Early Learning Action Alliance

Quality and access retreatnotes

June 2, 2011

9:30am-4:00pm

Educare Early Learning Center

Attendance: Emma Gordon (WEEL), Donna Horne (Volunteers of America, CCR&R), Sue Winn (ELAC, Family Child Care Association), Susan Yang (CCR&R), Jackie Hyllseth (Schools Out Washington), Lois Martin (WEEL), Agda Burchard (WAEYC), Leslie Dozono (Children’s Alliance), Casey Osborn (Children’s Alliance), Gary Burris (EOI), Hannah Lidman (LEV), Joel Ryan (WSA), Katy Warren (WSA), John Bancroft (PSESD), Marge Johnson (Dept. of Defense), Pat Dickason (League of Women Voters), Karen Tvedt (League of Women Voters)

Objective: The objective of the retreat was to reach agreement on the Early Learning Action Alliance’s strategic work moving quality forward in the long-term (five years) and short-term (over two years) and brainstorm strategies to implement the Coalition’s short-term vision. ELAA is a mechanism for sharing information and using our collective energy to implement change.

  1. SEEDS TO SUCCESS(presentation by Bonnie Beukema and Char Goodreau, DEL)
  2. What is QRIS?
  3. Quality standards, accountability measures, program and practitioner support, financial incentives, parent/consumer education
  4. 19 out of 25 QRIS systems across the county include tiered reimbursement
  5. Most states align career lattice with QRIS
  6. Mathematica is coming out with toolkit to evaluate QRIS this month
  7. Seeds to Success field test wrapping up this month
  8. Field test was in White Center, East Yakima, Clark County, Kitsap County and included a total of 88 licensed child care facilities (centers and homes)
  9. Supported by two evidence-based tools for measuring environments and teacher-child interactions (ERS and CLASS) that will be evaluated by UW
  10. Used a block system—a provider has to reach Seed 1 before reaching Seed 2. DEL will look at the possibility of moving to a point system.
  11. Family engagement was the sticking point (for example, offering conferences, families meeting with each other, involve families in decision making).
  12. Participants received a $300 grant and some scholarships
  13. DEL will reconfigure the ratings based on what they found during the field test. Then facilities will have an opportunity to promote the rating.
  14. From field test to statewide implementation
  15. Refine & Build (FY 2012)
  16. Eligible field test participants can apply to be one of 60 “early adopters” during phase one
  17. QRIS data system build—Connecting data systems
  18. DEL currently uses 9 different transactional data bases
  19. PD registry build/alignment
  20. MERIT in development—Policy and technical issues holding up progress. This delay has been confusing for people on the ground.
  21. Launch and expand
  22. DEL will begin adding new facilities, depending upon available resources. July 2012- date to expand QRIS and open to new facilities interested in joining process.
  23. Will take a minimum of three months to rate
  24. There will be a cap because there aren’t enough resources
  25. Program components & budget
  26. FY 2012
  27. CCDF quality discretionary $1.3 million
  28. Private grants up to $900k
  29. FY 2013 looks different—don’t know about private money and want to expand to 160 rated facilities. Components will include:
  30. Quality incentive grants
  31. Washington Scholarships for Child Care
  32. Coaching & training
  33. Outcome data (potentially testing the infant CLASS)
  34. Additional incentives based on rating currently in development
  35. Once the model is finalized DEL will look at cost implication of wage supplements
  36. Key opportunities
  37. Federal quality benchmarks for states
  38. Report card for the feds to see what the states are doing around EL, hopefully it will affect funding in the future
  39. Feds are moving in the direction of defining quality more specifically
  40. Early Learning Challenge
  41. Harvard has selected WA as a demonstration site for turning scientific research into practice and will help with our Early Learning Challenge application
  42. Legislators and stakeholders want to be a part of the proposal process
  43. Desire to integrate wage enhancementsusing additional dollars
  44. We need to submit comments on the Dept. of Ed. website on guidelines
  1. SMALL GROUP PRESENTATIONS
  2. Professional development and compensation
  3. Presentation
  4. Current context
  5. There are many elements of professional development, but they are not part of a cohesive system (scholarships aren’t always tied to where we want to move people in the field, no evaluation for training, etc.)
  6. Goals for WA
  7. Cadre of skilled, diverse, adequately compensated workforce
  8. Cohesive, integrated system of professional development (cross-sector)
  9. Professional development, licensing, and QRIS should be integrated
  10. NAEYC professional development blueprint (professional standards, career pathways, articulation, financing, advisory structure, data)
  11. DEL’s three priorities: Seeds to Success, Merit Registry, trainer and training approval process
  12. Additional discussion
  13. Family child care and centers
  14. Family child care homes and centers have different needs related to professional development and QRIS
  15. When we talk about PD and quality we need to decide where we want to be. Centers already have more capacity than homes for professional development.
  16. Education requirements for providers
  17. Impact on communities of color and older providers would be disproportionate
  18. Discussion is needed on the difference between seat time and demonstrated competency
  19. Race to the Top
  20. Reflects movement at the federal level toward ranking states to make decisions on funding—common data across states
  21. It’s important that data shows we are making progress
  22. CCDF quality dollars
  23. Perspective
  24. We have made progress in early learning over the years
  25. WA has to spend $15.4 million on quality in 2011
  26. DEL says it intends to spend $18 million on quality
  27. DEL is working on a breakout of how quality dollars are spent for ELAC
  28. Linkage btw child care and PreK is important
  29. Opportunities: SAC grant and Seeds to Success
  30. New CCDF plan was different in format than previous years, more emphasis on quality.
  31. Subsidy
  32. Access
  33. Difficult for parents—poor customer service, continuity issues
  34. DEL has indicated they may be looking into building more accountability measures into system
  35. Welfare to work focus rather than early learning program, partially because WCCC lives at DSHS
  1. LONG-TERM GOALS– brainstorming session
  2. Increase in state funding for EL comparable to what we are spending for each grade in K-12 system (about $1 billion/year increase)
  3. Make early learning as accessible as K-12 education
  4. Child care should be seen as education.
  5. Shift to greater level of quality in child care so it is focused on child development
  6. Requires better reimbursement, qualifications, etc.
  7. Affordable high-quality quality
  8. Making advancement worthwhile for providers
  9. With increased quality comes increased prices
  10. Coordinated, integrated systems for quality improvement supports and professional development, compensation
  11. Shift in licensors from policing to supporting
  12. Alignment between licensing reboot, QRIS, and WACs
  13. Weighted WACs
  14. More thoughtful attention to where resources are dedicated—we want to move people up the quality ladder.
  15. If incentives increase as you go up, the system will be driven toward high-performing facilities.
  16. There needs to be proportional weight to facilities performing at different levels.
  17. Need to use research around readiness to change to shape how we invest in quality improvement
  18. Implement child care contracts—the State would contract with providers directly. This would allow the State to address professional development, wages, and continuity. WA already does this with Homeless Child Care.
  19. Targeted spending to move lower level facilities up the system
  20. Incentives that support equity in the system
  21. Is it better to have more access or more quality? What do we push as advocates?
  22. During the legislative session we defend access to care that sometimes is not great quality. Reimbursement rates cannot sustain a high level of quality.
  23. Do we want to decide to fund a fewer amount of children at the risk of losing some slots?
  24. Military model was revamped in 1991 starting with increased standards. Once people saw success in the system, there was increased demand. Quality comes first, access follows.
  25. Even at market rate you can’t buy the kind of quality we want. We should tie our arguments to what it takes to buy quality, not necessarily the market rate.
  26. 25-30% of state-subsidized kids are in unregulated care. Many states have limited access to FFN by asking families to prove that they can’t find providers or that their children have special needs.
  1. SHORT-TERM GOALS– brainstorming session
  2. Integrate home visiting funds into the coalition discussion
  3. Pilot child care contracts
  4. Subgroups within ELAC (professional development and compensation, licensing, infant/toddler, subsidy)
  5. Legislation focused on quality child care. Begs the question, should CCDF funds be appropriated by the legislature or DEL?
  6. Data about program quality and child outcomes
  7. Consolidating WCCC at DEL
  8. Re-orienting child care subsidy to be education-focused
  9. There are additional issues with moving all of subsidy to DEL that need to be considered
  10. The balance between licensors that police and support providersis a philosophical discussion that has implications for the policies that we support
  11. Make ECEAP a program that serve children pre-natal to age 5
  12. Development of wage incentive system connected with QRIS
  13. Focus on the importance of QRIS with the elements we want added
  14. PreK legislation—Representative Goodman
  15. More support for R&Rs to support providers
  1. SUMMARY LONG-TERM GOALS(we don’t want to lose sight of these long-term goals as we are implementing short-term actions)
  2. QRIS
  3. Connection with and support of Thrive and DEL
  4. Coordinated, integrated system of professional development and compensation
  5. Targeted quality incentives and support through an equity lens
  6. Connected to professional development linkages, coordinated system
  7. Licensing connection/WAC alignment—licensing should be the building block for next steps in QRIS and WACs should be aligned with QRIS
  8. Culturally relevant
  9. Governance
  10. Subgroups (professional development & compensation, licensing, PreK, licensing) with ELAA input
  11. Open positions and opportunities to influence
  12. What does ELAC/what will ELAC have oversight of in early learning?
  13. Child care
  14. Move to increased focus on quality (need to discuss with full coalition)
  15. Subsidy rate not tied to market rate
  16. Longer term increased access to high-quality
  17. Move child care from DSHS to DEL
  18. Clear licensing standards
  19. PreK/0-5
  20. ECEAP system that serves children ages 0-5 system (including a set-aside for infants and toddlers) at a higher amount per slot
  21. ECEAP currently $6600/slot. The concept behind WA Head Start was implementing Head Start hours and funding levels using federal and state dollars.
  22. PreK work group will look at 2-tier model that provides more supports for lower-income families
  23. Work with Goodman
  24. Connection to QRIS
  25. Licensing
  26. Connection to QRIS
  27. Weighted WACs (provider caucus could give input and feedback)
  28. Shift of culture in licensing away from policing
  1. PARED-DOWN SHORT-TERM ACTIONS
  2. Full coalition sharing/discussion
  3. Discussion around increased emphasis on quality
  4. Provider Caucus meeting to gather input
  5. Communications
  6. Succinct definition of quality (do we focus on child outcomes or components of quality?). Include Communications specialists in this discussion.
  7. Succinct definition of compensation
  8. Mobilization
  9. Town meetings and candidate education (WSA, Pat, SEIU, LEV)
  10. Administrative/governance
  11. Clarification of DEL’s definition of quality
  12. Recommendations for ELAC membership (11 seats are up in September)
  13. Prep for ELAC retreat in September
  14. Further discussion around governance system
  15. Recommendation from the cultural competency review of EL plan is to have feedback loops for community members and increased transparency
  16. We can think about how we want to create a governance structure with greater transparency, access, and coordination btw state agencies
  17. Investigation of complaints should be at DEL rather than Children’s Administration
  18. Race to the Top
  19. Meet with DEL as soon as guidance is released
  20. Submit feedback influencing federal guidance—talking points gathered from Marge, LEV, WSA
  21. Legislative
  22. Letter addressing the use of CCDF dollars to fund ECEAP
  23. Work session/briefing/brown-bag on PDC recommendations
  24. ELAA meetings with Goodman, Kagi, Harper, Litzow, Fain, Hill
  25. Contextual info (such as CCDF docs) for ABCs of early learning binders
  26. Increased education on the importance & value of quality

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