, appreciate very much your 

continued interest in this committee and your great work. 

I want to welcome those as they appear. There is a whip meeting 

going on right now. Congress is under a little scrutiny from the 
2 

public right now, which they should be doing. And there is a whip 

meeting going on, so some will be arriving late. 

Welcome to those who are new to the committee, and I welcome 

the public and our witnesses to this hearing, ‘‘Improving Early 

Childhood Development Policies and Practices.’’ 

I was the one who, with the help of many in this room, wrote 

the first child care act, ABC Act, back in 1987. But it is appropriate that this is our first hearing this Congress, both because we 

are here to focus on the first years of a child’s life and because 

there is no issue more important than early childhood development. 

I say that with real experience, having raised three children and 

having seven grandchildren all living within about 20 minutes of 

Washington, D.C. So we are the babysitters of choice for seven 

grandchildren. 

Last month, in his address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama set a goal of ensuring that every child has access to 

a complete, competitive education from birth forward. That is why 

Congress and President Obama worked together to increase funding by $2.3 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start and $2.1 

billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant in the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the recent 2009 appropriations bill, because those investments will preserve and create jobs and improve access and quality for the children who need 

those programs. 

That is why I was so pleased to see that President Obama’s 

budget will commit significant new resources to early childhood, because the federal budget should reflect our values as a nation. And 

that is just what the president’s budget will do. Now, you can judge 

an individual by how that individual spends his or her money. And 

you can judge government by how that government spends the taxpayers’ money. 

And that is why I look forward to this committee working with 

the president to help parents and other educators make the early 

years of children’s lives nurturing and enriching. Just about an 

hour and a half ago, I held Addison Kildee in my arms—she is 11 

months old—and gave her a little kiss and came off to work. My 

son had dropped her off for daycare today at our house. 

Because ensuring that children and their families have access to 

high-quality, comprehensive services that help the children develop 

cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally enables them to 

succeed in school and in life. Children who receive quality early 

childhood education and development services do better in reading 

and math and are more likely to graduate from high school, attend 

college and hold higher paying jobs. The support and security that 

these services provide infants, toddlers and young children help 

their brains develop in the early years and set the foundation—literally—for later development and learning. 

Those early stimulations—sound, sight, touch—actually lay 

down, the physical circuitry of the brain. In 1965 when Head Start 

was enacted, those people were very prophetic. They didn’t really 

realize what we know now about the physical development of the 

brain. But they wrote a Head Start bill that really helped that so 

much. And now later on, we find out the importance of that stimulation for the actual laying down the circuitry of the brain. 
3 

We took some important steps last Congress. We authorized the 

Head Start Act to prioritize teaching quality and Early Head Start, 

among other things. I was proud to introduce that bipartisan reauthorization along with Chairman Miller and Governor Castle and 

Mr. Ehlers from Michigan and others. The committee also reported 

my colleague Ms. Hirono’s PRE-K Act. 

But as we will hear today, meeting the goal that we share with 

President Obama is about more than any one program, but about 

ensuring that wherever children are, there are high standards and 

the resources and accountability to ensure those standards are met. 

I am confident that today’s hearing will provide us with valuable 

information about the needs of young children and their families 

and what we can do to help meet those needs. As a father and 

grandfather, I know that is the key to their success. 

And now I yield to a very good friend of mine. We have been 

friends for many years—Governor Castle of Delaware. 

Governor? 

[The statement of Mr. Kildee follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Dale E. Kildee, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education 

It is appropriate that this is our first hearing this congress, both because we are 

here to focus on the first years of a child’s life and because there is no issue more 

important than early childhood development. 

Last month, in his address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama set 

a goal of ensuring that every child has access to a complete, competitive education 

from birth forward. 

That is why Congress and President Obama worked together to increase funding 

by $2.3 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start, and $2.1 billion for the child 

care and development block grant in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 

and the recent 2009 appropriations bill. 

Because those investments will preserve and create jobs and improve access and 

quality for the children who need those programs. That is why I was so pleased to 

see that President Obama’s budget will commit significant new resources to early 

childhood. 

Because the federal budget should reflect our values as a nation. And that is just 

what the President’s budget will do. 

And that is why I look forward to this committee working with the President to 

help parents and educators make the early years of children’s lives nurturing and 

enriching. Because ensuring that children and their families have access to highquality, comprehensive services that help the children develop cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally enables them to succeed in school and in life. 

Children who receive quality early childhood education and development services 

do better in reading and math, and are more likely to graduate from high school 

attend college, and hold higher paying jobs. The support and security that these 

services provide infants, toddlers and young children help their brains develop in 

the early years and set the foundation—literally—for later development and learning. 

These early stimulations—sound, sight, touch—actually lay down the physical circuitry of the brain. Wasted time diminishes that physical brain development. 

We took some important steps last congress. 

We reauthorized the Head Start Act to prioritize teacher quality and Early Head 

Start, among other things. I was proud to have been the chief sponsor of that bipartisan reauthorization along with Chairman Miller, Mr. Castle, Mr. Ehlers, and others. The Committee also reported my colleague Ms. Hirono’s PRE-K Act. 

But as we will hear today, meeting the goal that we share with President Obama 

is about more than any one program, but about ensuring that wherever children 

are, there are high standards, and the resources and accountability to ensure those 

standards are met. 

I am confident that today’s hearing will provide us with valuable information 

about the needs of young children and their families and what we can do to help 

meet those needs. 
4 

As a father, grandfather, and former teacher, I know that is the key to their success and our success as a nation. 

Mr. CASTLE. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I didn’t 

know that Chairman Kildee was a one-man Head Start program 

until today. Well, thank you for all the work you do in this area. 

You are obviously very experienced. And thank you for holding this 

important hearing. 

I am also pleased to be here today examining early childhood 

education. Research increasingly points to the critical importance 

of quality early childhood education as the foundation for school 

success. Early childhood development is an issue the committee 

knows well, and one that is extremely important to me. 

Since serving as the governor of Delaware, I have actively 

worked to ensure children 5 years of age and younger have access 

to high-quality early education. Through the Focus on the First 60 

Months initiative in Delaware, we recognized that the most effective way to assure children can take advantage of existing K-12 

education opportunities is to make certain they are ready to learn 

when they enter school. Delaware continues to work on early identification and treatment, which Dr. Lowery, who will be here shortly, will speak to in a few minutes, so that young children start life 

healthy, enter school ready to learn, and are able to grow into productive citizens. 

In 2007, members on both sides of the aisle worked together to 

draft legislation which was ultimately signed into law, as Chairman Kildee has explained. That legislation reauthorized the Head 

Start program and built upon the strengths of the program in order 

to improve early childhood education opportunities for disadvantaged children. The reauthorization was a major stepping-stone in 

improving early childhood education, and this hearing today is also 

important as the Congress continues to focus on early childhood 

programs that promote the educational development of our nation’s 

students. 

Recently President Obama outlined his plan to create incentives 

for states to support comprehensive and coordinated, high-quality 

early childhood programs for children from birth to age five. I agree 

that Congress should look at ways through which we can support 

the work states are currently doing to guarantee our youngest children are provided the early learning opportunities they need to 

succeed in school and in life. To do this, Congress must work in a 

bipartisan manner to make certain parents remain in control of 

their child’s early childhood care and education. 

Congress must also ensure that states are given the flexibility 

they need to carry out successful early childhood programs while 

remaining mindful of taxpayer resources throughout the process, 

especially in these tough economic times. Additionally, I am hopeful that we can work together to coordinate, not duplicate, existing 

federal early childhood programs. 

Today we will hear from witnesses who will provide us with expert background on improving early childhood education. I look forward to hearing their advice about effective and efficient early 

childhood reform and learning what they are doing to help our nation’s youngest and often most at-risk children. 
5 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Castle follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael N. Castle, Senior Republican Member, 

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education 

Good morning and thank you, Chairman Kildee, for holding this important hearing. I am pleased to be here today examining early childhood education. 

Research increasingly points to the critical importance of quality early childhood 

education as the foundation for school success. Early childhood development is an 

issue the Committee knows well, and one that is extremely important to me. 

Since serving as the Governor of Delaware, I have actively worked to ensure children five years of age and younger have access to high-quality early education. 

Through the Focus on the First Sixty Months initiative in Delaware, we recognized 

that the most effective way to assure children can take advantage of existing K-12 

education opportunities is to make certain they are ready to learn when they enter 

school. 

Delaware continues to work on early identification and treatment, which Dr. Lowery will speak to in a few minutes, so that young children start life healthy, enter 

school ready to learn and are able to grow into productive citizens. 

In 2007, Members on both sides of the aisle worked together to draft legislation, 

which was ultimately signed into law. That legislation reauthorized the Head Start 

program and built upon the strengths of the Program in order to improve early 

childhood education opportunities for disadvantaged children. The reauthorization 

was a major stepping stone in improving early childhood education, and this hearing 

today is also important as the Congress continues to focus on early childhood programs that promote the educational development of our nation’s students. 

Recently, President Obama outlined his plan to create incentives for states to support comprehensive and coordinated high-quality early childhood programs for children from birth to age five. I agree that Congress should look at ways through 

which we can support the work states are currently doing to guarantee our youngest 

children are provided the early learning opportunities they need to succeed in school 

and in life. 

To do this, Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to make certain parents 

remain in control of their child’s early childhood care and education. Congress must 

also ensure that states are given the flexibility they need to carry out successful 

early childhood programs while remaining mindful of taxpayer resources throughout 

the process—especially in these tough economic times. Additionally, I am hopeful 

that we can work together to coordinate, not duplicate, existing federal early childhood programs. 

Today we will hear from witnesses who will provide us with expert background 

on improving early childhood education. I look forward to hearing their advice about 

effective and efficient early childhood reform, and learning what they are doing to 

help our nation’s youngest, and often most at-risk, children. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you, Governor. 

Without objection, all members will have 7 calendar days to submit additional materials or questions for the hearing record. 

I would like now to introduce the very distinguished panel of witnesses with us this morning. 

Harriet Dichter is deputy secretary, Office of Child Development 

and Early Learning, Pennsylvania Departments of Public Welfare 

and Education. The Office of Child Development and Early Learning was created by Governor Rendell as part of a new initiative to 

link the Department of Public Welfare and the Department of Education to bolster early education and care for Pennsylvania children. 

As the head of that office, Ms. Dichter leads state efforts to raise 

the priority levels for early learning, including programs such as 

Pre-K Counts, the full-day kindergarten initiative, state-based 

Head Start program, the Keystone STARS early learning program, 
6 

Nurse-Family Partnership, Child Care Works and Early Intervention. 

What do you do in your spare time? [Laughter.] 

We really welcome you here. You have a great reputation of 

knowledge and a great reputation of care for children. 

Gina C. Adams is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Her 

focus is on policies and programs that affect the affordability, quality and supply of child care and early education, with particular 

focus on policies affecting lower income families. Her current research includes multi-state studies of child care providers, subsidy 

policies and factors that shape quality. 

Prior to the Urban Institute, she was the assistant director of the 

child care and development division at the Children’s Defense 

Fund. I used to work with Marian Wright Edelman, that is many 

years ago, on that. And the person who became first lady and senator and now secretary of state, she was involved in that at that 

time too. 

She began her career as a child care teacher for infants and toddlers and worked with low-income families. 

Sue Russell is currently president of the Child Care Services Association, a nonprofit committed to promoting affordable, accessible, high-quality early care and education. CCSA works locally, 

statewide and nationally. Sue developed both the T.E.A.C.H. Early 

Childhood and Child Care WAGE$ Project, initiatives that have 

been successful in increasing the education, compensation and retention of early childhood educators. Sue currently serves on various statewide and national boards and committees and is president of the board of the National Association for the Education of 

Young Children. 

I now yield to my friend, Governor Castle, to introduce Secretary 

Lowery. 

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Lillian M. Lowery was appointed Delaware’s secretary of 

education by Governor Jack Markell in January of 2009. Prior to 

appointment as secretary of education, Dr. Lowery served as superintendent of the Christina School District in Wilmington, Delaware. The district serves nearly 20,000 students who reside in portions of the city of Wilmington and surrounding suburbs. 

Before serving as superintendent in the Christina School District, Dr. Lowery was the assistant superintendent of Cluster VII 

for Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax, Virginia. She also 

served for 2 years as an area administrator for Fort Wayne Community Schools in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Dr. Lowery has taught 

middle and high school English in school districts in Fairfax and 

Alexandria, Virginia, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Secretary Lowery brings a lot of experience to the table, and I look forward to 

hearing your testimony this morning. 

Dr. Lowery, welcome. 

Chairman KILDEE. We welcome you all. Again, for those who 

have not testified before this subcommittee before, let me explain 

our lighting system and the 5-minute rule. Everyone, including 

members, is limited to 5 minutes of presentation or questioning. 

The green light will be illuminated when you begin to speak. 

When you see the yellow light, it means you have 1 minute remain-
7 

ing. When you see the red light, it means that your time has expired; you need to conclude your testimony. 

But please be certain as you testify to turn on and speak into the 

microphone in front of you and turn it off when you are finished. 

Now, we don’t have a button up here for an ejection seat, so you 

may finish up your thought rather than cut off in the middle, so 

you have a little flexibility there. 

We will now hear from our first witness. 

STATEMENT OF HARRIET DICHTER, DEPUTY SECRETARY, 

OFFICE OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND EARLY LEARNING 

Ms. DICHTER. Thank you, good morning, everyone. I am Harriet 

Dichter. I am the deputy secretary for the Office of Child Development and Early Learning, which is part of both the Pennsylvania 

Departments of Education and Public Welfare. I am also co-chair 

of the Pennsylvania Early Learning Council. 

I want to start by really thanking all of you for acknowledging 

the important role of early education and the educational and economic payoff from including our existing early childhood program 

in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and also for taking time this week to focus on early childhood education. 

As was mentioned, my office was created by Governor Ed Rendell 

to link the Department of Public Welfare and the Department of 

Education in order to raise the priority level for early learning and 

to really create an early learning system in Pennsylvania. Improving the national track record for investments and outcomes for our 

young children is essential. And based on our experiences in Pennsylvania, I have three points that I want to make while I am here 

today. 

The first, of course, is that there is no silver bullet, not just one 

investment or one program that works. What matters regardless of 

the early childhood program is a common framework of high standards, accountability and very importantly sufficient investment to 

make a difference. 

Secondly, the federal government has not been sufficiently 

proactive in this area and has left too much for the states to do, 

particularly in the area of financing. And third, proper public sector governance needs to be a focus in order to assure both good outcomes for children and the efficient use of our public dollars. 

So first, let me start by saying that to meet our children’s and 

families’ needs, we need a continuum of quality services. We can 

and we should expect to make investments in programs with different names, such as child care, pre-kindergarten and Head Start, 

for example, and we should be expecting to invest in infants, toddlers and preschoolers in each and every year until they enter 

school. 

In Pennsylvania, we take advantage of an existing array of early 

childhood providers to create our system and to respond to the very 

diverse needs of our young children and their families. Our programs in our state reach about 300,000 children and families 

through a network of school district providers, child care providers, 

Head Start providers, early intervention and home-visiting providers. But let me stress, although we have been busy working on 
8 

this agenda, we are still only reaching 40 percent of our population 

with services that we consider to be of adequate quality. 

We insist in Pennsylvania that our programs do share certain 

commonalities. They have to meet high program and specific early 

learning standards. And I brought these just to show. We actually 

have published all of our standards, pre-k through second grade. 

We have parent materials for them to use, and we have classroom 

things to put up in rooms so people can take a look at those and 

see there is a way to do this in a sensitive way. Our early learning 

standards are linked to our third grade academic standards. They 

go beyond them because we have all of the child’s development covered. 

We insist upon degreed and credentialed early childhood staff 

and benchmark compensation to go with that. Our curriculums and 

assessments have to align with our early learning standards. We 

have a big focus on partnerships for parents, program accountability, documentation of our children’s progress and both sufficient 

financial and very importantly helping-hand supports that endorse 

and demand excellence. 

So here are some examples. We systematically and voluntarily 

are improving child care quality through Keystone STARS. This integrates research-based standards and ratings, improvement supports—and Sue is going to talk a little bit more about T.E.A.C.H. 

and WAGE$; we are a big investor in T.E.A.C.H., and we have a 

version of WAGE$ inside of Keystone STARS—and very importantly financial resources. 

An independent evaluation of our Keystone STARS program 

shows that our program reversed a 10-year decline in Pennsylvania 

in child care quality. Nearly 80 percent of our centers voluntarily 

participate, and last year 25 percent of them moved up at least one 

STAR level. We are serving 170,000 children in this program, and 

increasingly our most vulnerable working families who participate 

in our Child Care Works subsidy program are increasingly selecting Keystone STARS providers. Each month, we see an uptick of 

maybe one or two percent more, so we are well over 40 percent of 

the families at this point. 

Another example, through our PA Pre-K Counts program, we 

reach at-risk 3-and 4-year-olds, and we use our Keystone STARS 

3 and 4 providers, school districts and Head Start to field this program. In our start-up year, which was 2007-2008, I am very proud 

to say that we both met all of our enrollment targets—we enrolled 

12,000 children in less than 3 months in the first year—and 94 percent of those kids finished the school year with age-appropriate 

skills and behavior or emerging age-appropriate skills and behavior, something we consider to be a stunning first-year success rate. 

For at-risk infants and toddlers, we have home visiting through 

Nurse-Family Partnership and the Parent-Child Home Literacy 

Program. We also include in our array children with delays and 

disabilities through Early Intervention, and there our focus is on 

inclusive practice. We have moved our preschoolers by 10 percent 

just in 1 year into more inclusive environments. 

We support Head Start by adding state dollars to enroll more 

children. And to our knowledge, we are the only state in the country to house all of these programs in one office. 
9 

Now, as I said, we cannot serve our children and families well 

using a silver-bullet approach that focuses on just one program, 

one age group or one financing stream. So key elements of our 

framework include high standards and expectations for program 

quality. These must be based on research and experience and focused on the best outcomes for our children. 

The professional preparation and ongoing education of our teachers and administrators—it is not enough to tell our teachers and 

administrators to achieve high standards. We have to give them assistance to help them get there and to maintain their excellence. 

Accountability for results is another focus. A practical way goes 

with that to help people in the broader community understand the 

results and why they matter for our entire society. 

And of course financial supports—I cannot stress this enough— 

link very directly and clearly to the standards we articulate at sufficient levels to get the job done. So our framework reminds us the 

work is complex, but it can be broken down into a realistic and 

achievable strategy. 

Second point I wanted to make is the importance of sufficient 

public investment. The established funding streams at the federal 

level—the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, 

IDEA Early Intervention for infants, toddlers and preschoolers— 

are not keeping pace with need. We are one of only eight states in 

the country to have consistently been improving our state investment in a full continuum of early childhood programs. We are making progress, but we have major gaps in our services. 

We started 5 years ago. Only 20 percent of our kids had access 

to a decent, quality program. Today we are at 40 percent. This is 

possible because of our new state dollars. We have children at risk 

in every county, every city and every state in the U.S. New funding 

is needed to help close a staggering gap between those children, 

those at risk of school failure in particular, who are in our quality 

early learning programs and those who are not. We need to ensure 

a public funding base for early education, just as we work to ensure 

a public funding commitment to K-12. 

What does that mean? I will try to get to the end here. We have 

to significantly deepen our investment in our established federal 

programs and funding streams, but we also need to commit to new 

federal funding that will push a unified approach across all the 

early childhood programs, insist that the states have meaningful, 

research-based standards and accountability based on nationally 

acceptable minimums. That will facilitate coherence in the programs and produce quality results, and I believe it can be done 

with sensitivity to state implementation needs. 

The last point that I want to make has to do with the organization of the programs and the resources to have that happen. Our 

families really do not care, in my experience, what we call the programs. They just want to know when they are enrolling their child 

in a program that it is of good quality and it is responsive to their 

needs. And they do want to know, when we are using public dollars, that the dollars are efficient and well-leveraged. 

As we mentioned, in Pennsylvania we solved this problem when 

we created my office. It has given us great access into both educational resources and health and human services. We have a sin-
10 

gle staff to do the work, a consistent framework across the programs. We have to find a way for the federal government to do the 

same. 

In summary, there is not just one program that works. Children 

need this continuum of early learning services. We need a commitment to infants, toddlers and preschoolers alike. It is just fine to 

have programs with different names, different hours of service. It 

is objectionable, though, to have programs that don’t have the same 

expectations for outcomes for children, the same standards for serving our children, the same expectations for performance and accountability and sufficient financing. 

Again, our parents expect that when a program opens its doors 

to them, it will serve them and our children well. From these simple precepts, I think there are several lessons, then, that we can 

take to inform the next phase of federal investment and policy. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Dichter follows:] 
11 

Prepared Statement of Harriet Dichter, Deputy Secretary, Office of Child 

Development and Early Learning 
12 
13 
14 
15 
16 
17 
18 
19 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 
25 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Russell? 

STATEMENT OF SUSAN RUSSELL, PRESIDENT, CHILD CARE 

SERVICES ASSOCIATION 

Ms. RUSSELL. Good morning, Chairman Kildee, Ranking Member 

Castle and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity. 

We believe that improving the education, compensation and retention of the early childhood workforce is the key to producing 

positive health and educational outcomes for young children. In 

1990, using data from the state’s first early childhood workforce 
26 

study, Child Care Services tested a scholarship model designed to 

address the low education, poor compensation and turnover of the 

workforce. 

Now operating in 21 states, T.E.A.C.H. scholarships help pay tuition, books and travel costs, and support paid release time to allow 

teachers to balance the extra load of going to school. As teachers 

complete their required credit hours, they receive a raise or a 

bonus and must continue teaching in their program for another 

year. 

In most T.E.A.C.H. states, teachers, directors and family child 

care providers working in child care, Head Start or pre-k settings 

are eligible for scholarships. T.E.A.C.H. scholarships always support formal coursework leading to credentials or degrees and require a funding partnership between individuals, their employers 

and the T.E.A.C.H program. 

In fiscal year 2008, states participating in T.E.A.C.H. spent 

about $28.3 million; the largest source of these funds came from 

the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Last year, over 

21,000 individuals across the country, working in over 10,000 different early childhood programs received T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood scholarships. Ten percent worked in Head Start programs, 

and 62 percent taught 3 and 4-year-olds. About 46 percent were 

women of color, typically earning less than $10 an hour. 

They attended almost 600 different colleges and universities. Together, these scholarship recipients completed about 130,000 credit 

hours. Their average earnings increased, and they left their classrooms at average rates of less than 8 percent annually. And this 

is in a field that routinely experiences 40 percent turnover a year. 

While attending a community college, teachers’ basic language 

and math literacy skills improve, as well as their knowledge of cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. About twothirds of participants were working on their associate degrees, 

doing this while working full-time and achieving a 3.25 mean grade 

point average. 

In 1994, to address the systemic problems of low wages and high 

turnover, Child Care Services began the Child Care WAGE$ 

Project. Graduated supplements are paid directly to participants 

and tied to their level of education. Supplements are paid every 6 

months with funding from Smart Start and CCDBG, as long as the 

individual remains in her classroom. Supplements range from $200 

to $6,250 annually. Last year, we had almost 9,000 participants. 

Graduated supplements encourage continuing education. WAGE$ 

participants with 2-or 4-year degrees had a 14 percent turnover 

rate, identical to our K-12 teachers. 

In many states with either T.E.A.C.H. or WAGE$ programs, 

there are waiting lists for participation; other states need funds to 

get these programs started. Investing in high-quality early care 

and education is essential for all of our children from birth to 5 if 

we want to stay competitive in a global economy. Disparate access 

to quality exists across age groups and for children within states 

and between states. States struggle to make the right choices, but 

resources are not adequate. With so many families unable to afford 

high quality child care and without the resources to help them, 
27 

state administrators continually choose between quality and quantity. 

More funding is needed to ensure a uniform level of quality for 

all young children. The reauthorization of CCDBG provides us with 

such an opportunity. And we believe that one area that must be 

targeted with increased investments is raising the education and 

compensation of the early childhood workforce. 

Investments in increased educational opportunities tied to compensation and benefits provide early educators with a viable, sustainable career path in a field in which they will remain committed. T.E.A.C.H. scholarships and wage supplements help the 

early childhood workforce become better educated, compensated 

and consistent as it strives to meet the higher standards associated 

with pre-kindergarten, Head Start and quality rating systems. And 

direct investment in the workforce means that quality can be 

raised without burdening parents with additional costs. 

Our work has taught us that the early childhood workforce 

wants to increase its knowledge and skills through our nation’s 

higher education system. The key is accessibility—having the 

money, the time and the support to make it possible. However, it 

is both unrealistic and unfair to expect the workforce to go back to 

school while they are working full time without help and without 

the promise of better wages and benefits. 

With sufficient investment in the workforce, we can improve education and retention. North Carolina’s turnover rates are down, 

and the education of the workforce is up. And best of all, the overall quality of early care and education has dramatically improved. 

When teachers are living on poverty-level wages and barely able to 

support their families, then leaving the job they love becomes a 

matter of necessity. 

Low education, poor compensation and high turnover are national workforce issues. It is time to address them with a national 

targeted investment. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Russell follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Susan Russell, President, 

Child Care Services Association 

Chairman Kildee, Ranking Member Castle, and members of the Subcommittee. 

Thank you for this opportunity. I am President of Child Care Services Association, 

a private nonprofit agency located in North Carolina that has been working every 

day for the last 35 years to ensure access to high quality, affordable child care. We 

believe that improving the education, compensation and retention of the early childhood workforce is key to producing positive health and educational outcomes for 

young children. 

In 1990, using data from the state’s first early childhood workforce study, Child 

Care Services Association set out to test a scholarship model designed to address 

the low education, poor compensation and high turnover of the workforce. We began 

as a small pilot program with scholarships to help 21 teachers take community college courses leading to an associate degree in early childhood education. This successful pilot became T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood(r), rapidly expanding in North 

Carolina and gradually to 20 other states. 

T.E.A.C.H. scholarships help pay tuition, books and travel costs, and often require 

and support paid release time to allow teachers to balance the extra load of going 

to school. As teachers complete their required credit hours, they receive a bonus or 

raise, and they must then commit to continue teaching in the field for another year. 

In most T.E.A.C.H. states, teachers, directors and family child care providers working in child care, Head Start or pre-k settings are eligible for scholarships. 
28 

T.E.A.C.H. scholarships always support formal coursework leading to credentials or 

degrees and require a partnership between individuals, their employers and the 

T.E.A.C.H program, with each entity contributing to the cost. A scholarship counselor helps the individual maneuver the challenges of balancing school, work, family 

and scholarship responsibilities. In FY08 the 21 states participating in 

T.E.A.C.H. spent about $28.3 million; the largest source of these funds comes from 

the Child Care and Development Block Grant. 

Last year over 21,000 individuals across the country, working in over 10,000 different early care and education programs, received support from T.E.A.C.H. Early 

Childhood(r) scholarships. Ten percent worked in Head Start programs and 62% 

taught three and four year olds. About 46% were women of color, typically earning 

less than $10 per hour. They attended almost 600 different colleges and universities. 

Together, these scholarship recipients completed almost 130,000 credit hours. Their 

average earnings in most states increased between 7 and 10 percent and they left 

their classrooms at average rates of less than 8 percent annually. And this is in a 

field that routinely experiences 40% turnover a year. While attending a community 

college, teachers’ basic language and math literacy skills improve, as well as their 

knowledge of cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. About twothirds of participants were working on their associate degrees, doing this while 

working full-time, and achieving a 3.25 mean grade point average. 

In 1994, as our next step to address the systemic problems of low wages and high 

turnover, CCSA began the Child Care WAGE$ program. This effort provides graduated supplements paid directly to participants and tied to their level of education. 

Supplements are paid every six months with funding from Smart Start and CCDBG, 

as long as the individual remains in her early care and education program. Supplements range from $200 to $6,250 annually. Last year, we had almost 9,000 participants. Because supplement amounts increase with more education, WAGE$ participants continue their education. WAGE$ participants with two-or four-year degrees 

had a 14% turnover rate, which is identical to the rate of teachers in our K-12 system. Two other states have WAGE$ programs. In many states with either 

T.E.A.C.H. or WAGE$ programs, there are waiting lists for participation; other 

states need funds to get these programs started. 

Investing in high quality early care and education is essential for all of our children from birth to five if we want to stay competitive in a global economy. Disparate 

access to quality exists across age groups, and for children within states and between states. States struggle to make the right choices, but resources are not adequate. With so many families unable to afford high quality child care and without 

the resources to help them, state administrators continually choose between quality 

and quantity. More funding is needed to ensure a uniform level of quality for all 

young children. The reauthorization of CCDBG provides us with such an opportunity. And we believe that one area that must be targeted with increased investments is raising the education and compensation of the early childhood workforce. 

Children of college-educated mothers have significantly better vocabularies by the 

age of three and far better educational outcomes than children with mothers with 

a high school education or less. Because early childhood educators act in loco 

parentis, often with young children 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, it is critical that 

they are well educated, supported and culturally competent. Investments in increased educational opportunities tied to compensation and benefits provide early 

educators with a viable, sustainable career path in a field in which they will remain 

committed. T.E.A.C.H. scholarships and wage supplements help the early childhood 

workforce become better educated, compensated and consistent as it strives to meet 

the higher standards associated with pre-kindergarten, Head Start and Quality Rating Systems. And direct investment in the workforce means that quality can be 

raised without burdening parents with additional costs. 

We have learned a lot in the last 19 years implementing these strategies in North 

Carolina and across the country. It is clear that the early childhood workforce wants 

to increase its knowledge and skills through our nation’s higher education system. 

The key is accessibility * * * having the money, the time and the support to make 

it possible. However, it is both unrealistic and unfair to expect the workforce to go 

back to school while they are working full time without help and without the promise of better wages and benefits. 

We have learned that with sufficient investment in the workforce, you can improve education and retention. North Carolina’s turnover rates are down and the 

education of the workforce is up * * * and the overall quality of early care and education has dramatically improved. Money makes the difference. When teachers are 

living on poverty level wages and barely able to support their families, then leaving 

the job they love becomes a matter of necessity. Low education, poor compensation 
29 

and high turnover are workforce issues across our nation. It is time to address them 

with a national targeted investment. Thank you. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much, Ms. Russell. 

Ms. Adams? 

STATEMENT OF GINA ADAMS, SENIOR FELLOW, URBAN INSTITUTE, CENTER ON LABOR, HUMAN SERVICES AND POPULATION 

Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am 

Gina Adams, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, where I conduct 

research on child care and early education policies. Thank you very 

much for inviting me here today. 

Let me start by setting some context. Child care and early education is a reality for about 12.4 million children in the United 

States today, about 60 percent of all children in this age group. 

Children can be found in a variety of settings—including Chairman 

Kildee’s home. About 36 percent of all children are cared for in centers, about 15 percent by relatives, as we have heard, and about 

11 percent by non-relatives in home-based settings. Children are at 

different settings at different points in their lives and can often be 

in more than one setting in any given day. 

Parents’ decisions about child care are based on a complex blend 

of preferences and constraints: what they want, what they can afford, what is available and what works for their child. Some families, including low-income families, working families and families 

with infants and toddlers or who have special needs, face far greater constraints in getting the choice that they want. 

This context, I think, underscores two important lessons for policy. First, policy solutions need to focus on a variety of settings; 

and second, they need to address the multiple constraints that families face. We cannot just focus on quality without also paying attention to affordability and supply. 

I would like to talk briefly about what children are getting in 

these settings. You already know that quality matters, but unfortunately the research has shown that the quality of much of the care 

in the United States is inadequate and that quality may be worse 

for low-income children and very young children, two groups that 

we care very much about. 

This shouldn’t be surprising. For most of our child care settings, 

we have a market-based system, where child care providers can 

only charge as much as parents can pay. And if providers were to 

invest in the key components that we know matter—well-trained, 

well-paid staff, low numbers of children per adult—the amount 

that they would need to charge would make the service completely 

unaffordable for many parents. 

So providers have to provide services at prices that are lower 

than are needed for quality. And even at these lower levels of quality, families have to stretch to pay for care. For example, families 

below poverty who pay for care pay a remarkable quarter of their 

income for that care. 

Looking at the policy response, we have clearly come a very long 

way. Policymakers such as yourselves understand the importance 

of investing in this area and have made significant steps, most re-
30 

cently demonstrated through the stimulus package. We have invested more resources, though clearly not enough to serve all the 

eligible children in helping families access good quality care, mostly 

through Head Start and pre-kindergarten services. These efforts 

have helped, but more needs to be done. 

But relying primarily on these initiatives to provide the good 

quality that children need is not enough. They primarily serve 3- 

and 4-year-olds, with the exception of the very small Early Head 

Start program, so it is now doubled—thank you—and because they 

most commonly are offered on a part-day, part-year basis. As a result, our most effective policy strategies to ensure that children are 

getting what they need in terms of quality are not reaching some 

of the most critical populations: infants and toddlers and children 

of working parents. 

Interestingly, these populations are served by the Child Care and 

Development Block Grant. Much of the focus of the block grant is 

to help families afford care so that they can work. But unfortunately, both the funding level and the design of the program make 

it much more challenging to focus equally on ensuring the quality 

of the care that families use. 

Instead, in many states, the block grant is primarily used to help 

families access those very settings that I described a few minutes 

ago as being inadequate, and the quality is limited by what parents 

can pay. In addition, the funding levels of the block grant mean 

that state administrators are constrained, in even their ability to 

meet the program’s primary goals and meet helping parents work. 

Only a fraction of the eligible children are served, and administrators face very difficult tradeoffs and constraints, limiting services, lowering provider payments or making families pay more. The 

good news is that we do have states, such as you just heard from 

Pennsylvania, that have managed to fight these constraints to 

make remarkable progress in using the block grant as part of an 

overarching strategy to support quality care for a broad range of 

children. 

However, as you also heard, they are very seriously limited in 

what they can do by the funding constraints and by the design of 

the program. These realities of the block grant challenge its ability 

to support quality for the families it serves and to coordinate with 

other systems to build a comprehensive approach for families. 

In closing, I commend you for focusing on these issues and for 

thinking about how to address the quality gaps in our early childhood policies and specifically those affecting our youngest children 

and the children of working parents. In this process, it is critical 

to focus on investments and strategies overall in our system, but 

also to make sure to focus on those that will allow the block grant 

to be a strong partner in this effort. 

The block grant already serves millions of the low-income children that we care about. State administrators need the resources 

to ensure that wherever they are, these children and their providers have access to the support that they need to build quality 

and to support their development. 

Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Adams follows:] 
31 

1 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Household 

Education Surveys Program, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07—042.asp. 

Prepared Statement of Gina Adams, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am Gina Adams, senior fellow 

at the Urban Institute, where I conduct research on low-income children and the 

early childhood/child care systems and programs that serve them. Thank you for inviting me to testify about the challenging realities facing families as they try to 

make sure that their children get a strong start in life. 

I was asked to talk about where children are being cared for, the challenges their 

families face, and the key policy issues that should be considered to address these 

problems. 

Where are our children being cared for? 

Today, whether by choice or necessity, child care and early education settings are 

a reality for millions of American families with young children. Many working families must find someone to care for their children while the parents work, and seek 

a safe nurturing and learning environment for that purpose. And many families, regardless of their work status, seek out early care and education programs as their 

children approach the kindergarten years because they want to help prepare them 

for school. As a consequence, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, today we find 12.4 million children younger than 6—or 60 percent of all children—are regularly in the care of someone other than their parents.1

These children can be found in a range of different early care and education settings. For example, 36 percent of all children younger than age 6 are regularly in 

center-based care, 15 percent are primarily being cared for by relatives, and 11 percent are being cared for by nonrelatives in home-based settings. However, this picture is somewhat oversimplified, as it provides a static picture of the main arrangement that children use. In reality, families can end up frequently changing the care 

arrangements they use for any child over the child’s early childhood years—and 

such changes can be more common and frequent for low-income families and families in the welfare system (Adams, Tout, and Zaslow 2007). Furthermore, children 

can be in more than one arrangement at a time. Census Bureau data from 2005 

estimate that 17 percent of children have multiple child care arrangements (U.S. 

Census Bureau 2007). 

The care arrangements that families make for their children are the result of several interacting factors, including what the family wants, what they can afford, 

what kinds of settings are available (either in their family or in their community), 

and what fits their work schedules, child’s needs, transportation, and so forth. Child 

care decisions are an extraordinarily complex blend of preferences and constraints, 

each of which plays out differently for each family depending on their unique circumstances. And while many parents face significant constraints in being able to 

get what they want, certain families face even more constraints—for example, if 

they are low-income, have a child with special needs, live in a rural or inner-city 

area where the supply of programs can be low, have a very young child, or work 

a non-standard work schedule. 

While this seems complicated, it can be boiled down to a few key points: 

• Children experience a variety of early care and education arrangements, all of 

which can affect their development. As a result, policy efforts cannot afford to focus 

on one setting and none can be ignored. 

• We also have to pay attention to the range of factors that constrain families 

from making the best choices they can for their children. For example, to ensure 

that families have access to good quality care, we must not only work to make care 

affordable, but also focus on enhancing the supply of good quality care. 

• Finally, the complexity of the situation means that there are not simple solutions to how best to support parents, so we must avoid thinking that there is a single program or approach that is the solution to the problem. Instead, it is important 

to continue to work comprehensively to accomplish shared goals for all families. 

Are children getting what they need in early care and education settings? 

In recent decades, those interested in the well-being and development of children 

have increasingly focused on the quality of early care and education. Their interest 

is due to the growing and well-established body of research showing that the quality 

of the early care and education experiences matters for children’s development, that 

it can support higher achievement and good outcomes, and that it may be of even 

greater importance for children who are at most risk of poor developmental outcomes (Adams et al. 2007). 
32 

However, the research also makes it clear, unfortunately, that generally the quality of care that children receive in our country is not adequate. A recent synthesis 

of the research in this area conducted by the Urban Institute and Child Trends 

pulls together the leading research in this area and describes the quality of the two 

major types of care that exist—first, ‘‘market-based’’ child care, which includes all 

of the child care programs and settings that have developed in response to parent 

demand (including most child care centers and family child care homes) and that 

are based on parents ability to pay; and second, ‘‘program-based’’ early care and 

education settings, which include settings that were developed and funded by public 

programs such as Head Start and state prekindergarten (Adams et al. 2007). The 

latter settings are generally mostly (or totally) paid for by public funds, do not rely 

on parent fees, and are usually designed to provide a particular quality of care. 

Today, I am going to focus only on the studies examining the quality of ‘‘marketbased’’ settings. For these settings, existing research suggests that ‘‘much of the care 

in the United States falls below a rating of ‘good’ on widely used observational 

measures. Further, different studies suggest that about 10-20 percent of marketbased child care settings have low overall ratings of quality, and may be potentially 

harmful to children’s development’’ (Adams et al. 2007, pg vii). Research also suggests that overall, children from lower-income families and children ages birth to 

three may be particularly likely to be in market-based child care settings that do 

not meet their developmental needs. 

The fundamental cause of this finding is important to understand. Basically, a 

primary challenge we face is that the amount that ‘‘market-based’’ child care programs charge for their services is primarily dependent upon what families can pay. 

However, many of the key components needed for a program to provide good quality 

are not cheap to provide—for example, paying salaries sufficient to attract and keep 

well-trained teachers, having small numbers of children per adult so they can get 

the attention and focus they need, and good materials and facilities. As a result, 

the cost of high quality care can be completely unaffordable for many parents, and 

the cost of even the inadequate quality that currently exists requires parents to 

stretch themselves to pay it. Data from the Census Bureau (2007), for example, 

show that families below poverty who are paying for care pay a remarkable 27 percent of their income for care, and those between 100 and 200 percent of poverty pay 

16 percent of their income on child care. 

The consequence of this situation is that generally providers must provide services 

at prices lower than are needed to provide high quality care—a problem even more 

severe in lower-income communities where families have fewer resources to pay for 

care. While some providers manage to provide quality services because they either 

serve higher-income families or can access other resources from public or private 

sources, there are many providers who are struggling to provide the best care they 

can but who simply cannot provide high quality because they cannot charge the 

prices they need to do get the revenue needed to produce the quality children need. 

The bottom line is that the child care market simply does not work in a way that 

produces enough good quality care for children. 

What is the status of our policy framework to address these problems? 

In recent decades, policymakers have become increasingly aware of these issues, 

and of the importance of investing in early childhood and child care, and have made 

significant steps forward in this area. The most recent evidence can be seen in the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, in which Congress invested significant additional resources into both the Child Care and Development 

Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start in an important commitment to children. But 

unfortunately there is still more work to do. 

One challenge is that despite the increasing policy interest and awareness of the 

importance of investing in good quality early education services, most of the efforts 

to invest seriously in helping families access good quality care have focused primarily on Head Start and prekindergarten services as the delivery mechanisms. The 

good news is that these efforts have indeed produced good programs for children, 

particularly when provided the funding and incentives needed to support quality. 

However, while it is important to keep investing in, and expanding these initiatives—as they only serve a fraction of the eligible families—it is also important to 

realize that our focus on primarily supporting quality through these programs has 

inadvertently created a somewhat patchy system of quality, with some major gaps. 

Specifically: 

• Both of these initiatives primarily serve three- and four-year olds, with the exception of the very small Early Head Start program. This means that our youngest 

and most vulnerable children have few resources focused on ensuring that they get 

good quality care. This is despite the strong research base showing the critical im-
33 

portance of the earliest years in establishing a foundation for future learning, as 

well as the previously mentioned research of the significant gaps in quality for this 

age group. The expansion of Early Head Start (EHS) in the stimulus package is an 

important step. However, EHS currently serves 3 percent of the eligible children, 

so has a way to go before it will be able to address the gaps identified here. • Both Head Start and prekindergarten initiatives most commonly are offered on 

a part-day, part-year basis, and thus are less accessible to working families. Given 

the large proportion of low-income parents who are working or need to work, and 

whose children are at risk of facing additional challenges in school, this gap means 

that our investments in early education programs are potentially missing significant 

proportion of the children we most need to reach. Consider, for example, the children of families that are on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) 

program and trying to meet the work participation requirements. These are exactly 

the children who we would most want to get these kinds of intensive quality services, yet the part-day, part-year nature of the services make them less likely to be 

able to use them. • Finally, both of these programs are primarily provided in selected group centerbased settings, meaning that while these settings or classrooms are likely to provide 

better care, these programs cannot directly support quality for the rest of the settings that care for children. 

On the other hand, the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the 

major federal program that reaches each of these groups—specifically, it serves children from birth through age 12, supports low-income working families, and is used 

in a wide range of the early care and education settings used by families. The growing awareness of policymakers of the importance of helping working families to afford care has led the program to grow since its inception, and most recently to get 

additional resources in the stimulus package. The CCDBG has been quite effective 

at helping millions of families across the country afford child care so that they can 

work. 

Yet this program also has major challenges in terms of helping families get what 

they really need for their children, specifically: • The CCDBG is primarily designed to help families afford child care settings 

that they can find in their communities—which are, in turn, those exact settings 

that were described above as being less than ‘‘good’’ due to market forces. While the 

CCDBG does have some funds designed to address quality, the bulk of the program 

resources are not designed to improve quality, and the CCDBG is not funded sufficiently to provide the level of resources and quality supports needed to bring local 

child care programs up to the level of what children need (Adams and Rohacek 

2002). This is corroborated by the research, which suggests that the child care that 

families access with the voucher-based subsidy system under the CCDBG is no better than, and in some cases is worse than, child care settings overall (Adams et al. 

2007). 

• Furthermore, the funding levels of the CCDBG have limited its effectiveness 

even as a work support, which is the primary goal that it is supposed to achieve. 

For example, 

• While the estimates vary, the CCDBG only serves a fraction of the eligible families, and there are eligible families that need assistance but are not able to obtain 

it. 

• While public funding always is constrained and forces tradeoffs, the funding levels of the CCDBG have required states to restrict eligibility in a number of ways, 

including for families looking for work, or in education and training. This is particularly unfortunate given the importance of these efforts in helping families find work 

and the particular importance of these efforts in the current economy. 

• Research by the Urban Institute has shown how subsidy policies and practices 

can inadvertently create barriers to families to be able to initially get subsidies, and 

to keep them once they get them. In particular, the inadequate resources have 

helped pressure states to maintain very tight controls on eligibility, with the result 

that the system does not always help parents stay attached to the workforce as they 

experience the dynamic work and life situations common for low-income workers 

(Adams, Snyder, and Sandfort 2002). This is of particular concern as families face 

the enormous challenges of the current economic downturn. 

A number of states are working to address these issues. One example is Pennsylvania, under the leadership of Harriet Dichter and her team, which has made impressive strides forward; and other states have taken important steps to address 

some of these problems (Adams, Snyder, and Banghart 2007). But the bottom line 

is still that with the overarching problem of inadequate resources, states are seriously constrained in how much they can do. Discussions with state administrators 

often focus on the extremely painful Solomon-like tradeoffs they must make in de-
34 

ciding whether to make families pay more, pay providers even less, or serve fewer 

families. These are not abstract policy choices and tradeoffs—instead, they seriously 

undercut the ability of the program to achieve its goals, and create serious problems 

for families and providers. 

And of course, these systems do not operate in isolation from each other. While 

many individuals are working hard to put them together to provide the best package 

of services to families, the inadequacies of one can limit the other. For example, the 

Urban Institute is conducting a study in Chicago, looking at the extent to which 

families face barriers accessing the Illinois Preschool for All (PFA) initiative. The 

initiative is a good one, and is one that addresses many of the issues that policymakers care about, and the state is committed to making it available to all families. 

The core funding for the program is for 2.5 hours a day, so the state has worked 

to make sure that working families can access prekindergarten services by making 

sure that community-based child care programs receive PFA funds and offer PFA 

services. Yet because working families still have to pay for the rest of the child care 

day, they are only able to access the program if they are also able to get CCDBGfunded subsidies—as these subsidies are what allow them to enroll their child in 

the child care program that includes a PFA component. As a result, anything that 

may create a barrier for a working family to access subsidies also makes it hard 

for them to access PFA. 

So what do we do? 

There are many issues that need our attention, a number of which have been 

highlighted by the other panelists testifying in recent days. I’d like to focus on three 

that seem particularly critical for sustained federal attention. Specifically, 

• Our policies must focus across the age spectrum from birth to age 5, as children’s needs for good care that supports their full development does not start at age 

three or four, and in fact, there is a serious gap in what children can get in their 

earlier years which is likely to have serious repercussions for their development and 

success; 

• One of the major gaps in our current approach is that we need to develop, sustain, and invest in efforts that focusing on supporting the ability of working families 

to access high quality services; and 

• It is critical to identify mechanisms to strengthen the quality of the range of 

settings that serve families. 

One important way to make progress in these areas is to strengthen the child care 

subsidy system as funded by the CCDBG. This program is the only federal effort 

that focuses on the wider age spectrum, focuses on serving working families, and 

touches a wide spectrum of early care and education settings. By focusing my comments on the CCDBG, I am by no means trying to suggest that the other early care 

and education areas do not also need attention and investments, or that we do not 

need to focus significant efforts on helping these systems coordinate more effectively. Instead, my focus on the CCDBG is because too often the policy debate about 

how to best ensure school readiness does not focus sufficiently on how to do so for 

the millions of young children who are in market-based settings supported by the 

CCDBG every day. 

Strengthening and reforming the CCDBG to allow the program to focus more on 

supporting the ability of low-income families to access good quality care would require a significant and sustained investment of new resources into the program, as 

well as the development of policies that more directly make supporting quality 

through every aspect of the program a priority. Rather than focusing solely on work, 

it is essential that we integrate a focus on child development and school readiness 

into the core funding of the program, and to identify ways that CCDBG can focus 

equally on improving the affordability, access, and quality of the early childhood settings that low-income working families need. 

In conclusion, I commend the Committee and Subcommittee on their continued efforts on behalf of the children of the United States. It is critically important that 

we build upon the significant progress of the last decades, and take the steps necessary to ensure that our public funds are spent to help families ensure that their 

children are safe, nurtured, and learning—in particular, our youngest and most vulnerable children for whom these investments are the most effective. We cannot afford to delay. Every day, there are children missing out on developmental opportunities that mean that they start school further behind, and with less of the foundation 

blocks they need to have in place if they are to become the productive involved citizens that we need. 
35 

REFERENCES

Adams, Gina, and Monica Rohacek. 2002. ‘‘More Than a Work Support? Issues 

around Integrating Child Development Goals into the Child Care Subsidy System.’’ Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/ 

url.cfm?ID=1000449. 

Adams, Gina, Kathleen Snyder, and Patti Banghart. 2008. ‘‘Designing Subsidy Systems to Meet the Needs of Families: An Overview of Policy Research Findings.’’ 

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/ 

url.cfm?ID=411611. 

Adams, Gina, Kathleen Snyder, and Jodi Sandfort. 2002. ‘‘Getting and Retaining 

Child Care Assistance: How Policy and Practice Influence Parents’ Experiences.’’ Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/ 

url.cfm?ID=310451. 

Adams, Gina, Martha Zaslow, and Kathryn Tout. 2007. ‘‘Early Care and Education 

for Children in Low-Income Families: Patterns of Use, Quality, and Potential 

Policy Implications.’’ Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. http:// 

www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411482. 

U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. ‘‘Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: 

Spring 2005.’’ Suitland, MD: U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/child/ppl-2005/tab01A.xls and http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/child/weeklychldcare.xls. 

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization 

that examines the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, 

or its funders. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much, Ms. Adams. 

Dr. Lowery? 

STATEMENT OF LILLIAN LOWERY, SECRETARY, DELAWARE 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

Ms. LOWERY. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Castle 

and members of the committee, thank you—did not push my button. 

Thank you, good morning. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Castle, 

members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to share 

Delaware’s early childhood plan. I am Lillian Lowery, secretary of 

education for the State of Delaware. 

Delaware recognizes that what children experience from birth to 

age 5 has a direct impact on their future success in school and in 

life. As we have learned more about the importance of brain development during the early years, there has been a renewed commitment to work together in public-private partnerships to increase 

the number of children entering school prepared to succeed. 

Through strong leadership, federal, state, corporate and private resources have been blended to develop a combination of universal 

and targeted programs which provide support from birth through 

kindergarten. 

For example, the parents of every baby born in Delaware receive 

the Growing Together portfolio—and I, too, have copies for you— 

a collection of valuable information ranging from a 5-year calendar 

customized with Delaware contacts to a read-aloud book to start 

early literacy. For first-time parents, there is a targeted service 

with a home visit by a nurse soon after the baby comes. The nurse 

links at-risk families to additional supports such as Parents as 

Teachers program, a monthly home visit from birth to age 3 by certified parent educators. 
36 

The state-funded Early Childhood Assistance Program adds to 

the capacity of the federally funded Head Start to guarantee a 

quality preschool program for every 4-year-old in poverty. Through 

similar state and federal support, children with disabilities from 

birth to 5 receive preschool special education specifically crafted to 

help prepare them for success in school. Both of these targeted programs, for children in poverty and those with disabilities, have 

been evaluated through a longitudinal study. 

Begun in 1997 as the children entered kindergarten, the study 

compared children in poverty who had participated in the Early 

Childhood Assistance/Head Start program to a like sample of economically disadvantaged students who had not participated in the 

program, and children with disabilities who were identified during 

early childhood and received early intervention services to children 

who were not identified as special education students until after 

entering public school. In this longitudinal study, three points of 

measurement—third, fifth and eighth grade assessments—were 

analyzed for students’ academic outcomes. 

As measured over time at all three grade levels, the students 

who had received early intervention services demonstrated markedly better outcomes than students who had not received those 

interventions. From the most recent analysis at eighth grade, the 

following results are examples of success rates: 73 percent of the 

students in poverty who participated in Early Childhood Assistance/Head Start program performed at or above standard in reading compared to 51 percent who had not participated in the program; 43 percent of students who received preschool education for 

special ed students performed at or above the standard in reading 

compared to 31 percent who had not received such services. 

State dollars have been leveraged to gain corporate and private 

funds to carefully develop, pilot and implement the Delaware Stars 

for Early Success rating program, which establishes quality standards for early childhood program providers connecting them with 

technical assistance, training and limited financial support as programs engage in quality improvement efforts. 

Full-day kindergarten is another important component of Delaware’s expanded efforts to ensure academic preparedness and success for all children. State funding for full-day kindergarten has increased each year with almost all public elementary schools offering this to families and communities. 

On another front, like many states, as I just heard Pennsylvania 

state, Delaware has worked hard to cooperate across state agencies 

on behalf of young children. The three primary departments which 

have responsibility for a variety of early childhood services—Education, Health and Social Services, and Services to Children, Youth 

and Their Families—established one central Office of Early Childhood and then the Delaware Early Childhood Council. 

The council is responsible for providing oversight of the development and implementation of Early Success: Delaware’s Early 

Childhood Plan. Early—excuse me—Early Success is a comprehensive plan to ensure that across the state young children and their 

families have access to quality early learning programs and services. 
37 

Supporting the goals of Early Success, Early Learning Foundations program guides have been developed for early childhood in 

alignment with the K-12 kindergarten expectations. Likewise, the 

social and emotional development program for young children, 

Partners in Excellence, has been connected with the K-12 Positive 

Behavior Support program. The Department of Education provides 

the formal review and certification of early childhood providers’ 

staff qualifications and is currently working on a Web-based modification of an online database for teacher certification that will include the early childhood workforce. 

Finally, the Department of Education has developed a framework 

for professional development that outlines the expectations and intensity of training opportunities for early childhood. The framework helps practitioners in making informed choices for their professional development experiences. 

The department recently awarded a multi-year grant to the University of Delaware for a new Institute for Excellence in Early 

Childhood to develop and offer the state-recommended training in 

the framework. The institute will develop, in collaboration with 

other educational organizations, a variety of state-recommended 

professional development opportunities to meet the identified needs 

of all sectors of the early childhood field. 

Thank you for this opportunity. 

[The statement of Ms. Lowery follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Lillian Lowery, Secretary, 

Delaware Department of Education 

Delaware recognizes that what children experience from birth to age five has a 

direct impact on their future success in school and life. As we have learned more 

about the importance of brain development during the early years, there has been 

a renewed commitment to work together in public/private partnerships to increase 

the number of young children entering school prepared to succeed. Through strong 

leadership, federal, state, corporate and private resources have been blended to develop a combination of universal and targeted programs and supports from birth 

through kindergarten. For example, the parents of every baby born in Delaware receive the Growing Together portfolio, a collection of valuable information ranging 

from a five year calendar customized with Delaware contacts to a Read Aloud book 

to start early literacy. For first time parents, there is a targeted service with a home 

visit by a nurse soon after the baby comes home. The nurse links at-risk families 

to additional supports such as the Parents as Teachers program, a monthly home 

visit from birth to age three by certified parent educators. 

The state-funded Early Childhood Assistance Program (ECAP) adds to the capacity of federally-funded Head Start to guarantee a quality preschool program for 

every four year old in poverty. Through similar state/federal support, children with 

disabilities from birth to five receive preschool special education (PSE) specifically 

crafted to help prepare them for success in school. Both of these targeted programs, 

for children in poverty and those with disabilities have been evaluated through a 

longitudinal evaluation. Begun in 1997 as the children entered kindergarten, the 

study compared children in poverty who had participated in the ECAP/HS program 

with a like sample of poor children who had not participated and children with disabilities who were identified during early childhood and received early intervention 

services with children identified as special education students after entering the 

public school system. In this longitudinal study, three points of measurement (3rd, 

5th and 8th grades) were analyzed for students’ academic outcomes. As measured 

over time at all three grade levels, the students who had received early intervention 

services (ECAP/HS or PSE interventions) have shown markedly better outcomes 

than students who did not receive those interventions. Students in the intervention 

groups significantly outperformed students who did not receive intervention. From 

the most recent analysis at 8th grade, the following results are examples of the success rates: 
38 

• 73% of the students in poverty who participated in ECAP/HS performed at or 

above the standard in reading compared to 51% who had not participated in ECAP/ 

HS 

• 43% of the students who received preschool special education performed at or 

above the standard in reading compared to 31% who had not received such services 

To improve the quality of early care and education for all young children, state 

dollars have been leveraged to gain corporate and private funds to carefully develop, 

pilot and implement the Delaware Stars for Early Success rating program. Delaware 

Stars has established quality standards for early childhood program providers connecting them with technical assistance, training and limited financial support as 

programs engage in quality improvement efforts. Delaware Stars for Early Success 

is a five level system, with ‘‘5’’ being the highest rating. The licensing rules issued 

by the Office of Child Care Licensing serve as the Standards for Star Level 1. With 

each higher Star Level, a program is required to meet increasingly higher quality 

Standards in the following categories: 

• Qualifications and Professional Development 

• Learning Environment and Curriculum 

• Family and Community Partnerships 

• Management and Administration 

Subsidized child care reimbursement rates have improved, and the goal is to tie 

those rates to Delaware Stars quality ratings as additional resources become available. In 2005, the Legislature increased its focus on early learning by creating the 

Kids Caucus, a bipartisan group of legislators focused solely on young children and 

their growth, development and learning. During the last legislative session, the Kids 

Caucus successfully championed legislation to increase outreach for the Children’s 

Health Insurance Program to students receiving free or reduced price meals in their 

schools. 

Full-day kindergarten is another important component in Delaware’s expanded efforts to ensure academic preparedness and success for all children. State funding 

for full-day kindergarten has increased each year with almost all public elementary 

schools offering this to families in their communities. 

On another front, like many states, Delaware has worked hard to cooperate across 

state agencies on behalf of young children. The three primary Departments which 

have responsibility for a variety of early childhood services (Education; Health and 

Social Services; and Services to Children, Youth and their Families) established one 

central Office of Early Childhood within the Dept. of Education which is staffed by 

personnel funded through the three Departments and charged with interagency collaboration and efficiencies. Also, in October 2001, the Governor established the 

Delaware Early Care and Education Council. The Council is responsible for providing oversight of the development and implementation of Early Success: Delaware’s Early Childhood Plan. The membership of the Council comes from the early 

care and education community, businesses and private citizens. 

Early Success is a comprehensive plan to ensure that across the state young children and their families have access to quality early learning programs and services. 

The five goals of Early Success are as follows: 

1. Ready Children: By the year 2015, all of Delaware’s young children will have 

available the supports they require to ensure that they are physically, socially and 

emotionally healthy. Early learning opportunities will be available to every child at 

home and in programs that are developmentally appropriate and individualized. It 

is important to ensure that every child’s development is progressing. Child assessment for early identification of developmental challenges or disabling conditions is 

essential. Early intervention is critical for remediation of developmental delays and 

readiness for school. 

2. Ready Families: By the year 2015, families of young children in Delaware will 

have the support and education needed to support their children’s healthy growth, 

development, learning and readiness for school. Families are significant partners in 

creating a culturally competent comprehensive and integrated early learning system. Families are the primary influence on their children. All other components of 

the early learning system must support the families of young children to be successful. 

3. Ready Early Care and Education Programs: By the year 2015, all of Delaware’s 

families will have access to early care and education programs that will offer families a safe learning environment that will ensure positive outcomes for children. 

Early care and education programs will be staffed by professionals educated and 

skilled in supporting the growth, development, and learning of young children. Programs will be regulated to ensure basic safeguards for children, both physical and 

developmental. 
39 

4. Ready Communities: By the year 2015, Delaware citizenry will understand the 

importance of the children’s growth, development and learning during the first five 

years and be willing to support and invest in creating an early childhood system. 

The early childhood system will be a durable, normalized component of the state 

budget, corporate investments, and community giving. Public will, governance and 

finance together create a community that is willing and prepared to support the 

early childhood system. Communities will work together to design and build localized solutions to support their young children and families. 

5. Ready Schools: By the year 2015, the schools and the early learning community 

will forge meaningful, productive relationships that support children and their families. 

Supporting the goals of Early Success, Early Learning Foundations program 

guides have been developed for early childhood in alignment with the K-12 kindergarten expectations. Likewise, the social and emotional development program for 

young children, Partners in Excellence (PIE), has been connected with the K-12 

Positive Behavior Support (PBS) program. Just as the K-12 system works to prepare 

children for college and the workforce, the early learning system works to prepare 

children for their school years. Connecting the systems and successfully facilitating 

the transition for children and their families between the two systems is important 

to the success of both early learning and K-12. 

The current report of Delaware’s Early Childhood Council highlights recent collaborative efforts to achieve the goals of Early Success. They are provided here to 

emphasize the importance of strategic public and community partnerships and to illustrate the broad scope of work of the Council and the Office of Early Childhood. 

I. Ready Children 

Emotional Wellness Committee: 

• Began work in August, 2008 

• Included representation from multi-agencies and multi-disciplines 

• Mission Statement: To develop a systemic framework to support the emotional 

wellbeing of young children and their families 

• Focused on specific tasks including: mapping resources, identifying gaps in resources and services, establishing standards for practice and identifying priority 

areas needed for the systematic promotion of emotional wellness in the state 

United Way of Delaware Success By 6(tm): 

• Partnered with the Department of Education to give leadership to Emotional 

Wellness Committee 

• Continued commitment to improving the quality of early care and education by 

financially supporting Delaware Stars and serving as a member of the public/private 

management team—specific responsibilities related to leading the coordination of 

private resource development, serving as fiscal agent for private funds, and providing leadership on building public will 

• Partnered with Nemours Health & Prevention Services to conduct a parenting 

needs assessment 

• Partnered with Family Support Coordinating Council for that Council to begin 

functioning as the advisory body for Success By 6TM’s work related to supporting 

families 

Early Childhood Comprehensive System Grant: 

• Focused on developing, implementing and sustaining comprehensive early childhood programs through collaborative partnerships and systems building initiatives 

• Funded the KIDS COUNT in Delaware Indicators for Early Success issue brief 

• Provided funding to host a series of educational trainings on topics promoting 

the importance of the medical home, family-centered primary care and newborn 

hearing screenings 

Nemours Health and Prevention Services: 

• Collaborated with the Delaware Child and Adult Care Food program to set 

higher nutrition standards for foods qualifying for reimbursement 

• Implemented a Child Care Learning Collaborative to test out a new approach 

to training, focused on helping centers make policy and practice changes to promote 

healthy eating and physical activity 

• Supported a statewide quality rating system, Delaware Stars for Early Success. 

• Initiated a pilot study for improved screening for developmental delays in primary care pediatrics—Assuring Better Child Health & Development (ABCD) project 

II. Ready Families 

Family Support Coordinating Council: 

• Supported the submission of a federal grant Supporting Evidence-Based Home 

Visitation Programs to Prevent Child Abuse 
40 

• Adopted a model that describes the future path of the council; the goal of this 

model is to establish the resources and supports needed to nurture strong families 

in Delaware 

• Sponsored the Parent Practitioner Partnership Summit held on May 14, 2008 

which addressed partnerships between parents and practitioners in healthcare, education and human services to improve child outcomes 

III. Ready Early Care and Education Programs 

T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood(r): 

• Provided scholarships to 136 individuals 

• Worked in conjunction with other initiatives (i.e. Delaware Stars) to increase 

the quality of early childhood programs through increased education for early childhood professionals 

Delaware First: Early Childhood Professional Development System 

• Developed a Framework for Professional Development that outlines the expectations and intensity of training opportunities for the early childhood 

• Awarded a grant to the University of Delaware for the creation of the Delaware 

Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood 

• Provided the formal review and certification of early childhood staff qualifications 

Delaware Stars for Early Success: 

• Completed the second year of ‘‘testing’’ the Delaware Stars system 

• Enrolled in 69 child care programs including all three counties; small and large 

centers; family child care and large family child care homes; before and after school 

programs; programs that serve infants and toddlers, children with special needs, 

and children whose primary language is other than English; Head Start and ECAP 

programs; and NAEYC accredited programs 

• 46 of the enrolled programs are serving children and families of low-income. 

• Served more than 5,000 children and their families in Delaware Stars programs 

Relative Care Training Program: 

• 600 Relative Caregivers have received training information 

• 178 Relative Caregivers have attended training 

• 42 Relative Caregivers have completed all 45 hours 

• Provided training and technical assistance in three sites that have been designed on a framework of program wide change consistent with the PBS system 

used in schools 

• Supported a training of trainers on the Parent Modules 

• Developed and piloted an approach that provides continuity to the systems that 

care for and educate young children in Delaware 

Partners in Excellence (PIE) Project: 

IV. Ready Communities 

Social Venture Partners Delaware: 

• Gave more than $2.5 million toward the improvement of early childhood education in the state of Delaware since its inception 

• Partnered with A.I. duPont Hospital for Children; this five-year partnership 

places psychology residents in early care centers to provide year round behavioral 

health management for at-risk children and families 

• Invested in a curriculum development specialist to train teachers and administrators in inner-city child care centers how to properly prepare their children for 

kindergarten 

Coalition for Early Learning: 

• Members testified at the Department of Health and Social Services budget and 

Joint Finance Committee hearings 

• Planned successful Annual Early Childhood Advocacy Day 

• Worked with the Kids Caucus to codify Delaware Stars for Early Success into 

law 

• Worked with Kids Caucus to gain support for Purchase of Care reimbursement 

rate increases, rates indexed to bi-annual market rate study and rates tiered according to star ratings 

Delaware Children’s Campaign: The Delaware Children’s Campaign (DCC) is a 

nonpartisan nonprofit organization that offers a different approach to child advocacy. What makes DCC different from other efforts is its use of public opinion data 

to identify issues relating to children that are of concern to Delawareans. Our polling along with the input of or platform committee helped us determine the DCC’s 

agenda: 

• Reduce the infant mortality/morbidity rate 

• Increase assistance for youth aging-out of foster care 
41 

• Ensure quality early education is available to all children DCC is dedicated to 

improving access to quality early care and education by building public awareness 

and grassroots support. Campaign staff works to educate and engage citizens, media 

and policy makers regarding the societal cost savings of quality/consistent delivery 

of early education programming. Wilmington Early Care and Education Council 

(WECEC): 

• Engaged members and community volunteers—‘‘Friends of the Council’’ 

• Represented early care and education programs throughout the City of Wilmington and community based organizations 

• Assisted with planning and executing special events 

• Met at the new City of Wilmington Parks and Recreation building 

• Worked with the City webmaster www.wecec.org to the City of Wilmington web 

site Sussex Early Childhood Council (SECC) 

• Spent time developing its mission and purpose—The Mission of SECC is to foster collaboration among families, communities, providers, and schools for children’s 

early success in Sussex County 

• Represented child care providers, human service agency representatives, parents, home visitors, school district representatives, and others interested in young 

children and families in Sussex County 

V. Ready Schools 

Delaware After-School Alliance (DEASA) 

• Public-private partnership that endorses the goal of all school age children 

being academically, socially, culturally and physically healthy 

• Worked on building bridges that link schools, communities, and families 

through policy development and partnership engagement with other agencies 

• Involved itself in many key efforts over the last year that address the common 

moral, social and educational concerns of Delaware’s citizenry, not the least of which 

were the Governor’s Dropout Prevention Summit and the Governor’s Expanded 

Learning Opportunities Summit 

I’d like to close my remarks by sharing two of Delaware’s most recent efforts to 

increase quality in our early learning system. In a new responsibility shifted to the 

Office of Early Childhood, the Department of Education (DOE) provides the formal 

review and certification of early childhood providers’ staff qualifications. Early childhood practitioners make application for review of qualifications and in 2008, DOE 

staff reviewed more than 3,000 applications on the education and experience of individuals using the specifications of the child care licensing (Delacare) rules. The Department is currently working on a web-based modification, which will be ready by 

fall 2009, of the online database for teacher certification that will include the early 

childhood workforce. 

And finally, DOE has worked on the development of a Framework for Professional 

Development that outlines the expectations and intensity of training opportunities 

for early childhood. The Framework helps practitioners in making informed choices 

for their professional development experiences. The Department recently awarded a 

multi-year grant to the University of Delaware for a new Institute for Excellence 

in Early Childhood to develop and offer the state recommended training in the 

Framework. The Institute will develop, in collaboration with other education organizations, a variety of state recommended professional development opportunities to 

meet the identified needs of all sectors of the early childhood field. The Institute 

will provide quality assurance to the consumer by closely monitoring the delivery 

and making sure that the content of training is research based and aligned with 

state standards for the field. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

Thank you all for your testimony. 

The rules of the committee adopted January 21st, 2009, give the 

chair the discretion on how to recognize members for questioning. 

It is my intention as chair of this subcommittee to recognize those 

members present at the beginning of the hearing in order of their 

seniority on this subcommittee. Members arriving after the hearing 

began will be recognized in order of appearance. 

I now recognize myself for 5 minutes. 
42 

Ms. Adams, how important is stability in addition to quality to 

children in early care and education? In other words, what is the 

impact to children of having changing arrangements? 

I ask that because back in 1987, we had hearings on ABC. We 

found, not just occasionally—we found some mothers or parents, 

within a week’s time might have three, four or five different arrangements for child care and sometimes on Tuesday weren’t sure 

what the arrangement would be on Wednesday. How important is 

that stability? 

Ms. ADAMS. It is a very good question. Stability is a critically important issue for children, having continuity of care. I mean, the 

way children develop a sense of trust of the world and know how 

to develop relationships is to have stable relationships. 

One of the important issues is that there are two different kinds 

of stability. For example, if you are always with your grandparents 

every afternoon and you are always in the Head Start program in 

the morning, that is still stability. What is instability is when you 

don’t know from day to day which caregiver—you develop a relationship with one, then suddenly you leave the next day. Those are 

the things that we worry a lot about, where it is broken relationships, broken trust, and where children don’t get the foundation 

that they need. 

One of the important issues is that when you look at many of the 

quality programs like Head Start and pre-k, they are focused on 

providing a child services for a year or 2 or 3 years. That is stability; that is continuity. That allows the teachers to—if they don’t 

have turnover—to develop relationships with the children. 

Part of the problem that we have in the child care world, for example on the block grant, is that the arrangements that are available to families fluctuate depending on their work situation; their 

subsidies may change if they change their job hours. There are a 

lot of ways that we don’t, I think, think enough about stability 

within the block grant and support families having a stable caregiving situation. 

Chairman KILDEE. What role and how important is a centerbased type of child care situation for the socialization of especially 

the young, the very young child? 

Ms. ADAMS. The recent research suggests that center-based care 

can be very important for children, depending on the quality, which 

is a big if, for the years right before they enter school. Part of the 

challenge that we face is that much of our workforce can’t use center-based care necessarily because they may be working evenings, 

weekends, changing work hours. But there is some evidence that 

access to a good quality group setting for at least some period of 

time before children enter school can be an important socialization 

tool. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Russell, can you describe in more detail how an early childhood program would come to participate in T.E.A.C.H. or WAGE$, 

who the partners might be and where the funding comes from? 

Ms. RUSSELL. Early childhood programs can participate in states 

where we have T.E.A.C.H. or WAGE$, usually through an application process. So individuals will apply and they will say, ‘‘I want 
43 

to go back to school.’’ They will apply. If there is funding, they will 

be eligible and they can go to school. 

Those teachers can work in a variety of settings. They can be a 

family child care provider, they can be a teacher in a classroom in 

a for-profit center, a not-for-profit, a faith-based center. They can 

be working in Head Start or they can be working in a pre-k program. It really doesn’t matter the setting, what matters is, is there 

funding to support them. 

So funding for T.E.A.C.H. comes from a variety of sources. About 

61 percent comes from the block grant, and then the rest of the 

funding is cobbled together using state resources. And Harriet was 

talking a little bit about that. In North Carolina, we use state resources as well, coupled with block grant funding or even local 

funding. So it comes from a variety of places. 

The key is that there isn’t enough of it. We have lots of states 

who would like to do T.E.A.C.H. scholarships, but they don’t have 

the funds. And we have lots of folks within states where there are 

T.E.A.C.H. and WAGE$ programs who can’t access it because of 

the lack of resources. 

Chairman KILDEE. If there is a definition of adequate, at least 

adequate child care, what percentage of children in this country 

would be receiving that type of adequate childcare? [Laughter.] 

Anyone want to venture out into that? You know, we know at the 

time we passed ABC that the percentage wasn’t very high and the 

situation was quite dire. I am just wondering how far we have 

moved since 1987. 

Ms. ADAMS. I don’t think anybody can answer that question except for the number is far too low. I mean, the data that we have 

that are representative of multiple states are from back in the 

early 1990s so it doesn’t do a good measure of looking at it now. 

But part of the problem, as I mentioned, is that one of our big 

investments, the block grant, which is a fabulous program in many 

ways, is not designed to change the quality of care. It is designed 

to help families access what is there. The quality set aside has got 

them wonderful things; T.E.A.C.H. and many of these initiatives 

came out of that. But that is 4 percent of the program. It is not 

going to be changing the entire marketplace with millions of children. 

So it has made significant changes in pockets, but it has not been 

enough to, I think, do a sustained change of the whole marketplace. That make sense? 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you, thank you very much. 

My time has expired. 

Governor? 

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Ms. Adams, let me ask you a question. I believe in what we 

are doing here, but I worry about it sometimes in terms of some 

of the programs, et cetera. Are there studies or research showing 

how children who have been involved in early education developmental programs, the kind of programs we are talking about here 

today, do later in their education outcomes? 

And the reason I ask that is I remember when we did Head Start 

there were some witnesses who testified that there were no positive 

results when you got out to third, fourth, fifth grade, et cetera. And 
44 

they were concerned that the programs either didn’t have enough 

of an educational component or weren’t working well enough. And 

I don’t know if there is any research that would either contradict 

that or confirm that that you know about. 

Ms. ADAMS. Well, I think it is important to distinguish different 

kinds of research. There is certainly the research showing kind of 

the high-quality, intensive intervention programs like Abacedarian 

and Perry Preschool. Those kinds of investments have shown very 

long-term impact. They are usually funded and focused at a level 

that is beyond what our public resources have been able to sustain 

so far. 

There is also some suggestion—I think the National Head Start 

Impact Study has shown some impact over time, but we don’t have 

it for very many years. I think they are about—next week, I 

think—to release the latest findings, which I believe go to third 

grade. I should know the answer because Urban Institute is part 

of that study, but I actually don’t. 

So I think that there is long-term impact. Part of the question 

is dosage—how much children are getting and for how long. Often 

Head Start can be a part-day, part-year program for 1 year. 

Harriet began her comments saying there was no silver bullet. 

If you are talking about children in extreme poverty, that is not 

going to be enough, which I think the investments in Early Head 

Start are so promising. 

I think we do know that when it is done right, it can have an 

impact. How you do that to scale is part of the job that many of 

you have been working on the last several years. 

Does that answer your question, sir? 

Mr. CASTLE. Well, I am not sure there is any easy answer, but 

it is a very good effort. That answer your question? 

Let me sort of ask a question, of any of you, that concerns me, 

and that is the family and parental involvement. We talk about 

these programs, whatever, and generally they are out of the home; 

not everybody can go to Dale Kildee’s Head Start program. 

So there is a lot of time when children are going to be at home, 

and obviously the family involvement with that child is vitally important. And I worry about that a great deal. 

I mean, a child may do well in some sort of a preschool or a development Head Start-type program, whatever that may be, and 

they go home and they run into other kinds of problems. Can you 

tell me what you are doing in your areas or what you know about 

in terms of that parental, family involvement to engage the parents 

and to help? 

I mean, statistics have shown us constantly that parents who are 

motivated and well-educated generally will have children who are 

motivated and will become well-educated and vice versa. And that 

should be a concern to all of us—whatever help you can give me 

along those lines. 

Ms. LOWERY. Congressman, I will begin—and you probably know 

as well as I, in Delaware the Early Success program has five components, and two components involve parental engagement and parental training, along with Parents as Teachers, but there is a component of training that is privately funded through such organizations in Delaware as Social Venture Partners and led by the Early 
45 

Childhood Council, that any child who is participating in early 

childhood programs in the state of Delaware also have a parent 

who is asked to engage in the teaching and learning aspect, not 

only of the academic-aligned expectations but of the social and 

emotional expectations around behaviors as well. 

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you. 

Ms. DICHTER. Let me add to that, and you raise a really critical 

point. I think we all know it is the adults together who influence 

the outcomes for the children. And so schematically and from a 

value perspective, it becomes very important for the early childhood programs to have excellent partnerships with parents. 

We actually built that into our standards. It doesn’t strictly fit 

the definition of what a standard would be, but we said, ‘‘This is 

too critical to leave this out; we have got to get everyone talking 

to one another and working well together.’’ So we have a big stress 

on that. 

We actually are fielding now statewide for 100 percent of our 

programs a unified parent satisfaction survey to make sure we are 

collecting enough of the feedback and getting that back out to the 

programs. We prepare materials for programs to use with parents—as I mentioned, this is a calendar that is month-by-month 

what you can do with your kids at home—and provide things. 

And I want to say anecdotally when we started just the pre-k 

program—we hear this from our Keystone STARS parents as 

well—our parents come now and say, ‘‘I am getting as much out 

of these programs as my children are.’’ They are thrilled at what 

they see is happening for their kids, but because we have tried to 

put so much emphasis on a partnership between the programs and 

the parents, parents are really saying, ‘‘This is a great asset for 

me.’’ 

I think you raise a very important point. It is very doable, 

though. You know, there does not—I try to think of it in this way. 

We are doing a tremendous favor to K-12 education if we can do 

the birth to 5-year right in terms of those relationships with parents and get everyone understanding it truly is a partnership for 

the kids. 

Mr. CASTLE. Okay, thank you. 

Ms. ADAMS. Could I add just one comment to that? I completely 

agree with both of these issues. 

The one other thing I think that we do need to start paying attention to as a country is the labor demands on families. Low-wage 

workers—it is very hard to participate in your child’s program if 

you have the kinds of job demands and you don’t have any flexibility to take time off. 

I just personally have noticed in changing schools recently how 

there are suddenly no parent volunteers, and it is a much more 

low-income set of families in my school. It is very hard to do that. 

I think we need to be thinking about how do we support parenthood in the low-wage workforce on the labor side. I don’t have the 

right answer there, but thinking about work policies and workforce 

issues is very important. 

Mr. CASTLE. Let me thank you all very much for your testimony 

and for what you do. 
46 

And I agree with you, Ms. Adams. I think we ought to start with 

Congress on a less work program so we can have more time at 

home. But somehow I don’t think that is going to get done. There 

is a lot to be done around here. 

I yield back. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you, thank you, Governor. 

For the information of the members, Dr. Lowery has to leave us 

at 11:30 for a Board of Education meeting, so please bear that in 

mind. 

It is my pleasure now to call upon the gentleman from Iowa who 

had a great victory on the floor of the House yesterday, Mr. 

Loebsack. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks for putting 

this hearing together. This is really a critically important issue. 

I am a mere sophomore here in Congress, but I had the pleasure 

in 2007 of participating in the reauthorization of Head Start and 

it was a real pleasure and honor to be a part of that. And I am 

really happy that we have obviously at the federal level put even 

more funding into that through the stimulus package, if you will, 

the Recovery Act. So I am really happy about those developments 

in recent years. 

I like this discussion about the role of parents, and I appreciate 

Mr. Castle bringing that up. I visited numerous Head Start programs in my district, the second district in Iowa, and I have always 

been impressed by the number of parents who have volunteered 

their time and in some cases it has actually been wonderful for 

those parents because they have gone on to become community 

leaders, in no small measure because of their involvement in Head 

Start with their children on a volunteer basis. 

And yesterday, we passed the GIVE Act, and that really is in no 

small measure intended to increase the number of volunteers in 

America for a lot of projects. In the case of Iowa most recently, it— 

near and dear to my heart, relating to the flood, the floods that we 

had in June and the recovery and rebuilding process. 

But, Ms. Adams, you mentioned the reduction in the number of 

volunteer hours, I guess, on the part of parents. Can you elaborate 

on that or any others on the panel elaborate on that a little bit— 

and again tying I suppose to the economy, but the whole issue of 

volunteerism on the part of parents? 

Ms. ADAMS. My comment was completely an anecdotal one from 

my daughter’s school, so I can’t give you the national numbers. But 

I think one of the things that worries me a lot is that as—I don’t 

think we know from the current economy what is going on exactly 

in terms of hours that parents have. 

But you know as parents are working harder, trying to keep jobs 

harder, looking for work harder, that the kind of discretionary time 

that they need to be able to really focus on going to their child’s 

school and spending time as they need to is going to be challenged, 

even if they are unemployed. That would allow some, but a lot of 

those families are really looking very hard for work on a regular 

basis during school hours. So they can’t do it after school because 

their children are home, and they are not going to be able to afford 

child care during those hours. 
47 

So I don’t have any data for you, but I think just kind of a commonsense—my own personal parent experience shows me that I 

can’t imagine it is increasing a lot right now. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Would anyone else on the panel like to respond 

to that? 

Ms. LOWERY [continuing]. We recognize the challenges that parents have, especially in this economy, and what we have tried to 

do in Delaware is rejuvenate Delaware Mentoring Council. And we 

know the connection between the parent and the child is very important, but we are also looking for community people who are retired from various professions who will also come in and act as surrogate parents with the students and build that relationship with 

them through mentoring. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I think that is really important, too, obviously, 

right. 

Any of the others? Okay. 

Ms. RUSSELL. I guess I would like to talk a little bit about the 

issue of parents in the context of our current economy. Because as 

Gina said earlier, we see parents struggling to try to support their 

families with rising unemployment. And as families become unemployed, their child care placements become at risk, their ability to 

afford child care, their ability to use it, their ability to even be eligible for support for the child care. 

And this is at a time when families are under the greatest 

amount of stress, so the children, young children, experience that 

stress too. And one of the things I worry a lot about right now is 

what this is doing to our children. 

Our state policies often are very rigid about providing assistance. 

You have to be working; you have 1 month to get a job. And so children are being pulled in and out of early childhood settings, which 

is terrible for children. And so right now states are scrambling with 

what to do about that, but without changes in policy that give some 

more flexibility so that children aren’t hurt in this process or hurt 

anymore in this process as families struggle during the current 

economy, I think, is critical. 

Ms. DICHTER. Let me just add to that because I want to talk just 

for a minute about how we look at eligibility for our subsidy Child 

Care Works program. We have a great deal of the concerns that 

people mentioned around providing our kids with stable settings 

and also understanding that the core base of when we are providing subsidy has to do with parents working and having stressed 

income. 

But we have created provisions that have—parents, for example, 

lose their jobs; they have several months to be able to maintain 

their children in the program while they are searching for a job. 

They need their early childhood program while they are job hunting. 

We rewrote our regulations in order to allow that to happen, but 

I think part of what we are trying to stress here is this is stateby-state decision-making now for this sort of thing as to what the 

value set is and how you implement that to really support the families. 

When we have created our additional state programs where we 

have been able to really put sufficient money on the table to get 
48 

the level of quality we know will really benefit the children, we arranged our eligibility policy for child care subsidy so that the child 

who was going to be enrolled for a part of the day in a program 

where we were paying the right amount for the kid and we knew 

we were doing well by the child would be able to maintain their 

child care subsidy even if there was a disruption in the parent’s 

employment because of the outcome that we were seeking for the 

child. 

So those were, again, all decisions we had to make at the state 

level. We did have to work with our General Assembly on many of 

them because they went into our eligibility rules, but we were successful in getting agreement on that kind of thing. So I think that 

we, as we look towards just the child care piece and additional 

roles for the federal government here, we probably need to elevate 

up some of our expectations and understanding of the interaction 

of our expectations for outcomes for children, what it takes to support them well and also then what it takes in terms of our value 

set on which parents—and how it is we are helping our parents to 

be successful as well. 

The last point I want to mention here because many people have 

found this counterintuitive. Yes, we are in a terrible time with the 

economy. We have never had as much demand as we have in our 

state for subsidized child care, okay. We have never had the level 

of demand. Our waiting lists are out the roof, okay. They are unbelievable to get into the program, and we have no cash left to be 

able to put more into the program at this point in time. 

So what we have is more parents, understanding there are people working; they need the resources and the assistance. So I just 

offer that so people don’t get themselves confused that we are in 

a period where there is less need. There actually looks from us to 

be a much greater degree of need and demand and understanding 

here. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thanks to all of you, what a great panel. I really 

appreciate your being here. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman KILDEE. We probably will have three votes about 25 

after the hour, so we will try to move along. 

And, Mr. Polis, the gentleman from Colorado? 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. 

The success of any effort to develop a high-quality early childhood development system depends on a qualified workforce. Welleducated child care workers and preschool teachers promote language and early literacy skills, social and emotional development 

and prepare children for kindergarten and their school careers. 

However, as our testimonies indicated, training and certification 

requirements for pre-k teachers vary widely from state to state, 

and compensation levels are discouragingly low and fail to attract 

those who would seek these occupations with preparation. 

According to the American Federation of Teachers, the mean annual salary for child care workers is $18,120 and for preschool 

teachers is under $25,000, compared to $45,000 for kindergarten 

teachers. A 2005 Yale study showed that seven out of 10 teachers 

in state-funded pre-k programs earn salaries in the low-income category; one in six works a second job to make ends meet. 
49 

In terms of preparation and credentials, 27 percent of preschool 

teachers don’t have a bachelor’s degree, and 36 states don’t require 

any specialized training for child care providers. As a result, only 

55 percent of family child care providers and 57 percent of center 

assistants have at least some college education. 

Ms. Russell, you spoke about the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood 

scholarships and the Child Care WAGE$ program. The T.E.A.C.H. 

scholarship has been very successful in Colorado and since 1997 

has helped 1,172 child care professionals in our state reach their 

educational goals. 

My question is how can these unique and effective programs be 

replicated nationally. And what other efforts are other states taking to ensure high-quality early childhood education workforce exists? And what federal policies can be effective in helping states develop a core of highly qualified and adequately compensated early 

education teachers? 

Ms. RUSSELL. Wow, that is a lot. The first question was how can 

they be replicated. Well, I think states have chosen to replicate 

T.E.A.C.H. cobbling together various dollars. Usually it isn’t that 

states don’t want to address education and compensation issues. I 

think that the real issue is a matter of funding. When states have 

to choose between various kinds of needs, sometimes the workforce 

does not get the kind of funding that it needs. 

You said what other initiatives are going on in other states. Well, 

we know that T.E.A.C.H. is probably the broadest and most uniformly used scholarship strategy. Child Care WAGE$ is one of a 

variety of wage supplement strategies that states are using. Pennsylvania has a different example. We have states like Illinois and 

Wisconsin and Minnesota and California doing various kinds of 

wage supplements. 

I think a lot of states recognize that, if you supplement the 

wages of the workforce directly as opposed to putting it on the 

backs of parents, you are able to drive quality without raising the 

cost. And I think that is the key to both T.E.A.C.H. and WAGE$ 

is you are doing it sort of as a back door way to raise quality. 

And then I think the last question was so what do we need at 

the federal level. Well, I would argue that what we need is more 

money, and that the money needs to be targeted to the workforce, 

and that there needs to be an expectation along with those dollars 

of higher standards, higher standards for the workforce themselves. 

You know, I think—what we have learned in North Carolina is 

that the workforce—and really across the nation—the workforce 

wants to achieve more, to go to school to learn more, to be better 

at it, but they need help. And I think, with resources and with 

standards associated with that and some level of accountability, we 

can achieve it. 

Mr. POLIS. Is there anybody else on the panel that would like to 

address that? 

Ms. DICHTER. Yes, I would like to add just a couple of points. We 

are very extensive investors in T.E.A.C.H.; we love this program. 

But we also had to invent other strategies to help people earn their 

degrees and credentials and to be paid appropriately. So we also 
50 

have a program where we reimburse people who take classes for 

college credit. 

We had to very deliberately decide to stop spending public dollars on continuing education workshops that did not help people 

get degrees and credentials. And we had to basically say there is 

going to be a minimum of that in our system because we need to 

help people be successful; this is how we measure it in our society. 

So we had to do those sorts of things as well. 

We have had to push with higher education on program-to-program articulation because we have adults in the workforce trying 

to get early childhood degrees and credentials. They may not be at 

only one institution of higher learning. We have a problem—not 

just in Pennsylvania—around the country of the 2-and 4-year 

schools, how it is people transfer credits back and forth. So we have 

had to be working on things like that; there is a lot of range. 

In terms of the compensation strategies, there is a compensation 

component in T.E.A.C.H. We built a compensation component directly into Keystone STARS. We have merit awards where we encourage people to add on to compensation. We created a career lattice to begin to show people how they would create that range. 

And very importantly, when we were able to start our newest initiative, which was our pre-k program, which uses child care, uses 

Head Start, uses school, we were able to set the compensation per 

child at a level high enough to pay our teachers the right amount 

for those B.A.’s in early childhood education and certification. And 

we benchmarked the salaries to show people how to do that. 

We work with our practitioners on how they blend the funding 

streams. Okay, we create automated spreadsheets to show them 

how to do that so that people can know how to get from here to 

there. Again, even in this one area, you can’t just do one thing. 

There is a set of things you have to do in the system as a whole 

to be able to help people move themselves forward. 

At the federal level, I think we have—Gina said this already— 

there is a lot more that could be done in the reauthorization of the 

Child Care Block Grant in terms of the standards, the quality rating and improvement systems, the stress on credentials basically 

and how resources have to be delivered. And as I said, I really 

think we need a new funding stream that unifies this across the 

variety of the early education initiatives. 

Ms. ADAMS. Can I add one thing? This goes back to my earlier 

comment about the importance of the block grant. I think it is very 

important to remember that the block grant is what is supporting 

many providers on a daily basis. The block grant rates are based 

on market prices, which are based on what families can pay, which 

is based on low wages. 

So I think we have to start talking about how we disentangle, 

how we allow rates the flexibility to pay what quality costs as opposed to simply what parents can pay. If we don’t, we can do all 

these strategies, honestly, but the biggest funding source supporting providers on a daily basis is not going to allow them to sustain it in the long term. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hinojosa? 
51 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that this hearing is very helpful. 

I want to ask my first question to Secretary Lowery from Delaware. In your testimony, you mention ready families as one of the 

early success goals and state that families were significant partners in creating a culturally competent, comprehensive and integrated early learning system. How are you putting into practice the 

concept of cultural competence? 

Ms. LOWERY. A lot of our students who are impacted by some of 

the Early Success program are our urban students, our more urban 

students. We work very closely with the United Way. We also, you 

will see in the literature, have a program called Success by 6. And 

through the United Way working with the Early Childhood Council, there is a lot of outreach to the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban 

League, through the Latin American Community Center, to engage 

parents in their communities where they are most comfortable. 

And our trainers are going in to them to take that training to them 

and meet their unique needs. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. If I may interrupt you, because time is very short. 

You mention the Latin American families, and I have 80 percent 

Latinos in my congressional district. I ask you the question: What 

are you doing for the families of English language learners? 

Ms. LOWERY. Great, we have, I mentioned earlier, a private concern called Social Venture Partners, and that is a group from the 

Business Roundtable in Delaware headed by a person, Mr. Paul 

Harrell, who has invested a lot of money and set up an early childhood center in the Latin American Community Center and worked 

very closely with the director of that center to do outreach. 

We also have Representative Miro, because those are mostly for 

the students who live within the Wilmington community. We have 

a lot of Latinos who also live in our suburban areas, and Representative Miro is working in concert with them to make sure that 

those services that we are giving to our inner-city students will 

reach those students in the suburban areas as well. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. I thank you. 

To Gina Adams from the Urban Institute, Hispanic families often 

rely on informal care, especially friends or relatives, for their child 

care. How can we support these informal providers so that they can 

provide a rich learning environment that supports literacy and social and cognitive development? 

Ms. ADAMS. It is a critically important question. I would say two 

things. One is that there are a number of strategies that have been 

experimented with in the block grant using the quality set-aside. 

States have been learning a lot about how to reach out to the 

community. What they have discovered is that you need to have a 

blend of what we might think of as parenting support because 

some of these providers more function as parents or family members, as well as our more traditional child care efforts. It has to be 

often done through trusted intermediaries. There are language 

issues, obviously, so you want to make sure that the materials are 

in the appropriate languages. But part of it is to not necessarily assume that people see themselves as professionals but see themselves as family members. 
52 

But I do want to say that one of the challenges for the Latino 

community in particular is that there is a presumption that because Latino families use relatives that is always what they want. 

Some families do, but some families very much want to have an 

early educational experience. And part of the challenge that we 

face is to make sure that the early child education programs, the 

child care centers, the Head Starts, the pre-k’s are actually meeting the needs of the families, that they have people who speak 

their language, so that when the family is leaving their child off, 

they are not leaving the child with somebody who they have no 

idea what is happening and they cannot communicate with their 

caregiver. 

So I think we need two focuses—one on informal care providers 

but also make sure that it is a choice. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. You are making some very good points. And one 

of the things that I have learned in our Latino community is that 

if we could provide them a little training on how to read to young 

children, ages 2, 3, 4, that it oftentimes results in that early reading plus writing, being successful then in their elementary schools 

and thus being able to stay in school and go on to high school to 

graduate and maybe go to college. 

So I hope that you all will integrate somehow the programs that 

we sponsor here in Congress. A good example of that would be the 

RIF program, which is Reading Is Fundamental, because the Congress pays for 75 percent of the cost of those books for children of 

all ages. And we are trying to focus on those 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-year-olds, 

so that we can get them interested in reading and loving books because that then will result in success in schools. 

My last question—and I am out of time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Hinojosa. 

Gentlelady from Hawaii, Ms. Hirono? 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Since I have been here in Congress—this is my second term— 

this committee as well as the full committee has really focused on 

the importance of quality early education, so I think that we really 

are—you know, the evidence is in and we understand what we 

need to do. 

And two things that come out in all these hearings that we have 

been having, for me, is that the states are at all different levels of 

support for quality early education, and clearly Pennsylvania, 

North Carolina, Georgia, other states are much farther along than 

some other states and that we need to support a diversity of the 

kinds of early childhood programs, quality early education programs, that work. One size fits all is not what we need to be doing. 

So I think those are common kinds of testimony from all of you, 

for which I am really glad. 

And I ask every panel that comes before us in talking about 

quality early education to take a look at the PRE-K Act that the 

full committee marked up last in last Congress and we passed out 

of the committee. That bill has been reintroduced, and I would certainly welcome your comments and input on that because it is a 

grant program that is meant to be very flexible to support states’ 
53 

efforts toward quality early education wherever that state’s efforts 

may be. 

I wanted to ask you, Ms. Dichter, that in your point to—you said 

that the federal government hasn’t been sufficiently proactive—and 

be still leaving too much for the states to do, in spite of the fact 

we have made substantial increases to Head Start, substantial increases to CCDBG funds. So can you elaborate a little bit more 

about—briefly, you know, how it is that you think the federal government could be much more proactive in this area? 

Ms. DICHTER. Sure, I think I can make this concrete and easy. 

I will just give an example of one program that we have talked 

about today. I mentioned we have Child Care Works subsidy. Every 

state has some kind of subsidy program in child care. It is up high 

in everyone’s mind because of the economy. 

I would need an additional $80 million a year in Pennsylvania 

to clear the waiting list. Under stimulus, the amount that we will 

be getting is $30 million a year for 2 years, of which, as you know, 

we will have mandatory and very appropriate set-asides to continue to work on infant-toddler services and quality overall. 

But I think that is a very concrete example. That is only the families who step forward. We do have pretty non-bureaucratic processes; you probably got the sense I am not for big bureaucracy in 

terms of how we run our programs. We do verify people’s eligibility, 

but these are families still knowing we have waiting lists who came 

and said they needed help from us, okay. 

So I hope that helps you to see we need more financial resources. 

We don’t have enough money in the system to get the job done 

well. And I think that we could benefit from having some greater 

combination of incentives and standards, basically, that comes with 

our federal funding in these areas and that we would do well by 

our families and children to take that kind of step. I personally believe people in the states and in local communities are ready for 

that. We have had very good experience in our state as we have 

organized the system and stepped up the standards and the accountability along with the investment. 

Ms. HIRONO. From your testimony, it seems clear to me that 

Pennsylvania has gone a long way toward a very comprehensive 

approach to the continuum of services to young children. 

I have a question for Dr. Lowery. You said that you are 

partnering with the private corporations and private entities to 

really leverage state dollars. I think that is a very important aspect 

of what we need to do because clearly the resources do not meet 

the demands. So how successful have you been in reaching out to 

what I call the non-usual suspects? The usual suspects in this area 

are the educators and all of that. 

But for example, the national association of lieutenant governors 

recently passed a resolution saying that they support quality early 

education. And a group of retired generals have said for the military that it is really important, nothing could be more important 

than putting resources into quality early education to enhance our 

military capacity. So these are what I call, you know, really broadening the support and understanding of the importance of quality 

early education. So I just wanted you to, you know, talk a little bit 
54 

about your success and getting money from corporations and other 

groups. 

Ms. LOWERY [continuing]. Sorry. Our early education council is 

an eclectic group of educators, business leaders and community activists. So a lot of the work that we have done around early childhood has really been led by citizens’ groups, including our business 

community. 

We are in the process of having a new survey done around the 

quality of care, as we have all been talking about today—what 

kinds of standards we have in place and how we really do, with integrity, engage parents in the teaching and learning piece as the 

children prepare for K-12 education. That will be led by the lieutenant governor. That is something that is just about to begin. 

As I came on as secretary of education, one of the first hires that 

I made was a person from the business community who is there to 

be a liaison between private and public partnership. And he is the 

person who founded the Social Venture Partners, which focuses on 

early childhood education. It is one of the platforms that our new 

governor, as every governor, including Congressman Castle, has always had as of—one of their major concerns is early childhood. 

Because maybe the state size of Delaware, we can get early access to many people very easily. And I can say with confidence and 

would be glad for anyone to come and sit and speak with any of 

us that our business community is actively engaged in supporting 

early childhood and in many instances may be the forerunners of 

making sure that that happens. 

Ms. HIRONO. Would any of the other—oh, I am out of time. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairman KILDEE [continuing]. The gentlelady from California, 

Ms. Woolsey? 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, wonderful panel of witnesses. 

You know, I shouldn’t come to these hearings because it takes 

me back 40 years to a nightmare that I try to get behind me when 

I was poor and on aid for dependent children with 1-, 3-, and 5- 

year-old children, forced to go to work because their dad self-destructed and wouldn’t get help. And that was the hell-year of our 

life, that first year, 13 different child care situations in 12 months, 

where actually I would tell the child care workers that came to my 

home, if they had any questions, ask my 5-year-old son because he 

knew more about all this than—can you imagine the pressure on 

that little kid? 

So a lot has changed since then, and I know that. Their children, 

all five of my grandchildren, are in really good—they are all professionals, husbands and wives. Their five children altogether out of 

the three families are in really wonderful child care or preschool 

situations and have been, but they can afford it. I was poor. Hardly 

anybody had really good child care options 40 years ago, but folks 

with the funds and the resources have it now. 

So my question is about the rest of the poor folks in this country 

that are left at our whim virtually. So what I wanted to know— 

if we need more federal funding, which we do, what controls, what 

federal standards do you think could be applied to federal funding 

for our community block grants, et cetera, because, you know, there 
55 

is not going to be a lot of extra federal funds unless we tie it to 

something that is measurable. 

So between you, do you have any suggestions in that regard, 

starting with you, Secretary? 

Ms. DICHTER. In the context of, say, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and I guess in terms of other potential new federal funding, we do need to be clear about what it is our early 

learning standards are, what our expectations are for the delivery 

of the services to the children. I think that is fair to do that, and 

again from my own state experience, I think you can balance the 

issues around the states with a national framework for being able 

to do this. 

We can go on. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. I think we have to keep moving down because you 

saw—— 

Ms. Russell, I mean, I would like you to tell me what those 

standards are, if you could, if you have some measurements that 

you would add to put in there so that—— 

Ms. RUSSELL. Okay. 

Ms. WOOLSEY [continuing]. That would be fair and measurable. 

Ms. RUSSELL. Okay, well, one of the things that we have found 

successful in North Carolina is the quality rating system, and we 

have embedded it in our licensure so that we have standards that 

50 percent of the quality rating is based on the education of the 

teacher and 50 percent is based on program quality. So helping 

states—one standard that could be found in the block grant is helping states to develop quality rating systems so that consumers 

know what they are buying and providers know how to improve 

their quality. 

I think the second thing, and for me probably the first thing, is 

to have some targeted dollars that require states to invest in the 

workforce, because the workforce is the key to getting the quality— 

for kids. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Ms. Adams? 

Ms. ADAMS. I would add just to make sure that we talk about 

basic health and safety—sorry, we don’t even have an assurance of 

basic health and safety in this country, so I would say that any federal standard should at least require that anybody who gets public 

funds taking care of at least one unrelated child should have basic 

inspections, should meet basic health and safety standards. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Because I think you are leading to the fact that 

a licensed child care center may not have ever been inspected for 

safety. 

Ms. ADAMS. Yes. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. But they still have a license. 

Ms. ADAMS. Yes. 

Ms. LOWERY. We do have a framework, the Stars program in 

Delaware, with a five-level rating system, where every child care 

provider, even if it is a child care provider keeping six children in 

his or her home has a rating level. And I do believe that I agree 

with everyone else. People need to see returns on their investments, so we have to have metrics to make sure that they are getting that. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Okay, thank you very much. 
56 

I will yield, Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

Chairman KILDEE. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. Davis, from California? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, all of you, for 

being here and the work that you have done. 

I want to focus for a moment on the military families and the 

programs that we have, not necessarily just on our bases but some 

of the standards even that the military has in this regard. What 

is really interesting right now is that the key issue that military 

families are bringing is for child care and for preschool education 

for their students—for their children. 

Because despite the fact that we have some great programs out 

there, many of them either fall through the cracks or are not eligible within their state. California at one time didn’t make them eligible. It is a little bit easier now, but still finding places is hard. 

And I wonder if you could—we know how important it is for 

those children because of instability, deployments. I mean, it is 

really a critical, critical need. Can you give us some concrete ideas 

about what we might do to support those programs more? But also 

is there a great deal to learn as well from their programs, from 

their standards? How can we apply some of the tools, if you will, 

that they have used as we look at federal programs and what we 

can do to be more supportive? I don’t know how familiar you are 

with those programs. 

Ms. ADAMS. I guess I would just say very briefly, I think, from 

what I know—I am not an expert on the military system—it seems 

to be a designed system. It is not just based on the market; it is 

not just based—it has all the things that we have talked about. It 

has standards, it has accountability, it has expectations and it has 

resources. And I think there is a lot that we can learn. 

But I do want to say I think that we know those answers. The 

question is can we let the country decide that that is what all children need. 

Mrs. DAVIS. All right, thank you. I appreciate that. 

One of the areas that I think particularly, Secretary Dichter, in 

your—in the background material—and I am sorry I wasn’t here 

when you spoke earlier. Family-visiting programs are something 

that are applauded in many areas and began quite a number of 

years ago. There are a lot of different models out there, and I am 

wondering whether—we always have to make choices. And I was 

impressed that it sounded like about 40 to 50 percent of the children in Pennsylvania, perhaps in some areas of Pennsylvania particularly, are reached by that program. 

Should we be putting a lot more resources into those programs? 

Or is there enough of a controversy surrounding them to a certain 

extent, in terms of family intervention issues and other concerns 

that perhaps—political concerns that people have—that it is not 

worth focusing on that? Or in the real world, in terms of what is 

actually having an impact on children and their families, is that a 

better place to put one’s resources? 

Ms. DICHTER. We believe in the continuum of early childhood 

programs, which means we need programs that do visit with families at home and programs that are in classrooms and other group 
57 

settings. And we want to make sure that our families have all of 

these options available to them. 

We are very big on evidence-based programming. We are investing public dollars, so we want to invest it as effectively as possible. 

So we would say there is a need for a continuum. 

The one cautionary note that we see with our home-visiting programs is that they may not meet all of the work needs of the families. And so, again, as we build our continuum, we try to be very 

sensitive around making sure that we are paying attention to all 

of these dynamics in the family—and Gina talked a lot about this— 

especially with our most stressed, lower-income families, all right. 

They need a significant number of supports, in terms of how we 

build the early child care programming. 

So I would say yes to evidence-based work, okay, and no to, 

again, only a home-visiting approach. A home-visiting approach 

amongst other approaches, very appropriate, and we encourage 

home visiting for our classroom-based programs. That is a requirement, as you may know, in Head Start, but it is also something 

that we think is very valuable, and teachers and parents both like 

that when that occurs as well. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I guess do we have enough added value from that? 

I understand, in terms of the continuum, we want to have it all. 

But that coupled with other kinds of programs, does it add so much 

value that it really is something that we need to take a much deeper look at? 

Ms. DICHTER. Let me just say, then, the two programs we use— 

the Parent-Child Home Literacy Program and the Nurse-Family 

Partnership—both have very good documentation of effectiveness 

for results for children and results in fact for parents, but we are 

very careful and cautious about how we field those programs. 

Chairman KILDEE. The chair wishes he could take more time to 

thank the panel. You have been really helpful, various aspects. All 

of you in your own involvement in this area bring an expertise here 

and a concern, which is very, very important. So I wish I could 

take more time to thank you, but we have votes on the floor. 

And as previously ordered, members will have 7 calendar days 

to submit additional materials for the hearing record. And any 

member who wishes to submit follow-up questions in writing to the 

witnesses should coordinate with majority staff within the requisite 

time. 

And without objection, this hearing is adjourned, thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Payne follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Donald M. Payne, a Representative in 

Congress From the State of New Jersey 

Let me thank Chairman Kildee for holding this important hearing on improving 

early childhood development policies and practices. 

An extensive body of research now clearly demonstrates the importance of promoting early language and literacy skills in preparing children for later success in 

reading and in school. Yet today, large numbers of children still do not receive the 

support and assistance they need to develop these essential skills and begin kindergarten ready to learn. 

To close this gap, the federal government has traditionally provided funding 

under Title I, Part B of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for a variety of literacy programs and strategies that reach children and parents, and the professionals that interact with them. 
58 

However, there has emerged over the last decade a powerful and effective new 

approach to promoting early language and literacy development, and school readiness—pediatricians and other healthcare providers guiding and encouraging parents 

to read aloud to their children right from the early years of life, sending them home 

from each doctor visit with a prescription to read aloud together. 

I have reintroduced H.R, 1526, the Prescribe a Book Act, to authorize a five-year 

$85 million federal pediatric early literacy grant program based on the long-standing, successful Reach Out and Read (ROR) program, which has trained more than 

47,000 healthcare providers in literacy promotion, and operates in more than 4,100 

clinics and hospitals nationwide. 

This grant program would train doctors and nurses to provide low-income parents 

with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance of reading aloud 

to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book at every wellness 

visit. 

[Questions for the record and their responses follow:] 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

Washington, DC, March 30, 2009. 

Ms. GINA ADAMS, Senior Fellow, 

Center on Labor, Human Services and Population, the Urban Institute, Washington, 

DC. 

DEAR MS. ADAMS: Thank you for testifying at the March 19, 2009 hearing of the 

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on ‘‘Improving Early Childhood Development Policies and Practices.’’ 

Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ), member of the Early Childhood, Elementary 

and Secondary Education Subcommittee has asked that you respond in writing to 

the following question: 

1. Would you support pediatric and early literacy programs like the Prescribe a 

Book Act, a grant program which would train doctors and nurses to provide lowincome parents with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance 

of reading aloud to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book 

at every wellness visit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee staff by close of business on Thursday, April 2, 2009—the date on which 

the hearing record will close. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to 

contact us. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

Responses to Questions for the Record From Ms. Adams 

Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to testify before the Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee. Below are my thoughts 

in response to the follow-up questions. Please feel free to contact me if there is more 

information that you need. 

1) What do you estimate it would cost to provide high quality early care and education for nine hours per day, five days per week, for 52 weeks, for (1)infants, 

(2)toddlers, and (3)three and four year-olds? 

This is an important question, but unfortunately one that is not one that I have 

analyzed at this point, or have the data easily available to do so. However, I will 

suggest that one of the most essential issues in getting information on this question 

is to clarify what form of ‘‘high quality’’ you are interested in, for what outcomes, 

and for what children. For example, ‘‘high quality’’ which not only addresses the cognitive needs of children but also takes a more comprehensive look at their needs 

will cost more than programs take a more limited approach—but may magnify and 

broaden the impact of the initiative depending on your goals and the particular families and children you are interested in serving. It is also critically important to 

specify key parameters of quality that you want to be the basis of such estimates— 

such as group sizes and ratios, teacher education, training and experience; salary 

levels and benefits; standards and accountability; and so forth. 

2) How much do you think it would cost to provide high quality child care to one 

child for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? 

See above. 
59 

3) In addition to increasing funding, what changes would you suggest to the Child 

Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to improve quality and access? 

There are many changes I would recommend to the program, some of which I suggested at the hearing. Below I highlight two issues that sometimes get less attention in the policy debate. 

a) Encouraging states to base payment rates on what providers need to provide 

quality care and are providing, rather than their local market prices. As I mentioned in the hearing, market prices are artificially low due to the inability of parents to pay, so cannot sustain quality. Obviously these higher rates should only be 

paid to providers who provide quality care, but nonetheless, I believe that we should 

start to decouple the payment levels from market prices for those providers who provide good quality. We also need to support providers who are working to get their 

programs up to meet higher standards by providing up front start-up funds. 

One of the challenges with this issue is the fact that providers vary in the extent 

to which they serve families with vouchers. The above approach works most effectively for providers whose enrollment is majority voucher—it is much more difficult 

to use voucher reimbursements to leverage quality for providers who only have a 

fraction of the children on vouchers. It would be useful to encourage states to identify creative ways to help support quality among these providers as well, including 

broader use of contracts and other opportunities to provide foundational supports 

to providers to pay for ongoing costs to maintain quality settings that are not supported by the market. [For more information on these issues, and some policy suggestions, see our article More than A Work Support? Issues around integrating child 

development goals into the child care subsidy system, by Adams and Rohacek, 

which can be found at http://www.urban.org/publications/1000449.html.] 

b) One of the links between quality and access is making sure that the eligibility 

rules do not inadvertently force parents off subsidies and create discontinuity in 

care for children. In particular, we have done extensive research on helping states 

design subsidy systems that are more supportive and cognizant of the needs of families and children, and have identified a number of important policy strategies that 

states can implement in this area. [See Designing Subsidy Systems to Meet the 

Needs of Families: An Overview of Policy Research Findings, by Adams, Snyder, 

and Banghart, at http://www.urban.org/publications/411611.html.] While this report lays out many specifics, one of the most important steps the federal level can 

take would be to increase funding so that states are not forced to make draconian 

choices between different needy families, and to send a clear message to states that 

the subsidy system should support families through changes to help them stabilize 

their care arrangements, and should not be cut off in situations where families are 

trying to get back on their feet or keep their families stable through other changes. 

This means states need to be encouraged to make changes in a number of areas, 

including: redetermination periods, interim reporting requirements, whether and 

when vouchers are terminated or adjusted in response to minor or temporary 

changes in family status, income eligibility determination policies, and support for 

critical work supports such as job search, training, and education. Specific examples 

of policies that some states are already putting into place in these areas are described in the report referenced above. 

4) If the federal government sets a floor or baseline for the minimum level of child 

care quality that states will need to meet, what should be the minimum requirements of this system? 

Again, this is an important question that is not specifically my area of expertise. 

However, I will offer a few thoughts that might be helpful. First, any guidelines 

about a floor or baseline must continue to be considered within the larger context 

of a system which has too few resources in it to develop and sustain good quality 

care. So any effort to strengthen basic standards must be accompanied by funding 

to support programs to come into compliance, as well as by systemic reforms that 

identify ways to ensure that programs have access to the ongoing resources necessary to meet these standards. The baseline will simply not work as long as we 

have a system that primarily relies upon the inadequate resources of private-pay 

families to determine what resources providers can use to care for children. 

Second, in addition to funding to help programs achieve and sustain quality, it 

might be useful to recognize that the effectiveness of any licensing or quality protection system relies on three interdependent issues. The three components needed to 

set a floor or baseline of quality need to address: 

a) which programs are required to meet standards or are, alternatively, exempt 

from having to meet such standards; 

b) what standards they are required to meet; and 
60 

c) whether and how the standards are enforced for those required to meet them— 

which not only includes inspections, but also subsequent enforcement and followthrough for programs out of compliance. 

I often describe these as the three legs of a three-legged stool, as this metaphor 

makes it clear that all three are necessary for an effective system. Consequently, 

I would suggest that any strong system must involve improvements in all of these 

areas—specifically, must cover most or all programs or care settings; must include 

standards that at a minimum protect children from harm and hopefully help move 

programs towards quality through an understanding of the components that impact 

the full range of children’s development; and finally, must include enforcement provisions that include inspections and followthrough if programs are not in compliance. When these steps are coupled with an overall approach that helps programs 

achieve and sustain quality, significant progress could be made. 

5) How would you suggest we encourage states to go above and beyond any kind 

of federal quality baseline or floor? 

Several states are experimenting with the use of Quality Rating and Information 

Systems (QRIS), which create a continuum of quality and provide supports to individual teachers, centers and family child care providers to meet the increased standards. In some cases, they also provide higher reimbursements for providers meeting 

the increased standards. QRIS also provides information to parents and helps them 

understand the quality of the provider they have chosen. Consequently, you might 

consider using incentives and challenge grants to states to encourage the development and implementation of these systems. 

However, to be successful, QRIS need substantial resources to provide grants to 

providers to receive additional education and training, supports to centers and family child care homes to improve the quality of their environment through new materials, and increased reimbursements to offset the cost of meeting higher quality 

standards and compensating qualified providers in order to improve retention. 

[Note, however, the previously mentioned challenge of relying solely on this approach for improving quality among those providers who do not have a majority of 

their enrollment being paid for by the voucher system.] There are also additional 

costs associated with monitoring and assessing the quality of programs to ensure 

they are meeting the higher standards. Therefore, any effort to expand the use of 

QRIS should include additional resources to meet these additional costs. 

6) Would you support pediatric and early literacy programs like the Prescribe a 

Book Act, a grant program which would train doctors and nurses to provide lowincome parents with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance 

of reading aloud to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book 

at every wellness visit? 

I believe that literacy programs are extremely important, however I am not an 

expert on this particular approach and do not feel qualified to offer an opinion on 

this issue. 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

Washington, DC, March 30, 2009. 

Ms. HARRIET DICHTER, Deputy Secretary, 

Office of Child Development and Early Learning, Departments of Education and 

Public Welfare, Harrisburg, PA. 

DEAR MS. DICHTER: Thank you for testifying at the March 19, 2009 hearing of 

the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on 

‘‘Improving Early Childhood Development Policies and Practices.’’ 

Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ), member of the Early Childhood, Elementary 

and Secondary Education Subcommittee has asked that you respond in writing to 

the following question: 

1. Would you support pediatric and early literacy programs like the Prescribe a 

Book Act, a grant program which would train doctors and nurses to provide lowincome parents with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance 

of reading aloud to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book 

at every wellness visit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee staff by close of business on Thursday, April 2, 2009—the date on which 

the hearing record will close. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to 

contact us. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 
61 

Responses to Questions for the Record From Ms. Dichter 

This memo addresses a number of questions in follow up to the March 19, 2009 

hearing. If I can be of further assistance, please let me know. I am glad to drill 

down to a more concrete or specific level if you do not find this memo specific 

enough. There is more that we can do to improve the early educational experiences 

of the nation’s youngest children—to do so takes more financial resources than are 

currently invested as well as a more focused, disciplined approach to quality, demanding that all of us accept this as a core value and organizing premise for public 

investment. 

Representative Titus as well as Representative Woolsey asked similar questions 

about the role of standards in federal funding and how to maintain/attain quality. 

My responses to those questions follow: 

CCDF: For the existing funding stream that states are already controlling and 

represents a location in which many parents enroll their children, the Child Care 

and Development Block Grant, I would recommend that we set a baseline floor for 

quality for the investment and receipt of these dollars. This funding stream, as I 

indicated in the hearing, is also significantly underfunded and lacks a baseline of 

public funding such as what we have for K-12 public education. Keeping this in 

mind, we must find a way to advance a focus on meeting the learning/developmental 

needs of the children and in creating an approach that is quality improving. 

That investment would require the states to develop and implement an accountable, strong Quality Rating Improvement System, using the element we have designed in Pennsylvania for Keystone STARS, which (in short) 1) set standards progressively and 2) provides supports in the form of financial resources as well as professional development and technical assistance. In our experience in Pennsylvania, 

we have elevated expectations but also provided meaningful supports and an approach to assist the providers in doing a better job in serving children and in making it attractive to the providers to do so. 

The federal government can require a core set of minimum standards, the provision of supports to build capacity in the form of professional development and technical assistance as well as money, without interfering with the exercise of state creativity and autonomy. In other words, if the federal government puts a framework 

into place, states such as ours would benefit and would have opportunities to continue to push our work to new levels and states that are not yet there would be 

able to draw upon the framework while still exercising options at the state level. 

On the accountability side, as you know, I mentioned that in Pennsylvania we 

have worked to gain acceptance of the concept of accountability in early childhood 

education and I believe our providers are proud of the strides that they are making. 

Within Keystone STARS, we use the Environmental Rating Scales developed at the 

University of North Carolina as part of our accountability model for the purpose of 

our overall classroom monitoring, and we demand certain scores associated with the 

upper STAR levels. This tool is helpful to everyone as it also provides appropriate 

and useful feedback so that programs can help to improve. 

The focus on improvement is a crucial aspect of accountability. At the level of the 

child’s progress, we have a responsibility to inform parents about how their children 

are doing and it is also helpful for our teachers and administrators in order to gauge 

their own needs for professional development and support. Starting with Early 

Intervention, where there is a federal mandate for child outcome or progress reporting, and then adding in our new state-funded pre-k program (delivered by STARS 

child care, Head Start, schools and nursery schools), we now have child-level outcome reports using a developmentally appropriate assessment of children (generally 

3 times a year) that helps chart their progress. This information is fed back to parents, to teachers, to administrators, and as we keep building our system, to those 

offering higher education, professional development and technical assistance so that 

they know how to better target their efforts with teachers and administrators. We 

also use this information in aggregate to demonstrate program impact. We are 

building out this system to include children in our other quality early learning programs and the information at the child level is firmly grounded in our knowledge 

of the child’s background, the level of public investment, and the standards of the 

program so that we an more accurately understand or predict the level of progress 

a child should be making in the program relative to these circumstances. 

I can provide more information to you but I hope that this satisfies you that there 

is a way to have high standards and expectations within the context of federal funding without compromising state leadership or creativity in problem solving and 

without compromising the best interests of children. 

So, within a Keystone Stars type system you would need to have: 
62 

• Minimum Standards for the so-called structural areas such as class size; teacher-child ratios; curriculum linked to standards, which in turn should be early learning standards built to align with the state’s k, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade standards 

(noting of course that the early learning standards will likely include areas not 

found in the early education standards, which tend to be exclusively cognitive in 

their basis); and other critical areas such as partnerships with parents and management and administrative practices. I recommend you take a look at what we did for 

Keystone STARS as well as our new pre-k program PA Pre-K counts to get a specific 

feel for this and to show you the other enumerated categories that are needed. The 

list is not overly long as we are running publicly administered programs and as 

with most government, we want to be prudent and efficient. • Professional Development and Degree Support, including the creation of a Career Lattice. • Capacity building supports through professional development, site-based technical assistance, Environmental Rating Scales use, including training of site-staff on 

self-implementation, interpretation and quality improvement planning from the 

ERS, etc.; • Appropriate child assessment that is looked at against the standards set and 

the context for the child and the money invested in the program; • Financial rewards for programs as they move up STAR levels. This includes 

money for the program as a whole as well as resources for teachers and administrators who gain valuable early education degrees and credentials and stay on the job. 

In our system programs ‘‘earn more’’ if they are inclusive (enrolling children within 

infant toddler or preschool Early Intervention or those participating in our subsidized child care program.) These earnings come either in the form of increased 

grants when certain thresholds are reached on inclusion or add-on payments in subsidized child care. 

In short, the focus is a positive one, to assist programs to get better and to experience positive results, including monetarily, when they do this. It is not just about 

ratings but also about resources, including financial resources, and a system of supports. This would create a baseline for the investment of federal dollars in our most 

vulnerable children and in my experience, the community as a whole does better 

when provided with targets, benchmarks and supports to help achieve them. 

To accompany this I would also recommend a rethinking about the rate-setting 

strategies in child care and the role of the federal funding to help accomplish this. 

The current model is deficit based insofar as it assumes that the rates paid will be 

less than the private market would pay. This is fundamentally unfair when you consider the severity of the need of the vulnerable at-risk children served through these 

programs. Elevating the standards and aligning costs with more appropriate 

benchmarked salaries would provide us with better benefits for children and society 

as a whole. 

A New Funding Stream: In addition to embedding a quality approach that recognizes our need to start with the most vulnerable children first, and to connect quality with the use of what we now call subsidized child care, I am a proponent of a 

new federal funding stream that would apply these same principles to help states 

unify across these disparate categorical funding streams that are controlled by the 

federal government directly (Head Start), state government (child care) and local 

schools (Title I, for example, and usually state general fund contribution to local districts). A unifying new funding stream would be standards based, as I mentioned 

above, and would establish unifying high standards for programs to meet to receive 

operating dollars, whether for infant, toddler or preschool age children. This is the 

approach we used in our state for the new PA Pre-K counts program, which set and 

funded an appropriate standard, create a supportive system to keep providers focused and disciplined in their service quality, and effectively erased the difference 

between the child care, school district, and Head Start provider by insisting that 

they all meet and deliver on the same standards, subject to the same monitoring 

and oversight. This new stream would need to combined dollars to enroll more children at the appropriate standard of quality (with oversight so that this is not just 

a theoretical standard) and to assure that providers who can meet the standards 

can all participate. 

Data systems to inform improvement and to help with accountability must be included. We simply cannot do our work without these and they require real resources 

to develop and maintain with appropriate integrity and feedback for the program 

administrators at the local level and for the state’s planning and oversight role. I 

can provide more information on the specifics of what we are doing in Pennsylvania, 

which we believe is innovative insofar as it works across all of our programs, incorporates management planning and financial tools that we must have to do a good 

job with public funds, tracks elements of structural quality (teacher qualifications, 
63 

etc.) and then also provides a way for us to look at children with appropriate protections and confidentiality intact. As we focus on how our children are doing, we are 

interested in quality improvement, i.e. the focus I mentioned on not just the teacher 

qualifications but the ongoing professional development and technical assistance 

supports, the supports to teachers to conduct assessments, and independently 

verified child assessment as well as input from kindergarten teachers and overall 

a way to help us look at where all children stand as they enter and participate in 

kindergarten. 

Representative Woolsey also asked about encouraging states to go beyond a federal quality baseline. Were we to get to the type of programming I am thinking 

about both in child care and with a new funding stream, I think we would see significant results for our children throughout the United States. Additional incentives 

could come to those who exceed the federal standards by way of more money, although I would urge that there be predictability with that so that states could be 

efficient and effective in the use of additional resources. 

Representative Hirono and Woolsey also asked about specific costs for the provision of services. Let me start by focusing on the core cost component, which is the 

price we pay for the staff of a program. Personnel costs will constitute about 70% 

of the total cost, so this question focuses on staff qualification and compensation 

issues. As I stated at the hearing, we have focused on the development of a B.A. 

early education qualified workforce, also demanding teacher certification for our program with the highest standards for 3 and 4 year old children. We benchmark the 

salaries by researching comparable salary structures and then evaluating this 

against the length of the year and length of day issues. This is the approach that 

I believe we should endorse system wide and while I did not do the precise calculations you requested, if you did not receive these from the other witnesses, my staff 

and I would be glad to do them for you. We have quite a bit of experience with this 

type of model building and benchmarking, so please do let me know if you want the 

specific estimated cost elements and our working assumptions for your use. We can 

do this for a 9 hour day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks/year for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, making assumptions using the quality programs we have put into place 

in our home state of Pennsylvania. 

Representative Payne also asked about programs run by nurses and doctors to 

provide low-income parents with reading tips and advice about reading aloud at well 

child visits. As I am sure Representative Payne knows, there is some evidence of 

effectiveness of these efforts and I certainly believe that we should be looking for 

positive ways to use the authority of the health care community to help children 

with their language and literacy development. But I would be cautious about how 

such an initiative would address the major gaps and problems we are now seeing 

for our young learners, and would caution that this type of approach would need 

to be part of a deeper, broader approach that would also meaningfully address the 

core accessibility, quality and accountability of the early learning settings (as discussed above) for the population most at-risk. In addition, for interventions for the 

health care community, it would be important to look other aspects of the health 

care practice, such as assuring that primary care visits include use of screening 

tools such as Ages and Stages that can be used in multiple settings is critical, and 

that the health care community develop a more profound and robust understanding 

of early childhood education so that better counseling can be provided to parents 

and better connections can be built. 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

Washington, DC, March 30, 2009. 

Ms. LILLIAN M. LOWERY, Secretary, 

Delaware Department of Education, Dover, DE. 

DEAR SECRETARY LOWERY: Thank you for testifying at the March 19, 2009 hearing 

of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on 

‘‘Improving Early Childhood Development Policies and Practices.’’ 

Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ), member of the Early Childhood, Elementary 

and Secondary Education Subcommittee has asked that you respond in writing to 

the following question: 

1. Would you support pediatric and early literacy programs like the Prescribe a 

Book Act, a grant program which would train doctors and nurses to provide lowincome parents with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance 

of reading aloud to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book 

at every wellness visit? 
64 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee staff by close of business on Thursday, April 2, 2009—the date on which 

the hearing record will close. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to 

contact us. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

Responses to Questions for the Record From Ms. Lowery 

Question from Representative Mazie Hirono (D-HI) 

1. What do you estimate it would cost to provide high quality early care and education for nine hours per day, five days per week, for 52 weeks, for (1)infants, 

(2)toddlers, and (3)three and four year-olds? 

The fees charged to families for child care vary greatly even in a state as small 

as Delaware. To answer your question, we queried child care programs that are 

rated at the highest level in our quality rating and improvement program, Delaware 

Stars for Early Success. These programs are also accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the profession’s premier accrediting organization. For full day (average nine hours), full week and full year, our programs 

charge private paying parents on average: 

Infants: $12,792 annually 

Toddlers: $11,625 annually 

Three year olds: $9,768 annually 

Four year olds: $9,684 annually 

Economist Steven Barnett of National Institute for Early Education Research 

(NIEER) estimates that the cost of full day, full year high quality preschool for three 

and four year olds would be $12,910. The actual cost of child care and fees charged 

to parents are not the same. The fees charged by Delaware’s programs fees are close 

to that estimate. 

Questions from Representative Lynn C. Woolsey (D-CA) 

1. How much do you think it would cost to provide high quality child care to one 

child for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? 

The Delaware average fee for high quality full day, full year child care for one 

child is $10,967 for children infant through four years of age. The fee charged to 

families is often not the actual cost of the care. 

2. In addition to increasing funding, what changes would you suggest to the Child 

Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to improve quality and access? 

CCDBG should provide the opportunity for states to develop and implement a single, comprehensive early childhood plan incorporating all federally funded early 

childhood programs. Incorporating state funded programs should be encouraged. 

The federal programs to include should be: CCDBG, Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Grant (Maternal Child Health), Title I, Special Education Parts B and 

C, and Head Start. The Early Learning Advisory Councils required in the 2008 

Head Start reauthorization provide a starting point for this work. Delaware is working on developing a comprehensive early childhood system to serve all children birth 

to five years as well as their families. We are challenged by the varied mandates 

associated with federal funding. We are committed to an early childhood system 

that is seamless. 

Developing America’s Potential: An Agenda for High-Quality Child Care, the conceptual framework by a collaborative lead by the National Women’s Law Center 

puts forth the elements of an early childhood system. The essential elements are: 

• Child care licensing standards that include health, safety, and child development to support children’s healthy growth and development and apply to all programs serving young children 

• A quality rating and improvement system that supports families in selecting 

quality child care programs and that supports child care programs to improve and 

sustain quality 

• A professional development system that ensures a work force that is educated 

and skilled in meeting the needs of young children 

3. If the federal government sets a floor or baseline for the minimum level of child 

care quality that states will need to meet, what should be the minimum requirements 

of this system? 

Delaware’s minimum level of child care quality is set by our state child care licensing regulations. Effective licensing systems are based upon clear, measurable 
65 

and research-based regulations that are fairly enforced. Regulations should include 

content to protect children from physical and developmental harm. According to the 

National Association for Regulatory Administration (NARA), regulations vary greatly in the content of what is regulated and the scope of coverage. According to NARA, 

at minimum state licensing regulations must cover: 

• Qualifications of Staff including: 

- State and federal criminal background clearances 

- Child and sexual abuse registry clearances 

- Education level of all staff 

- Specific knowledge in child development and early learning 

- On-going professional development 

- Staff to children ratios and classroom group size 

- Supervision of children 

- Learning activities, equipment, and materials to support children’s early learning aligned with state early learning standards (ELG’s) for infants, toddlers, and 

preschoolers, designed for inclusion of children with special needs 

- Behavior guidance and discipline 

- Parent communication 

• Health and Safety—guided by Caring for Our Children: Child Care National 

Standards by American Academy of Pediatrics and American Public Health Association; including 

- Fire safety 

- Environmental health 

- Reducing the spread of illness 

- Managing illness and injury prevention 

- Health requirements for children and staff 

- Nutrition 

- Transportation safety 

- Emergency preparedness 

- Safe inside and outside play space and equipment 

4. How would you suggest we encourage states to go above and beyond any kind 

of federal quality baseline or floor? 

Delaware’s baseline of quality is its child care licensing regulations, which are 

among the strongest in the country. In 2002, we assessed the quality of our early 

care and education system (child care, preschool, Head Start, state pre-k, and family 

child care) using the Environment Rating Scales, a benchmark higher than our licensing standards. This baseline quality study has allowed us to be strategic and 

focused in our efforts to improve early care and education in our state. Encouraging 

states to evaluate the quality of their system to develop an improvement plan would 

support systematic improvement. 

An incentive program for states to exceed the federal baseline would be helpful. 

We have designed and implemented a quality rating and improvement system for 

child care programs. Our professional development system for early childhood practitioners includes all individuals working in the early care and education field and 

is aligned with the K12 professional development system. However the scope of 

these initiatives is limited due to a lack of resources. We need assistance to implement retention and recruitment mechanisms to build and maintain a workforce able 

to support children’s early learning. Opportunities need to be created in the federal 

child care subsidy program to encourage states to ensure that the child care purchased for these low income children is high quality. 

Question from Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ) 

1. Would you support pediatric and early literacy programs like Prescribe a Book 

Act, a grant program which would train doctors and nurses to provide low-income 

parents with age-appropriate reading tips and advice about the importance of reading aloud to their children as well as give these parents a children’s book at every 

wellness visit? 

The Prescribe a Book Act would allow doctors to use their influential position with 

parents of young children to encourage early literacy experiences. All efforts to educate parents about the importance of reading and talking with their children should 

be supported. Young children who are raised in language rich homes come to school 

with better vocabularies and will become better readers. 

In Delaware we have been working to encourage pediatricians to perform comprehensive screenings consistent with the policies of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) at 9, 18, and 30 months as recommended by the AAP. Children cannot 

learn if problems remain undiagnosed and untreated. Screening tools, such as the 
66 

PEDS or Ages and Stages, allow pediatricians to individualize consultations with 

families targeted to specific concerns identified by the screening process. 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

Washington, DC, March 30, 2009. 

Ms. SUE RUSSELL, President, 

Child Care Services Association, Chapel Hill, NC. 

DEAR MS. RUSSELL: Dear Ms. Russell: Thank you for testifying at the March 19, 

2009 hearing of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary 

Education on ‘‘Improving Early Childhood Development Policies and Practices.’’ 

Representative Mazie Hirono (D-HI), member of the Early Childhood, Elementary 

and Secondary Education Subcommittee and member of the Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness Subcommittee, has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following question: 

1. What do you estimate it would cost to provide high quality early care and education for nine hours per day, five days per week, for 52 weeks, for (1)infants, 

(2)toddlers, and (3)three and four year-olds? 

Representative Lynn C. Woolsey (D-CA), member of the Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee and member of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee, has asked that you respond in writing to the following questions: 

1. How much do you think it would cost to provide high quality child care to one 

child for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year? 

2. In addition to increasing funding, what changes would you suggest to the Child 

Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) to improve quality and access? 

3. If the federal government sets a floor or baseline for the minimum level of child 

care quality that states will need to meet, what should be the minimum requirements of this system? 

4. How would you suggest we encourage states to go above and beyond any kind 

of federal quality baseline or floor? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee staff by close of business on Thursday, April 2, 2009—the date on which 

the hearing record will close. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to 

contact us. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

[Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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