Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, education policymakers have debated the best ways to prevent and remedy learning loss. For our nation’s youngest learners, this loss has been multilayered, with 发展性 and academic losses compounded by diminished access to early childhood programs themselves.
During the 2020-21 school year, for example, the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University documented 历史性下降 in the number of children enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs, with participation in six states decreasing by 30 percent or more. That same year, the nation’s 幼儿园入学率下降 by an estimated 340,000 children, with the steepest declines demonstrated among students from low-income families.
It might be tempting to write off this particular phenomenon as a one-time reaction to the onset of a historic global public health crisis. And there may be some wisdom to this line of thinking, as recent data suggests that public school pre-K and kindergarten enrollment are both demonstrating 反弹迹象。
But the same cannot be said of the American child care industry, where both longstanding and real-time economic forces continue to conspire against providers and families, depressing enrollment and staffing 远低于大流行前水平. There is every reason to believe America’s child care crisis will get worse before it gets better.
Even before the pandemic, child care was a textbook example of a broken market—a faulty three-legged stool in which parents often pay more for infant care than for housing or -州立大学学费, providers squeak by on the narrowest of profit margins and the whole sad affair is balanced on the backs of a low-income workforce 主要由有色人种女性组成.
如果在 COVID 之前，该行业就在边缘摇摇欲坠，大流行威胁要把它推到边缘。由于许多州强制关闭，随后对入学实行公共卫生限制，仅凭借一次性联邦救济金，该行业大部分仍然存在——如果不稳定的话——在我们 2022 年结束时有偿付能力。
除非紧急然而，由于国会和各州的干预，该行业正走向崩溃。
While recent data from the 体育联播平台 (好的体育平台app) suggests that the nation’s overall employment now slightly exceeds its pre-pandemic level, the same is not true of child care, where employment in the sector remains some 8 percent below its early 2020 benchmark.
This isn’t due to lack of parental demand, but rather an increasing inability to attract teachers willing to staff classrooms for the wages the industry can afford to offer. In 2021, the average pay for child care workers in the U.S. was $13.31 per hour, according to the 体育联播平台 (好的体育平台app). That’s roughly $11 an hour below 全国四口之家的“生活工资”为 24.16 美元, according to the living wage calculator developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Like many problems in child care, the question of workforce compensation is a longstanding challenge recently exacerbated by the pandemic as 快餐店, 买球哪个平台好 (中国最强的体育直播平台) and other low-wage employers resort to significant pay increases in order to remain competitive. This is a luxury child care providers cannot easily afford without passing additional cost onto already-overburdened parents.
The result is a loss of service to children and families. With providers unable to field eligible candidates, a growing number of child care classrooms are currently sitting vacant, even in the face of unprecedented demand. Indeed, recent reporting suggests that one rural Oregon provider has 将冷冻胚胎放在其长达数年的等待名单上。
一次性 COVID 救济金将于 2024 年到期，目前正在维持该行业，大流行病最重要的经验教训损失势必会波及早教部门本身，威胁到数百万美国父母的劳动力参与、他们雇主的生产力和各州经济。
幸运的是，越来越多的证据表明政策制定者在这方面的意识；学习的迹象。
In Congress, following a contentious partisan debate over the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda (which would have infused historic new funding for both child care and pre-K), fourteen Republican Senators, led by South Carolina’s Tim Scott, have 引入立法 to reauthorize and expand the nation’s Child Care and Development Block Grant. (Companion legislation was 引入 in the U.S. House on December 1, 2022.) In what can only be described as a bipartisan compromise in the making, the bill mirrors significant aspects of the Biden plan: Expanding access to child care subsidies, capping parental co-payments at 7 percent of annual income and resetting the methodology by which states set their own rates to providers.
Meanwhile in New Mexico, voters recently demonstrated just how much bipartisan support such investments enjoy, 通过宪法修正案 that will infuse an estimated $150 million annually into early childhood programs. The measure passed with 70 percent of the vote, far outpacing the 52 percent garnered by the state’s Democratic governor in her successful reelection bid. The key takeaway: Early childhood investments enjoy the overwhelming support of Democrats and Republicans alike.
This bipartisan spirit extends to governors and state legislatures as well. Maryland’s Democratic Governor-Elect Wes Moore 成功运行 on a platform that included the expansion of pre-K, while Arkansas’ Republican Governor-Elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders 做了同样的. In September, North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum 宣布了拟议的8000万美元框架 to expand access to child care subsidies for working families, coupled with rate increases to providers designed to stabilize the industry. Meanwhile both Alabama and 华盛顿特区, have committed significant resources to reforming child care compensation, boosting annual provider pay by $12,000 and $14,000 respectively.
如果这种势头加速，国家可能仍会避免在另一边等待它的灾难迫在眉睫的 COVID 资金悬崖。如果没有，那么在大流行病最显着的教育损失中，获得高质量儿童保育的机会在历史上下降也不要感到惊讶。
