Child Care is an Umbrella of Programs, Pre-K is One Part

Across the country, momentum is growing for pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) programs. The November 2020 election carried some of that energy with state and local pre-K measures passing in Colorado and Multnomah County, Oregon. While pre-K can have positive lifelong impacts on children, it is a narrow sliver of the whole child care system and not a substitute for other models of care that benefit working parents.

The Child Care Crisis

Our country is in the middle of a child care crisis that is having negative implications on our children, businesses, and workforce. Across the country, the demand for child care greatly outpaces the supply of child care slots, creating a significant child care gap. Additionally, the cost of owning and operating a child care facility exceeds what families can pay, causing these small businesses to constantly exist on the precipice of closure, a phenomenon accelerated and highlighted by the pandemic. Despite child care facilities doing their best to minimize costs by operating on slim margins, families are paying exorbitant amounts to send their children to child care; the monthly cost of child care is a major expense that can easily rival the monthly cost of housing for families. The ongoing struggle to find affordable and available child care is markedly worse for working parents with infants and toddlers or for parents working non-traditional hours (outside of the typical 9-5 workday). The lack of child care has implications for our workforce and economy, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. With ongoing closures due to the pandemic, over 68% of parents reported that child care has affected their ability to stay in the workforce and 42% of parents have reported changing jobs in order to have more flexible hours to afford child care.

How does Pre-K fit in?

Pre-K can be both high-quality early education and child care. Pre-K is child care because it provides children with a safe place to go while parents are otherwise engaged. However, pre-K programs are distinct from other child care options because they are primarily implemented by states as a classroom initiative versus work support for working families. Pre-K’s primary mission is kindergarten preparedness and as such, it benefits from a structure largely modeled after a school-day classroom: one that follows a 9-3 schedule.

Achievement has long been tied to a child’s experience and development before they reach kindergarten, and the benefits of a high-quality pre-K program have been widely acknowledged: children see higher math and literacy abilities, in addition to social emotional benefits. While the format has the potential to be effective in reaching its intended goals, pre-K is not a productive model for addressing the larger child care crisis facing our nation.

By the nature of its structure, pre-K is unable to provide child care for parents who may work non-traditional hours. Single-parent households or households where parents work beyond 3 p.m. will need secondary care arrangements in addition to pre-K. As previously stated, those child care arrangements are already limited in supply. Furthermore, the demographic served by pre-K is generally narrow, with a focus on supporting kindergarten readiness for children ages 3-5. Because of its targeted age group, pre-K is unable to provide educational or child care opportunities for families with infants and toddlers, which leaves behind a large swath of the population for which child care is both expensive and difficult to access.

Our fragmented early learning system leaves the child care sector in crisis and both pre-K and child care underfunded. A shift in perspective is necessary in order to recognize that both child care and pre-K are invaluable pieces to helping our children, workforce, and economy thrive.

What’s Next?

Pre-K can be both high-quality early education and child care but it’s only one piece of a larger puzzle of our child care system. When implemented effectively, its outcomes have proven to be positive, but it cannot adequately support working parents and businesses, especially as we seek long-term recovery from the pandemic. It’s important to distinguish the distinct role pre-K plays within the child care system. Both child care and pre-K remain underfunded, consequently leaving many children and families behind. If our country pursues more robust pre-K programming, then we must simultaneously pursue sustainable support for the child care sector as a whole, for the two go hand-in-hand.