Rebuilding Child Care for a More Equitable Future in the Midst of COVID-19

The pandemic presents a generational opportunity to redesign and rebuild child care with equity at the center.

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash

by Brandy Lawrence, Emily Sharrock, and Joe Waters

Capita and the Bank Street College of Education are two organizations tied together by a singular commitment to the flourishing of children and families now and for future generations. We recognize that structural racism creates systems with often insurmountable barriers for working, low-income, and Black and brown families and children — inequalities that are evident in the care of our youngest children.

Neuroscience tells us that brains grow explosively in the first 1,000 days of life, developing more than one million neural connections a second. Studies have shown that the developmentally meaningful interactions present in quality early care and education are critical to ameliorating the stark inequalities in kindergarten readiness. Yet the same racial disparities that we see in high school graduation rates and college enrollment are visible in children as young as 9 months and grow larger by 24 months. Similarly, research indicates that stark racial and gender disparities exist in expulsion and suspension practices at an early age, with young Black boys composing 18% of preschool enrollment, but 48% of preschoolers suspended, further compounding their development. And yet, our failure to adequately invest in the systems and structures that support our youngest children means that less than 10% of the country’s early care and education programs are considered high quality.

Caregivers experience the same barriers to success within this sector. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of the early care and education workforce relied on public assistance, 86% earned less than $15 per hour, and only 15 percent received employer sponsored health insurance. Compensation for the early care and education workforce has increased by only 1 percent in the past 25 years. The early care and education field is made up of 40% women of color who are clustered primarily in the lower wage jobs, such as aides and assistants, within this already low wage field. Nationally, on average, Black female educators working full time in settings that serve children ages 0–5 make 84 cents for every $1 earned by their white counterparts.

The pandemic has brought to light the systemic inequalities in the childcare sector, exposing the fragility and impact of years of disinvestment, that hurt both children and caregivers. The Center for American Progress estimates that nearly half of early childhood programs could close as a result with a disproportionate impact on working families, especially families of color.

Recently, five senators introduced the Child Care Is Essential Act to Congress calling for a $50 billion increase in funding to stabilize the child care sector and support re-opening. If, and only if, we put equity at the center of the policies and practices funded, the United States can rebuild the child care sector to value all children and caregivers. Working with — not for — early educators and the communities they serve, we must rebuild in a way that not only creates a secure system designed to address the unique needs of children and families emerging from this pandemic but also addresses the systemic racism prevalent in our existing system. Only then can all children and caregivers thrive.

Capita’s goal is to provide a platform and voice to those also fighting to ensure that our programs and systems support flourishing children, families and communities, and to do that we recently partnered with the Bank Street College of Education to publish their essay, Rebuilding the Early Care & Education System With Equity at the Center, that outlines five policy proposals to ensure equity as we rebuild:

1. Focus On Supporting Child Development, Not Just Physical Safety

Child care should be more than just a safe place for children to go when parents are working. Research confirms that the earliest years of life are a time during which a sensitively attuned parent, family member, educator and caregiver make the largest positive impact, building a base for future success in school, relationships, and life. Yet, adverse experiences during this critical period can affect positive cognitive and language development. Millions of young children and their families and caregivers are experiencing levels of stress and trauma that are unprecedented during our lifetime. To ensure that very young children and their caregivers have the capacity to engage in the relationships and experiences that set the stage for healthy learning and development, we must adequately invest in practice-centered professional learning opportunities for educators and caregivers that give them the skills needed to support child development and to manage their experiences of trauma as well as those of the children and families they support.

2. Pay Infant/Toddler Providers as Educators

Many in our country still consider early childhood educators to be “babysitters.” Right now, many infant/toddler educators are getting paid more in unemployment benefits than they received for their work as educators. To sustainably improve the quality of early learning experiences, we need to invest in our early care and education system by treating it as a public good. This means paying infant/toddler educators at least the same salary we pay similarly credentialled elementary school educators for the critical work they do.

3. Strengthen Systems

To implement bold reform, the early care and education system needs strong system and policy level leadership. These leaders must be able to effectively manage complex, large scale policy design and implementation that reflects an understanding of the needs of children, families, and the caregivers that support them. Leaders must commit to dismantling institutionalized practices, perspectives and behaviors that perpetuate racism, gender discrimination, and economic inequity through a deep understanding of systemic racism and the ways they pervade our early care and education system. Policymakers must devise proactive strategies to recruit and support leaders who share the lived experience and perspectives of the communities they serve.

4. Equip Providers as Educators

The profound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the childcare system will inevitably lead to the need to rebuild the workforce. Policymakers must design new pre-service pipelines and pathways for the existing early care and education workforce which confront the systemic obstacles posed by racism and gender bias. It is critical that programs intended to deepen the expertise of the early care and education workforce build on the invaluable funds of knowledge that educators bring to their work, while providing a robust ongoing professional learning program that produces educators who uphold the racial, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the children they educate.

5. Reach All Caregivers

A system designed to strengthen the quality of early care and education must also incorporate strategies to reach sectors of the workforce that are not frequently engaged in training or other support, like the one million family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) providers who care for the majority of young children from low-income families. For many parents, FFN care enables them affordability and the comfort of knowing that their children will be cared for by an adult who is well known to them. In addition, given patterns of racist practice that disproportionately affect Black and brown children, including suspension and expulsion rates, FFN care provides a way to avoid formal systems of care and education as long as possible.

With these policies in place, we can recover and begin to grow from the lessons learned during this unprecedented time in our nation’s history. If we begin to recognize and fund child care as the public good that it is, we can overcome decades of systemic inequalities and create opportunities for all children, families, and caregivers to flourish.

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Bank Street College of Education is a recognized leader in early childhood education, teacher and leader preparation, and the development of innovative practice in school systems across the country. For one hundred years, Bank Street’s focus has been improving the education of children and their teachers by applying to the education process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. Learn more about Bank Street Children’s Programs, Graduate School of Education, and Bank Street Education Center at bankstreet.edu. To learn more about Bank Street’s Birth-to-Three Workforce Policy Initiative, please visit bankstreet.edu/birth-to-three.