This story was originally published by The Daily Yonder.
Chris Nelson teaches preschool in rural Vermont, just a few miles from the Canadian border, but not in the school or child care center Most people think of this when they imagine a state- or local-funded preschool. Instead, her 3- and 4-year-olds are embedded in her five-star-rated home-based childcare program, where she also looks after younger children and some after-school children until their working parents pick them up.
Many of those parents would have to drive more than an hour to get to a preschool center or program at a school where children The state covers tuition for only 10 hours per weekNelson's program, on the other hand, is open 12 hours a day to accommodate parents' commutes, non-traditional schedules for shift workers and those who do seasonal work.
Nelson would like to continue teaching preschool, and the parents of those children would like to receive the $3,800 free tuition the state offers for enrolling in Nelson's program. However, the new recommendations from Vermont School Board Insurance Trust (VSBIT), which insures schools and preschool programs, effectively excludes home-based providers from participation, because the $2 million insurance policy they recommend (based on the needs of the school district) is not even available to home-based child care providers, sometimes also called family child care providers or FCCs. Nelson brought the issue to the attention of state child care regulators.. In a memorandum In a report released in mid-June to school district superintendents, the Vermont Education and Human Services Agencies indicate that local education departments may waive the insurance requirement for home-based preschool programs that do not or cannot afford the VSBIT-recommended policy. Because this policy change came so late—just two months before the 2024 school year begins, when most districts have already made decisions about partnerships with private preschool providers—it remains to be seen how many home-based child care providers will be able to offer preschool this year.
Vermont, like many statesis engaged to a blended delivery model for preschool educationwhich allows the state subsidy for preschool tuition to be applied to programs in a variety of existing settings, including home-based ones. However, according to the National Institute on Early Education Research (NIEER) Yearbook of the State of Preschool Education 2023In 2022-2023, more than 60 percent of preschool-aged children served were in public school settings, not in private programs or home-based child care options. Together, all of those programs served just 44 percent of eligible 4-year-olds and 17 percent of 3-year-olds. More than half of all 3- and 4-year-olds are still not in preschool. For many rural families in particular, the barriers to paying for and having their children attend a preschool program are too great.
Creating “universal” access to high-quality preschool will require massive, long-term public investment (up to $33 billion, according to NIEER). In the short term, states can increase access by leveraging existing infrastructure to offer preschool in home-based programs that already serve many rural families. Policy experts such as The Erikson Institute and No way Recommend “significantly” including and supporting home-based child care providers in the expansion and implementation of publicly funded preschool as a promising first step toward increasing access, especially in states where more than 50 percent of the population lives in a kindergarten in the desert. TO new initiative Led by Home Grown, a national funding collaborative focused on improving the quality and access to home-based child care, in partnership with NIEER, would support state, municipal, county, and tribal government leaders to include home-based child care in their preschool programs.
States' commitment to a blended delivery model often fails in part because many, like Vermont, have a governance structure that reinforces a tendency to view preschool as an additional grade before kindergarten, with regulations and funding that are modeled after elementary education. These include tiers of teacher licensing requirements, classroom settings, and administrative oversight. Meanwhile, home-based child care is overseen by the department of social services, with different parameters for licensing and oversight. Former state Rep. Ashton Clemmons, who co-chaired the preschool caucus in the North Carolina General Assembly, notes that this “misalignment” works to segregate caregivers of infants and toddlers from those who teach preschoolers.
“If parents are given a voucher and allowed to go wherever they want, many parents would choose FCCs for preschool and for care of their infants and toddlers,” says Rachel Bymun, a licensed home-based child care provider in Bay Point, California, a low-income, primarily immigrant community about an hour outside of San Francisco. She notes that while California also adheres to a mixed-delivery model, her county does not have the mixed-delivery model. Family Child Care Home Education Network This would allow home child care providers like her to participate in California's subsidized preschool program. As a result, families in her county who want to access a publicly funded preschool program have to drop out of their program and enroll in another setting.
Families who prefer a home-based child care environment are often The most neglected and difficult to reachincluding families of color, those in rural communities, those who speak languages other than English and those who work non-traditional hours, according to Alexandra Patterson, director of policy and strategy at Homegrowna national collaboration of funders supporting home-based child care: “Excluding these providers from the formal preschool system further marginalizes families and providers who need those resources most.”
Another major barrier to access is that working parents need more than two to six hours of care per day for 180 days per year, which is the typical preschool school year. Many eligible working parents have difficulty taking multiple children of different ages to different schools or are unable to find a preschool with an available schedule that is also within commuting distance of their work and home. Home-based preschool, on the other hand, is typically integrated into a comprehensive child care program that serves multiple children of mixed ages and is open all day and year round. This family-friendly setting, according to This report from the Erikson Instituteprovides continuity and stability for children, culturally and linguistically sensitive care, individualized education, and fosters community connections and relationships that families rely on for support from each other and their child's teacher.
Nelson's nature- and play-based approach to learning in a small, mixed-age group is a strength of home preschool that many parents prefer to hectic classrooms filled with 20 or 30 4-year-olds.
“Schools set aside 275 days a year for learning,” she says, “but I think every minute is a learning moment. On a normal day, we might visit the pond to collect tadpoles and bring them back so children can learn about life cycles. Two-year-olds might want to touch the little jelly eggs, and older children will see the eggs grow legs and tails and turn into frogs.”
This approach is also supported by the National Academies. New vision for a high-quality preschool curriculum. He “Magic 8” Preschool Classroom PracticesAccording to child development researchers, they include precisely the practices that FCCs implement daily in their homes: lots of listening to children, holistic sequential activities, cooperative interactions among children, and minimal time spent transitioning from one space to another or between lessons. These videos Home Grown features home-based child care providers who demonstrate these practices while teaching and caring for mixed-age groups of children.
How could publicly funded preschool programs enroll more children and meet the needs of more families? Recent NIEER report and recommendations from the Erikson Institute on pay equity and Support for suppliers Detailed strategies to set reimbursement rates for pre-kindergarten services that reflect the true cost of providing high-quality pre-kindergarten services in a home-based child care setting. These include supporting home-based providers with educational, training, and assessment programs specific to preschool standards, establishing environmental recommendations, and the allowable infant-toddler ratio based on a caregiver’s license in a manner appropriate to home-based settings. Changes like these would allow Nelson and other home-based child care providers to maintain their programs and open their doors to 3- and 4-year-olds who are waiting in the wings for school to start. This solution also relies on and Strengthens the existing capacity of FCC educatorsshoring up state workforces and economies in both the short and long term.
What's more, this solution does not require building new preschool wings in old school buildings or Training a new group of preschool teachersWhat is required, says Patterson, is an “innovative and inclusive vision of family child care homes as learning centers and of qualified caregivers who operate them as early childhood educators”—that is, preschool teachers deserving of the same support and pay offered to school- or center-based preschool programs.
