August 2008
Public Policy Reports and Alerts:

Federal | Maryland | MDAEYC
This Web page consists of MDAEYC’s public policy alerts and reports
issued since this Web site was established in 2007.
[Archived Reports: June 2008 | January 08 | December 07 | October 07 ]

Federal:

Congress just passed a reauthorization to the Higher Education Act, and it may well be signed by the President. The revised Act provides a number of new features helping those who work in early childhood, primarily that student loans can be forgiven for new borrowers who work in child care, Head Start, early Head Start, or public Pre-K programs. New grants will be offered, when appropriated, on a competitive basis for teacher quality partnership proposals that may include compensation incentives for early childhood educators getting an AA or BA, and for cross-sector, integrated and comprehensive professional development systems for those working with children 0-5. It will take a while for these authorizations to be implemented, but they are the first signs of progress in child care funding streams coming from the Federal Government for quite a while. NAEYC lobbied vigorously on our behalf for these provisions.

No news on the Federal funding issues. At this week's biennial State and Territorial Administrators Meeting, the HHS/Child Care Bureau did not announce any new initiatives, and the Bureau's researchers, meeting afterwards, focused their attention on parental child care choices, quality rating and improvement systems, professional development, and cooperation between agencies to improve child and family outcomes. One interesting factoid that emerged is that recent research has shown that the BA in early childhood has lost much, if not all, of its significance as an indicator of high quality in child care classrooms, as measured by environmental rating scales. Apparently non-college credit courses in early child development and curriculum have sharpened their focus on responsiveness between teacher and child, while college faculty have become more focused on K-12 children and have become much less able to devote their time to early childhood topics than before.

Maryland:

State and local agencies are now working on their budget requests for the fiscal year starting next July, and the outlook is far from promising. At the State level cuts may be required if the economy does not begin to improve and the slots referendum fails. At the local levels the economy also is a factor. This is not a year in which new and expensive initiatives for young children are likely to be welcomed by legislators, although the need is great and the costs of continued inaction will be substantial.

The Pre-K for All Working Group has completed its deliberations on a report to add details to last year's proposals, and it may come out soon. There is a new Early Childhood Council, created by the Governor's decision following a Federal mandate under the Head Start Reauthorization Act. MSDE/ECD groups are hard at work in developing a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) and professional development plans, especially for upper division college work in early childhood education.

MDAEYC:

MDAEYC's new Web site, www.mdaeyc.org, is a wonder to behold. Its public policy pages provide much information about where we stand and what we're doing about it.

Please tell your colleagues that they can get these reports directly if they send me a request by email.