As a mother and grandmother in Arkansas, I think the holiday season is a perfect time to talk about our children and grandchildren--and issues that will impact their future in our state.
We need to improve the quality and quantity of early childhood programs in our state and make pre-K and childcare services available to more families.
We still have too many children who start school without early literacy and math skills. This stresses our schools and costs our state later in remediation, health care and even incarceration.
Too often, our pre-K and other early childhood programs aren't reaching the families who need them the most. About two-thirds of 3- and 4-year-olds in households earning $100,000 or more attend pre-K in Arkansas. But only 40 percent of children from households that make less than $20,000 per year do so, according to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
After a $100 million investment in 2008, we've left funding mostly flat over the years. Pre-K enrollment dropped from 2008 to 2013. Sadly, our failure to invest in early childhood came as we boosted state funding for prisons by 19 percent in the same period.
Lack of adequate support means no new seats for the thousands of Arkansas families who wish to enroll their children, creating waiting lists for programs that provide children with a good foundation.
In the 2015 legislative session, Sen. Joyce Elliott of Little Rock pushed for an additional $16 million in support for pre-K program, which would have brought funding current based on cost-of-living increases since 2008. While Senator Elliott's proposal did not pass, Gov. Asa Hutchinson directed $3 million toward expanding pre-K. We applaud the governor's efforts. This is a wonderful start.
Our next steps in improving early childhood programs in Arkansas should be informed by the work of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). I was proud to serve on the SREB Early Childhood Commission, which brought leaders from 16 states together with national experts and researchers on early education and brain development. Senator Elliott also served on the commission, and Governor Hutchinson is now the chair of the overall 16-state SREB board.
Our commission developed recommendations, and we have just released our report, "Building a Strong Foundation: State Policy for Early Childhood Education":
• Boost the quality of programs: Set high standards for early education from birth to third grade.
• More effective teaching: Ensure teachers have specialized training and continued professional development for working with young children.
• Accountability for results: Measure students' progress and prioritize funding for early education based on performance and quality.
• Greater access: Work toward serving as many children as possible in high-quality programs.
• Coordinate governance and budgets: Build a statewide policy framework to serve children from birth to age 8.
As a mother, I was fortunate to find high-quality child care and preschool programs that met high standards. However, good child-care centers often have a waiting list, forcing low-income families to accept low-quality programs or simply go without.
Using our state's new rating system for child-care providers, only about half of our state's publicly funded programs meet national quality standards, so we need to provide assistance so that more providers meet those standards.
Training also remains an issue. This fall, Arkansas created a new birth-to-kindergarten teaching license to help teachers receive training in early childhood knowledge and teaching strategies. This new licensure will help us follow voluntary national quality standards for early childhood.
Arkansas does a lot of things right. We provide full-day pre-K, while many states only provide half-day programs, but we can do better. There was resistance in 2012 when a proposal was made to raise academic requirements for teachers and assistants. Many states require further steps such as the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential and specialized training for teacher assistants. Arkansas does require the CDA for teacher assistants/paraprofessionals in state-funded pre-k classrooms.
Right now in Arkansas, early childhood programs are overseen by the Department of Human Services. Moving the program to the Arkansas Department of Education would provide better-coordinated and unified leadership, services, and data collection to help us know what's working and what we can do better.
We're making much progress in Arkansas, but we can't stop until every child in the state has access to high-quality early childhood programs.
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Dr. Johnnie Roebuck of Arkadelphia is a retired graduate dean and professor at Henderson State University, taught in public schools and higher education for 41 years, served in the state House of Representatives in 2007-2012, and currently serves on the Southern Regional Education Board.
Editorial on 01/01/2016