Taking Care of Our Children (1998)

The Cornell Early Childhood Program is well positioned to help New York communities deal with the fall-out from welfare reform and universal pre-K legislation. Such active involvement in addressing current issues provides an ideal climate for training undergraduates in early childhood education. When President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, little thought had been given to who would care for the children. 1998 alone approximately 300,000 additional children in New York State will need spaces in an already strained day care system as their parents make the transition from welfare to work. As if that's not enough, last August Governor George Pataki signed into law the Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program, which guarantees that by 2002 the state's annual cohort of 250,000 four-year-olds will have access to free early childhood educational programs. Both laws will have a profound effect on the lives of New York's children. addition they will affect day care providers, educators, and school districts throughout the state. Welfare reform is the most dramatic change in our social welfare system since the 1930s, yet nobody knows how parents will get the child care needed to take advantage of new jobs, says Moncrieff Cochran, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Early Childhood Program. This has significance not only for parents and the communities they live in but for the development of these children. Where are they going? What kinds of experiences are they having? And how can communities improve the quality of those experiences? The Cornell Early Childhood Program is well positioned to answer those and other questions about providing child care and to offer expertise on planning and running pre-kindergarten programs in communities across the state. The program, located in the Department of Human Development, supports providers of day care and other early childhood educational experiences so they can offer children unprecedented access to high-quality learning and care. the broadest sense its mission is to promote a greater understanding of young children and their families and to contribute to policies and practices that enhance child growth and development. With its research, teaching, and outreach components, the program has most recently been able to serve as a resource for New York communities dealing with the fall-out from welfare reform and universal pre-K legislation. Our philosophy is that communities should have choices in the types of programs available to young children, notes Cochran. In contrast to coming in from the outside and telling communities what to do, we see our role as a resource to others while they engage in the process of looking at their own strengths, in figuring out what works best in a particular situation. response to the universal pre-K legislation, Susan Hicks, a senior extension associate, alerted Cornell Cooperative Extension educators across the state about the content of the legislation and the importance of participation on local pre-K policy advisory boards. She continues to provide research-based information about what constitutes high-quality care and education to school districts through county extension offices. Hicks also heads a statewide effort focused on teacher development. One of the critical issues raised by universal pre-K, Cochran says, is a recognition that a developmentally appropriate practice for preschool-age children is philosophically and pedagogically different than that for older children. Hicks is working to bring together staff from day care resource and referral agencies, local offices of the Department of Social Services, professionals from the New York Association for the Education of Young Children, staff of the New York State Department of Education, and members of the National Educators Association to develop a plan for ensuring that new pre-K teachers have access to appropriate professional development. …