Closing the Opportunity Gap for Young Children (2023) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
8 Key Conclusions and Recommendations
8 Key Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 379-406
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From page 379... ...
These conclusions lay out what is known about the causes of the opportunity gap experienced by many 379
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Conclusion 1: Differential experiences and access to resources in early childhood result in opportunity gaps, which can lead to long-term gaps in outcomes in education, physical health, and social-emotional development that are harmful to individuals, communities, and society. There are a number of drivers of opportunity gaps in health and health outcomes in the early years and even before birth.
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From page 381... ...
, Medicaid, and Head Start -- the benefits of investing in these supports exceed the costs. Although the extent to which this is the case depends on the program, the committee's analyses provide a conservative estimate of the potential returns on investing in targeted interventions to address the opportunity gap.
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From page 382... ...
Limited access to paid family leave creates an opportu nity gap for young children by limiting parents' and infants' bonding time, decreasing the time available to take care of serious health issues, elevating family stress, and exposing children to financial uncertainty. Limited access to high-quality child care can create opportunity gaps by limiting parents' employment, earnings, and job stability, ultimately leading to family economic insecurity.
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These recommendations are designed to address opportunity gaps, improve data collection, and identify future research needs. Recommendation 1: Federal entities and agencies and private philan thropic organizations that collect data and fund research related to child health and development should create and adequately support an effective equity-focused policy- and services-monitoring data in frastructure (collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, data analysis, and program evaluation)
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• Data could be shared across agencies that are responsible for in dividual safety net and social insurance programs (e.g., the De partment of Health and Human Services/Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for Medicaid, the Internal Revenue Service for the earned income tax credit/child tax credit, the Department of Labor for unemployment insurance) and linked when possible to create merged data sets.
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• The National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Institute of Education Sciences could prioritize studies that fill gaps in knowledge about policies, programs, and practices that reduce opportunity gaps for subgroups of young children that are underrepresented in the existing evidence base. • The Internal Revenue Service and the Census Bureau could create a linked data system for use in analyzing all families' access to and take-up of tax credits -- the most robust antipoverty programs, including the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit -- in support of the development of a systematic outreach approach to reduce the burden associated with and increase take-up.
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From page 386... ...
. In addition, the effect of the earned income tax credit on improved child health and educational outcomes demonstrate the importance of coordinated and sustained efforts to increase uptake of such programs (Dahl & Lochner, 2012; Markowitz et al., 2017; Komro et al., 2019; Lenhart, 2019; Batra & Hamad, 2021)
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, and provides evidence supporting the assertion that ECE investments have been inadequate to bridge opportunity gaps for historically marginalized groups (Institute of Medicine [IOM] & National Research Council [NRC]
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Such a unified system would: • ensure that children and families from communities listed in Ex ecutive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government, are prioritized; • allocate greater resources to historically marginalized communities to compensate for historical and current inequities in resources, experiences, and opportunities; • allocate greater resources for parts of the ECE system that have traditionally received fewer resources; • require evidence-based program standards that improve population outcomes and explicitly remedy opportunity gaps; • build a corps of diverse, competent, well-trained, well-supported, and appropriately compensated early childhood educators and pro gram leaders, across all age groups and program settings; and • require disaggregated data collection that can be linked with other relevant data sources, as well as continuous quality improvement aimed at bridging opportunity and outcome gaps. Underinvestment in high-quality ECE disproportionately affects children from low-income families, children of color, children who speak languages other than English at home, and children with disabilities.
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Efforts to target ECE investments to children from households with low income have not ensured highquality experiences or been sufficient in scope to serve all eligible children. Quality frameworks adopted by the field may not, in many instances, include indicators that have a particularly salient effect on opportunity gaps and the experiences of children from historically marginalized communities, such as issues related to bias, language of instruction, and inclusion of children with disabilities.
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From page 390... ...
Elementary school edu cation should operate under a common quality framework, with quality benchmarks aligned with those in the early care and education system and based on evidence-based policies and practices. Such a system would: • address structural drivers of education opportunity, including seg regation in learning settings by language, disability, race, and in come; and • be adequately funded to support the implementation of high-qual ity benchmarks aligned with those in the ECE system, including • high-quality instruction and asset-driven pedagogies, assess ments, and curricula; • social-emotional and mental health supports and policies to ex plicitly reduce exclusionary and harsh discipline and eliminate disparities in such practices; • full inclusion of children with disabilities in general educa tion settings, with high-quality and individualized services and supports; • bilingual learning opportunities for children who are English learners and dual language learners; • structurally sound, safe, healthy, and engaging learning envi ronments; • a well-qualified, fairly compensated, and supported workforce; • data-driven continuous quality improvement efforts targeted at identifying and addressing opportunity and outcome gaps; • authentic and meaningful family engagement and partnerships; • strong partnerships with ECE systems that promote seamless transitions from ECE to the early grades; and • community partnerships and engagement to promote holistic family wellness.
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As part of achieving this goal, the Department of Education, states, and districts should under take specific reforms explicitly addressing opportunity gaps identified in this report, including a. uneven access to early intervention and preschool special education; b.
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Indeed, the inadequate funding of these services has resulted in states restricting eligibility criteria, lowering the dosage of services, or stretching wait times for the evaluation and service delivery process to the upper limits of what is allowable by law. IDEA policy reforms, through reauthorization, regulation, technical assistance, and monitoring and accountability systems, must intentionally address gaps in access, particularly for children of color; accuracy in identification; inclusion in general ECE settings; and the harsh discipline to which children with disabilities are disproportionately subject.
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are disproportionately exposed to hardships and stress across the life course, including stress related to racism and discrimination; are less likely to have their mental health needs met; and are more likely to have treatment prematurely terminated (e.g., Reiss, 2013; Cree et al., 2018; Jones Harden & Slopen, 2022)
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From page 394... ...
To implement this recommendation, the federal government could: • build on the current job protections offered under the unpaid Fam ily Medical Leave Act to create a paid social insurance program, administered by the Social Security Administration, to support parents needing time away from work to care for infants and newly adopted children and attend to their own and their family members' serious health issues; • address documented issues in access to paid family and medi cal leave for low-income families and families from marginalized communities by implementing progressive wage replacement rates, making coverage more inclusive by eliminating firm-size require ments, and using existing hours and duration criteria for Social Security Disability Insurance or Medicare Hospital Insurance; • develop recommendations on the definition of good-quality jobs for families with children, an effort that should include setting standards for family-sustaining wages and family-friendly employer practices; • update existing labor standards and policies, raise the minimum wage floor, make work schedules more predictable, budget more resources for enforcement, and incentivize employers to provide training and career ladders; and • partner with philanthropic organizations to conduct research on job quality standards and metrics to guide policy and employer based interventions. Research shows that many working families do not earn enough from full-time employment to cover basic needs, and that many employers do
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To further the development of targeted policies and interventions for addressing the opportunity gap at the community level, the following actions should be taken by federal, state, and local entities and private philanthropic organizations: • Federal and state governments should expand existing safety net programs that have been shown to address poverty and food inse curity as social determinants of health, including the special Sup plemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, SNAP, and the earned income tax credit, as well as the 2021 ex panded child tax credit. Eligibility applications for these programs
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These inequities in access to resources and programs that strongly influence developmental outcomes lead to persistent opportunity gaps for young children. Creation of a centralized resource cataloguing effective, evidence-based practices across domains that eliminate disparities in opportunity among young children -- similar to the What Works
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Chapter 1 provides examples of federal, state, and local influences on the opportunity gap and associated racial/ethnic disparities, as well as effects on marginalized communities, including differences in achievement and inequitable access to mental and physical supports for health and well-being (e.g., Bell, 1965; Vogtman, 2017; Minoff, 2020; Derenoncourt & Montialoux, 2021; Parolin et al., 2021)
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Chapter 1 of this report describes the historical precedents of the opportunity gap in educational systems, the role of segregation in widening this gap, and structural and economic policies that further widen these inequities. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the evidence on the intersection of institutional racism with ECE and elementary education, and highlight how program funding, early special education intervention, differential learning settings, and the training of the education workforce are heavily influenced by manifestations of structural racism (e.g., poorly funded programs, under- and overidentification of children of color for special education, harsh disciplinary practices aimed at marginalized children, and poorly paid and trained educators)
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It is important to stress that the question of quality is central to all efforts to close the opportunity gap; the expansion of access to resources and experiences alone is insufficient in the absence of high quality. Promising approaches highlighted in this report offer the opportunity to reduce disparities in ways that promote healthy development and learning for all children.
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. Short-term effects of the earned income tax credit on chil dren's physical and mental health.
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. The impact of family income on child achievement: Evidence from the earned income tax credit.
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. Effects of state-level earned income tax credit laws on birth outcomes by race and ethnicity.
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. Effects of state-level earned income tax credit laws in the U.S.
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National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Availabile: https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/re sources/understanding-health-disparities/srd.html Nolen, L.T., Beckman, A.L., & Sandoe, E
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. Inequitable access to child care subsidies.
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