Julie Kashen, Director, Women's Economic Justice and Senior Fellow
Julie Kashen is a senior fellow and Director for Women's Economic Justice at The Century Foundation with expertise in working families, economic mobility, labor, and poverty.
Melissa Boteach, Contributor
Melissa Boteach, Vice President for Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning, oversees the National Women's Law Center's advocacy, policy, and public education strategies to ensure that all women and families have the income and supports they need to thrive. Prior to joining NWLC, Melissa spent nearly a decade at Center for American Progress (CAP), where she founded and led the Poverty to Prosperity Program, growing it from a team of 1 to 17, establishing projects to center the voices of low-income families; leading the team’s message and narrative change work, overseeing intersectional advocacy campaigns, and developing bold ideas to cut poverty & expand opportunity that resulted in new legislation, executive actions, and other progress. . A Harry Truman and George J. Mitchell Scholar, Melissa has a Master’s of Public Policy from The George Washington University, a master’s of Equality Studies from University College Dublin where she studied women in social movements, and bachelor’s degrees from University of Maryland in government and Spanish.
Stephanie Schmit, Contributor
Stephanie Schmit is the director of CLASP's child care and early education team. Her work is focused on quantitative and qualitative analysis of data, state technical assistance, and federal and state policy analysis. Ms. Schmit has expertise in home visiting, data analysis, and state and federal child care and early education policy. Prior to joining CLASP, she worked at the National Center for Parents as Teachers in St. Louis, focusing on policy and advocacy for young children. Additionally, she worked in direct practice doing home visits through an early childhood program in Cincinnati, OH. Ms. Schmit has a bachelor's degree in social work from the University of Cincinnati and a master's degree in social work—with a concentration in children, youth and families—from Washington University.
Jessica Milli, Contributor
Jessica Milli, PhD is an economist with over 7 years of experience directing high-impact research projects and impact evaluations with a focus on social and economic equity. As the founder of Research 2 Impact, Dr. Milli utilizes a mixed-methods research approach that helps organizations, philanthropists, and policymakers leverage data and stories to drive social impact. A core part of this work is the application of an intersectional framework that explores how individual identities shape peoples’ experiences and needs. Dr. Milli has authored or co-authored more than 40 publications on a range of economic and social policy issues disproportionately impacting women and people of color throughout her career. Recognized as a leading expert in the field, she has been quoted in more than 50 print, online, and radio news stories including in Bloomberg, The Atlantic, Marketplace, and Fortune, and has been invited to provide expert testimony to state and local legislative bodies on a range of public policy issues.
Biden’s Child Care and Early Learning Proposal Could Serve 8.27 Million More Young Children
Comprehensive child care and early learning policy is a “win for all” policy: a pathway to progress on gender, racial, and income equality; healthy child development and family well-being; improved educational outcomes; and economic growth and prosperity. President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, reflected in the Congressional budget, is essential to building a strong child care and early learning system that can achieve these goals.
The pandemic laid bare and exacerbated the deep inequities of a child care system that relies on families paying unaffordable sums, early educators being paid poverty-level wages, and too many communities across the country lacking sufficient workforce or facilities to meet child care demands. It is time to put a stake in the ground and build a comprehensive child care and early education system that works for our nation’s children, families, educators, and economy.
All in all, a ten-year federal investment of $450 billion would serve 8.27 million young children a year across the United States (when fully implemented) through both child care assistance and preschool. That’s eleven times more than those served without expansion. The table below includes one-year, point-in-time estimates for how many infants, toddlers, and preschoolers would be served by the combination of child care assistance and preschool programs when fully implemented in each state, with the total number compared to the number of children who would receive child care assistance through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) without this expansion.
Map 1. Estimated Number of Young Children Served by a Proposed Federal Investment of $450 Billion in High-Quality Child Care and Preschool, by State, Full Implementation 1
The cost of quality is based on the model developed by the Center for American Progress and assumes all quality enhancements are made. This includes fewer children per teacher, increasing resources for professional development and classroom materials, and other child development supports. For more information, “Methodology for ‘The True Cost of High-Quality Child Care Across the United States” from the Center for American Progress.
This commentary was written in collaboration with the National Women’s Law Center and the Center for Law and Social Policy and has been cross-posted on their websites.
Notes
Tags: child care