Todd Smith Testimony

Issuer: Congressional materials
Document type: Todd Smith Testimony
Date: 2024-04-10
Case: Todd Smith Testimony

Summary

Written testimony of Laurie Todd Smith, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Education Opportunity and the Center for the American Child at America First Policy Institute, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on April 10, 2024, for a hearing on the role of child care small businesses in supporting parents and the American workforce. The testimony discusses research on early childhood development and state challenges with child care capacity, cost and workforce. It cites state examples from Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa, and an employer child care program at UPS that it says cut turnover from 31% to 4%. It argues for skills-based hiring and apprenticeship models, noting that 35 states have Registered Apprenticeship programs for child care, and ends with a reference list.

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Full text

April 10, 2024

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

THE RO LE OF CHILD CARE SMALL BUSINESSES
SUPPORTING PARENTS AND THE AMERICAN WO RKFORCE

TESTIMONY BEFO RE THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

U.S. SENATE

APRIL 10, 2024

LAURIE TODD- SMITH, PH.D.
DIRECTOR CENTER FOR EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY
DIRECTOR CENTER FOR THE AMERICAN CHILD
AMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE

INFO@AMERICAFIRSTPOLICY.COM | AMERICAFIRSTPOLICY.COM
1001 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, SUITE 530, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20004
TE ST I M ON Y | Center for Education Opportunity and Center for the American Child April 10, 2024

Chair Shaheen, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you
for convening today's hearing on the role of child care small businesses in supporting parents and
the American workforce.

I am Dr. Laurie Todd Smith and I serve as the Director of the Center for Education Opportunity
and the Center for the American Child at America First Policy Institute, a non-profit, non-
partisan research institute that exists to advance policies that put American families first. I am a
former early childhood teacher, Director, and public school teacher. I have had a long and
rewarding career at every level of the education continuum, but I strongly believe that early
childhood education is the most crucial area of U.S. policy and so much of my research is
focused on early literacy and education opportunity for all children. I am honored to testify
before the committee today on this topic, and it is fitting that I am doing so during the National
Week of the Young Child. Today in my testimony, I will discuss the research highlighting the
importance of quality child care. I will also address the challenges states face, including limited
child care capacity, high child care costs, and the need for a well-supported child care workforce.
I will conclude by highlighting state successes in these areas.

Introduction
The first five years of a child's life are pivotal for laying the foundation of their future learning
and success, as the brain is highly adaptable to experiences during this period. Despite years of
federal support for early care and education, existing policies are fragmented and do not consider
the latest research, hindering their effectiveness. The environment significantly influences the
development of a child's brain, with supportive environments fostering optimal growth and
adverse conditions having long-lasting consequences. Disparities in early experiences exist, with
children from lower-income backgrounds often entering school underprepared. It is easier and
less costly to form strong brain circuits during the early years than to intervene or "fix" them
later. However, federal policy has not adapted to the latest research on child care and education,
with existing programs often lacking coordination and being based on outdated science. These
programs also neglect the intertwined nature of care and education and do not fully address the
needs of children who spend significant time in child care. To improve children's outcomes, the
focus should be on early health and wellness, strengthening families, and supporting parents as
essential drivers of young children's well-being. The home, community environment, and quality
of interactions a child experiences directly impact their health and brain development.

State Challenges and Solutions
The child care industry within states is fragmented and typically has varying governing
structures that seek to align services but continue to fund programs instead of families. The child
care market includes a diverse set of for-profit and nonprofit businesses, including large child
care centers run by national or regional companies; child care provided in the owner's home—
often referred to as family child care or home-based care; care provided in faith-based settings;
and individual caregivers. Some of the challenges that states report are related to a low number
of child care centers or home providers, leaving parents with few options, the high costs of child
care, and recruiting and retaining qualified child care professionals.

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When it comes to early childhood education, states should lead the way. States have faced
significant challenges in optimizing federal funds and aligning them with their respective child
care plans. The recently introduced Stronger Workforce for America Act (WIOA reform bill
HR6655) includes many improvements that could strengthen the American workforce including
childcare. Governors are granted authority to retain a portion of the total funding for various
programs, including adult, youth, and dislocated worker initiatives. Governors have the
flexibility to allocate funds towards eligible activities that align with their priorities including
childcare. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves leveraged funds from the WIOA governor's
reserve fund to establish the state's career coaches program in public schools. This program
places coaches within school districts to guide students towards quality career pathways.
Coaches can also advise high school students on the training and job opportunities available in
the state. Following the program's success in several communities, the state legislature allocated
an additional $8 million and then $12 million more to expand it to additional school districts
(Accelerate Mississippi, n.d.).

The best way to improve child care policy is to identify, support, and highlight the work of
innovative states focused on advancing whole families through a two-generation strategy that
simultaneously enables adult work and supports young children's learning and development.

Child Care Capacity
One of the most successful ways the early childhood field has seen improvement is through a
state systems approach to increase alignment, coherence, and continuity of child care across
programs and services (Erdei, 2019). Instead of looking at child care as a separate entity, the
systems approach seeks to achieve increased access, reduce duplication of effort, and improve
effectiveness across government agencies and between public and private organizations. States
have worked to build cohesiveness on financing, governance, training for teachers, Head Start,
child care, public pre-k, home visiting, and other sectors of early childhood to operate as a
whole. North Carolina created a state position within the Department of Commerce to focus on
child care specifically addressing the insufficient supply of high quality and affordable child care
in the state. States like Arkansas, Georgia, and New Mexico have significantly improved the
alignment and coordination of services for young children and their families by consolidating
state agencies, creating a governing board for early childhood education, and administering
federal and state funding for child care and public PreK from within one agency (Smith et al.,
2018).

Family Forward NC is an innovative initiative to improve children’s health and well-being and
keep North Carolina’s businesses competitive. It is employer-led change to increase access to
research-based, family-friendly practices that improve workplace productivity, recruitment and
retention; grow a strong economy; and support children’s healthy development. Resources for
parents about child care are included and employers to help address the child care needs of their
employees are available for employers.

States clearly recognize that quality child care is crucial for a healthy economy, and many are
taking action to create a wider variety of child care options, both publicly and privately funded.
These policies include increasing the number of child care providers. A recent example is the
partnership between the Mississippi Department of Human Services and Wonderschool, a child

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care platform. This program helps qualified individuals launch new home-based child care
programs, specifically targeting areas with child care shortages. For such programs to succeed,
data systems must also improve.

In order to better understand child care capacity, states must have accurate data. An Early
Childhood Integrated Data System collects, integrates, maintains, stores, and reports information
from early childhood programs across multiple agencies within a state that serves children and
families from birth to age 8. The importance of integrated data is widely acknowledged, given its
ability to facilitate better outcome tracking, increase efficiency, and improve the capacity for
informed decision-making, leading some states to put more resources behind creating and
developing data systems than others. Mississippi has made considerable progress towards
developing and establishing a statewide integrated education and workforce longitudinal data
system. The system has a shared vision and mission, sustainable partnerships, and governance
and management plans for sharing data amongst state agencies. The system includes longitudinal
data on early childhood, K-12 education, community colleges, higher education institutions,
employment, rehabilitation services, and corrections. Many education and workforce leaders
have recognized the importance and value of such a system as it has been used to generate
information to inform policymakers and stakeholders on student achievement and workforce
outcomes.

To streamline early childhood services, states like Georgia consolidated departments to form
entities like Bright from the Start. This single agency now oversees all early childhood initiatives
in the state. In a similar effort, Iowa established a Childcare Task Force through an executive
order by Governor Reynolds to tackle childcare shortages and employment obstacles

Child Care Cost
Child care is often the most significant expense for families with young children and more
choices are urgently needed. It is not only costly for parents but also costly to provide. High-
quality child care is a multi-dimensional concept and may vary based on the setting, such as
center-based care or family child care homes. It is critical to respect the role of parents in
choosing the care best suited to their child's needs, values, language, culture, and work
schedules. One-size-fits-all directives on what constitutes high-quality child care can be
counterproductive, especially when few child care providers are left in the market from which to
choose. Child care policy and quality rating systems should include all provider types, including
home-based family child care, to enable safe, nurturing child care options and settings.

Licensing, regulatory, and monitoring frameworks are the basis for ensuring that child care
settings are healthy and safe for children. However, policies to regulate the health and safety of
child care are created separately at the federal, state, and local levels. This can result in an
overlay of contradictory policies and procedures, the imposition of unnecessary and burdensome
requirements, and multiple visits from regulatory officials and program monitors at many levels
of government. Some regulatory practices, such as local zoning laws, inadvertently drive up
prices and reduce availability and fail to create a more nurturing environment for children. The
Federal government and states should ensure that regulatory frameworks, requirements, and
monitoring practices are not duplicative and unintentionally drive up the cost of providing care,

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reduce availability, or push different types of providers, such as faith-based or home-based
family child care providers, out of the market.

Meanwhile, businesses can invest in benefits that directly support their employees' child care
needs. Many companies now provide annual child care stipends to their workers, while others
create on-site child care services. The UPS Child Care Initiative, launched in partnership with
Patch Caregiving, was piloted in 2022-2023. The program, a first for UPS, aimed to mitigate
child care challenges and increase employee retention. It offered on-site day care services, with
80% of eligible employees participating and avoiding over 120 unplanned absences. The
initiative significantly reduced employee turnover from 31% to 4%. Given its success, UPS plans
to expand the program to more facilities in 2024.

Like UPS, many businesses recognize that paid leave, child care, and other family-friendly
policies are important ways to recruit and retain the workforce. The Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA) excludes the cost paid by employers of providing benefits such as accident and health
insurance, retirement benefits, and life insurance from the "regular rate" of pay, and thus the
overtime pay calculations. Currently, under FLSA employers must pay additional overtime for
the benefit of on-site child care and child care subsidies. Unlike healthcare or even health club
benefits, there is no statutory exclusion for the cost of providing child care benefits. All
businesses can benefit from a better understanding their employees' child care needs. Beyond
current tax credits, technical assistance around employer-sponsored child care models and best
practices, as well as general information about employee-parent child care needs and return on
investment from family-friendly policies, could be more widely distributed.

All of these aforementioned initiatives demonstrate a growing focus on improving access to
high-quality child care through public and private partnerships to support the early childhood
education workforce. These examples also underscore the necessity of state-level engagement to
support the long-term viability of early childhood education and child care initiative.

Child Care Workforce
An essential component of high-quality child care, particularly for young children, is ensuring a
nurturing, responsive relationship with caregivers. A college degree alone is an uncertain proxy
for quality child care. Requiring child care staff in a child care setting (center or home-based) to
have a college or other degree can increase costs, unnecessarily burden already low-paid
providers with unnecessary student loan debt, and drive others out of the profession. Policies
should encourage skills-based hiring to ensure providers bring the competencies and skills
needed to provide quality care, irrespective of academic degrees. Making it easier for educators
and caregivers to gain the skills and competencies they need to provide high-quality care that
promotes healthy development and learning can encourage more providers to enter and stay in
the workforce. Removing barriers to access to professional development and creating pathways
creating multiple pathways to enter and advance in the field is critical, as is ensuring that
compensation aligns with market demands.

Compensation for child care providers, especially those workers who care for infants and
toddlers, is generally very low. However, federal and state-level policymakers have increased
credentialing and degree requirements over time. Apprenticeship models provide a viable

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credentialing option for the early childhood education workforce." Child care apprenticeship
models provide experience and are an excellent way to highlight and train individuals
considering a career in child care. Ten years ago, only a handful of states had child care
Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs). Over the past few years, 35 states have
implemented regional or statewide Registered Apprenticeship programs for child care and early
learning, with an additional seven states currently developing such programs. These initiatives
are relatively new and typically serve a small number of apprentices, ranging from five to 25
individuals.

Summary
In conclusion, improving the well-being of America's young children is crucial to their life
chances and the success of our nation overall. The widespread desire for a work-life balance that
prioritizes parental involvement is underscored by findings from the 2021 American Compass
survey. Families seek diverse options, including affordability and flexibility, highlighting the
importance of providing various choices to accommodate varying needs. Furthermore, all 50
states have established early learning standards from infancy through preschool, recognizing that
children learn continuously in various settings. Therefore, policies that bolster family bonds and
empower parents, especially during crucial early developmental stages, merit attention. This
approach resonates with parents' preferences and fosters optimal child development, ultimately
contributing to a brighter future for America.

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AMERICA FIRST INSTITUTE POLICY
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Todd Smith Testimony

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