Search

Low-income families' ability to sustain employment while ensuring the care and safety of their young children is profoundly affected by federal policies regarding access to subsidies and programs, such as Head Start. The current structure of these policies evolved during the decades following the 1990 enactment of the Child Care and Development Block Grant – a period that also witnessed expansion of the Head Start program and growth of state pre-K programs. Using data from two nationally representative surveys of child care providers conducted in 1990 and 2012, this paper examines trends in the supply, sponsorship, and funding structure of publicly-funded child care centers during this period of active policymaking in early care and education. These changes include major expansion in the number and share of child care centers receiving public funds, as well as in the number of children enrolled in these centers; relatively more rapid growth among for-profit vs. non-profit centers in the publicly-funded sector, but consistency in that the major share of publicly-funded centers remained non-profit; and substantial growth in publicly-funded centers receiving vouchers as a primary funding mechanism. These trends carry the potential to enhance the reach of quality improvement efforts tagged to public funds and may have increased low-income families' choice of centers with differing hours, in a range of locations, that serve a wider age range of children, as well as children supported with differing funding sources. Whether the growing supply of publicly-funded centers has actually kept pace with demand, let alone enhanced access of low-income families to care that supports their children's development, are critical, next-stage questions to address.

Preschool teachers are widely acknowledged as critical to supporting the school readiness of children, yet remain under-paid relative to their education levels and have high rates of turnover relative to the U.S. workforce as a whole. Federal and state policies affect preschool teachers through education and training requirements, as well as guidelines affecting subsidy reimbursement rates, for example. Because these policies are focused on low-income children, they disproportionately experience the impacts. The present study describes trends affecting the racial-ethnic composition, education and experience, and compensation and turnover of preschool teachers of 3–5-year olds in ECE programs receiving and not receiving public funds between 1990 and 2012 – two years when nationally representative data are available. Data sources are the Profile of Child Care Settings (1990) and the National Survey of Early Care and Education (2012). Results indicate that, while the experience and education levels of teachers have increased over this 22-year period, wages have remained flat. Access to health insurance, in contrast, has improved over time and turnover rates have declined. The race-ethnic composition of the preschool teaching workforce also shifted during this time period, revealing a notable loss of Black teachers. Comparisons of programs receiving and not receiving public funds, and among those receiving different sources of public funds – CCDBG/CCDF subsidies, Head Start funds, pre-K funds -- identified disparities within survey years, as well as differing trends over time. Results have implications for policies to support teachers and young children.

One strand of home visiting research investigates efficacy while another investigates under what conditions programs achieve outcomes. The current study follows the latter approach. Using a within-program design in a sample of 11 home-based sites in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study, this study found that three components of home visits (quantity of involvement including number of home visits, duration in the program, length of visits and intensity of service; quality of engagement including global ratings of engagement by staff and ratings of engagement during each home visit; and the extent to which home visits were child focused) represented distinguishable aspects of home visit services. Demographic variables predicted components of involvement, and home visit involvement components were differentially related to outcomes at 36 months, after controlling for demographic/family factors and earlier functioning on the same measure. Only one quantity of involvement variable (duration) predicted improvements in home language and literacy environments at 36 months. Quality of involvement variables were negative predictors of maternal depressive symptoms at 36 months. Finally, the proportion of time during the visit devoted to child-focused activities predicted children's cognitive and language development scores, parent HOME scores, and parental support for language and learning when children were 36 months of age. Implications for home visiting programs and policies are discussed.

Sometimes implementing evaluation designs that involve random assignment or strong nonrandomized comparison group designs is not feasible. When this is the case, several other types of comparisons may offer credible, though not conclusive, evidence on program effects. This article describes three approaches—comparisons of the outcomes of the treatment group with a national sample, comparisons of the outcomes of program participants and nonparticipants, and dose-response analyses—and illustrates their use in the evaluation of the School-Based Adolescent Health Care Program. The findings suggest that if outcomes are measured before and after the intervention, comparisons of the treatment group outcomes to outcomes for a national sample may provide valid estimates of program effects. The other two types of comparisons produced implausible and unstable estimates of program effects. Because of the selection bias inherent in these two methods, researchers cannot count on being able to produce plausible estimates of program effects with such comparisons.