Earlier this month, President Obama announced a $1 billion investment in early childhood education, which will go toward expanding national awareness about its importance and funding more programming in the area. The funding will come from the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and a plethora of individuals, foundations and large companies.
A component of the investment package awards 18 states, including Illinois, a total of $250 million “to create or expand high-quality preschool programs,” according to a PBS Newshour report.
The President’s announcement is part of what at least one local expert in the field believes to be a growing consensus among policy experts, practitioners and lawmakers that early childhood education is “one of the best investments we can make,” as Obama said during his remarks announcing the $1 billion expenditure.
“I think people are really recognizing that if we want to make meaningful differences for children and have a level playing field, then we need to begin at birth or before birth,” said Carolyn Newberry Schwartz, executive director of the Oak Park-based Collaboration for Early Childhood.
Schwartz said she wasn’t certain whether any of that $1 billion would trickle down to her nonprofit organization but noted that the money represents a much more important intangible reality.
“I don’t know how the funding will be prioritized in terms of where it will go,” she said before also mentioning that Oak Park isn’t a priority community for state and federal funders since there are so many other communities with much higher levels of need.
“[But] I think it’s exciting what’s happening with the President because it shows the importance of early learning and that it’s beginning to be recognized as an important policy area,” Schwartz said.
Created in 2002 through a partnership among all six of Oak Park’s governmental agencies, the Collaboration for Early Childhood now comprises more than 60 public and private participating agencies that work to advance local awareness about, and provide programming options relating to, early childhood education. Before the Collaboration’s contract with districts 97 and 200, Schwartz said, there were very few home visiting and parent support services available for area families.
She said the organization materialized from the needs and concerns of parents in the area, many of whom felt isolated when trying to seek out what little institutional assistance existed.
There are nearly 5,000 children under kindergarten age in the Oak Park area, an 11 percent increase since 2000, according to the Collaboration’s website. Of that population, about 16 percent are at-risk “due to family income status, developmental delays, or stressed family situations,” the website states.
“In surveys, over 90 percent of Oak Park parents of preschool-age children reported feelings of isolation and a lack of access to information about parenting, programs and resources,” Schwartz said, noting that the dispersed nature of early childhood education is among the biggest obstacles for parents.
President Obama attributed the dearth of early childhood education at the national level to its high costs, which are often a prohibiting factor for too many low-income families. Obama said that less than one-third of the nation’s 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool.
Schwartz said 2014 has been a banner year for her organization’s mission to confront the reality behind that data. Working with Parenthesis Family Center, the Collaboration services more than 500 families, providing them with parenting workshops and coaching sessions, in addition to information and referrals for more extensive support services.
In August and September, more than 800 children received developmental screenings as part of a pilot program, which trained 75 early childhood providers in the use of a web-based screening tool.
And as of Nov. 30, “Parenthesis has 48 families who may be confronted with an array of concerns, such as low incomes, children with developmental delays, broken relationships, unstable living arrangements and histories of substance use and abuse,” Schwartz said.
The Parenthesis staff often conducts street-level outreach by going into nail salons, barbershops, laundromats and apartment complexes with their message about the importance of early childhood education and raising awareness of programs such as Parents as Teachers.
“Parents as Teachers is a national program that will serve 35 to 100 families in Oak Park,” Schwartz said. “This is a home-visiting program that provides parents with a support worker who will visit the home at least twice a month and talk with parents to see how things are going with their child. It also involves parents in group activities so they can socialize [while learning]. This is an exciting effort that’s also gaining momentum nationwide.”
Schwartz said the program has “been shown to result in gains of as much as 20 percent in kindergarten readiness for children who receive two years of this type of support, coupled with two years of high-quality preschool.”
Going into next year, Schwartz noted that her organization’s focus will be on tracking its own performance. She wants the current spotlight on early childhood education to be more than a trending topic and to prove that there’s more to it than media hype. That evidence of proof is both essential to the field’s validity and to its financial solvency, she indicated.
This year, the nonprofit launched the Unified Early Childhood Database, which Schwartz claimed is one of the first and only measurement efforts of its kind in Illinois. The database would bring together information from a variety of sources, such as developmental screenings and District 97 student evaluations, to track whether or not certain programming is effective.
“It’s going to take time for us to really know [the effects of our work], but we also understand that funders want to know that the children are deriving the benefits that we think they should be getting, and if they’re not, that we make the appropriate adjustments,” Schwartz said.