And some leave for kindergarten knowing how to read. 

“But it’s not because we’re hounding them,” said Heather Lyons, the program’s coordinator. “It’s because we’re constantly trying to help them pursue this love of learning.”

That careful mix of academics and social skills is one reason demand for the program is strong. Parents start calling in January to ask about registering their kids for the fall, Lyons said. Lamar’s program is part a statewide pre-K initiative now serving a quarter of the state’s 4-year-olds — up from about 3% six years ago.

The state helped drive pre-K enrollment nationwide to record levels in 2022-23, according to the recent from the National Institute for Early Education Research. Following sharp declines during the pandemic, participation in preschool is back on the upswing. Over 1.6 million children attended public pre-K last school year, with the percentage of 3-and 4-year-olds hitting new highs. 

Expanding access, however, doesn’t mean states have to cut back on quality by lowering training requirements for teachers or increasing class sizes, the report’s authors note.

They point to Mississippi as an example of a state that’s managed to boost enrollment while maintaining high standards.

In fact, the state is among the few that have written the institute’s “quality benchmarks” . Those include having teachers with a bachelor’s degree, assistants with early-childhood training, and screenings for vision, hearing and health problems.

“We’re keeping an eye on them,” said Allison Friedman-Krauss, an assistant research professor at the institute. “They started small with a focus on quality. They are also working hard to fund more coaches to support teachers, so they’re committed to quality in that way.”

There are now 36 early learning collaboratives — local partnerships that include school districts, Head Start providers and child care centers — that offer the pre-K program.

“We’re moving out of the baby stage and into the teen stage of the law,” said Rachel Canter, executive director Mississippi First, an advocacy group. She added that including Head Start, the federal preschool program serving children in poverty, is one reason the program receives bipartisan support. “People across the political spectrum see how it can benefit their own community. That has allowed us to expand it statewide while also making sure kids who need it most are getting access.”

Due partly to her advocacy, the legislature has increased annual spending on the program five times since 2016.

Now the challenge is to increase the number of child care providers that participate and continue to expand, she said. 

In communities without a program, parents are often left with lower-quality options or end up juggling their child between multiple caregivers during the day. Other parents, Canter said, might take fewer hours at work to stay home with their children. “That’s a terrible situation for a working family.”

Supporting the workforce

Advocates and policymakers are often the forces behind efforts to expand early-childhood education. But in — another state making major moves in pre-K — it was the voters who demanded more access when they passed a by an overwhelming 73%. 

The law creates permanent funding for early learning, resulting in the legislature appropriating last year. School districts, child care providers and tribal governments are now using some of those funds to by boosting teacher pay to match what K-12 teachers receive, using high-quality curriculum and giving preschoolers an extended school day.

The state also provides for teachers still earning their degree and pays for substitutes so teachers can take time off to attend courses.  

“The early childhood workforce has just been historically undervalued,” said Sara Mickelson, deputy secretary of the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department. “We’re really a state that is supporting access to degrees.”

Meanwhile, 70% of New Mexico 4-year-olds now attend public preschool, making the state one of just a handful that serves at least two-thirds of eligible students.

But states serving the most preschoolers — like California, Florida and Texas —  are not always examples of high quality.

California spent over $830 million in 2022-23 on preschool and is moving toward making all 4-year-olds eligible for its transitional kindergarten program by the fall of 2025. That figure accounted for over 70% of the total $1.17 billion increase in spending for the whole country, said Steve Barnett, the institute’s senior co-director.

But since it began a decade ago, the transitional program has met only a few of the institute’s 10 quality indicators. Teachers weren’t required to have special training in educating young children and class sizes were far larger than recommended — , compared with the institute’s benchmark of 20.

“There were no guidelines from the state,” said Rahele Arakabi, director of educational services for the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento. Classrooms, she said, looked more like first grade than pre-K, with students sitting in rows facing the whiteboard. “Teachers really were in that mode of drill and kill.” 

But the outlook for the program has improved. Statewide, class sizes are now capped at 24 students with two teachers; and charters that don’t comply face fines. By the 2025-26 school year, ratios will be set at the institute’s standard of 10-to-1. The state also offers a new credential for educators teaching preschool through third grade, and by next year, teachers will be required to have or experience in early-childhood education. 

In Washington Unified, which serves 130 transitional kindergarten students in six classes, ratios are even lower, 8-to-1. Some teachers who worked in the district’s separate preschool program have already earned a credential to teach in transitional kindergarten.

Arakabi used a $400,000 to make classrooms more child-friendly, with age-appropriate furniture and play areas. She implemented a new curriculum specifically for pre-K and provided a year of coaching and support on child development. The investment, she said, is making a difference.

“My worry was always buying curriculum and then it just sits there in the shrink wrap,” she said. “This group of teachers is not easy to please,  but they’re actually using it.”

Thirty-two percent of 4-year-olds attended a state-funded program in the 2021-22 school year — up from 28% the year before, when the National Institute for Early Education Research, which publishes reported that COVID had “erased” a decade of growth in public pre-K. 

A recent push in several states to expand universal pre-K, meanwhile, could more than make up for that decline in the coming years, said Steven Barnett, founder and senior co-director of the research center based at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

California, Colorado, Hawaii and New Mexico recently passed laws to provide universal access to early-childhood education while governors in , and have all taken initial steps in that direction. 

“I don’t think we’ve had a wave like this. That dramatically changes the landscape,” Barnett said. Georgia was the first state to launch a universal pre-K program in 1992, followed by Oklahoma in 1998, but Barnett said, “That’s in the distant past.”

The institute’s latest report — its 20th — provides some perspective on how far states have come since researchers began tracking the data in 2001. Forty-five states now have publicly funded pre-K programs, seven more than when the institute issued its first report. The percentage of 4-year-olds served and the overall amount states are spending on pre-K has more than doubled.

But in some areas, there’s been little change. Taking inflation into account, average per-child spending has been relatively flat. And states only serve 6% of 3-year-olds. In New York City, where former Mayor Bill de Blasio aimed to make pre-K for 3-year-olds universal, his successor Eric Adams has from the city’s budget, citing the expiration of pandemic relief funds. 

While overall state spending increased to nearly $10 billion, about $400 million of that was in COVID relief funding. Barnett, however, said he doesn’t expect states to cut funding when the funds run out because most of the expansion nationwide stems from voter-approved initiatives.

“Florida voters amended their constitution. That’s why they have universal pre-K,” he said during a call with reporters Wednesday. “At the local level, cities all over the country have taken it on themselves.”

The Biden administration is also urging districts to spend more of their Title I funds on pre-K and has proposed a in the 2024 budget to expand pre-K in Title I schools.

While more states are adding universal pre-K, Barnett doesn’t see the same emphasis on improving quality. During the pandemic, several states paused efforts to strengthen programs and widely granted waivers from certain staff training requirements because of teacher shortages.

Delaware, for example, hasn’t yet reinstated classroom observations to help teachers improve, and North Carolina stopped limiting long-term substitutes to 12 weeks a year, according to the report. Substitutes are required to have an associate’s degree, but not a bachelor’s. 

By noting these exceptions, Barnett said he hopes the report will “encourage states to not make this leniency permanent.” 

Five states — Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi and Rhode Island — meet all 10 of the institute’s quality standards, the same as last year. Among the indicators are a strong curriculum that includes literacy and math, teachers with at least a B.A. and a staff-child ratio of 1 to 10.

Eleven states meet fewer than half of the standards, including three that serve the largest number of children: California, Florida and Texas. 

Polis calls parents

California’s existing state preschool program for low-income children has been in place since 2008. The state then launched transitional kindergarten in 2012, but it was originally available only to 4-year-olds with fall birthdays who missed the state’s Sept. 1 kindergarten eligibility date. The state is now gradually expanding the program, which will be open to all 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year.

A shows enrollment in transitional kindergarten this school year fell well below projections, but that wasn’t the case everywhere. The Oxnard School District in Ventura County, up the coast from Los Angeles, expanded its program to younger students ahead of the state’s timeline. Leaders planned for nine classes and ended up having to open 25 due to demand. 

“California will have the largest preschool program for 4-year-olds in the U.S.,” Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, an advocacy organization, said during the press call.

Even though K-12 enrollment in California and several other states is declining, Barnett said that’s actually a boon for early childhood programs because states can serve more preschoolers without having to increase spending.

In Colorado, voters in 2020 approved a nicotine tax to fund universal pre-K, and last year Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, creating the program, which will provide up to $4,300 per child annually.

He’s also been reaching out to families who secured a spot this fall. He called Mitchell Smith of Colorado Springs about two weeks ago to congratulate him on getting his first choice school for his daughter Arrow. 

“I was blown away,” said Smith, a high school science teacher who also has a daughter in kindergarten. “Monday through Friday, [Arrow] sees her sister go to school. She wants to know, ‘When am I going to go?’”

Allie Caracillo, another Colorado parent, will be able to keep her daughter Giovanna in the KinderCare center that she already attends in Denver. But now the state-funded pre-K program will cover 15 hours a week.

“It was a no-brainer,” she said. She thinks she’ll be able to save several hundred dollars a week.

‘We’ve got a model’

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy is allocating $120 million in federal relief funds and expanding classes to as part of his pledge to phase in a universal system. The model will expand on the state’s — mandated by the state supreme court in 1998 as a remedy to longstanding inequities in the state’s poorest school districts.

Barnett, who is involved in planning the program’s expansion, urged leaders not to cut back on components that have contributed to positive gains for students, such as class sizes of 15 with a teacher and an aide. A showed that two years of attendance reduced half of the achievement gap between low-income children and those from more affluent families.

“We’ve got a model. We know it works. Let’s just do it,” Barnett said.

He predicts lawmakers without plans to offer universal access will likely feel pressure from neighboring states.

“If you’re a legislator in Oregon and Washington,” he said, “and California has universal pre-K, do you just say, ‘That’s nice, but we’re not going to do it’?”

This Week’s Top Story

FDA Committee Recommends COVID Vaccines for Young Kids

• The Food and Drug Administration’s committee of independent vaccine experts from Moderna and Pfizer for infants and toddlers.
• “ is administered in three doses for kids ages six months to 4-years-old. The shots are dosed at 3 micrograms, one-tenth of what adults receive.”
  • “After two doses, Pfizer’s vaccine was about only 28% effective in preventing symptomatic infection in children aged 6 months through 4 years old. , but the finding was based on only 10 cases out of a subset of the 1,678 trial participants,” The New York Times reports.�� 
• “ is administered in two doses for kids six months to 5-years-old. The shots are dosed at 25 micrograms, one-fourth of what adults receive.”
• “Parents will likely be able to get their kids immunized , though appointments might be limited at first as the vaccination program ramps up, according to Dr. Ashish Jha, who oversees the White House’s response to the pandemic.”
• The best analysis and takeaways come, as they always do, from and .��
• Learn more and watch the meeting.
• Fact Sheet: .��

The Big Three

Students Need Summer School. Some Districts Can’t Staff It:

• “In Virginia, state officials canceled a small selective summer program for lack of staff. In Wisconsin, school system leaders notified 700 students they could not be enrolled in summer classes because there weren’t enough teachers. And in rural Oregon, Superintendent Ginger Redlinger is still hiring for programs that start in June and August.”
• “St. Louis Public Schools are paying teachers $40-an-hour this year, from roughly $25-an-hour last year. Support-staff pay jumped $10-an-hour above the usual rate.”
• “To spark student interest, summer classes in St. Louis are being framed as “summer camp,” with hands-on experiential learning for all and Friday field trips for younger kids. More than 6,000 students signed on, bigger than last year — and about 30% of the 20,000-student district.”
• “Pay increases are not without trade-offs. Pushing up hourly pay rates in one area can mean that nearby school systems struggle to hire staff, said Ronn Nozoe, chief executive of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. ‘Neighboring districts suffer,’ he said.”

Pandemic Babies Are Behind

• “Emerging evidence reveals an uptick in developmental delays and challenging behaviors in children belonging to the so-called ‘COVID generation.’ Born during or shortly before the pandemic, many of these children are talking, walking and interacting later and less frequently. They’re also more prone to certain behaviors, like outbursts, physical aggression and separation anxiety,” .
• “It’s unclear how much the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic fallout are to blame. But experts note many young children in recent years have had uneven access to health and child care and relatively little exposure to the outside world.”
• “It could be years before researchers can adequately measure whether the pandemic had any material, long-term effect on early childhood development. In many cases, .”
• “National data shows a dip in referrals for early intervention services at the beginning of the pandemic, as well as in visits to primary care physicians. In many cases, the children who need the services most are least likely to receive them. The disparities are likely to become worse as demand rebounds, experts say.”

Florida Hasn’t Ordered Any Pediatric COVID Shots Yet

• “ to ensure coronavirus vaccines for young children are delivered as soon as regulators authorize their use — except for one,” McClatchy reports.
• “ to request delivery of COVID-19 pediatric vaccines for children under 5, guaranteeing a delay in access for parents across the state, according to two U.S. government sources.”
• “Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for the Florida Department of Health, confirmed the department ‘chose not to participate’ in the vaccination program because the state health department is not following federal public health recommendations.
• “Parents in Florida seeking vaccines for their children will still have two options to access the shots. Some community health centers have ordered vaccines directly through the federal government. And federal pharmacy partners will also have supply, although several chains will be prioritizing children ages 3 and up.”

Federal Updates

U.S. Education Department 

• Creates “” (Read more about the new council at ����Ӱ��) 

Senators Strike Bipartisan Gun Safety Agreement: 

• Via . Four key provisions: 
  • Enhanced background checks for buyers under 21; 
  • Funding to incentivize states to pass “red flag” laws; 
  • Funding for mental health and school safety, which could be as much as $7 billion for community mental health clinics.
  • Closing the so-called boyfriend loophole, which presently allows people to buy guns even if they were convicted of domestic violence against a partner they were dating (but not married to).
• Reactions:
  • : “It does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction. With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay. Let’s get this done.”
  • : “We must move swiftly to advance this legislation, because if a single life can be saved, it is worth the effort.”
  • : “The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation. I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country.”

City & State News

Iowa

• requirements at schools, daycares.

Nevada

• The Nevada Board of Regents approved the selection of .

Pennsylvania

• “ = math proficiency?”

Wisconsin

• “Madison’s One City Schools plans to try something different this fall to keep its educators fresh for the coming school year.” 
• “On Friday, the organization revealed a switch to a .”
• “Students will keep the same Monday-Friday routine. Teachers will rotate alternative days off from one another, so that there are always teachers in the building.”

COVID-19 Research

Data Highlight Greater Impact of COVID-19 vs. Flu in Children 

• A study in JAMA Network Open comparing COVID-19 versus flu in kids 5 years old and younger finds that the
• “We observed more [pediatric intensive care unit] admissions from SARS-CoV-2 between April 2020 and June 2021 than from influenza during the preceding 2 years.”

Information Campaigns and School Closures Were the Most Effective Measures 

• “Among the so-called non-pharmaceutical measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, . They reduced the reproduction rate, which is the average number of people infected by an infected person, by 0.35 and 0.24, respectively.”
• “Nevertheless, the high effectiveness of a measure does not automatically translate into a recommendation for political implementation if it has, as in the case of school closures, strong negative effects,” says study author Alexander Sandkamp from the Kiel Institute.”
• “Wearing masks did not produce statistically measurable success in the first wave of COVID-19, but did so in the second wave.”

Predicting the Fall and Boosters

• Via
• “One way to get ahead of the virus is to anticipate the dominant variant this winter, just like we do with the flu each year.”
• “It’s suggested that we adapt this process for COVID-19. And I agree. But I can’t highlight enough how incredibly challenging this is right now. For several reasons”
• “Bigger questions (beyond the FDA) include:”
• “Payment. Congress has not passed COVID-19 funding, so we don’t have money to pay for everyone’s new boosters in the U.S. Not everyone would get in line given vaccine hesitancy, but the discrepancy and the implications are important.”
• “Vaccination rate. All of this science is great. But only 48% of people in the U.S. have their original booster. Only 23% of eligible people have their second booster. Why aren’t we leveraging social science as much as bench science to increase effectiveness of vaccine rollouts?”

More Notable Research

• in Large Metropolitan Areas: “Our results indicate that places are not dangerous on their own; instead, transmission risk is a combination of both the characteristics of the place/setting and the behavior of individuals who visit it.”
• Unexplained hepatitis is not more common in U.S. children than before the pandemic, .
• , primary school reading assessments show
• For students below grade level, , according to a report from Zearn.

Viewpoints

Teacher Survey

The Christensen Institute released : 

Teachers Leaving Jobs During Pandemic Find ‘Fertile’ Ground in New School Models

• Via ����Ӱ��: “Microschools and online programs are attracting educators who valued the flexibility they gained during remote learning.“
• “For the first time in their lives, they have options,” said Jennifer Carolan, a former teacher in the Chicago area and now a partner with Reach Capital. The investment firm supports online programs and ed tech ventures, such as Outschool, with thousands of online classes, and Paper, a tutoring platform that states and districts have adopted using federal relief funds.”
• “Traditional schools, Carolan said, haven’t kept pace with what teachers want in the workplace, particularly flexible schedules. And after a “hellish two years,” some are gravitating toward positions that personalize learning for students while offering a better work-life balance.”
• Related: Microschools Are Catching On, reports .

How 100 Large and Urban Districts Are (and Aren’t) Engaging Stakeholders: CRPE in ����Ӱ��.

• “Of the 100 districts in our database, 68 have publicly shared plans for spending their relief dollars, and 57 have created engagement strategies for soliciting community input, according to our analysis this spring. That’s an increase from 47 districts with engagement strategies in place last year at this time. Of those 57 districts, 29 designed at least two pathways for community feedback.”

Lessons for Policymakers from Frustrated Parents: 

• Via leveraging some focus group research
• “Work with parents to better understand their needs: Policymakers and education leaders must increase efforts to reach out to families to better understand their needs.”  
• “Increase the number of educational options available to families: Policymakers should provide families with educational options both during and beyond the regular school day. These options, in addition to school choice, should include more flexible and supplemental learning options like after-school programs, tutoring, and summer activities.”  
• “Inform families about educational options that could meet their child’s needs: Policymakers and advocates should redouble their efforts to provide families with clear, reliable information to better inform their education decision-making.”
• “Reduce barriers to access: Policymakers should work with parents to identify barriers to educational opportunities in their communities and tailor solutions to mitigate or eliminate them.”

…And on a Reflective Note

Classmates Wouldn’t Sign His Yearbook

• .
• “No one helped me when I was in that situation,” said Maya, 14. “So I wanted to be there for him.”
• “She rounded up her friends, all of whom were eager to give Brody a confidence boost. The impromptu initiative spread throughout the school, and on May 25, the day after the yearbooks were distributed, a swarm of older students filed into Brody’s sixth-grade classroom, ready to sign his yearbook.”
• “Maya, for her part, promised Brody that beyond signing his yearbook, she would continue to be there for him. She gave him her phone number, and they have already met for ice cream with a few of her friends. They bonded over their shared experience with bullies, and she imparted words of wisdom: ‘Whoever is trying to bring you down is already below you,’ she told Brody.”
• .
• Related: Avery Dixon shared how he was bullied. .

ICYMI @The74

Weekend Reads: In case you missed them, our top five stories of the week:

• They Ran for their Lives: Panic at DC March Inflames the Trauma of Parkland
• Student Voice: Graduating After a Third COVID-Disrupted School Year
• Documentary: An Philadelphia Teacher Helps His Community Capture Hope & Promise in Art

For even more COVID policy and education news, .

Disclosure: John Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to . Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. He sits on ����Ӱ��’s board of directors.

Before the pandemic, states were serving 44% of 4-year-olds. Now they might not reach 40% over the next 10 years, the report found. 

“The pandemic erased an entire decade of progress in preschool enrollment,” said Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, which released the report. He added that it was “minority children and children from low-income families who lost out most.” 

As in past years, this year’s pre-K report provides an overview of how many children states serve, how much they spend per child and the quality features of programs that support children’s learning and development.

But this 19th edition also conveys the extent of the pandemic’s blow to states’ pre-K systems. Concerns about COVID and reluctance to participate in a virtual program topped the reasons thousands of parents decided to skip pre-K.

“It’s unacceptable to go back to where we were in March 2020,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “Our littlest learners need more.”

Cardona and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined the Institute’s Monday call with reporters, signaling the Biden administration’s push for a larger federal role in public pre-K.

‘First order of business‘

Becerra highlighted passage of the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which many states have used to offset state budget cuts, pay pre-K teachers and keep programs open in spite of enrollment loss. Without federal relief, spending cuts to pre-K would have been much worse, the report said. 

But Biden began his administration with a pledge to do much more — provide universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds. When last year’s annual report was released, early education advocates were still hopeful Democrats in Congress would pass Build Back Better, a domestic spending package that included $400 billion for child care and pre-K. 

Momentum stalled, and the war in Ukraine and inflation have pushed some of the president’s education priorities aside. The Senate education committee recently held to draw attention to families’ struggles to find quality, affordable programs for young children, but a divided Congress is unlikely to address the issues soon.

Republican leaders don’t agree with Biden’s plan to address those challenges. Their would expand the existing federal block grant for child care. Democrats are still pushing to pass without Republicans’ support.

Barnett said he hopes early-childhood legislation is the Senate’s “first order of business” this week, and added in the media call that the House plan, which passed in November “could find widespread support in Congress.”

Last Thursday, Biden returned to the topic at a Democratic fundraiser in Seattle, citing research findings on high-quality pre-K and the benefits of young children attending school — “not daycare.” 

Overall, state funding declined for pre-K for the first time since 2014, by 3% — almost $255 million, adjusted for inflation. Twenty-six states cut state funding by at least 2%, including those with long-running universal pre-K programs, like Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. 

Arkansas, however, was among the 14 states that increased spending by at least 2%. The state kept its Arkansas Better Chance classrooms open the whole year. Individual classrooms only closed if there was a COVID outbreak.

“We continued to push through,” said Lori Bridges, director of early childhood programs for the Arkansas Department of Education. While enrollment fell by about 2,800 children at the beginning of the year, parents gradually became more comfortable with safety procedures, Bridges said, and by the end of the year, 87% of the slots were filled. 

The report includes Arkansas among the 10 states “within striking distance” of serving at least 70% of their low-income 4-year-olds. The state, which targets its program to children in poverty, served over 10,400 4-year-olds last year, and would need to enroll about 8,600 more to reach 70%.

Federal funding for universal pre-K, Bridges said, would allow the state to offer free pre-K to middle class families, but she added that with limited staffing and classroom space, her state currently couldn’t implement such an expansion even if it had the funds to do it. “There would have to be some kind of phase-in,” she said.

The House passed President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan Friday morning by a 220 to 213 vote. One Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voted against it.

The $1.75 trillion package — which Democrats say creates a vital social safety net for American families but Republicans call a reckless spending spree during a period of inflation — now heads to the Senate, where its future remains uncertain. The legislation would fund universal pre-K, child care and K-12 educator preparation programs over a 10-year period.

“The impact of this proposal on educational equity, excellence and opportunity — from cradle to college and career — will be nothing short of transformative,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its  of the bill, showing the programs would increase the deficit by $367 billion over the 10-year period, a figure that doesn’t include additional revenue from tax enforcement. 

The House is expected to vote next week on President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending plan, but its future in the Senate remains uncertain with some progressives wanting to add more programs to the package and two budget-minded Democrats likely to oppose those efforts.

For now, however, Democrats are celebrating the passage of half of Biden’s legislative agenda — the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that includes funds to expand broadband access, replace diesel school buses and rid schools of lead pipes.

Some of those efforts are well-timed. Just last week, a released from the National Association of State Boards of Education showed that while 45 states have voluntary or mandatory lead testing programs for schools, only 15 provide any financial support for mitigation.

“The influx of money would help bolster state and local efforts for lead testing in schools and provide more opportunities for states to engage in the work,” said Renee Rybak Lang, spokeswoman for the association.

States, she said, will need “clear guidance” on how schools and districts can apply for the funds — $15 billion for replacing lead pipes and $23.5 billion for water treatment projects, fixing pipes and other work to provide clean drinking water.

Families and educators, however, have been more invested in whether the social spending plan — which includes funds for universal pre-K, child care, tax credits and educator preparation programs — makes it to Biden’s desk. For three months, progressive Democrats in the House delayed a vote on the infrastructure bill, arguing they wanted to pass both parts of Biden’s agenda at the same time. But it didn’t work out that way. While they passed the infrastructure bill Friday night, and Biden said he will , the House was only able to pass a rule setting up a future vote for the so-called “Build Back Better” plan. Moderates aren’t ready to sign off on it until they can ensure cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office square with what the president has told them about its impact on the deficit.

To advance the bill, Democrats are using a process known as reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority to pass. But some observers suggest it could be well into the holiday season before a vote is scheduled in the Senate. And if changes are made, it would have to go back to the House for approval.

“I do have faith that when we get it out of the House, it will pass in the Senate,” said Julie Kashen, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. “What’s driving me right now is a lot of hope and the knowledge that there are tons of constituents in West Virginia and Arizona who will benefit from what’s in there.”

Those are the home states of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two fiscally conservative Democrats who drove the cost of the package down from its original $3.5 trillion price tag. 

To reach that deal, the White House agreed to extend a higher child tax credit for one year instead of four, eliminated the president’s plan for free community college and took out over $80 billion for school construction. Nonetheless, Manchin, of West Virginia, has said he still for the $1.75 trillion plan, regardless of what the Congressional Budget Office concludes.

‘Not the first time’

Losing funds for building and renovating schools has been the biggest disappointment for K-12 leaders, who say it’s not just lead pipes but also mold, asbestos, leaky roofs, and inadequate heating and air-conditioning systems that threaten the health and safety of students. 

“Members of Congress cannot keep punting on funding the second largest infrastructure sector in the country and claim they want global competitiveness, high-quality educators and equitable academic outcomes for students of color,” AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said in a strongly worded statement when the $1.75 trillion agreement was announced. 

The association is asking the U.S. Department of Education to give districts more time to spend relief funds from the American Rescue Plan, which provided $122 billion for K-12, on facility needs. According to the organization’s September , a quarter of respondents said the 2024 deadline to spend the money is an obstacle because contractors are hesitant to work under that timeline as long as supply chain disruption is driving up costs and making it hard to get materials.

A spokesman for AASA said the organization has not received a response. But in a statement, the department emphasized the American Rescue Plan’s “historic and unprecedented investment in education” and said it would “continue to work with state and local education communities” to provide support, but did not say whether it would extend the deadline.

Nation ‘not partisan’ on pre-K 

While public schools won’t see more federal funds for construction anytime soon, states would potentially have up to $50 billion over the next three years for in the child care sector — including expanding and renovating facilities. Child care centers are among the settings that would accommodate new universal pre-K classrooms.

The combined $400 billion for child care and pre-K in the social spending bill would lower or eliminate the cost of care and preschool for many families. But experts say it’s still hard to predict if states that have never offered public pre-K — such as Idaho, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming — would participate.

“They don’t think they need it,” Steve Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said about those states. While the bill would allow locally funded programs to participate, Barnett added that governors would “have to decide whether they would rather be in control or turn it down and have localities go their own way.”

When pressed recently on whether he supports universal pre-K, Wyoming Republican said he thinks Biden’s policies aren’t helping people. 

But Kashen of the Century Foundation noted that many Republican governors were early supporters of state-funded pre-K. While the bill in Washington is partisan, she said, “the nation is not partisan on this issue.”

Over the next year, they visited dairy farms, brushed Highland cattle’s long hair, and branched off to learn about elk, deer and llamas. They read stories about cows, counted cows and compared different breeds. That’s the kind of child-led learning experience that Nelson plans to continue this fall when she participates for the first time in Vermont’s Universal Prekindergarten program.

“We base our curriculum on children’s interests,” said Nelson, who has 26 years of experience in the field and even has former students who enroll their own children in her program. “We know the kids’ learning style. We have a history with them.”

Allowing providers such as Nelson to participate in a publicly funded pre-K system could speed up the timeline for providing universal access to 3- and 4-year-olds — along with tuition-free community college, the other half of President Joe Biden’s plan to provide four more years of free public education. But from the National Institute for Early Education Research and Home Grown, an organization working to improve home-based child care, suggests it’s not that simple. Including family child care in pre-K initiatives could satisfy parents who prefer their home-like environment and increase the supply of preschool programs in communities with limited supply, the authors say. However, they caution policymakers against expecting in-home providers to immediately meet the same standards and regulations as pre-K centers.

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As Congress begins writing a $3.5 trillion plan that is expected to include $200 billion for early-childhood education, the report recommends lawmakers take a gradual approach that considers the perspectives of providers and parents.

“It’s really tricky for home-based providers. They lose out when they don’t get included [in public pre-K programs],” said Natalie Renew, Home Grown’s director. But pre-K systems that are primarily oriented toward schools and centers also disadvantage the providers and the families they serve, she added.

The primary downside, she said, is that if more home-based providers seek state funds to serve just preschoolers that could mean less space for infants and toddlers, space that is already in . Working parents are more likely to choose family child care over centers for , surveys show.

According to of Biden’s American Families Plan, families would be able to “choose the settings that work best for them.”

‘People coming into your home’

Parents family child care because it offers a more personalized environment, allows them to keep siblings in the same program and can offer flexible hours that centers can’t accommodate. Including home-based providers in state pre-K also could further diversify the workforce, allowing parents to find caregivers that reflect their culture and speak their language.

Family child care providers have to to be licensed, but many state pre-K regulations regarding facility space, hours of instruction and education requirements for teachers don’t easily translate to someone who cares for children in their living room. State funding could be a predictable source of income for providers, but it also means “more people coming into your home” to monitor compliance, Renew said.

New Jersey, for one, requires pre-K classrooms to be 950 square feet. “Would homes need dedicated spaces for the pre-K program with minimum square footage per child equivalent to the classroom requirement?” the authors ask.

States often require lead pre-K teachers to have a two- or four-year degree and special training in child development. Currently almost 50 percent of home-based providers have no college education, according to the report.

Educational requirements could increase the quality of family child care, but Renew said there’s a mismatch between most college-level early-childhood programs and the realities of family child care — especially around implementing a pre-K curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds while still attending to the needs of babies and toddlers.

“It doesn’t work if we turn every family child care provider into a teeny tiny center,” she said.

Lanette Dumas, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care, said she’s encouraged by the direction the administration is taking, but wants funding for an “on-ramp” to help providers earn degrees and make other modifications to their programs.

Finally, Renew added, there’s a false assumption that home-based child care is cheaper. The report argues that including such providers on a large scale could end up costing more.

In the Seattle Preschool Program, for example, a coach or consultant visiting a center would provide training for two to four teachers at once and “indirectly impact up to 40 kids,” said Monica Liang-Aguirre, who leads the program at the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning. With family child care, that same coach might be working with one provider who serves maybe two or three children. The coach is still receiving the same pay and likely has added travel expenses to reach at-home providers.

Renew said there’s not yet enough research on whether children benefit from home-based pre-K programs in the same way they do in centers.

San Francisco has the most experience, with at-home providers representing 18 percent of the city’s pre-K sites. In Seattle’s program, funded by a local , 25 at-home providers — about 2 percent of the overall number — are expected to participate this fall.

Liang-Aguirre said the department waived the bachelor’s degree requirement because it wasn’t realistic for home-based providers. The majority are immigrants and speak languages other than English.

They serve families that are often reluctant to use out-of-home care and are “trying to figure out if it’s a good idea to let their children go to preschool,” Liang-Aguirre said. “We see it as a really important model and an important way to make preschool accessible for all families.”

As in most pre-K classrooms, Geneva Gadsden’s students — known as the All Stars — rotate through different stations, from dress-up corners to building block areas.

But the All Stars, the Happy Owls and other groups of preschoolers at the Whitted School in Durham, North Carolina, also take turns with Chromebooks, spending 15 minutes a day clicking through early literacy activities from , a nonprofit software provider.

When COVID-19 shut down schools, many pre-K programs across the country saw participation drop or sent home paper materials for at-home learning. Not so at Whitted, where students kept rolling along with the Waterford Reading Academy at home.

“It really was a lifesaver,” said Suzanne Cotterman, early education director for the Durham Public Schools. The district adopted the program three years ago as a pilot, but expanded access to all pre-K families when schools closed. Some families, Cotterman said, couldn’t participate in scheduled Zoom classes, but “the bonus with Waterford is that it allows you to do it any time.”

More than a year after COVID-19 forced preschool programs to shift online, Waterford hopes schools continue to employ virtual models like theirs to help young children prepare for kindergarten. Waterford designed its program to work in classrooms like Gadsden’s or to be used directly by families at home. Waterford Upstart, the organization’s signature early learning program, can reach children in rural areas and other communities that don’t have access to pre-K, said spokeswoman Kim Fischer. But many early education experts oppose spending public funds on computer-based models, saying they can’t match the experience children get in a high-quality classroom. And they interpret the huge enrollment declines in pre-K and kindergarten this year as evidence that most parents agree.

“It’s important to understand the limits of digital technology in early education,” said Aaron Loewenberg, an education policy analyst at New America, a center-left think tank. “So much of pre-K is about the social-emotional learning that happens via student interaction with peers and well-trained educators, and that sort of learning can’t be replicated by interacting with a computer program.”

While there are other widely used online early learning resources that parents can purchase or find for free, including and , Waterford has been especially successful at garnering public funds for preschoolers’ at-home learning.

In 2014, the nonprofit received a $14.2 million to start pilot programs in five more states. And they view President Joe Biden’s $200 billion universal pre-K proposal as an opportunity for further expansion.

It’s been a relatively quick ascend for Upstart — an acronym, now discarded, for “Utah Preparing Students Today for a Rewarding Tomorrow” — which received its first grants from the state in 2009 to reach families in rural areas. A 2018 from the Utah Department of Education showed 77 percent of Upstart children had average or above average literacy scores at the end of the program, compared with 71 percent of children in high-quality public preschools and 69 percent in private programs. In math, Upstart children demonstrated no advantage.

‘Children that you know are behind’

Public funds support Upstart in five states, with most targeting the program to low-income children. Wisconsin made the program available in districts with significant achievement gaps. South Carolina spends about $3 million to serve 1,400 4-year-olds in 17 high-poverty districts. As in Durham, children complete activities with parents at home in addition to attending state-funded pre-K.

“The big draw … was the family engagement piece,” said Quincie Moore, director of the state education department’s Office of Early Learning and Literacy. Upstart provides family liaisons who monitor children’s progress and answer parents’ questions.

She added if additional funds were available, she would consider expanding the program to children not enrolled in a center. “It’s additional instruction for children that you know are behind,” Moore said.

That’s precisely what worries early-childhood education advocates — that policymakers might see Upstart as a way to do pre-K on the cheap. The program costs about $2,000 per child, well under the average $5,500 per child states spend on pre-K.

“Our biggest concern is that using public [money] will interfere with efforts to provide real publicly funded preschool to children,” said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, formerly the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. In a 2018 statement, the organization and another nonprofit, Defending the Early Years, about Upstart, calling it part of a “larger set of trends to further digitize and privatize public services.”

Rhian Evans Allvin, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, expressed in 2020, and said in a recent email that regardless of the pandemic, her views haven’t changed.

But Fischer, with Waterford, described Upstart as a catalyst that has convinced Utah lawmakers of the importance of early learning. Until 2019, the state didn’t even have a public pre-K program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual “yearbook.” But in the 2019-20 school year, the state spent almost $7 million on two grant programs supporting preschool centers.

“We do not see ourselves as competition to any other form of early learning,” said Fischer. “We try to fill the gaps wherever there are.”

In New Hampshire, young English learners often fall into those gaps. that if young children are not proficient in English by kindergarten, they can trail their peers in academic outcomes throughout elementary and middle school. That’s the population the state education department was hoping to reach when it awarded a $440,000 grant to the Greater Nashua Smart Start Coalition, an early learning initiative within the local United Way, to offer Upstart. The program was funded with a federal Preschool Development Grant aimed at better preparing children in low-income families for kindergarten.

Five-year-old Alice Wang, whose home language is Mandarin, would have attended the local Nashua school district’s pre-K if it hadn’t been for the pandemic.

“Waterford Upstart kind of became her school,” said Zixin Lou, her mother, who doesn’t think Alice is any less prepared for kindergarten this fall. “She told me, “I know how to spell ‘mom.’ I know how to spell ‘water,’ and ‘Mom, do you know chickens hatch from eggs?’”

Between the beginning of the pandemic and April of this year, the number of Upstart users quadrupled, from 20,719 to over 82,600, according to Waterford data. And now, with Biden pledging to offer universal pre-K, the organization sees the potential for Upstart to help meet demand.

“We have to focus on how we can achieve universal kindergarten readiness as quickly as possible,” Fischer said, adding that it “could take decades” to add enough classrooms to serve all 3- and 4-year-olds. Existing state-funded pre-K programs serve just over a third of the nation’s 4-year-olds and about 6 percent of the 3-year-olds, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. “To be truly universal, the country has to meet children where they are. There are always going to be kids who don’t have access.”

The question is whether an online program is a sufficient replacement for in-person pre-K. At the start of the pandemic, preschool participation fell by half, and those children who stayed in remote programs didn’t participate consistently, according to the institute’s surveys of families.

“Parents have been frustrated and dissatisfied with remote pre-K this last year, and I think they will make that clear,” said Steve Barnett, the institute’s senior director.

‘Deepen their learning’

Much of the skepticism relates to screen time. that young children just don’t learn as well from screens as they do in a face-to-face setting, and too much screen time can interfere with development, research has shown. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than an hour of screen time for 2- to 5-year-olds, but from Ohio showed that during the pandemic, kindergartners’ daily average time online had reached more than six hours.

The AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation, a nonprofit that works with charter schools to implement their preschool model, ran into these concerns when it joined with , Nick Jr.’s educational streaming service, and , an early learning app, to offer free, online content — called Ready Grow — for children in 100 classrooms. Families in the program also received iPads.

In focus groups, parents said the digital materials filled a void when they were “feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do,” said Chavaughn Brown, who leads Appletree’s research efforts. Some teachers worked hard to incorporate characters from Nick Jr. programs like “Blue’s Clues” and “Paw Patrol” into their lessons so children would see the connection to Ready Grow. But some parents didn’t want their children to have any more screen time beyond virtual Zoom classes.

Even so, Appletree will continue to offer a remote option for families this fall. Brown said while she sees ed tech as a supplement to high-quality preschool, there are ways “you can leverage children’s love for those characters to deepen their learning in other ways.”

Fischer, with Waterford, said there’s a false assumption that children using Upstart are spending hours in front of screens. The literacy component takes just 15 minutes, she said. Adding math and science would stretch the time to half an hour, and family liaisons are trained to intervene if they think children are spending too much time on the program.

As use of Upstart grows in other states, Waterford’s largest footprint remains in Utah. State funding for the program continues to grow, with the organization slated to receive over $24 million in 2022. Upstart is available to any preschooler in Utah.

But educators aren’t necessarily advertising that fact.

The Granite School District in Salt Lake City, for example, is focused on its own, in-person preschool classes for 3- and 4-year-olds. Spokesman Benjamin Horsley said leaders haven’t worked directly with Waterford to recruit preschoolers for Upstart.

“We do feel like there is some value in utilizing digital programming,” he said. “The concern has always been, will parents think that an online program is sufficient over in-person instruction.”

Disclosure: The Overdeck Family Foundation provides financial support to and ����Ӱ��.