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Promoting Quality and Equality through Early Education and Care

Americans are regularly presented with examples of the horrific consequences of US childcare, when children are harmed, sometimes fatally, in unsafe settings. These episodes draw attention to instances of malpractice, neglect, and even violence in US childcare centers. What tends not to rise to the level of public attention is the quotidian reality of early childhood education and care in theUnited States: that the quality of too many programs is at best mediocre (Barnett and Frede 2017, 153–4). This is the case despite the high cost of these services to parents, creating challenges for many to afford decent care but especially burdening lowand moderate-income families. The consequences of this expensive, variable-quality system reverberate across US society, depressing women’s workforce participation, undermining the potential gains for children of early education, and reproducing class, racial, and gender inequalities. The root cause of this situation is US reliance on private markets and limited demand-side subsidies to provide early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. Public aid for childcare and preschool consists of means-tested assistance or programs that reach only a fraction of the population and tax subsidies that fail to cover much of the cost of these services. Parents therefore rely on a market that exists largely because of the low pay received by those employed in this sector, which in turn depends on the low educational requirements for those working in these jobs. One of the many consequences is high staff turnover in ECEC centers, preventing the development of skills and knowledge about the care and education of children. The system is mutually reinforcing, as raising standards for staff education and training would raise pay and lower turnover but render these services prohibitively expensive for most parents, given the lack of public subsidies. The result is a landscape of expensive and flawed ECEC services that fail parents, children, ECEC workers, employers, and society as a whole.