Facts In Action

As part of last year’s state budget, the MA Legislature and Governor created a Council on Early Education and Care, composed of the Commissioners of Education, the Office of Child Care Services, and of Public Health. The Council was charged with developing a “comprehensive plan to coordinate, integrate and streamline publicly funded early education and care administration and functions.” The council held five public forums, soliciting input from nearly 400 individuals who attended. Based on the discussions among the commissioners, as well as their review of the comments and recommendations from the early care and education field, the council made a number of recommendations aimed at improving the coordination of services, strengthening parent involvement, and ensuring the creation of a workforce system to support the education, training, and compensation of teachers.

Specific recommendations of the Council include:

• Adopting uniform program standards, or “Commonwealth standards” for all preschool programs, in place of the current multiple sets of standards used by DOE and OCCS; and establishing similar uniform Commonwealth standards for Infant/Toddler and Family Child Care programs

•Establishing a joint program monitoring plan in order to reduce duplication of effort at the state and local level, as well as the regulatory burden on programs

• Working towards the establishment of a standard state rate for services and uniform financial eligibility criteria for child care subsidies

• Strengthening parent education and involvement through the development of a guidebook and expansion of training opportunities on nurturing children’s development and education

• Creating a single early education and care data collection system to guide policy and program planning. The system would be maintained by OCCS, with information shared across the three state agencies, and with local CPC councils.

• Establishing opportunities for early childhood educators to advance along a career ladder through aligning credits offered by various professional development systems, and supporting scholarships, loans, and federal loan forgiveness programs.

• Ensuring that any increase in the standard state rates for services be used to improve compensation of early care and education providers, including family child care providers.

The Council proposed that it continue as an oversight board that will meet quarterly and continue working towards coordinating policies, program administration and program funding. Providers and advocates will want to keep informed of the Council’s progress and continue to push for improvement.

For full report visit: www.doe.mass.edu/els/news04/childhood_report.pdf

Facts in Action, March 2004