This article originally appeared in the September-October 1999 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children

The care for public investment

Monique Murad

Kids need high-quality child care. In the largest recent national study of child care quality, a team of researchers around the country has shown that the quality of care in a child's first three years makes a lasting impact. Since 1993 researchers for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have closely followed the development of 1216 children from a wide range of backgrounds. They found that:

• High-quality classroom practices such as teacher sensitivity, responsiveness, and effective teaching styles result in children with substantially stronger understanding of language and ability at math.

• In child care settings with close teacher-child relationships, children develop better social and thinking skills, show more language and math ability, and engage in less problem behavior.

• The quality of early care affects children from low-income or troubled families most. High quality improves outcomes and poor quality harms outcomes for these children more than for children in better-off families.

  High-quality child care, researchers concluded, increases children's readiness for school and chances of success. This study supports earlier research, such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study, which compared children in high-quality care with a control group and followed them for 30 years. Even into adulthood, those who had received high-quality early care went farther in school and had lower rates of unemployment and arrests.

• Most kids don't get high-quality care. According to NICHD researchers, the majority of infants and toddlers and nearly three-fourths of preschoolers spend time in some form of child care. But when researchers rated the quality of their care, they scored only about a quarter of the care "good." Most, they said, was "mediocre," and 11 percent was below the "minimally acceptable" level.

  For infant and toddler care the picture was worse. Only 8 percent of the care was rated "good or higher," while 40 percent was "below minimally acceptable."

  Factors leading to poor quality were: a high child-to-staff ratio, low levels of staff education and administration experience, and low staff pay resulting in a one-third turnover rate every year.

• Quality care costs more. The NICHD study found that higher-quality child care centers paid higher wages and provided better benefits and working environments. These centers were the ones with extra financial resources.

• Parents can't pay more. In a 1995 survey, NICHD researchers found that the national average cost of high-quality child care was almost $5,000 a year. The Children's Defense Fund points out that one in three families with young children earns less than $25,000 a year.

• Parents today pay 75 percent of the total cost of child care, and few parents can afford to pay more. That's why child care experts are increasingly seeking greater public support for quality child care