Americans have come to value the role education plays in supporting families by giving children the opportunity to build a good life. No matter where you live, parents have come to rely on the option of a welcoming public school where children gain the knowledge and skills to thrive in careers, college, and beyond.
Our schools are not perfect, but improvement demands that we shore up America’s promises of working to provide a level playing field and opportunities for all.
Undermining ED will impact children, families, educators, and our future.
Attacks on the U.S. Department of Education (ED)—the smallest cabinet-level agency—are attacks on the American mission to ensure equal access to educational opportunity for all learners. Undermining ED will impact children, families, educators, and our future. And while the United States has still not invested in a similar system for early learners, the impact of attacks on ED will be felt by the field of child care and early education, too.
Essential Support for Early Learning Programs
The Title I program supports more than 1.5 million preschool students. Those districts who leverage Title I to support preschool must, by law, offer a high-quality program consistent with the education performance standards that exist in Head Start settings. These standards “address children’s comprehensive learning needs cohesively through teaching practices, learning environments, curricula, screening and assessments, and parent and family engagement in children’s learning and development.”
Four in every five elementary schools that receive Title I offer preschool. Further, in Congress’s most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, districts are encouraged to establish or expand early childhood as a strategy for driving improvement for schools and student populations that district and states identify for improvement. In fact, the law requires that the state coordinate the services it provides under Title I with those offered under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and other federal early childhood programs. And regardless of whether they offer a preschool program, all districts receiving Title I must develop agreements, and carry out mandatory coordination activities with local Head Start programs.
Research shows that programs that intentionally design their preschool programs to align children’s learning experiences with elementary school can improve child outcomes and to prevent or close achievement gaps. Title I can also be used to support early learning services for infants and toddlers, including home-visiting. Our children’s futures will not be the same if Title I is damaged or dismantled.
Services That Protect Vulnerable Populations and Strengthen Systems
ED also implements the promise made by the federal government that all students with disabilities or delays will have access to a fair and appropriate public education. Congress extended that commitment to our youngest learners by establishing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) preschool grants (Part B, Section 619) and grants for infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays (Part C). According to the most recent data from ED supplied through its budget request, IDEA supports more than half a million preschoolers and more than 400,000 infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays.
ED also has modest programs to help thousands of student parents attending college with defraying the cost of child care, or to support states in their systems-building efforts that create more and stronger child care and early learning opportunities.
Inter-Agency Partnerships That Protect Young Students
The Department of Education also has a history of collaborating with other agencies. Some especially notable partners are the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice, with whom ED guides the field on the challenges of expulsion and suspension in preschool. Partnerships also work to support the development of children who are dual-language learners in early childhood programs (with HHS), and to meet the needs of families with young children experiencing homelessness (with HUD). This interagency work continued recently through the re-issuance of an inclusion statement on students with disabilities (with HHS), among other efforts. A gutted department would in turn hinder or even prevent these efforts to leverage the expertise of different federal agencies in better supporting children and families.
Child Care Funding and Guidance for Hundreds of Thousands of School-Aged Children
ED administers the Twenty-First-Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) program, which is the largest federal program dedicated to meeting the before-, after-, and summer care needs of school-aged children. 21CCLC distributes $1.3 billion to every state in the country so that school districts can extend essential care for 1,380,000 students, and help over 350,000 adults and family members meet their day-to-day needs. Recently, for the first time in twenty years, ED released guidance on 21CCLC that included ways that states could better connect activities under this program with those provided to school-aged children through CCDBG. Recommendations included encouraging CCDBG administrators and state educational agencies to work together to harmonize the licensing and monitoring requirements for each of their subgrantees, so that programs and providers can more readily access funds under each program.
Oversight Efforts That Ensure Equity and Fairness
The Civil Rights Data Collection, which the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has conducted for nearly five decades, has frequently shone a spotlight on troubling practices and resource disparities. For example, without OCR, it’s possible that we wouldn’t know that hundreds of preschool children are subjected to corporal punishment in school settings, and that while Black girls make-up 18 percent of girls in preschool, they represent 40 percent of preschool girls who are suspended from those settings. These data bear witness to injustice, and inform the research and advocacy needed to correct and prevent it.
Attacks on public education are attacks on America’s families, who believe in the promise of a better life for themselves and their children. There are no major cost-savings to be had by eliminating the Department of Education, nor benefits to attendant staff reductions, given the department’s limited workforce. Efforts to dismantle ED will impact every state and school district, and make it more difficult to support our youngest learners.
The Department of Education was established on the premise that education is fundamental to the development of individuals and the progress of a nation. That has not changed. Neither should the promise to the American people of a department that remains accountable to implementing the laws that serve children and their schools and families.
Tags: department of education, child care, early childhood education
How the U.S. Department of Education Serves Our Youngest Learners
Americans have come to value the role education plays in supporting families by giving children the opportunity to build a good life. No matter where you live, parents have come to rely on the option of a welcoming public school where children gain the knowledge and skills to thrive in careers, college, and beyond.
Our schools are not perfect, but improvement demands that we shore up America’s promises of working to provide a level playing field and opportunities for all.
Attacks on the U.S. Department of Education (ED)—the smallest cabinet-level agency—are attacks on the American mission to ensure equal access to educational opportunity for all learners. Undermining ED will impact children, families, educators, and our future. And while the United States has still not invested in a similar system for early learners, the impact of attacks on ED will be felt by the field of child care and early education, too.
Essential Support for Early Learning Programs
The Title I program supports more than 1.5 million preschool students. Those districts who leverage Title I to support preschool must, by law, offer a high-quality program consistent with the education performance standards that exist in Head Start settings. These standards “address children’s comprehensive learning needs cohesively through teaching practices, learning environments, curricula, screening and assessments, and parent and family engagement in children’s learning and development.”
Four in every five elementary schools that receive Title I offer preschool. Further, in Congress’s most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, districts are encouraged to establish or expand early childhood as a strategy for driving improvement for schools and student populations that district and states identify for improvement. In fact, the law requires that the state coordinate the services it provides under Title I with those offered under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and other federal early childhood programs. And regardless of whether they offer a preschool program, all districts receiving Title I must develop agreements, and carry out mandatory coordination activities with local Head Start programs.
Research shows that programs that intentionally design their preschool programs to align children’s learning experiences with elementary school can improve child outcomes and to prevent or close achievement gaps. Title I can also be used to support early learning services for infants and toddlers, including home-visiting. Our children’s futures will not be the same if Title I is damaged or dismantled.
Services That Protect Vulnerable Populations and Strengthen Systems
ED also implements the promise made by the federal government that all students with disabilities or delays will have access to a fair and appropriate public education. Congress extended that commitment to our youngest learners by establishing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) preschool grants (Part B, Section 619) and grants for infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays (Part C). According to the most recent data from ED supplied through its budget request, IDEA supports more than half a million preschoolers and more than 400,000 infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays.
ED also has modest programs to help thousands of student parents attending college with defraying the cost of child care, or to support states in their systems-building efforts that create more and stronger child care and early learning opportunities.
Inter-Agency Partnerships That Protect Young Students
The Department of Education also has a history of collaborating with other agencies. Some especially notable partners are the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice, with whom ED guides the field on the challenges of expulsion and suspension in preschool. Partnerships also work to support the development of children who are dual-language learners in early childhood programs (with HHS), and to meet the needs of families with young children experiencing homelessness (with HUD). This interagency work continued recently through the re-issuance of an inclusion statement on students with disabilities (with HHS), among other efforts. A gutted department would in turn hinder or even prevent these efforts to leverage the expertise of different federal agencies in better supporting children and families.
Child Care Funding and Guidance for Hundreds of Thousands of School-Aged Children
ED administers the Twenty-First-Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) program, which is the largest federal program dedicated to meeting the before-, after-, and summer care needs of school-aged children. 21CCLC distributes $1.3 billion to every state in the country so that school districts can extend essential care for 1,380,000 students, and help over 350,000 adults and family members meet their day-to-day needs. Recently, for the first time in twenty years, ED released guidance on 21CCLC that included ways that states could better connect activities under this program with those provided to school-aged children through CCDBG. Recommendations included encouraging CCDBG administrators and state educational agencies to work together to harmonize the licensing and monitoring requirements for each of their subgrantees, so that programs and providers can more readily access funds under each program.
Oversight Efforts That Ensure Equity and Fairness
The Civil Rights Data Collection, which the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has conducted for nearly five decades, has frequently shone a spotlight on troubling practices and resource disparities. For example, without OCR, it’s possible that we wouldn’t know that hundreds of preschool children are subjected to corporal punishment in school settings, and that while Black girls make-up 18 percent of girls in preschool, they represent 40 percent of preschool girls who are suspended from those settings. These data bear witness to injustice, and inform the research and advocacy needed to correct and prevent it.
Attacks on public education are attacks on America’s families, who believe in the promise of a better life for themselves and their children. There are no major cost-savings to be had by eliminating the Department of Education, nor benefits to attendant staff reductions, given the department’s limited workforce. Efforts to dismantle ED will impact every state and school district, and make it more difficult to support our youngest learners.
The Department of Education was established on the premise that education is fundamental to the development of individuals and the progress of a nation. That has not changed. Neither should the promise to the American people of a department that remains accountable to implementing the laws that serve children and their schools and families.
Tags: department of education, child care, early childhood education