November 23, 2021

To: Joint Committee on Education

From: CEO Action for Racial Equity

Chairman Lewis, Chairwoman Peisch, Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on legislation before you today focused on early childhood education and childcare.

We write to you today on behalf of CEO Action for Racial Equity, a Fellowship of over 100 companies that mobilizes a community of business leaders with diverse expertise across multiple industries and geographies to advance public policy in four key areas – healthcare, education, economic empowerment and public safety. Our mission is to identify, develop and promote scalable and sustainable public policies and corporate engagement strategies that will address systemic racism, social injustice and improve societal well-being. The focus of our work has been on advancing policies that help to improve quality of life outcomes for Black Americans. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments as you consider bills related to early education, kindergarten and literacy and how best to invest the Commonwealth’s resources with respect to early education and care.

As a coalition that centers racial equity in our policy positions and support, our perspective is that the Committee, as it considers legislation that addresses issues of access, affordability and quality in early education and care, should not only prioritize the investments’ impact on areas of “high needs” (as defined in Section 1 of proposed bills H.605 and S.362), , but we believe that it is appropriate and necessary to also explicitly address racial equity in order to fully realize the impact these investments could have on closing racial opportunity gaps and strengthening racial diversity within the industry.

One of the main priorities of the Fellowship is Equity and Excellence in Early Childhood Education (ECE), inclusive of both child care and preschool. While demand for ECE remains high, issues with limited availability, high costs, and inconsistent quality leave Black children at a disadvantage during critical years of development and impact parents’ ability to participate in the workforce. [1,2,3] As business leaders from communities across the nation, including 27 organizations with employees throughout the Commonwealth, we respectfully urge you to prioritize racial equity and require that proposed legislation be amended to include provisions to address racial inequities in the access, affordability and quality of early education and care, specifically as it relates to the allocation of federal and state funding for ECE.

This is a historic moment in our country with the global public health pandemic shining a spotlight on many societal inequities, including the fragility of our ECE system. The research tells us that a child’s brain doubles in size in the first year of life and grows to about 80 percent of adult size by age three, and 90 percent by age five, making the preschool years critical in laying the foundation for a child’s later success in school and having long-term implications for our nation’s future workforce. [4]

Racial disparities in access appear early, leading to academic opportunity gaps. According to a 2019 report from The Education Trust, across a sampling of 26 states, including Massachusetts, only four percent of Black 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in high-quality state preschool programs.[5] On average, Black as well as Hispanic and low-income children enter kindergarten significantly behind in reading and math skills.[6] Additionally, when a young child enters kindergarten ready for school, there is an 82 percent chance that the child will master basic skills by age 11, compared with a 45 percent chance for children who are not school ready.[7]

All children, regardless of socioeconomic status and racial background, should have equitable opportunities to access affordable and high-quality early education and care that puts them on a path to academic and career success. In order for every child to thrive, and to help Massachusetts tackle both academic and economic inequality, we believe a holistic and sustainable solution that explicitly addresses racial disparities in access, affordability, and quality is necessary.

Access – Even before the pandemic, over half of all people in Massachusetts lived in child care “deserts” where there are more than three children in the community for each available spot at an ECE center or family daycare. [8] Parents should have flexible, accessible options that can accomplish positive outcomes for their children. CEOARE supports a mixed-delivery approach whereby subsidies may be used for ECE provided by public and private entities, including but not limited to preschools, public school systems, child care centers, Head Start and independent family child care.

Affordability – Massachusetts has the second highest child-care costs in the nation, second only to Washington, D.C.[9] CEOARE supports prioritizing funding for subsidies to families with the greatest need based on income, educational barriers, and other circumstances indicating an elevated need, as well as families in which early education and child care is needed to enable the parent or caregiver to seek, obtain, or retain employment.

Quality – The quality of the curriculum and preparedness of the workforce are important considerations. Both of these factors are inter-related and benefit from a racial equity lens. Research shows that students of color benefit from being exposed to teachers who look like them, and in Massachusetts, more than 40 percent of people licensed to work in child care identify as women of color. [10,11] This positions the Commonwealth well to meet the needs of all students and we need to confirm we are providing all ECE educators and providers with the training they need to be successful in the classroom and their careers. To that end, CEOARE encourages enhanced job training for ECE professionals and competitive compensation. We support a targeted approach that prioritizes training, upskilling, cultural competency, and retention of ECE workers in programs such as Head Start that serve communities with the greatest need. This will not only serve to help build the capacity of the ECE workforce, but it will also directly impact the quality of education and the educational outcomes experienced by children and families.

While our Fellowship is not endorsing any specific early education and child care legislation before you today, we believe any legislation designed to address the challenges in our ECE system should require the collection and sharing of demographic data, including race and ethnicity, as a critical component to confirming whether racial equity is achieved in the allocation of funding intended to address racial disparities in access, affordability and quality.

An investment in ECE is an investment in the Commonwealth’s economic health now and into the future. Leading economists estimate that for every $1 invested in high-quality ECE programs for disadvantaged children, there is a 13 percent annual return from better education and health outcomes for children, employment gains for parents, and greater economic productivity.[12] Moreover, if the United States were able to close the educational achievement gap between native-born white children and Black and Hispanic children, the U.S. economy could be 5.8 percent – or nearly $2.3 trillion – larger in 2050.[13]

The Commonwealth has been a leader in advancing progress in crucial areas such as health care coverage for all and same-sex marriage. And an opportunity now exists for the Commonwealth to lead once again by prioritizing racial equity to help close the educational opportunity gaps for the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable children.  As such, we respectfully urge the Committee to prioritize early education and care for action this legislative session.

Thank you for your consideration. We stand ready to work collaboratively with you to enable the Commonwealth with a high-quality, affordable and accessible system of early education and care.

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Submitted by:

Pia Flanagan
COO, CEO Action for Racial Equity

References

1. Hamm, K., Malik, R., Schochet, L., Novoa, C., Workman, S., & Jessen-Howard, S. (2018). America’s Child Care Deserts in 2018. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/earlychildhood/reports/2018/12/06/461643/americaschild-care-deserts-2018/.
2. Gould, E., & Cooke, T. (2015). High quality child care is out of reach for working families. Economic Policy https://www.epi.org/publication/child-care-affordability/.
3. Caitlin McLean, et al., Early Childhood Workforce Index – 2020, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, U.C. Berkeley (2021), https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/report-pdf/.
4. Gilmore, J. H., Knickmeyer, R. C., & Gao, W. (2018). Imaging structural and functional brain development in early childhood. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 19(3), 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2018.1
5. Carrie Gillispie, Young Learners, Missed Opportunities, The Education Trust (November 2019). https://edtrust.org/resource/young-learners-missed-opportunities/.
6. Isaac S. Solano & Matt Weyer, Closing the Opportunity Gap in Early Childhood Education, National Conference of State Legislatures (July 2017), https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/closing-the-opportunity-gap-in-early-childhood-education.aspx.
7. B. Pritzker, Jeffrey L. Bradach and Katherine Kaufmann (October 2015). Achieving Kindergarten Readiness for All Our Children: A Funder’s Guide to Early Childhood Development from Birth to Five.
8. Rasheed Malik, Katie Hamm, Leila Schochet, Cristina Novoa, Simon Workman, and Steven Jessen-Howard. “America’s Child Care Deserts in 2018.” Center for American Progress. 2018. pgs. 3-4 https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/12/06/461643/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/.
9. World Populations Review (2021). Child Care Costs by State 2021. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-costs-by-state.
10. Thomas, D. (2018). Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/press-release/teachers-color-high-demand-and-short-supply.
11. Lynette M. Fraga & Renee Boynton-Jarrett, The Forgotten Essential Workers: Women of Color in Child Care, Real Clear Policy, (May 2020).
    https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2020/05/12/the_forgotten_essential_workers_women_of_color_in_child_care_491313.html.
12. Investing in Early Childcare and Education Produces Significant Economic Returns, Heckman First Five Nebraska, https://heckmanequation.org/www/assets/2020/11/F_Heckman_FFN_OnePager_110320.pdf.
13. Robert G. Lynch & Patrick Oakford, The Economic Benefits of Closing Educational Achievement Gaps (November 2014). https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WinningEconomyReport2.pdf?_ga=2.208064341.618252848.1632778660-517815703.1631811100.