Mastering matching games, learning their colors and writing lowercase letters could be worth $6,800 a child for Indiana 4 year olds attending preschool through a proposed voucher program.
Maintaining a certain pass rate on a kindergarten readiness assessment is one of the requirements for preschool programs to be eligible for a new voucher program, which passed through the House with a 87-9 vote Thursday. Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, introduced the bill, which calls for a two-year pilot program involving five counties.
“There’s no question that especially for children in poverty, there’s a need for them to get at least a start comparable to their middle income peers,” said Behning, chair of the House education committee. “Education is a tool that provides opportunity for all so we can lift the child out of poverty.”
The goal of the preschool voucher system is to make preschool more accessible to low-income families while maintaining a variety of early childhood education options. The need to regulate quality comes with state dollars.
In addition to meeting requirements for a percentage of students passing a kindergarten readiness assessment, preschools that want to be eligible for the vouchers also would need to:
• Provide 180 days of instruction each year,
• Offer a parental engagement and involvement component, and
• Be nationally accredited, be offered by a school accredited by the state board of education, or meet standards to qualify for a Level Three or Level Four rating on the Paths to Quality system, a voluntary quality rating system adopted by the state of Indiana.
Eligible providers would receive up to $6,800 per child of state money for full-day preschool, and $3,400 for half-day programs. While the exact amount appropriated to the preschool voucher program will not be determined until the budget session in 2015, Behning would like to see $7.5 million a year allocated to the program.
The money will come from the general fund, and Behning has committed to sparing K-12 funding from taking a hit to pay for the preschool voucher system.
For families to be eligible for the program, their income has to fall within 185 percent of the poverty threshold, which is $43,567 a year for a four-person household. Parents also need to participate in educational engagement activities offered by the preschool, make sure their child maintains a certain attendance rate and enroll their child in kindergarten after completing an early education program.
“Vouchers can go to public, private and nonprofit (preschools) as long as they meet the standards we create,” Behning said.
Dorothea Irwin, director of early education and special programs for Kokomo Schools, is skeptical of some of the strings attached to the proposed voucher program and would like to see more unity in the state’s approach to funding early education.
“Let’s not splinter our efforts. … It needs to be on the same page,” Irwin said. “There are lots of ideas about what should happen in preschool. The part that scares me in (House Bill 1004) is where it talks about having to pass an assessment.”
Irwin is worried the focus of preschool will shift to passing a test, which is not appropriate for that age level, she said.
Kokomo Schools fully implemented a preschool program serving 200 students at three sites this school year. That program utilizes the Indiana Standards Tool for Alternative Reporting of Kindergarten Readiness (ISTAR-KR) to monitor its students’ progress.
Behning said the Early Learning Advisory Committee established in 2013 has been authorized to work with the Indiana Department of Education to select a kindergarten readiness assessment. They are considering ISTAR-KR but exploring other options, Behning said, because ISTAR-KR tends to focus on academic skills.
Teachers’ ability to observe their students’ progress and adapt their lessons is critical for young children, Irwin said, which makes professional development an important part of a quality preschool program.
“A curriculum in preschool looks very different than curriculum in kindergarten,” Irwin said. “It would behoove (lawmakers) to look at programs that are already up and running and providing free preschool, but struggling to do so. Statewide, we need to make sure we’re talking the same talk and looking at what quality preschool is.”
Kokomo Schools set aside its federal Title I funds to run its preschool program. The money is enough to cover half-day sessions, and parents must provide a co-pay if they want their children to attend full-day preschool. Irwin would like to see early education experts from across the state involved in determining how best to spend the money set aside for the preschool voucher program.
Gov. Mike Pence proposed a preschool voucher program in December and endorsed it again in his State of the State address Tuesday.
“Now, I’ll always believe the best pre-K program is a prosperous family that is able to provide the kind of enrichment in their home that every child needs and deserves. But the reality is that’s not the case for many Indiana children,” Pence said in the address. “It’s important that the program be voluntary. It’s important that the program is available in the form of a voucher. I want parents to be able to choose to send their child to a church-based program, a private program or a public program that they think would best meet their needs.”
So many children, so few resources
Behning’s voucher proposal builds on legislators’ action in 2013 to establish an Early Learning Advisory Committee to oversee the distribution of an Early Education matching grant, which allocates up to $3,350 per student of state money to qualifying preschool programs that also receive a matching grant from local donors. The proposed preschool voucher program would operate separately.
The Early Education matching grant, available for children from households at 100 percent of the poverty threshold, has potential to serve 500 children. The voucher proposal currently being debated has potential to reach at least another 1,000, Behning said, depending on funding levels.
That’s still not enough.
From 2009 to 2011, 108,000 Indiana 3- and 4-year-old children (60 percent) were not enrolled in preschool, according to the most recent data from Kids Count, a data project run by the private charitable Annie E. Casey Foundation to track the well-being of children. In that survey, “preschool” included any preschool or nursery school program, not necessarily ones that met standards of quality.
The 771 licensed providers that currently meet Level Three and Level Four Paths to Quality standards have capacity for just 45,016 children statewide.
In Howard County alone, there are about 4,000 children who could attend preschool, local Head Start director Julie Worland reported, based on the program’s latest community assessment.
Head Start offers 380 slots for at-risk children in Howard, Miami and Tipton counties, with about 100 children still on a waiting list. Families must qualify for the federally-funded preschool program.
Kokomo Schools provides another 200 preschool slots and is willing to expand the program as more families want to register. Private programs offer more local preschool opportunities.
“Research proves over and over that your brain develops most from ages 0 to 5,” Worland said. “It’s the whole child and comprehensive services that makes (a preschool program) successful. And it all goes back to having funds to make it happen.”
Church vs. State
Indiana recognizes licensed preschool centers (which includes Head Start, public preschools and private programs), licensed homes and registered ministry preschool programs.
It joins just nine other states in not requiring registered ministry programs to comply with daycare regulations — something Eric Miller, founder of conservative political engagement group Advance America, has fought hard to maintain.
Miller did not return calls from the Kokomo Tribune, but in the past he has been outspoken about protecting churches and ministry preschools from government regulation.
Advance America referred to a proposed amendment to a Senate bill in the 2013 session as an “attack on churches” because it included registered ministry preschools in specific requirements a child care provider must meet in order to receive federal Child Care and Development Fund payments. The amendment to SB 305 ultimately failed.
“If the government can control a church child care ministry then the next step could be to go after other ministries involving children including a summer camp, Christian school, Vacation Bible School or Sunday school!” reads a post on the Advance America website in reference to the previous amendment.
However, Karen Dikeman, director of Little School at First Evangelical Presbyterian Church is ready to comply with the regulations of the voucher program, a step she described as “inevitable.”
“I think it’s something that’s inevitable because we’re seeing more and more the benefits of preschool,” said Dikeman, who has been director of the church-run early childhood education program for 18 years following her time as a teacher there. “I’ve seen it coming for a while now. We are not an accredited program … but we are looking at moving in that direction.”
With support from the church, Dikeman plans to seek accreditation through the Association for Christian Schools International, which is one of the accreditation agencies the IDOE recognizes. The accreditation process is extensive and can take two or three years, but in the meantime, Little School seems to be on track to meet stipulations for the proposed voucher program.
Every classroom is staffed with a teacher and assistant. Teachers have bachelor’s degrees or Child Development Associate credentials, are trained, know CPR and pass a background check. Little School enrolled 187 2 through 5 year olds this school year, offering kindergarten readiness assessments when the time comes that are based on teacher observations, state standards and benchmarks included in the in-house curriculum.
“I’ve felt our quality has been so high there hasn’t been a need (for accreditation),” Dikeman said. “Now, I’m seeing a need with all that’s going on at the state. We do meet a lot of the criteria.”
Dikeman is in favor of the vouchers, saying parents need more preschool options.
“There are a lot of families who fall through the cracks,” she said. “They don’t qualify for Head Start, but their income level is where it’s difficult to afford private preschool.”
The federal CCCDF offers vouchers so low-income families can afford child care while parents work or continue their education, but those resources only go so far. In 2013, 353 Indiana children received CCDF vouchers, while 3,155 children remained on a waiting list, according to CCDF.
Parents as first teachers
Even if preschool is made available to all Indiana children, parents still need to take an active role in their young child’s learning, said Marilyn Skinner, director of the Indiana University Kokomo Center for Early Childhood Education.
The mission of the center is to help all Howard County children be successful when they enter kindergarten. The center focuses on the parent as a child’s first teacher and offers support for parents, education materials through the Totes for Tots program and hosts informal playgroups.
“It has nothing to do with (income). Your baby’s brain is just as good as the rich people’s baby,” Skinner said. “Families have to show them things, talk to them about things and explain things. It’s not necessarily what a person’s income is. It’s the time and energy they’re willing to dedicate to their child.”
Parental involvement is a key component of Behning’s voucher proposal as well. Head Start, Kokomo Schools and Little School all said they include educational resources for parents in their preschool programs.
“We think it’s a necessity that parents are engaged in this program as well,” Behning said. “With poverty, there’s an uncertainty about the future so parents may enroll in a program and then not go. In an effort to offer wraparound services, we want to make sure parents are very cognizant of the fact that if they are not engaged in the program, the child cannot learn.”
Skinner thinks existing public preschools already are doing a good job of involving parents and educating children, and she would like to see the state offer more support for those programs.
“There’s a lot of regulations on those (preschool programs) that are in a public school,” said Skinner, who was coordinator of the area Head Start program and taught at Kokomo Schools before taking on her current role at the early education center. “If they want to fund preschool, they should fund it in a public school where they’ll have regulation. My concern would be with those that start up in churches and private homes. I’m always concerned that some will get in it for the money.”
Monitoring the quality of preschools programs, whether they are public or private, is a tall order, Skinner said. She would like to see regular checks to make sure preschools are living up to the Paths to Quality requirements.
“I don’t know how you’d possibly do that at the state level,” Skinner added. “I don’t know how they’d have enough people to monitor that.”
She also is concerned that a voucher program would spread the state’s resources too thin. Using the state money allocated to early childhood education in private as well as public programs would mean less money for all programs.
“If there are public schools doing a great job, then the funding should go to them,” Skinner said.
Irwin and Worland agreed, holding up Head Start as an example of a successful program the state could dedicate more resources to emulate. Head Start maintains a Level Four Paths to Quality rating, uses a CLASS tool to assess whether an environment is suited for young children’s learning and includes a parental engagement component that teaches parents and guardians about health care, nutrition and strategies for helping their children learn.
“Maybe parents don’t realize their important role in the education of their child,” Skinner added. “Maybe that’s because we haven’t stressed the importance of it.”