Introduction
On Friday, May 4, 2001, six
nationally distinguished scholars and 135 audience members
convened at the Radisson Metrodome Hotel near the University of
Minnesota's Minneapolis campus for the 20th Minnesota
Round Table titled "Child Care: The Role of Higher Education
in Policy and Practice." Audience members included
University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff, as well as
policymakers, child care providers, and parents from around the
region and the state.
Over the years, the Minnesota
Round Table has brought together scholars and practitioners
devoted to young children and their families and challenged them
to address questions salient to ensuring optimal early childhood
development. The Round Table's unique format facilitates
integration of insights gained from research, policy, and
practice and promotes visionary suggestions for future
directions. At times, the Round Table format prompts panelists to
voice unusual or unpopular perspectives on controversial issues.
The result for audience members and panelists alike is a
thought-provoking and insightful interaction that stimulates new
thinking on the issues.
This year's Round Table
moderator, Dr. Scott McConnell, Professor of Educational
Psychology at the University of Minnesota and Director of the
Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), described the
Round Table format: "We think of the Round Table as a
discussion among our invited experts but with hundreds of their
closest Minnesota friends eavesdropping on their
conversation!" He invited the panelists to "take risks
and offer visions that are sometimes rare in traditional academic
settings."
The 2001 Round Table was
sponsored by the Center for Early Education and Development
(CEED); the Irving B. Harris Training Center for Infant and
Toddler Development (University of Minnesota); the Minnesota
Department of Education; the Minnesota
Child Care Resource and Referral Network; and the Minnesota
Association for the Education of Young Children (MNAEYC). To
begin the Round Table, each panelist described his/her
involvement with research, policy, and practice in child care.
Each of the two sessions, one in the morning and one in the
afternoon, presented the panelists with two issues and several
questions to address in their conversation. The topics for
discussion were introduced by colleagues representing educational
institutions, statewide programs, the Minnesota Department of
Children, Families, and Learning, (Minnesota State Department of
Education). Audience members asked questions at the end of each
session and the panelists gave closing remarks at the end of the
day.
The following comments were
taken from the day-long conversation between the panelists. In
some cases quotations have been rephrased and/or moved to
articulate the speaker's position on the topic. A complete,
verbatim transcript of the 2001 Round Table is available. Contact
CEED at 612-625-6617.
Sitting
at the Round Table
Scott McConnell, Ph.D.,
is a Professor and Coordinator of the School Psychology Program
in the Department of Educational Psychology, and Director of the
Center for Early Education and Development at the University of
Minnesota; in addition, he is an Adjunct Professor of Child
Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. McConnell received
his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Oregon
in 1982 and is a certified School Psychologist. He currently
serves as the Co-Director of the Early Childhood Research
Institute on Measuring Growth and Development
(http://ici2.umn.edu/ecri/), a five-year research, development,
and dissemination effort to build procedures for describing young
children's growth and development over time and to design
interventions that support optimal rates of development. He has
published articles on the assessment and treatment of social
behavior deficits, social competence, school adjustment, and
academic performance, including development of early literacy
skills and other developmental competencies. Scott and his wife
Ann are parents of two children, Nora (age 11) and Reid (age 9).
Deborah A. Ceglowski, Ph.D.,
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and
Instruction at the University of Minnesota, and Principal
Investigator of the CEED Head Start Project. She has 20 years of
experience as an early childhood teacher, parent educator, day
care director, and member of the Head Start training and
technical assistance network. She studies the impact of policies
on children, families, and early childhood programs and has
taught a course in qualitative research methods. Dr. Ceglowski's
publications include a book titled Inside a Head Start Center:
Developing Policies from Practice, which was awarded the
Outstanding Qualitative Dissertation Award from the American
Educational Research Association. Dr. Ceglowski recently
completed a year-long study with three Minnesota Head Start
programs to investigate how the programs provide full-day
services to Head Start families and the impact on families moving
from welfare to work. She completed a research design for the
Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning to study
the quality of Minnesota's child care system and is now the
Principal Investigator of a three year study of the quality of
child care, part of the Minnesota Child Care Policy Research
Partnership funded by the Child Care Bureau and the Minnesota
Department of Children, Families, and Learning.
Richard Chase, Ph.D., of
the Wilder Research Center (http://www.wilder.org) in St. Paul
has 20 years of experience working with diverse community groups
and government agencies to design and carry out useful studies
and to establish ongoing systems that help programs improve and
measure their success. Dr. Chase is a generalist with
considerable experience evaluating community-based prevention and
capacity-building programs for youth and families, and helping
organizations focus on results. He holds a doctorate in American
Studies from the University of Minnesota.
Recent research projects
include
- Statewide household
survey on child care (Minnesota Department of Children,
Families, and Learning)
- Needs and resources
assessment for the St. Croix Valley
- Health surveys for
Washington County and St. Paul's West Side
- Statewide staffing
study for early childhood and school-age child care
programs
- Recent evaluation
studies include
- Hmong youth programs
to prevent crime and substance abuse (Hmong American
Partnership)
- Child maltreatment
prevention programs (Minnesota Department of Health)
- Golden Eagle, an
American Indian youth resiliency program (Minneapolis
American Indian Center)
Rachel Connelly, Ph.D.,
is an Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the
Women's Studies Program at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine.
Connelly received her Ph.D. in economics in 1985 from the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with fields in labor
economics, economic demography, and econometrics. Her area of
research is at the intersection of demographics and labor
markets. She has published articles on the effect of broad
demographic trends on labor market decisions and on the economics
of child care. In addition, she is currently working on issues
related to women's status, education, and migration in rural
China. Her research on child care considers both sides of the
market the demand for child care on the part of families with
young children and the labor supply of child care workers. Recent
projects related to child care include a study of the value of
employer-sponsored child care and a set of papers using recent
data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation looking
at the relationships among marital status, employment status,
child care use, and welfare recipiency. She currently serves as
research consultant to the Minnesota Child Care Policy Research
Partnership.
Carollee Howes, Ph.D.,
is a Professor in the Department of Education in the Graduate
School of Education and Information Sciences at the University of
California at Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. in
Developmental Psychology at Boston University in 1978 and did
postdoctoral studies in the Department of Social Psychiatry at
Harvard University. She joined the UCLA faculty in 1981. Dr.
Howes is currently on the leadership team of the National Center
for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) funded by the United
States Department of Education, Office of Research and
Improvement (1995 to 2003). As well, she is part of the National
Early Head Start Research Consortium. Her research and
publications concern the development of social and effective
relationships with parents, other adults, and peers. A second
line of research is on child care policy. She and her partner,
Karen Brodkin, live in Venice, California. They have three grown
children and a granddaughter.
Jill Uhlenberg, Ph.D.,
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching at the
University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in Cedar Falls. In addition,
she is the current President of the National Coalition for Campus
Children's Centers (www. campuschildren.org), "The Voice for
Children on Campus." Dr. Uhlenberg received her Ph.D. in
Early Childhood Education at the University of Iowa in 2000. In
addition, she is Coordinator of the UNI Child Development Center,
a full-day laboratory program for children (ages 0-5) of
students, faculty, and staff, where she is involved in the
preparation and supervision of early childhood education
undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Uhlenberg serves on
local Child Care Resource and Referral Advisory and Training
committees that develop and implement training for child care
centers and home providers in the area. She is involved in
qualitative research about young children in group settings and
has been a presenter at local, state, and national conferences on
a wide variety of issues related to programming for young
children. Jill and her husband John are the parents of four grown
children.
The
Four Issues Addressed at the 2001 Round Table
Issue
1. Families in the Child Care System, Present and Future
Introduced by Deb
Swenson-Klatt, Child Care Research and Evaluation Specialist,
Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning
Multiple economic, social, and
political contexts surround the reality and the possibility of
child care in the United States. These contexts help determine
where children spend their time, who cares for them, how families
find and pay for care, and how child care providers are trained
and compensated for their services. What does research tell us
about the current status and future needs of the child care
system in the United States? What do we know and what do we still
need to learn?
Q:
What decisions are families making about child care, and what
factors impact those decisions?
Chase: When the Wilder
Foundation did our household survey of child care, we didn't ask
parents what kind of child care they were using. We didn't want
them to start with predetermined categories but rather to talk
broadly about where kids spend their time, with whom, in what
settings, at what costs, why they're doing it, and so on. We
found that the most common type of child care is relative care.
An interesting pattern emerges and correlates with the age of the
child. It starts with grandparents and goes to siblings and then
to more self-care as children become older.
Howes: For years I
defined child care as any kind of care by someone other than the
parent who is usually responsible for the day-to-day care of the
child. This definition does not include self-care. One recent
national study used fathers as part of child care, which strikes
me as problematic because, usually, when fathers provide care,
they do so during part of the day while mothers work, and then
mothers provide care while fathers work, but mothers' care is not
defined as child care.
Connelly: One
definition revolves around the facilitation of women's
employment. The majority of parental caregivers are mothers who
are worrying about whether they can take care of children and
have a career at the same time. Men expect to have children but
don't expect it to be a problem. Over 60 percent of women with
children under the age of one are in the labor market. At the
same time, the occupational segregation rates and wage
differentials between men and women are still very high. These
facts impact decisions about who will exit the labor market to
take care of the children.
Howes: You also have to
think about the culture of the family. All members of poor
families are working. There isn't a grandma at home or an aunt or
a sister who can take over. These families don't use the formal
child care system, but it's much less romantic than our notions
of "relative care."
Chase: Another issue is
"non-standard hour care," which is care before seven in
the morning or after six at night or on weekends, so it's
non-standard working hours. Our survey found that half of
Minnesota kids are in child care during non-standard hours.
Relatives are such a common provider because they are available
during hours when formal care systems are not.
Ceglowski: Families
select from those choices available. Researchers are sometimes
biased when thinking families should choose from the formal
system of licensed centers or homes.
Chase: Our study showed
that low-income households fare much worse in the current child
care system with regard to availability, stability, and cost.
They're paying way too much of their income (up to a third). They
change arrangements more often. They have less choice.
Howes: We recently
completed a study comparing different types of providers in terms
of their ability to construct a positive, sensitive, secure
attachment relationship with children. We found that relative
caregivers were no more able to do this than non-relative
caregivers. Some grandmothers are too overwhelmed and don't
really want to be taking care of the child. Some child care
workers are too underpaid and don't have enough training to do
it. Being a relative does not ensure the ability to form secure
attachment relationships with children.
Connelly: It's really
important not to over-romanticize relative care. In our study of
factory workers, we found that many families who had relatives
available chose the formal child care system. They enjoyed the
reliability of the formal system and the lack of familial
obligation associated with using relative care. It can be
difficult to know whether families choose relative vs.
non-relative care for reasons of availability, cost, quality, or
other reasons. And we must remember that taking care of children
is really hard work. As family income increases, parents are less
likely to use parental care. This is not because they love their
children any less. It's because child care is work. They're using
their increased income to buy themselves some time not providing
care themselves.
Chase: In the Wilder
study, we asked parents why they chose the type of child care
they use. Relative care was chosen based on flexibility and
trusting the provider. The formal child care system was chosen
based on location and on the perception that centers provide more
stimulating environments to meet children's developmental needs.
Issue
2. Quality Care
Introduced by Avisia Whiteman,
Research and Evaluation Specialist, Minnesota Department of
Children, Families, and Learning
Research is beginning to tell
us about children's experiences in child care. We are starting to
have definitions of good quality care. Based on the research,
what is the best way to make sure that quality child care is
provided?
Q:
What are children's experiences in care, and what does
"quality" care mean?
Howes: Some children
experience warm, trusting relationships with caregivers and
opportunities to engage with other children. They learn how to
share resources and how to engage in fairly complex social play.
They have good materials with which to play. Other kids
experience barren asphalt playgrounds and nobody that they can
trust. They get covert microaggressions that are based on race
and gender. They get boring things to do, the same things day
after day. This variability exists in all types of settings,
whether formal or relative care.
Chase: We need to
direct public attention to the fact that child care (even formal
child care) is not a facility. We have to change the language
from day care to child care: We don't take care of days, we take
care of children. Child care is an environment for kids to
develop and succeed.
Howes: Another
interesting result of our studies is that practices can vary
widely while still providing good quality care. We observed one
African American academy that teaches two-year-olds through
drilling numbers, letters, and phonics. At first glance, this
approach seems to be exactly the opposite of what is
developmentally appropriate. But the program had our very highest
scores on all warmth, social, emotional, and relationship
measures. Although they were using drills, what was most salient
to the children was the adults' concern, commitment, and passion
for children and for creating spaces that value and respect
children. The kids were bouncing up and down over phonics, having
fun and laughing. In the final analysis, it wasn't much different
in tone than playing in the garden and learning about earthworms.
Connelly:
Interestingly, when you talk to parents, you find out that what
they think is good quality care is the same kind of care that
developmental psychologists say is good care. The problem is, how
do you work with communities to increase the quality of care that
children are getting?
Howes: We must think in
terms of a threshold, a base level of quality below which we
don't want any child to fall. The hard part is identifying that
level. Our studies show that children in relatively cheap and
easily available "good enough" care don't benefit from
the care over the long term. But children receiving the next
higher level of quality care accumulate benefits. Every child
deserves very good care and yet some children need it more. These
are the children whose parents can least afford the quality care.
The fact is, most children are in "good enough" but not
really good care. Are we satisfied with this?
Chase: We also have to
wonder whether or not "quality" means that an
environment has to be "just like home."
Howes: Sometimes
parents don't want care like home. Advocates for children have to
admit that sometimes replicating the home environment is not in
the best interests of children. Often, though, wanting something
"just like home" is a matter of congruence between the
language spoken at home and the language used by the care
providers.
Chase: It's often more
than language. Our research shows that parents want the provider
to raise their child the same way the family raises the child. It
is about using the same kinds of discipline and rewards, and it
is about the kinds of things the children are exposed to, a whole
mix of things and much more than speaking the same language.
Q:
What does accountability look like for child care and how do we
ensure quality?
Ceglowski: Research
shows four indicators that are related to good outcomes for kids:
low teacher/child ratio, small group size, better compensation,
and teachers with better formal education. Ensuring these
indicators of quality means struggling with two opposing notions
about children. On the one hand, people believe that child care
is the responsibility of parents. The other notion is that
children are a public good. Another issue is that of resources:
We can't demand outcomes as measures of good care without
providing the resources necessary to achieve those outcomes.
Connelly: To gain the
societal resources to ensure quality child care, it seems
necessary to define child care as part of the educational system.
We have to convince people that education begins in infancy and
that there is nothing magical about the age of five years.
Redefining child care as education also means professionalizing
the child care workforce. This will lead to higher salaries and
better quality care.
Howes: Accountability
is absolutely necessary. Only 60% of the National Association for
the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accredited centers met
the research standards of "good." We say we have a
self-regulating system and we regulate ourselves, but we don't
train our regulators, we don't hold them to an objective
standard, and we let friends accredit other people's programs.
Maybe we're just too kind in this field and maybe, in fact, there
are some programs and some teachers who shouldn't be doing it.
There may be some providers who shouldn't be doing it. There may
be some grandmas who shouldn't be doing it.
Ceglowski:
Accountability needs to be broader than child outcomes. We need a
broad definition of outcomes which is more inclusive than a list
of things that kids will be able to do at a given age.
Howes: Outcome measures
also need to take into account all the children who come from
very difficult life circumstances into our programs. You
absolutely have to measure change considering where the child
started, not only what they've achieved, which may not look
"good" on your outcome measures but is still much
better than day one.
McConnell: It's
important for us to remember there's a difference between what's
easy to count and what's important to count between indicators
and outcomes. Indicators are easy to count. What they indicate
should be an important measure of quality that is harder to
measure than the indicator. My hunch is that the level of formal
education of child care workers is not really an action variable
causing better care to be provided. But level of education is
easier to measure than observing someone for three weeks to see
how they interact with kids.
Howes: A good example
of easy to count is "turnover." Harder to count is
quality of relationships. Turnover is a quick and dirty measure
that talks about stability of relationships but it really doesn't
get all the way there.
Chase: Similarly, there
is a difference between speaking a language and being culturally
competent or culturally supportive. Outcomes for kids under age
six should be simple and developmentally appropriate. The
standards have to be developed from the bottom up with the
involvement of the parents. Parents are not often involved in
these kinds of discussions by researchers and policymakers on
what these standards should be.
Howes: Why do they have
to be involved?
Chase: Because it's
their children.
Howes: Aren't they our
children, too?
Chase: Certainly. But
the parents are too often left out of professional and research
definitions of "our." Then the "experts" tell
them what's good for their children as opposed to parents being
involved in defining what is important for their children to be
good members of their families and communities. This is the
notion of family-centered child care where the family and the
provider form a partnership and both have responsibilities. Most
of all, they talk to each other. Providers don't set policies at
the center without consulting parents. Parents communicate what's
going on at the home. Family-centered care brings the family into
the care setting.
Connelly: There's a
balancing act between a parent's need to have control over their
child's life and society's need for children to be part of a
growing society and the notion of children as a public good. The
idea that we are all stakeholders in that development is an
important one. It is, in fact, the justification for public
funding of education. Again, I ask the question: What is so
magical about age five?
Chase: When we talk
about children as a public good, it becomes our obligation to
figure out what's best for them and make sure all kids get it. If
we really thought kids were a public good, we wouldn't have such
low-paying wages and such high turnover, and we would ensure that
every child and family have equal access to quality care.
Q:
What are some strategies for mobilizing the public's will and
resources toward ensuring quality child care?
Howes: (responding to
audience suggestion of launching a Madison Avenue-quality
advertising campaign): It's very important for researchers to
work with people who know how to talk to the rest of the world.
Uhlenberg: The majority
of people in this country don't have children in child care. Most
of them don't know they want to support quality child care
because they haven't thought through what it means for the
future.
McConnell: Might
policymakers and the public perceive early childhood services
differently if they thought of it more as educational and less as
custodial?
Uhlenberg: Exactly.
Part of the challenge is that child care is perceived as
less than early childhood education. We need to convince people
that caring for young children has important developmental and
educational impacts on these children.
Howes: We have to
figure out our common language. When children have a trusting,
secure relationship with an adult, they use that relationship to
organize their learning. As a social developmentalist, I am far
more interested in how relationships shape learning than I am in
thinking about learning or education as separate from
relationships.
Chase: It gets
complicated because when we talk about child care, we're talking
about children as old as age 14. What do you call the
after-school programs? They clearly cannot be called "early
childhood education." Plus, with the phrase "early
childhood education," you have that image of little toddlers
sitting in rows of chairs and desks and you have this other issue
of parental involvement. One big reason that some parents aren't
involved in schools is because of the bad experiences that they
had in school. If you try to get them to send their toddlers and
pre-kindergarten kids to something they think is school, you've
really got an uphill battle. How do we increase parental and
public involvement in promoting quality environments for all
kids, environments which support the relationships that every
child of every age needs to learn and grow?
Connelly: There was a
study in Florida of businesses who employ parents using
state-subsidized child care. When the study results were
presented to the employers, business owners realized that they
were benefiting from the state's subsidizing low-income women's
child care. All of a sudden, they became child care advocates.
Chase: It's also
important to recognize the tremendous resource we have in our
providers. Many wonderful providers cannot stay in child care
because of the money. Wilder's research shows that 15% of the
family child care providers last year didn't make any profit; of
those that did, annual profit was just over $11,000. So if it is
not a labor of love, what is it? They're not staying in it for
the money, and family providers often cite the stresses on their
own families as reasons for stopping.
Howes: We also need to
address the issue of sick children in child care. Many centers
have policies that sick children have to leave the center, which
puts a tremendous strain on parents. In some communities there
are centers that only take sick children, but at very high cost.
In fact, there is no reason for sick children not to be in child
care most of the time, particularly when we are talking about
common colds and respiratory illnesses. Centers need to have
quiet rooms for children with these mild illnesses so they can
rest and recuperate, but they needn't send children home. The
sick children have already infected all the other children.
Chase: This is a
workplace issue, not a child care issue. If you don't have jobs
with benefits, then parents can't take time off to care for sick
children. We know from the Wilder household survey that 75% of
parents say their usual back-up plan when their child is sick is
for a parent to stay home or to go home from work, often at the
sacrifice of pay or even their jobs. This is an issue about more
humane workplaces. Even if a child could stay in some form of
care while sick, is that really the best place for a sick child
to be? Wouldn't we rather have sick children at home, receiving
loving care by a parent whose parental role is supported in the
workplace?
Issue
3. Education and Training of Child Care Providers
Introduced by Kelly McKown,
Child Development Faculty, St. Paul Technical College
High-quality training for
child care staff is one of the essential components of quality
care for young children. Should there be a differentiation
between preservice training, inservice training, and professional
upgrade? What does the research say about content of training?
Where is training currently provided? What are the benefits and
incentives for training in a low-wage field? How can we address
the staffing crisis in child care? What can higher education do
to prepare child care staff for their responsibilities and to
support their ongoing educational needs?
Q:
What are the incentives for training and how do these interact
with the economics of being a child care provider? What kind of
training do providers currently receive?
Connelly: People
respond to incentives. Child care wages are low. As a result, we
have high turnover rates. Compared to other jobs with the same
educational level, child care workers earn the lowest salaries.
But how do you explain the fact that people are
child care workers, given how low their wages are? There must be
some nonpecuniary benefits. If you can make those better, you
have another incentive for training. Child care teachers like to
be good teachers. They can be convinced to participate in
educational programs if they can feel more competent as a result.
Chase: In our staff
turnover study, family child care providers said they left
the field because of too much time with the kids and too much
isolation. They said things like, "I need to talk to an
adult," "I need to have more connections." So the
same reasons that get them into the field eventually burn them
out and get them to move on.
Howes: When we ask
providers and teachers if they like their jobs, overwhelmingly
the answer is yes. What do they like about their jobs? They like
working with small children and having autonomy to decide what to
do on a moment-to-moment basis. We also ask if they feel they
have enough training and knowledge to work with children. Mostly,
the answer is no. They find working with children to be difficult
and getting worse, and they want more training. As for what kind
of training providers prefer, it turns out that they like
trainers who are child care providers themselves. They also
comment that they get bored at trainings. Most importantly, most
providers want to stay in the field but cannot afford to do so.
We used to ask how much of an increase in pay it would take for
them to stay in the field. People replied with such small amounts
that we really didn't want to publicize the findings. We were
afraid that people would pay attention.
Chase: It's interesting
that better training tends to correspond to public early
childhood programming. Teachers in the publicly funded settings
like Head Start have better benefits and pay. Consequently, you
get lower turnover, better equipped teachers, and better quality.
It seems to require public resources to stabilize the system.
Howes: According to the
national data sets, most providers get some post-high school
education, but it's not a two-year degree or a six-month program.
It's a course here and a course there. We don't know if those
courses are in a vocational school or if they're in a community
college, if it's a course that's given by the local resource and
referral agency or if they get college credit for it.
McConnell: Content is
another issue. What kind of content are people getting when they
train in this non-systematic way?
Howes: I'm fearful that
a lot of the content is based on a developmental approach of ages
and stages, an inventory of what kids do at each age, which is
not very exciting and not the kind of thing that I think will
help practice.
Ceglowski: Minnesota
has been struggling to identify the core things that people need
to know in child care. Yet child care is diverse, so people in
different settings identify different types of content. A
center-based teacher wants one kind of training while a home care
provider wants something else. We do have some national models
that have been used for better and worse. There is a credential
called the Child Development Associate credential that originated
in Washington and is now associated with the National Association
for the Education of Young Children. This credential organizes
content into a core of knowledge and specific competency areas.
Q:
What are the effects of better training on the quality of child
care provided?
Howes: One thing we've
found in our studies of providers is that there's very rarely
such a thing as preservice. Most people start taking care of
children in some setting and then go back to school. Most people
start training through inservices while they already work in the
field. States regulate how much training and formal education is
required, and it varies from state to state. My reading of the
research data says that all this is very well and good but you
need a B.A. to be an effective teacher or provider. The data
tells us this over and over again. But the reality is that most
providers do not have a four-year degree.
Ceglowski: And they
need a B.A. in a certain area. It's not that they need a B.A. in
physics, which is a story I heard a few weeks ago.
McConnell: We're happy
to have people enrolled in the bachelors licensure programs, but
they now get licensed to teach up to third grade in the state of
Minnesota. With this system, they have a choice of going into
child care or into formal education, a system that has tenure
after three years and great benefits. In some ways, we are upping
the ante when we train people well and market forces prevent us
from impacting the child caring system.
Uhlenberg: The
four-year degree prices people out of the low-wage child care
market. Even though we have a large number of people
majoring in early childhood education, most of them are double
majors in elementary education. They take early childhood in
order to be more marketable to school districts. Very few of them
have a goal to be a home care provider with their B.A. degree.
Connelly: One way to
think about this question is, "If I could change the whole
system, what would I do?" It makes sense to me that if you
pay higher wages, you end up with a professional workforce. It
requires political will to make big changes like that. The other
way to ask the question is a marginal way: "If you had a
thousand dollars, what would you do to get the biggest
impact?" We need to engage in both levels of conversation.
In my opinion, if you have a little bit of money, the answer is
not to fund people in four-year institutions even if that's the
right answer for the big-change question. Maine is giving
scholarships to people to go and get degrees in early childhood
education, but you have to wonder how long they stay in early
childhood education before they go to the elementary schools. I
wouldn't put $1,000 into training in four-year institutions; I'd
rather put it into a two-hour safety course or make sure there
are fire extinguishers, or that all providers know infant CPR.
Maybe you put it into respite so that providers can get a break
or attend training sessions.
Ceglowski: Well, I'm
giving you $500 for that and I'm taking the other $500 and
putting it into professional development that entails credit and
is somehow also tied to compensation for people. I am not an
advocate of any more two-hour trainings. We haven't paid enough
attention to creating a professional development lattice. In the
long term, I think that's where we want to go.
Howes: We've spent a
lot of time going backwards and forwards on this whole argument
of professionalization and compensation. I'm not willing to play
the game that says if only we train them, then they'll be
professionals and then they'll get their pay. In some ways, we
have been our own worst enemies on this. Because there is such a
shortage of care, providers and families need them or employers
need the families to have the providers, and everyone wants
low-cost care we've been lowering the requirements. Florida
increased their regulations over a six-year period so there would
be a Child Development Associate (CDA) teacher for every 12
children. But they lost most of their B.A. staff as they gained
their CDA staff. California started out requiring a masters
degree to work in its center-based programs during the second
World War. Now we're down to some courses in community college,
not even an A.A. degree. That's not good enough. People who work
with children under five must have the ability to reflect and
think in the abstract. This is what the B.A. stands for. We must
have adequate compensation. We have to set our standards high
enough. Middle income parents and affluent parents are just going
to have to pay a lot more to build the system that all children
deserve.
Connelly: But they're
not going to do it unless they believe that it matters. You have
to convince parents that children need to be educated by an
educated person.
Howes: Calling
ourselves professionals does not make us professionals. Getting
education, getting training, and acting like professionals is
what makes us professional. Getting paid for it is absolutely
essential.
Uhlenberg: It's also
important to think about parents as consumers of child care. Most
people are not child care consumers for very long. Over your
parenting life span, the years that you have to be a child care
client are very brief. Part of our challenge is the lack of
continuity in the population who cares about what's going on in
this field.
Howes: One of the
corporate child care systems which operates for profit markets a
very expensive and upscale model. It has very well educated and
trained providers. Some parents are clearly buying it.
Uhlenberg: Many of the
campus centers provide better salary for better educated
teachers. But, going back to what Richard said, it is the subsidy
by the university that supports the quality.
Issue
4. The Role of Higher Education in Research and Policy
Introduced by Nancy Johnson,
Executive Director, Minnesota Child Care Resource and Referral
Network
What are some barriers that
you as researchers encounter when bridging academia, provider
settings, and public policy? Research questions impact and are
impacted by the public climate and public policy. Who should
define the questions that researchers investigate? Should we
strive for greater inclusiveness in the research process? How can
practitioners and advocates for children and families in the
field have a greater connection to the research that you do, and
what are some specific suggestions for researchers to make sure
that you are reaching out to parents and people in the field?
Q: How
do you balance the ethical quandaries of pursuing research as
well as public advocacy and policy changes?
Howes: When I work in
community partnerships, one of the things we talk about from the
beginning is the importance of framing the questions. I tell them
that if there's some answer here that would make them extremely
uncomfortable, then we probably should abandon the question or
change it. From this angle, questions that follow the format of
"does fill in the blank work?" go out the window
because what if you find out that what you are doing does not
work? Instead, we hone the questions and identify more
specifically who does it work for, where does it work, how does
it work, and how do we improve it? These questions are intriguing
to answer and don't have such deadly consequences if you get the
"wrong" answer.
Connelly: It's
important for researchers to be objective because objectivity is
an important gift we bring to the policy debate. You have to be
careful about situations where the funder is telling you what you
can find and what you can't find. As advocates, you all have to
respect the independence of the researcher. I was in a situation
like this where researchers were talking to advocates. I had the
feeling that I was going to leave the room with tar and feathers
on me because I wasn't saying what this group really wanted to
hear. There has to be room for independent research.
Howes: It's the
responsibility of the researcher to be very careful about the
integrity of research. I am vehemently opposed to releasing any
findings before they're peer reviewed for the integrity of the
research.
Connelly: There is
value in having people who are doing research who aren't being
paid by one of the stakeholders in the system.
Howes: I don't take
money from people who are paying for the intervention to evaluate
their intervention.
Ceglowski: I also think
that because of the type of research I do, I often have to defend
the integrity of my work: Do we have the same openness and space
for rigorous qualitative work?
Q:
What role does collaboration play in your efforts as a
researcher?
Howes: I have always
been someone by disposition who liked to hang out with
practitioners and community people, the people we now call
participants and not subjects in our research. Most, if not all,
of my ideas about what I research have come through exchanges
with practitioners and partners in the field and community
people. You can't do good policy-related research unless you have
those ways of communicating back and forth.
Chase: And there are
still researchers who want to study the population as research
subjects but not as partners in the research. If you're doing
research with people, it's incumbent to engage them in the
creation of the research questions.
Howes: Well, sometimes
yes and sometimes no. There is a body of knowledge that the
researcher brings to it that cannot be diminished. Yet it's
absolutely important to engage in respectful and trusting
relationships with the people with whom you're doing research. In
one study we just completed, we were concerned about what
characteristics of child care teachers helped contribute to the
building of new positive relationships. We went to staff meetings
to introduce the research. We told them we would be asking them
questions about what they thought about the children and about
themselves. We did not ask them to look over the very sensitive
clinical instrument and decide whether or not it was a good
instrument. We didn't tell them how we were going to score it. We
asked them if they would participate in a conversation around
these topics. They signed informed consent.
Uhlenberg: What I would
find interesting is once you have finished with the data
gathering, then to ask those teachers their impressions.
Howes: We did. That's
the next stage in the study. Many of the people with whom I do my
current research subject our findings to review by stakeholders.
We ask them to look at the findings, interpret them, and talk
about the pitfalls of releasing these findings. That doesn't mean
we change our findings. We don't shape our findings so that
they're real sweet and nice.
Chase: As researchers,
we are accountable to communities. I do think that's important,
that we can't be separate. As Minnesota becomes more complicated
and diverse, it's going to be even more difficult to figure out
how to be inclusive. If we think we have a hard time now, it's
only going to get harder and we should get started.
Howes: And of course,
there are so many barriers to who gets to be a researcher, who
gets access to the qualifications that allow you to be a
researcher.
McConnell: A lot of the
academic research is sort of doctrinaire. That is, it is informed
by the work that's gone on before it, and it only informs the
research that will follow it. It sort of exists in this little
tiny world. Is it appropriate to have somebody say to me,
"Don't study that anymore because we know enough about that.
Instead, could you pay attention to this?"
Chase: If we want to
engage communities, the public, and practitioners in evaluation
research, we have to teach them the language first. In this
process, it's most effective to use examples from their own daily
work, ways that they do outcome evaluation and maybe didn't even
know they were doing research. Most of what Wilder does is with
community groups in order to give them information they need. For
example, if a program is not working, we help them understand why
and how to make it better. That's where the passion comes in. You
can be passionate about putting the information to use and making
improvements to practices while preserving scientific integrity
and neutrality.
Howes: When we generate
our research questions, we need to have dialogue, a
give-and-take, a discussion about what are the important topics
to be researched. Those sorts of exchanges only happen when the
researcher leaves the ivory tower.
Uhlenberg: The research
that I normally do is action research working with individuals or
working with classroom teachers working with individual children.
The results are likewise small. But for the practitioner, they're
every bit as valuable as some of the larger studies and may be
more applicable in what they're doing on a day-to-day basis.
Q: How
do you ensure that policymakers and the public understand and use
the research?
Ceglowski: Recently we
created some informational media. We hired a technical writer and
a graphic designer to make the material accessible to the public.
The process that was most intriguing to me was people sitting
around the table not once, not twice, but many times trying to
figure out what were acceptable messages that were research-based
and were still succinct enough to be understood by the public. I
don't think that's a process that we as researchers engage in
enough. We could learn a lot from our colleagues who do more
marketing.
Chase: There's a
concept in community organizing: Where's the self-interest?
Self-interest isn't bad. Selfishness might be bad. Self-interest
is not bad. When it's in their self-interest to get into child
care, it happens. If it's in the employer's self-interest, it
happens. You have to push self-interest as part of community
organizing on behalf of families and kids.
Connelly: In the
factories we studied in North Carolina, it was also about
self-interest. We looked at how child care impacted decisions in
a low-wage occupation. It was a very tight labor market with
enough training costs that you don't want a revolving door of
workers. A couple of the bigger companies decided it was worth
putting a child care center into their facilities. But not all
employers are going to go with the same response. That may be a
good thing in terms of choice. If one factory offers the 401k
while the other has the child care center, the workers can choose
where to be employed. Self-interest puts the benefits in place
and self-interest selects the workers most likely to use the
benefits offered.
Ceglowski: Policymakers
aren't much different. Policymakers make decisions based
on their own world views. They start with their own values, their
family's values. Then they think about their community and
constituency. What researchers think is not the priority in the
policymaker's decision process, unless what we have to say
matches what they believe. The quality of the research does not
ensure that its results will be applied as good policy.
Chase: At the Wilder
Research Center, our rewards are different than the academic
world where you have to publish in journals to get advancement.
We want to get our research findings out to the public because
changing public opinion is the best way to change public policy.
Closing
Remarks
At the conclusion of the day,
Dr. McConnell asked each of the panelists to make one closing
statement.
Jill Uhlenberg...
We have a good body of research now about what quality looks
like, what we should be expecting in child care, and my concern
is how to take that next step and put it into action to get some
policy that responds to that research and puts it into practice
for the children.
Carollee Howes...
I'm struck again by how much we struggle in this field and in
this area to balance the needs of children and the needs of
mothers and families and to do well for everyone. In some ways,
that's almost an impossible task.
Deborah Ceglowski...
I come away with reminders from the audience about things we need
to keep in mind and also about doing more thinking on the
complexity of the child care issue. It's hard, it's slippery.
Richard Chase...
If we can conceptualize stadiums as a public good, certainly we
can conceptualize children as a public good...
Rachel Connelly...
I think these kinds of conversations, limited as they are, are
very valuable and help us think outside our boxes.
Scott McConnell...
I'd like to share this last thought with you: As a researcher who
works with young kids in child care settings sometimes, although
not in child care per se, and as a parent of two young kids and
hopefully one day graduates of the child care system, it's clear
to me from the conversation today and from my experience as a
researcher and a parent that America is struggling with changing
the way that we raise our young children and thinking about what
the consequences of those changes are.
Mary
McEvoy Recognized for Years of Service
Mary McEvoy,
former Director of CEED, was honored at the 2001 Round Table for
her seven years of service to the Center. Current Director, Scott
McConnell, praised McEvoy for her energetic leadership on early
childhood issues in the College and at the University and her
success in bringing new visibility to early education and
development issues, particularly among legislators and
policymakers. Mary is now Chair of the Department of Educational
Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She continues to work
on projects sponsored by CEED.
CEED-Affiliated
Projects
Positive Approaches to Problem
Behavior for Young Children with Disabilities: Greater Minnesota
Behavior Project
Early Childhood Research
Institute on Measuring Growth and Development
Contact: Scott McConnell, (612) 624-6365, smcconne@umn.edu,
Minnesota Infant Mental Health
Project
Contact: Christopher Watson, (612) 625-2898, watso012@tc.umn.edu ,
CEED Projects
Head Start Project
Contact: Deborah Ceglowski, (612) 624-2034,
deborah.a.ceglowski-1@tc.umn.edu
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Fall 2001,
Volume 28, Issue 2