The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth ... · 2017....

Portland State UniversityPDXScholar

City Club of Portland Oregon Sustainable Community Digital Library

3-17-2006

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education ofChildren from Birth to Age FiveCity Club of Portland (Portland, Or.)

Bethany Wurtz

Julie Young

Let us know how access to this document benefits you.Follow this and additional works at: http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub

Part of the Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education Commons, UrbanStudies Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons

This Report is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in City Club of Portland by an authorized administrator ofPDXScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Recommended CitationCity Club of Portland (Portland, Or.); Wurtz, Bethany; and Young, Julie, "The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care andEducation of Children from Birth to Age Five" (2006). City Club of Portland. Paper 529.http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub/529

brought to you by COREView metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

provided by PDXScholar

https://core.ac.uk/display/37769563?utm_source=pdf&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=pdf-decoration-v1

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://library.pdx.edu/services/pdxscholar-services/pdxscholar-feedback/?ref=http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub/529

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://network.bepress.com/hgg/discipline/808?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages




http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/oscdl_cityclub/529?utm_source=pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu%2Foscdl_cityclub%2F529&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

mailto:[email protected]

Published in City Club of Portland Bulletin Vol. 87, No. 42 • March 17, 2006

City Club members will vote on this report on Friday, March 17, 2006. Until the mem-bership vote, City Club of Portland does not have an official position on this report. Theoutcome of this vote will be reported in the City Club Bulletin dated March 31, 2006and online at www.pdxcityclub.org.

The Early YearsA City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five

• CONTENTS

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. The Public’s Stake In Early Care And Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3History Of Early Care And Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Implications And Limitations Of Legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Why Should The Public Care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3. How Does A Child’s Brain Develop? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104. Are Young Children Receiving What They Need To Thrive In

Supplementary Care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Features Of High-Quality Supplementary Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13Are Portland-Area Children Receiving High-Quality Early Care And Education? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5. Barriers To Children Receiving High-Quality Supplementary Care . . . . 17Affordability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Provider Compensation, Training And Turnover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Limited Access to Specific Early Care And Education Programs . . . 23Employment Policies And Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

6. Public Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Governance Of Child Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Coordination Of Early Childhood Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Regulation Of Early Care And Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Government’s Role In Providing Consumer Information And Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7. Public Support For Families And Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Financial Assistance To Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Financial Assistance To Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

8. Discussion And Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4810. Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Committee Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Appendix A: Witnesses And Others Consulted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Appendix B: Other Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Appendix C: Related Friday Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

The mission of City Club is to inform its members and the community in public matters and toarouse in them a realization of the obligations of citizenship.

Additional copies of this report are available online at www.pdxcityclub.org or by contacting:City Club of Portland901 SW Washington St.Portland, OR 97205503-228-7231 • 503-228-8840 [email protected] • www.pdxcityclub.org

Cover: Grant Didway and Kamlyn Yosick.Inside: Grant Didway, Sophie Friedenwald-Fishman, Donovan Gardner and Kamlyn Yosick.Special thanks to their parents, Judy Booker and the YMCA of Columbia-Willamette’s ODS Tower Child Development Center.Photography by Kenneth Aaron Photography (www.kdaphoto.com). Used with permission.

infant care, special-needs care and care during nontraditional hours.2. Competing demands for public and private funding.3. Financial impediments to employers providing a desirable mix of

employee benefits while maintaining a competitive bottom line.4. An apparent under-appreciation for the childcare profession.5. A scarcity of leadership ready and able to capture and maintain

public support for early investment in the lives of children.

Your committee offers the following conclusions and recommendations:

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five iiiThe Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Fiveii

Across the 50 states, early careand education for children birthto age 5 has become a dis-cernible public issue as termssuch as “universal pre-K” and“ready to learn” become part ofthe common vernacular. CityClub’s review of early care andeducation in the Portland areacoincides with other local andstatewide — public and private —attempts to bring public attentionto a population that adults haveevery reason to care about —from moral, political and econom-ic standpoints.

Responsibility to care for and edu-cate children in their earliest years,before kindergarten exposes themen masse to possibly their firstpublic institution, has largely beenviewed as an untouchable rightand obligation of the family. As aresult, differences of opinion haverisen over increasing public involve-ment and the allocation of publicresources for young children. Yourcommittee’s charge presumes thatparents have primary responsibilityfor their children, and that othermembers of society — particularlypolicy-makers and business lead-ers — have a parallel responsibili-ty to support parents’ efforts toprovide optimum conditions for

the early care and education ofchildren.

Through its research, your com-mittee identified the following fivekey findings for parents, commu-nity leaders and the general pub-lic to consider:

1. Brain research makes clearthat the early years are themost critical years in humandevelopment.

2. Early investment in the welfareof children saves money in themid and long term.

3. Families are affected byemployment policies andpractices.

4. Quality early care and educa-tion workers provide an impor-tant service to our society.

5. Oregon already has an earlychildhood system intended tocoordinate services for familiesand care and educationproviders.

Your committee also recognizesthe following challenges to ensur-ing high-quality early care andeducation for all children:

1. Limited availability of affordablehigh-quality care and educa-tion for all children, particularly

• EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Conclusions

1. Early care and education is a critical public issue, as important asother civic issues such as public safety, economic development and envi-ronmental standards.

2. Federal and state family leave programs intended to support workingfamilies provide little benefit for parents who cannot afford to takeunpaid leave from their jobs.

3. Public and private investment in early care and education will, in themid and long term, produce significant cost savings and increase taxrevenue through greater economic output.

4. Brain research provides a clear and powerful road map to guide earlychildhood care and education policy in our local communities and state.Research has proved that the fundamental social, emotional and intel-lectual skills necessary to become a healthy, productive adult are largelydetermined by development during the first five years of life.

5. Your committee endorses widely accepted scientific research aboutthe importance of proper health care and nutrition during the earlyyears of a child’s life.

6. Many at the forefront of early care and education in Oregon have cor-rectly begun to link research that clearly identifies the features of high-quality early care and education with measurable characteristics of sup-plementary care and education settings.

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five vThe Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Fiveiv

Recommendations

1. Access to health care and nutrition support should be guaranteed for allyoung children and pregnant women in Oregon.

2. State, county and city leaders should assure full funding for earlyscreening and early intervention programs for all eligible children frombirth to age 3 and their families.

3. A new position of “chief advocate for early childhood” should be createdin the executive branch of state government that would lead Oregon’s EarlyChildhood System and be the public voice for the early years.

4. Funding for pre-kindergarten in Oregon should be increased to ensureaccess for all income-eligible 3- and 4-year-old children statewide.

5. State- and federally funded childcare subsidies should be increased to alevel that enables parents to afford quality care in the context of their fami-ly budgets.

6. Resources should be directed toward improving the quality of the earlycare and education work force by linking wages to training and experienceand providing more opportunities for training and education.

7. A statewide information system on childcare quality should be estab-lished to inform parents and the public about the quality of individualearly care and education settings. Publicized information should includethe seven observable and measurable characteristics identified in thisreport: (1) adult-child ratio, (2) group size, (3) education and training levelof providers, (4) caregivers’ compensation, (5) caregivers’ turnover history,(6) accreditation and (7) record of substantiated complaints against theprovider.

8. Employers should provide parental leave benefits, flex time, breast-feed-ing opportunities and other polices that increase the time that parents canpersonally care for their children.

9. City Club of Portland should join an emerging movement of private andpublic sector leaders calling for investment in the lives of young children, inaccordance with to the conclusions and recommendations of this report.

7. Little is known about the quality of supplementary care in Oregon,largely because state and local governments have failed to collect ormake available comprehensive information about the quality of individ-ual settings in their jurisdictions.

8. Free-market conditions have not and will not adequately support theearly care and education needs of families with children. Governmentmust, therefore, fill the gap or accept the consequences, which are morecrime, lower economic output and greater societal costs.

9. With childcare costs in Portland among the highest of any major met-ropolitan area in the nation and increasing faster than average annualincomes, your committee is gravely concerned about the decreasingaffordability of high-quality early care and education.

10. Oregon’s childcare subsidies are inadequate and restrict childcarechoices, particularly for low-income families.

11. Available data often misrepresent the true picture of childcare avail-ability by not accounting for common family-specific variables such aslocation, hours of operation, age of children (e.g., infant care vs. toddlercare)

12. Low wages and inadequate employee benefits are significant barri-ers to attracting and retaining qualified providers and, as such, are barri-ers to high-quality early care and education.

13. Regulation of early care and education is an underutilized opportu-nity to ensure that publicly subsidized settings meet standards for safe,high-quality care.

14. Sustained leadership, adequate and stable funding and a broadpublic understanding of the vital importance of early childhood develop-ment are necessary to ensure high-quality early care and educationopportunities for all of the state’s youngest citizens.

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five 1The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Fivevi

In August 2003, City Clublaunched a study committee toresearch and report on key issuesrelated to early childhood care andeducation in the Portland area.Committee members werescreened for conflict of interest toensure that no person had a directeconomic or professional stake inthe outcome of the study or waspublicly identified with a positionon early care and education.

City Club’s Research Boardcharged your committee with thefollowing:

• Examine the developmentalneeds of children during thefirst five years of life.

• Review published research ofthe beneficial and negativeimpacts of child care on earlychildhood development.

• Describe the need for child care.• Provide an overview of the cur-

rent childcare and early child-hood education system, focus-ing on availability, cost andquality.

• Describe employer policiesregarding child care and earlychildhood education.

• Review Oregon and local lawsregarding childcare and earlychildhood education.

• Develop recommendations con-cerning the roles of local andOregon state government, busi-nesses, public schools andnonprofit organizations regard-ing early childhood care andeducation.

To provide a reasonable scope ofwork for a volunteer committee,the charge instructed your com-mittee to focus on children frombirth to age 5 in the Portlandmetropolitan area and not tofocus on settings that aredesigned to serve children withspecial needs as their primarypopulation.

The charge assumes that manyyoung children have multiplecaregivers. Readers are advisedthat this report is about care andeducation that is supplementary tocare provided by parents.

Methodology

Your committee interviewedproviders of early child care andeducation, child developmentexperts, local and state officials,advocates, business people andother representatives of the com-munity. Committee members vis-

• 1 INTRODUCTION Early childhood is a time-sensitive population; today in the Portland met-ropolitan area, more than 100,000 young brains, from birth to age 5 aredeveloping. Social, scientific and economic evidence considered by yourcommittee makes clear that we either invest in the lives of young chil-dren now or pay more in social costs later. Your committee asks CityClub members to act now, making early care and education a top priori-ty for our community.

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five 3

ited early care and education centers and schools and attended relevantpublic meetings. Your committee also reviewed extensive backgroundmaterial about early care and education. Witnesses are listed inAppendix A. Other resources are listed in Appendix B.

Your committee read with interest and respect other locally producedreports and proposals about early care and education. These docu-ments contain valuable information and thoughtful recommendationsfor change, most of which have not been fully implemented. City Clubof Portland itself has long been concerned with the state of early careand education, as exemplified by the number of reports it has issuedand public forums it has sponsored (see Appendix C for a list of relatedFriday Forums). This City Club report builds on previous works in anattempt to focus and inform public dialogue.

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five2

• 2 THE PUBLIC’S STAKE IN EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION

To some people, early care andeducation may seem to be a pri-vate family matter, rather than apublic issue. Yet based on cur-rent economic and social factorsdiscussed later in this report,your committee believes thatearly care and education is a criti-cal public issue, as important asother civic issues such as publicsafety, economic developmentand environmental standards.

The term “early care and educa-tion” refers to a young child’s collective learning and develop-mental experiences. It does notconnote a particular setting.Supplementary care, more com-monly known as day care or childcare, is care provided by anyoneother than a parent.

Early care and education occursat home and elsewhere, with andwithout parents present.

Chronology of 10 Major Local andStatewide Studies and Reports

Children’s Institute of Oregon — Early Childhood Development:Investing in Oregon's Economic Future (2005)

Oregon Department of Human Services — Oregon Child Care MarketRate Study (2004)

Children First for Oregon — Status of Oregon’s Children: County DataBook (2003 and 2004)

Oregon Commission for Child Care — Report to the Governor and theLegislature (2003 and 2005)

Oregon Commission for Child Care — Report of the Oregon TaskForce on Financing Quality Child Care (2002)

Oregon Department of Education — Oregon Kindergarten SurveyReport: Readiness to Learn (2002)

Citizens Crime Commission — Kids Intervention InvestmentDelinquency Solutions (KIIDS) (2000)

Oregon Head Start Collaboration Project — Essential Elements ofPrograms for Children: Implementation Plan for Quality (1999)

Draft report to Portland City Council — Enhancing the Quality of ChildCare and Education in Portland: Research Findings andRecommendations; prepared by Early Childhood Strategies and cityemployees (1999)

Portland/Multnomah Progress Board — Children’s Readiness to Learn:Strategies for Improvement (1998)

funded under the umbrella of aCommunity Action Program.4

The Head Start model, largelyunchanged since inception,attends to the emotional, social,health and nutritional needs ofpreschool-age children. The hall-mark of the program has alwaysbeen an emphasis on parentalinvolvement, recognizing that aparent is a child’s first teacher.

The 1970 White House Conferenceon Children identified child care-related issues as “the number oneproblem facing American childrenand families.” Congress subse-quently passed the ChildDevelopment Act to establish anational network of childcare cen-ters. In spite of broad bipartisansupport, President Nixon vetoedthe bill based on concerns that itwould move “the vast authority ofthe federal government to the sideof communal approaches to childrearing over the family-centeredapproach.” At the time, this vetowas called “the most significantact in the history of infant and tod-dler child care in the UnitedStates.”5

Federal legislation in the 1970sincluded two decisions critical toworking families. In 1975, TitleXX was added to the SocialSecurity Act, expanding childcareeligibility to include low-incomefamilies that were not receiving

welfare. This was the first timethat states were given freedom todistribute childcare moneyamong different programs. In1976, Congress enacted theChild and Dependent Care TaxCredit, the first federal employ-ment-related legislation thatassisted working families in meet-ing the cost of child care (andadult care). This was followed 25years later, in June 2001, with theenactment of the first federalemployer tax credit for child care.

The Child Care and DevelopmentBlock Grant Act of 1990, whichsent new money to the states, wasa major investment in child care bythe federal government. Parentalchoice and state control of policyremained central when the pro-gram was expanded in 1996 aspart of the Personal Responsibilityand Word OpportunityReconciliation Act of 1996 com-monly known as “welfare reform.”Under this act, federal funding forchild care was entitled the ChildCare and Development Fund. Theact propelled a wave of motherswith infants and children into thework force.

In 1993, the federal governmentenacted the Federal FamilyMedical Leave Act, which gavesome workers the right to, amongother things, take up to 12 weeksof unpaid leave to care for new-


Supplementary care generallyoccurs in childcare centers,preschools and other such set-tings, as well as in the child’shome when care is being provid-ed by someone other than aparent.

The need for supplementary childcare has increased in recentdecades in response to economicand cultural changes across thecountry. In Oregon, the percent-age of women with childrenunder age 6 who participate inthe labor force grew from 43 per-cent in 1980 to 62 percent in2000.1 Likewise, the country’semployment rate of single moth-ers with children under 17 grewto 73 percent, including 59 per-cent of mothers with childrenunder age 1.2 Regardless of fam-ily circumstances, supplementarycare and education arrangementsaffect most families.

History of Early Care and Education

Federal support for child carebegan during the Depression ofthe 1930s when Congress appro-priated funds for nursery schoolsto provide health and nutritionalsupport to the children of poorfamilies. Public schools housedmany of these programs. Publicsupport continued into the 1940s

when World War II demanded alarge labor force, and mothersbegan working outside the homein record numbers, leaving infantsand toddlers in formal and infor-mal care. In Portland at thistime, the Vanport city housingproject, constructed for shipyardlaborers, provided childcare cen-ters and preschool facilities thatoperated from morning throughevening to accommodate factoryshifts. Kaiser Shipyards also builtand operated childcare centers atentrances to the shipyards,staffing them with professionallytrained experts.3

In 1947, teachers, childcare work-ers, pediatric nurses and othersinterested in the development ofyoung children established thePortland Association for NurseryEducation.* This early voice foryoung children took its opinionsand concerns to the Legislatureand governor, lobbying for morepreschool regulation.

The federal Head Start programwas launched in 1965 to providea nurturing, comprehensive pre-school program for low-incomefamilies. Locally, two MultnomahCounty programs, Albina HeadStart and Portland Public SchoolsHead Start, were initiated and


* Today this organization is known as theOregon Association for the Education ofYoung Children.

TANF allows states to temporarily exempt specific categories of individu-als from the federal work requirement. According to the State PolicyDocumentation Project, 28 states exempt low-income individuals fromwork until their child is 1 year old. Five states exempt individuals fromwork until their child is 2 to 3 years old. As mentioned above, Oregonparents who receive TANF must return to work within 90 days of thebirth of their child. Oregon, unlike other states, also does not provideexemptions for “disabled/temporary illness,” “caring for a householdmember” or “child care unavailable.”9

Your committee concludes that federal and state family leave pro-grams intended to support working families provide little benefit forparents who cannot afford to take unpaid leave from their jobs.

Why Should the Public Care?

The care and education of young children is arguably a private matter,but one with well-defined public implications. The underlying rationalefor public support of an early childhood care and education infrastruc-ture is straightforward: society benefits from physically, mentally andemotionally healthy children. More than 100,000 children in thePortland tri-county area are under 5 years old — nearly 7 percent of thearea’s population.10 A preponderance of research demonstrates thatintervening early with high-quality early care and education services foran at-risk child provides specific economic and social advantages forboth the child and the community in ways that are evidenced now and


borns and newly adopted chil-dren. Prior to 1993, the UnitedStates provided no federal guar-antee that parents could return totheir jobs following a family-relat-ed leave of absence.

Two years later, Oregon passedsimilar legislation. The OregonFamily Leave Act ensures similarrights as FMLA, but is generallythought to be more generous tofamilies than the federal act.Instead of affecting companieswith 50 or more employees, asdoes FMLA, OFLA requires organi-zations with 25 or more employ-ees to provide unpaid leave.Rather than requiring a minimumof one year of employment withthe same employer, OFLA requiresonly 180 days of employmentbefore eligibility takes effect.Unlike FMLA, however, OFLA doesnot require an employer to contin-ue group health coverage duringfamily leave.6

Implications andLimitations of Legislation

The limitations of federal and statelaws have direct impact on familiesthat use supplementary care. Forexample, a 2000 survey by theU.S. Department of Labor showedthat nearly 42 percent of employ-ees in the private sector work forcompanies that are not required to

offer family leave. Further, FMLAguarantees only unpaid leave, andmore than 75 percent of employ-ees who have reason to take familyor medical leave do not take itbecause they cannot afford tomiss a paycheck.7 In other words,family leave protection is not uni-versal, and because it is unpaid, itis less likely to be used by parentsfor whom employment is an eco-nomic necessity.

The 1996 welfare reform legisla-tion noted above requires thatprogram participants, the majori-ty of whom are women with chil-dren, work in exchange for thereceipt of benefits. The federalgovernment has transferred muchof the responsibility for designingand implementing welfare pro-grams, known as TemporaryAssistance to Needy Families, tostates and provides block grantsto support the programs.

Oregon’s TANF program requiresparents of newborn children tofulfill some type of work require-ment (e.g., employment, jobsearch, training or education)when their child is 90 days old.Recipients are eligible for TANFassistance for 24 months in anyseven-year period. Sanctions areimposed on those who do notcomply with the program require-ments, including denial of cashassistance to the entire family.8


“The underlying rationale for publicsupport of an early childhood careand education infrastructure is

straightforward: society benefitsfrom physically, mentally andemotionally healthy children.”


into the future, when these chil-dren have children. Children whoexperience appropriate earlyintervention are more likely to:

• enter school with better reading,writing and social skills

• score higher on primary gradetesting

• stay on grade level and notrequire special education

• graduate from high school• enroll in college• have higher earning power as

adults• have lower rates of juvenile

crime.11

The High/Scopes Perry PreschoolProject, a well-documented, longi-tudinal study (1962-present) ofan early education program inYpsilanti, Michigan, concludesthat for every dollar invested inhigh-quality early care and educa-tion, there is an economic returnon investment to society of morethan $17.12 The return to societyresults from the reduced cost forremedial and special education;greater tax contributions basedon higher earnings once in thework force; savings in welfareassistance; and savings in thecriminal justice system and topotential victims of crimes.

Many other studies have also con-cluded that early investment inthe lives of young children is acost-effective use of public funds.A study released in 2004 by theEconomic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, notes that“early public intervention toimprove young poor children’shealth, brain development, familyenvironment and readiness forschool represents one of the bestand most productive uses forpublic funds.”13 In the study,economist Robert G. Lynch pro-poses that a comprehensive pro-gram, while initially costly, wouldpay for itself in the 17th year andin 25 years would provide $31 bil-lion in net budget savings. Thereport summarily posits thatcommunities are the beneficiariesof increased earned incomes andtaxes paid back to society whenhigh-quality early care and educa-tion is provided to our nation’syoungest children.

Your committee concludes thatpublic and private investment inearly care and education will, inthe mid and long term, producesignificant cost savings andincrease tax revenue throughgreater economic output.


pediatrician with the NorthwestEarly Childhood Institute, toldyour committee “nearly 85 per-cent of the fundamental social,emotional and intellectual skillsnecessary for later success aredeveloped by age 5.”

3. A safe environment is criticalfor the well-being of children.Abuse, neglect and exposure toviolence are known to jeopardizehealthy development, resulting inanxiety, depression and inabilityfor a child to form healthy attach-ments, and a significantly higherlikelihood for violence later in life.15

The younger the child, the morevulnerable the developing brain isto both physical and environmen-tal trauma. Studies of abusedchildren confirm an associationbetween maltreatment and overallreduction in brain size.16

4. Healthy development, includingbrain development, depends criti-cally on the quality of nutritionand health care from birththroughout childhood. Malnutri-tion during the brain’s most form-ative years can result in delayedmotor skills development, socialwithdrawal and lower cognitiveperformance.17 Breast milk, whichprovides the best mix of nutrientsfor infants, is recommended forat least the first year of life by theAmerican Academy of Pediatricsand for at least the first two years

by the World HealthOrganization.18 Pediatric screen-ings for genetic disorders, childwellness exams and up-to-dateimmunizations are vital in pro-moting healthy development dur-ing the early years.19

5. Brain development is promot-ed by caring and consistent rela-tionships with one or moreadults throughout infancy andchildhood, a process known as“attachment.” Pediatric special-ists declare that “more than anyother single factor, the quality ofa child’s relationships withmature, caring adults determineswhether brain development pro-ceeds in healthy ways.”20

Children who lack nurturing per-sonal interactions at an earlystage of life have trouble latereven forming friendships, letalone negotiating the expectableups and downs of peer relation-ships.21 Actual brain intelligence,researchers tell us, “can neitherfully develop nor manifest itself inany meaningful way without hav-ing done so in a context of appro-priate social development,” pro-vided by the child’s first teachers— its family or other caregivers.22

6. Brain development is also pro-moted by planned educationalexperiences at home, in childcare and in preschool. A child’scapacity to benefit from thought-


A profusion of research in theneurobiological, behavioral andsocial sciences has contributedenormously to the understandingof the long-term importance ofthe first few years of a person’slife.* Neuronal development in thebrain begins shortly after concep-tion, and the most dramatic brain

growth occurs during an infant’sfetal life and first two years. Itcontinues at a rapid pacethroughout early childhood.Additional results from recentbrain research provides informa-tion fundamental to caring forchildren in the early years:

1. Brain development is promot-ed by proper prenatal andbirthing care. Because braindevelopment begins shortly afterconception, the health of theintra-uterine environment plays akey role in the child’s long-termphysical, emotional and socialwell-being. Socioeconomic factorsknown to adversely affect braindevelopment during pregnancyinclude homelessness; unsafe liv-ing environments; emotionalinstability in the household; poornutrition; and use of drugs, alco-hol and tobacco.

2. The most significant braindevelopment begins in infancy.In addition to the linguistic andcognitive gains associated withbrain development, children frombirth to age 5 exhibit “dramaticprogress in their emotional,social, regulatory and moralcapacities.”14 Dr. David Willis, abehavioral and developmental


• 3 HOW DOES A CHILD’S BRAIN DEVELOP?

* In the 1970s, researchers begandemonstrating how cultural patterns canmake a difference in child development(Bronfenbrenner, Urie, Two Worlds ofChildhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R., Russel SageFoundation, 1970). By 1980, the focus ofchild development had moved from themental health of the mother to interper-sonal processes that occur in optimalchild care (Kilman, Gilbert W., andRosenfeld, Albert, Responsible Parenthood:Holt Rinehart Winston, 1980). In 1981,beginning with Myron Hofer and col-leagues at Albert Einstein College ofMedicine, researchers started blendingthe extensive biological knowledge withcultural and interpersonal constructs thatlead to numerous studies on brain struc-ture (Hofer, Myran, The Roots of HumanBehavior, 1981). Experts declared the1990s the “Decade of the Brain,” and weare currently living in the “Decade of theMind.” In the 1999 book, The DevelopingMind —Toward a Neurobiology ofInterpersonal Experience, Daniel Siegelreviews what is known about care, devel-opment, education, nutrition and thesocial and political challenges that arefaced by our society in promoting healthybrain development (Siegel, Daniel J., TheDeveloping Mind — Toward a Neurobiologyof Interpersonal Experience, Guilford Press,1999).

Features ofHigh-QualitySupplementary Care

A growing body of social and sci-entific research consistentlydefines and emphasizes theimportance of high-quality pro-grams and effective public policyon children’s well-being. Parentsof young children generally wantto know where to find high-qualityearly care and education in theircommunities. Policy-makers andvoters, when allocating resourcesto early childhood, are appropri-ately and increasingly asking fordata on the effectiveness of pub-licly funded programs.

Through synthesis of research byearly childhood experts, yourcommittee identified seven fea-tures of high-quality early careand education that supporthealthy development:

1. Stability — Children are ableto build lasting relationships

with a small number of care-givers and other children.

2. Nurturance — Relationshipsbetween caregivers and chil-dren are characterized bywarmth and responsiveness.Caregivers seek to develop chil-dren’s emotional, social, cogni-tive and moral well-being.

3. Stimulating and developmen-tally appropriate curriculum— Children are exposed to sto-ries, wordplay, new vocabularyand numbers from infancy.

4. Comprehensive approach tocaregiving — Children are wellfed and well rested. They haveaccess to adequate and appro-priate medical, dental and psy-chological care.

5. Family involvement — Parentsand other family members arewell informed when they placetheir child in an outside caresetting. They have opportuni-ties to volunteer and learn par-enting skills.

6. Inclusiveness — Racial andethnic differences are respect-ed. In caregivers and curricu-


ful, intentional experiences doesnot begin at age 5 when childrengenerally enter kindergarten — itbegins at birth. This is not tosuggest rigorous academic prepa-ration for toddlers, but rather toemphasize that children exposedto environments rich with appro-priate linguistic and physicalactivities will experience a corre-sponding boost in their neurologi-cal development. Adults, begin-ning with parents, should encour-age independence, curiosity, moti-vation, persistence, self-control,empathy and the ability to com-municate.

Given this array of needs andinfluences on a child’s developingbrain, for children to thrive, theircare must meet some minimumstandard of physical safety andadult oversight, whether it is pro-vided by a parent, other caregiveror teacher.

Your committee concludes thatbrain research provides a clearand powerful road map to guideearly childhood care and educa-tion policy in our local communi-ties and state. Research hasproved that the fundamentalsocial, emotional and intellectualskills necessary to become ahealthy, productive adult arelargely determined by develop-ment during the first five years oflife.

Your committee endorses widelyaccepted scientific researchabout the importance of properhealth care and nutrition duringthe early years of a child’s life.


• 4 ARE YOUNG CHILDREN RECEIVING WHAT THEY NEED TO THRIVE IN SUPPLEMENTARY CARE?

in supplementary care reportedfeeling that their child’s care wasdeficient in some aspect of quali-ty.24 This finding is consistentwith national results. TheNational Institute of Child Healthand Human Development hasrated 61 percent of settings foryoung children as either poor (8percent) or fair (53 percent), withcare for infants and toddlers earn-ing the lowest ratings.25 TheNICHHD study explains that childcare rated “fair,” while probablynot harmful, fails to promotegrowth and learning.

A 1999 University of NorthCarolina study reports that mostchildcare centers in the UnitedStates are rated poor to mediocrein quality, with almost half meet-ing less than minimal standards.26

Another national study looked at511 childcare centers and pre-school classrooms and rated 76percent of them as less thangood quality. The authors con-cluded, “Most U.S. child care ismediocre in quality, sufficientlypoor to interfere with children’semotional and intellectual devel-opment.”27

Many of Portland’s early child-hood programs that are fundedby private and public dollarsundergo evaluations that provideinformation on quality. Programsthat receive funding from

Portland’s Children’s InvestmentFund or from the OregonCommunity Foundation’s Readyto Learn Initiative, for example,must have evaluation processesto demonstrate their success tograntors. We know very little,however, about the quality of sup-plementary care (i.e., day-carehomes and centers in thePortland metropolitan area) large-ly because until now there hasbeen no comprehensive effort togather data about those settings.In summer 2005, public and pri-vate partners launched a pilotproject in Multnomah County togather data on the quality ofchild care in centers and familychild care homes that volunteerto participate in the project.*Other private funders have sincestepped forward to extend thepilot study to Coos and Currycounties. The goal is to eventuallycreate a statewide informationsystem that will make the dataavailable to consumers.

Children First for Oregon, a non-partisan, nonprofit child advocacyorganization, collaborates withthe national Annie E. Casey


lum, children see positiveexamples of diversity.

7. Safety — Children are notexposed to hazards to theirphysical health.

Features of high-quality supple-mentary care, as describedabove, have been linked withseven observable and measurablecharacteristics of the setting inwhich it is provided:23

1. Group size — Smaller groupsallow caregivers more timewith each child.

2. Adult-child ratio — Standardsare based on the age of thechild; infants and toddlers ben-efit from higher adult-to-childratios.

3. Education and training levelattained by caregivers — Abachelor’s degree or higher isassociated with the most effec-tive teaching; caregivers withcredentials in child develop-ment or associate arts degreesare more effective than individ-uals with no formal training.

4. Caregiver compensation —Caregivers who earn higherwages and benefits are morelikely to be better educatedand less likely to leave theirjobs.

5. Caregiver turnover — Lowturnover increases the likeli-hood that a child will experi-ence predictability and security

because they can attach to aconsistent caregiver.

6. Accreditation — Research linksaccreditation from nationalorganizations (e.g., NationalAssociation of the Education ofYoung Children and NationalAssociation of Family ChildCare) with quality.

7. Record of substantiated com-plaints — A history of meetingstate regulatory requirementsis one indication of safety andquality.

Your committee concludes thatmany at the forefront of earlycare and education in Oregonhave correctly begun to linkresearch that clearly identifiesthe features of high-quality earlycare and education with measur-able characteristics of supple-mentary care and education settings.

Are Portland-AreaChildren Receiving High-Quality Early Care and Education?

While experts can outline whatquality looks like, it is usually par-ents who judge their child’s expe-rience in care settings. In a sur-vey by the Oregon Child CareResearch Partnership, nearly halfof Oregon parents with children


* The Child Care Quality Indicators Projectis sponsored by the Oregon Child CareDivision; Multnomah County Commissionon Children, Families and Community;Penney Family Fund; and HannaAndersson Children’s Foundation.

Supplementary early care andeducation has two general pur-poses: to foster children’s devel-opment and to support parents’employment and other activitiesoutside the home. This sectionidentifies barriers to providinghigh-quality supplementary care.

Affordability

Affordability has emerged as amajor issue in Oregon’s childcareand education system. ThePortland Business Journal report-ed that according to a privatelyfunded study in 2004 childcarecosts in the Portland metropoli-tan area are the seventh highestout of 140 major metro areasnationwide.29 According to the2004 Oregon Child Care MarketRate Study, rates increased atleast 30 percent, depending ontype of care, from 1994 to 2004.As a rule, the more formal thecare arrangement (e.g. centersand schools), the greater the cost.Care for infants is generally moreexpensive, and preschool-age careis less expensive than toddlercare. According to the market

rate study, typical rates (75th per-centile) for available toddler careslots statewide are priced at$450 per month for family care,$650 for certified family care and$820 for center care. Rates aregenerally higher in the Portlandmetropolitan area.

Nationally, parents pay an esti-mated 60 percent of early careand education costs, while gov-ernment programs pay 39 per-cent (includes federal and stateincome tax relief) and nonprofitorganizations pay 1 percent. InOregon, the number is higher.Oregon parents pay an estimated67 percent of childcare costs.30

The state defines “affordable childcare” as care that costs no morethan 10 percent of a family’sgross annual income, specificallyfor families earning less than thestate’s median income ($60,262in fiscal year 2005).31 In reality, 57percent of Oregon families withincomes under $60,262 couldnot afford child care in 2004 bythis definition. The OregonProgress Board cautiously identi-fied this change as progress giventhat 65 percent of families found


Foundation to release an annualreport card on the well-being ofOregon’s children. Its 2005grade for early care and educa-tion was a “B,” an improvementover a “C” in 2004. Compared toan “F” grade for family financialstability and a “D” for health, itwould initially appear that Oregonhas few problems in the area ofearly care and education. Uponreviewing the benchmarks thatcontribute to the grade, however,your committee found that inreporting two of the five measure-ments, “childcare affordability”and “childcare supply,” ChildrenFirst for Oregon acknowledgesthat low-income families find itdifficult to cover other basicneeds after paying for child care,and families struggle to find safe,high-quality child care.28

Reports such as the Status ofChildren in Oregon Report Card,provide a snapshot of cost andavailability at a given time andcan identify trends that indicatehow children are faring. The “B”grade for early care and educa-tion is a positive sign. Yet thebenchmarks and grades do notreport whether specific qualityindicators that have been linkedto positive outcomes are presentin early care and education set-tings. For example, they do notindicate for parents or the publicwhether individual supplementary

care settings foster attachment orprovide developmentally appropri-ate learning opportunities.

Your committee concludes thatlittle is known about the qualityof supplementary care in Oregonlargely because state and localgovernments have failed to col-lect or make available compre-hensive information about thequality of individual settings intheir jurisdictions.


• 5 BARRIERS TO CHILDREN RECEIVING HIGH-QUALITY SUPPLEMENTARY CARE

Caring for children is labor-inten-sive and, unlike other businessesthat may use a variety of tech-niques to maintain a competitivecost advantage, childcare providershave few options to make caremore affordable for parents.Regulations limit the number ofchildren per adult, so a careprovider cannot simply care formore children while lowering fees.

Your committee concludes thatfree-market conditions have notand will not adequately supportthe early care and educationneeds of families with children.Government must, therefore, fillthe gap or accept the conse-quences, which are more crime,lower economic output andgreater societal costs.

Subsidized CareOregon administers the federally-funded Employment Related DayCare subsidy (see page 36) tohelp working families that earnless than 150 percent of the fed-eral poverty level.* In Oregon,this aid is compromised by highco-payments that exceed the 10percent of household incomebenchmark for affordable childcare. ERDC subsidies are paiddirectly to providers, and

providers are responsible for col-lecting co-payments from par-ents. The federal governmentexpects that these subsidy vouch-ers should provide access to 75percent of child care slots in acommunity, but in Oregon thevouchers cover the cost of only24 percent of slots — the lowestpercentage of any state.35 Whenparents cannot find affordablemarket-rate care, they are forcedto choose providers that chargesubmarket rates, a situation thathas been correlated with less sta-bility for children.

Some 1,000 children and 500families lost the state-adminis-tered subsidy when the OregonLegislature in 2003 reducedincome eligibility from 185 per-cent of the federal poverty level to150 percent. Efforts to restoreeligibility failed in the 2005Legislature even though federallaw permits states to use federaldollars to serve up to 85 percentof the state’s median income.High co-payments, subsidies thatare significantly below the federalstandard, and a low number offamilies served have been identi-fied by state early childhoodadministrators as causes of agap in childcare affordability inOregon.36


child care unaffordable in 2002.The report acknowledged that thechange might be an indication offamilies being forced out of themarket.32 Being forced out of themarket means that families opt touse less-expensive nonmarket-rate care that has little or no pub-lic oversight, including minimumregulations for health and safety.

Using the state’s benchmark foraffordability, a Portland family’sannual income would need toexceed $60,000 in order to affordeven the least expensive type oftoddler care. Since the Oregon

Progress Board started trackingchildcare costs in 1992, thesecosts have risen 66 percent, whileaverage annual earnings rose only43 percent in the same period.33

Further, a University of Oregonreport noted that families earningless then $25,000 per year spendmore than 22 percent of theirhousehold income on child care,and low-income single parentsspend nearly one-third of theirincome on child care.34 The figurebelow illustrates how unaffordablechild care is for many familieswithout public assistance.


* 2005 federal poverty level is $19,350 fora family of four.

50%

45%

40%

35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

Child Care Costs* as Percent ofHousehold Income (costs assume no public assistance)

34%

Annual householdincome:$29,025

(150% federalpoverty levelfor family offour in 2005)

Annualhouseholdincome:$60,262

(median stateincome for

2005)

State benchmark for affordability

16%

* $820 per month (75th percentile) for one toddler in full-time center care.

51%

Annual house-hold income:

$19,350 (federal pover-

ty level forfamiliy of four

in 2005)

indicate whether the locations ofproviders align with the geograph-ic locations of consumers. Webertold your committee that thegross measurement of slots,“does not take into account theextent to which care available inany given community matchesthe specific needs of families inthat community.”40 Some exam-ples of specific needs are careslots that are near public trans-portation, that are open irregularhours or provide flexibility to par-ents. Put simply, child care maybe available but it may not beaccessible.

Your committee concludes thatavailable data often misrepre-sent the true picture of childcareavailability by not accounting forcommon family-specific vari-ables, such as location, hours ofoperation, age of children (e.g.,infant care vs. toddler care).

Provider Compensation,Training and Turnover

Ironically, as unaffordable as childcare is for many families, child-care providers are among the low-est wage earners in the state.Bureau of Labor statistics for thePortland area show the annualmedian income for childcareworkers is $18,410. For compari-son, this is slightly less than non-

farm animal caretakers (workersin animal shelters, kennels andaquariums), whose medianincome is $20,280; and signifi-cantly below aerobics instructors,who average $37,950. Preschoolteachers in the Portland area fareslightly better than childcareworkers, earning $24,610 annual-ly, but both earn substantially lessthan kindergarten teachers, whoaverage $40,690 annually, plusbenefits.41

Research done in 2002 illustratesincome for family care providers*compared with the cost of doingbusiness.42 In this Coloradostudy, the annual mean providerincome (including parent feesand reimbursements, and govern-ment food program reimburse-ments) was $21,189. Operatingcosts, including children’s meals,equipment, insurance, toys andmaterials, salaries for substitutesand assistants, professional devel-opment, and other costs, werenearly $7,800, leaving a netincome of $13,418.

A composite example extrapolat-ed from a 2003 Oregon survey ofchildcare providers illustrates alocal picture of low wages andfew benefits.43 The typical


With childcare costs in Portlandamong the highest of any majormetropolitan area in the nation,and increasing faster than aver-age annual incomes, your com-mittee is gravely concernedabout the decreasing affordabili-ty of high-quality early care andeducation.

Your committee concludes thatOregon’s childcare subsidies areinadequate and restrict childcarechoices, particularly for low-income families.

Availability

In the Portland metropolitan area,parents have an array of careoptions including paid, unpaid(usually by friends or family),state-subsidized and federallyfunded programs such as HeadStart. However, your committeefound that the supply of afford-able, high-quality early care andeducation services for childrenfrom birth to age 5 does notmeet the current and growingdemand.

The Oregon Progress Boarddefines “available child care” asthe number of childcare slotsavailable for every 100 childrenunder age 13. In Oregon the sup-

ply of child care has declinedfrom 20 slots available statewidein 2000, to 17 slots per 100 chil-dren in 2003, the most recentyear for which data are available.Oregon Progress Board’s 2005report predicts that Oregon willnot reach the national standardand Oregon’s target of 25 slotsper 100 children “anytimesoon.”37 “Twenty-five slots per100 children describes a scenarioin which families would be able tofind care for their children,”explains Bobbie Weber of theChild Care Research Partnershipat Oregon State University.38

Children First for Oregon providesan annual report of childcareavailability by county, measuringavailability by the number of slotsper 100 children under 13. Their2004 report showed thatMultnomah and Washingtoncounties had fewer childcare slotsthan in the previous year. Bothcounties, as well as ClackamasCounty, were well below thestate’s target for availability ofchild care.39

Measuring childcare availability bytotal number of slots in the stateor per county fails to showwhether spaces are available for achild of a specific age (for exam-ple, infant care as opposed toschool-age care). Nor does it


* Family care refers to facilities in a single-family residence where no morethan 10 children are cared for at any time.

County and Municipal Employees,to gain collective bargaining power.Similar organizing has taken placeacross the country over the pasttwo years, with leaders of themovement noting that unionsbring experience and power toadvocate for more public sup-port.49 Oregon Governor TedKulongoski signed an executiveorder in September 2005 directingthe Department of HumanServices and the EmploymentDepartment to meet and conferwith AFSCME Council 75 represen-tatives on behalf of some 4,500certified and registered familychildcare providers. In February2006, Kulongoski issued a secondexecutive order, this time authoriz-ing the nearly 6,000 state-listedfamily childcare providers to begincollective bargaining with SEIULocal 503, OPEU.

Organizers from SEIU andAFSCME spoke to your committee,citing childcare subsidy issues,lack of health insurance, needing avoice in regulation, training to workwith special needs children, and“professionalizing” the business asthe key reasons for Oregonproviders seeking representation.50

According to union representatives,in addition to being better forproviders, organizing careproviders will improve quality forchildren because provider turnoverwill decrease.

Other local organizations thatwork with providers towardimproving their business acumenand enhancing child care as achosen profession include theOregon Center for CareerDevelopment in Childhood Careand Education at Portland StateUniversity and the nonprofit ChildCare Improvement Project.

Limited Access toSpecific Early Care andEducation Programs

As explained earlier in this report,availability of supplementary carehas not kept pace with demand.Similarly, your committee foundthat publicly and privately fundedearly care and education pro-grams for young at-risk childrenare not serving significant num-bers of eligible children, largelydue to insufficient funding.Perhaps most striking is that thisshortage negatively affects chil-dren and their families during thecritical early years when provenintervention programs have thegreatest potential for impact.

Examples of programs operatingin Portland that have demonstrat-ed positive outcomes, but whichdo not currently serve all eligiblechildren and their families includethe following:


provider is a female who providescare in her Multnomah Countyhome, working an average of 54hours per week. Her annualincome is less than $25,000.Like 70 percent of other homeproviders in the county, she hasno paid vacation, and like 81 per-cent of them, she has no person-al retirement savings. Nor doesshe have medical insurance, a sit-uation she shares with 30 percentof family childcare providers inMultnomah County. Given thispicture, one can begin to under-stand why high rates of turnoverpredominate in the field of childcare.44

The education level of providerscorresponds closely to compen-sation. Simply put, better-educat-ed teachers tend to earn highersalaries. Similarly, care and edu-cation facilities with high turnoverare likely to be ones whereemployees are poorly compensat-ed.45 For these reasons, compen-sation turns out to be a reliableindicator of quality. The OregonChild Care Commission’s TaskForce on Financing Quality ChildCare found that, due to chronical-ly low wages, many providers can-not afford to stay in the profes-sion.46 This was echoed by twoPortland-area providers who toldyour committee that the greatestchallenge childcare providers faceis financial viability.47 High

turnover rates among familychildcare providers and amongchildcare teachers and staff “aresignificant barriers to qualityimprovement.”48

State Senate and House bills insupport of local early childhoodprofessional development pro-grams, referred to as OregonCARES (Compensation andRetention Equals Stability) wereintroduced in the 2005Legislature. Oregon CARES is aresearch-based childcare improve-ment program that combines theuse of scholarships and wagesupplements to increase the qual-ity of child care and reduceprovider turnover. Senate Bill 779died in the budget committeeand House Bill 3107 did notreceive a hearing.

`Your committee concludes thatlow wages and inadequateemployee benefits are significantbarriers to attracting and retain-ing qualified providers and, assuch, are barriers to high-qualityearly care and education.

Organizing ProvidersA growing number of home child-care providers in Oregon are sign-ing on with one of two laborunions, Service EmployeesInternational Union or theAmerican Federation of State,


Early Head Start (for childrenbirth to age 3 and their families)and Head Start (for 3- and 4-year-olds) are known for making dra-matic improvements in the well-being and school readiness ofsome of the nation’s neediestyoung children and, possiblymore significant, positively influ-encing participants’ earningcapacity and social well-being inadulthood. The 2002 OregonKindergarten Readiness Surveyshowed that Head Start partici-pants entered kindergarten withtheir physical well-being, lan-guage skills and approaches tolearning similar to that of theirpeers from families with higherhousehold incomes. Local HeadStart programs are fundedthrough a combination of federaland state funds that are subjectto competing needs and the polit-ical process. In MultnomahCounty, federal and state fundsallow only 63 percent of income-eligible 3- and 4-year-olds (a totalof 1,932) to be enrolled. Thisleaves 1,111 eligible children notserved. Local programs that arefederally funded cost $9,219 perchild; programs funded throughOregon Head Start Pre-kinder-garten* cost approximately$7,800 per child.

Early Head Start funds from thefederal government and the cityof Portland allow 10 percent ofeligible children from birth to age3 in Multnomah County, or 482children, to be enrolled. Over4,000 eligible children are notserved. The average cost per childis $12,652.

Employment Policies and Practices

A May 2005 article in OregonBusiness magazine notes that incompanies with an employeeturnover problem, turnover forlack of child care is higher thanturnover from retirement or forlack of training.52 Nationally,close to 80 percent of employeeswith children miss work at somepoint because of childcare prob-lems.53 A 2004 report from theFamilies and Work Institute foundthat most supplementary careproviders are closed for businesson Saturdays and Sundays eventhough 26 percent of employeesnationwide work at least oneweekend day.54

The Oregon Commission for ChildCare has found that the need forconvenient, flexible child care is


Healthy Start screens all first-born infants, and provides childand family support when warrant-ed (including home visits, breast-feeding information, child devel-opment and parenting informa-tion and referrals to supportgroups and social services in thefamily’s community). The primarygoal of Healthy Start is to protectchildren from maltreatment, butparticipants of the program alsobenefit in other ways.

Healthy Start children are moreinclined to have regular well-childcheckups and be immunized;their mothers tend to receive bet-ter prenatal care for subsequentbirths; families are more liklely topromote school readiness; and ahigh percentage of Healthy Startparents consistently use morepositive parenting skills. A 2003-2004 independent evaluation ofthis statewide program docu-mented specific positive gains forHealthy Start children and theirparents.51 The report also notedthat the program’s limited fund-ing prevents it from serving fami-lies to the extent that their assess-ments indicate is needed. Sincethe report was published, the pro-gram’s budget was cut $4 millionby the 2005 Legislature. Thereduction for Multnomah Countywas $396,841 for the 2005-2007biennium.

Children’s Relief Nursery inNorth Portland is modeled on theEugene, Oregon relief nurseryprogram, a highly acclaimed, suc-cessful early intervention programthat is one of six national demon-stration projects of the U.S.Department of Health andHuman Services. The program iscredited with reducing abuse andneglect in high-risk families byproviding comprehensive servicesfor children and parents, deliveredby professional educators andmental health professionals.

The target population is youngchildren who are at risk forimpaired healthy developmentdue to poverty, food insufficiency,housing insecurity, poor attach-ment and other unmet needs.Actual numbers of children orfamilies that need services is diffi-cult to estimate, according toChildren’s Relief Nursery adminis-trators, but crime statistics revealthe agency’s catchment area haseight times the state average ofchild abuse and neglect. The pro-gram competes with other servic-es for city, county and state rev-enues and is reliant on privatephilanthropy to fund approxi-mately two-thirds of its operation.The cost per child is approximate-ly $8,500 per year.


* Oregon Head Start Pre-kindergarten, established in 1987, replicates the Head Startstructure and methods that are credited with long-term success for at-risk children. Theseinclude individualized and developmentally appropriate learning experiences, low child-staff ratio, health care and nutrition, parent involvement and family support.

• no financial incentive; usingother tax credits

• Private nonprofit or public non-profit organization (not eligible)

• “we hire the individual, not thefamily”

• “mind boggling” to implement• employer cannot afford to offer

childcare subsidies• “if I pay a portion of the costs

and the costs are so high, whatgood is my contribution?”

• employer offers a flexible spend-ing account for parents; par-ents can use pretax dollars topurchase child care

• employer struggles to offer tradi-tional health benefits; cannotreasonably consider alternativebenefits

• did not know the credits existed.

At the same time, according toHurkes, employers currentlyusing dependent care tax creditsare pleased with the results.Hurkes stated, in addition to sim-ply making some “feel good,”some employers believe the taxcredits produce direct and indi-rect cost savings, help recruit andretain employees, and reduceabsenteeism.

According to a state survey ofemployers, when ranked withother benefits, including healthinsurance, profit-sharing, sickleave, employer-paid transporta-tion to and from work, and

employer-paid meals, childcarebenefits are at the bottom of thelist of benefits provided in thePortland area.62 Needing to con-sider medical, dental and otherbenefits for 7,000 employees,Legacy Emanuel Hospital andHealth Center in 2005 closed itschildcare center that had benefit-ed 33 employees at a cost of$400,000.63 At the same time,however, employers in thePortland metropolitan area areincreasingly offering flexible workschedules and telecommuting,both of which support familieswith children, as incentives toattract and retain employees.Oregon Employers of Choice, anaffiliation of businesses that pro-vide a range of childcare employ-ee benefits, points out that sup-porting employees’ childcareneeds is, “a hard-edged, dollars-and-sense understanding of theeconomics of employee retention,productivity and satisfaction.”64


particularly acute. In its examina-tion of childcare supply acrossOregon, the commission noted a“persistent need for specific areasof care that include infant/toddlercare, special needs care, extend-ed hour/odd hour, sick child careand school age care.”55 The com-mission, an independentlyappointed board, also acknowl-edged in its most recent report tothe governor and Legislature that“employees do not leave theirchildcare problems at home; theytake them into the workplace.”56

Locally and nationally, researchon employee productivity providesevidence that treating employeeswell is good for business. To thatend, childcare benefits, flexiblework arrangements and extendedparental leave have been recog-nized as family-friendly benefitsthat help to reduce turnover,reduce absenteeism and increasebusiness productivity.57

Yet in Oregon, where both stateand federal tax incentives encour-age companies to provide a child-care benefit, fewer than 4 percentof employers do so.58 Oregon’sEmployment Department recentlysurveyed Oregon businessesabout their use of child care andfound that “very few companiesoffer childcare services to theiremployees.”59 Of the respon-dents, only seven indicated theyhad used the state’s Dependent

Care Tax Credit, which givesemployers a credit for half themoney they spend in support ofchild care for their employees:four respondents provide theiremployees with childcare infor-mation or referral, one providesits employees with a subsidy forchild care, and two provide on-sitechild care. According to surveyresults, 77 of 117 businesseshad not used the credit becausethey had not heard of it.

A September 2005 article in TheOregonian suggested that whilethe Dependent Care Tax Creditmay not be well known, the lowuse might instead be attributedto the fact that “most Oregonbusinesses have little or no tax lia-bility to write down.”60 The articlecites Oregon Department ofRevenue data showing that overthe past six years, only 21employers on average havesought the credit.

Cynthia Hurkes, Business Liaisonfor the Oregon Child Care Re-source & Referral Network, sur-veyed businesses across the statein 2005 and found a broad rangeof reasons why employers are notutilizing tax credits.61 Reasonsidentified include:

• avoidance of morale problemsamong employees who do nothave children


policy development for the servic-es provided by 36 countyCommissions on Children andFamilies. State and federal fundsflow through the Commission tolocally selected initiatives intend-ed to better the lives of children.Examples of these programs inthe Portland metropolitan areaare Healthy Start (Multnomah,Washington and Clackamas coun-ties), Great Start (MultnomahCounty) and Children’s ReliefNursery in North Portland.

Coordination of EarlyChildhood Services

The Oregon Children’s Plan,passed in 2001 as House Bill3659, focuses resources on front-end prevention and treatment,beginning at birth, and expandedthe Healthy Start programstatewide, with an emphasis onhome visits. The bill also estab-lished the voluntary Oregon EarlyChildhood System, which is joint-ly led by the four entities listedabove and run in collaborationwith other state and local earlychildhood partners. That collabo-rative is known as Partners forChildren and Families.

Specific goals of the EarlyChildhood System, as outlined inOregon Revised Statues (ORS)417.727, are as follows:

• prevent child abuse and neglect• improve the health and develop-

ment of young children• promote bonding and attach-

ment in the early years of achild’s life

• support parents in providing theoptimum environment for theiryoung children

• link and integrate services andsupports in the statewide vol-untary Early Childhood System

• link and integrate services andsupport in the local voluntaryEarly Childhood System

• ensure that children are enteringschool ready to learn

• ensure that children receivequality care.

Additional legislation (ORS417.728) requires the voluntarysystem to include services suchas screening, assessment, homevisiting, community-based servic-es, high-quality child care, pre-school and other early educationservices, as well as health servic-es for children and pregnantwomen and mental health servic-es. It calls for the consolidationof administrative functions to theextent practicable, increased coor-dination through data systemsand quality assurance.

This legislative mandate haspressed state and county admin-istrators and staff to work togeth-er to plan, coordinate service

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five 29The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five28

• 6 PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Governance of Child Care

At the state level, early care andeducation in Oregon is funded,regulated, supervised and sup-ported by no fewer than four stateentities. The EmploymentDepartment, the Department ofEducation, the Department ofHuman Services and theCommission on Oregon Childrenand Families all play significantroles in the well-being of childrenfrom birth to age 5.

The Child Care Division of theEmployment Department pro-motes childcare safety, quality,affordability and accessibility.It also initiates and funds innova-tive programs. Within theEmployment Department is the18-member Commission for ChildCare, created in 1985, to advisethe governor on critical issuesrelated to child care. The ChildCare Division is also home to theOregon Child Care Resource andReferral Network, a statewide net-work of 17 community-basedchild care resource and referralagencies that work to improve thequality, accessibility and affordabil-ity of child care for all Oregonfamilies.

Oregon’s Department ofEducation oversees federal fund-ing and coordination of HeadStart and Early Head Start, andprovides education services toinfants and young children withdisabilities. Through communitycolleges and universities, theDepartment of Education hasauthority in teaching and trainingearly childhood educators, includ-ing childcare professionals, andsupports research related to earlychildhood development.

The Department of HumanServices includes Adult andFamily Services for low-incomefamilies, the Health Division, Officeof Medical Assistance Programs(which administers the OregonHealth Plan), Mental Health andthe State Office of Services toChildren and Families. DHS pro-vides childcare referrals, informa-tion on selecting quality child care,and assistance in applying forchildcare subsidies to familiesreceiving federal welfare support(TANF).

The Commission on Children andFamilies provides no direct servicebut is responsible for statewideplanning, standards setting and

than 16 children, including theprovider’s own, must be certi-fied by the state. This is ahigher standard of regulationthan registration, so in additionto meeting the same health,safety and training require-ments as registered providers,certified providers must haveat least one year of childcareexperience or a minimum of20 college credits related tochild development. The statehas the right to investigateproviders’ physical, mental andmoral fitness for caring for chil-dren if a criminal backgroundcheck suggests further review.Certificates must be renewedannually and 15 hours of train-ing are required each year.The Child Care Division makesone unannounced visit annual-ly. Approximately 250 certi-fied (group) child care homesstatewide were listed by theChild Care Division in 2005.68

Certified Childcare Centers:Facilities that serve more than12 children and are located innonresidential buildings mustbe certified by the Child CareDivision. Requirements aresimilar to those for certifiedfamily childcare homes, withthe addition that the firedepartment, Department ofHuman Services and ChildCare Division must inspect and

approve the facility prior tochildren being in care, and arere-inspected annually. Certifi-cates must be renewed annual-ly. Announced and unan-nounced inspections by theChild Care Division are per-formed annually in these facili-ties. As of 2005, about 1,000centers are on the state’s list ofcertified facilities.69

A number of providers are exemptfrom licensure requirements.Exempt care includes a range ofpaid and unpaid care choices thatare not subject to safety andhealth inspections, criminal historychecks, adult-child ratios, caregivertraining level or any other state reg-ulation. Your committee identifiedthe following examples of exemptcare:70

• in-home care: provided in thechild’s home by parents, a sib-ling, relative or babysitter

• small-service care: residence-based providers caring forfewer than three children orchildren from only one family

• part-time preschools: educa-tion-focused care less than fourhours per day for children age3 to kindergarten

• occasional care: care providedon an occasional basis by aperson, sponsor or organiza-tion not ordinarily in the busi-ness of providing child care


delivery, consolidate administra-tive functions, develop a commondata system, and to link the EarlyChildhood System to services forolder children. An independentevaluation of the Early ChildhoodSystem completed in 2003 notedpositive levels of collaboration,but also identified challenges forthe model, including time andstaff needed to facilitate coordi-nation efforts, and differing eligi-bility criteria across programsthat serve young children.65 Itnoted that the purpose of furtherevaluation ought to be on improv-ing implementation of the initia-tive rather than on evaluatingimpact.

The structure of the EarlyChildhood System does not des-ignate an administrator or direc-tor to lead its many efforts.

Regulation of Early Careand Education

Regulation of caregiving providesa means and an opportunity toinfluence the quality of early careand education. In Oregon, theChild Care Division of theEmployment Department ischarged with regulating carethrough licensure of individualproviders, preschools and child-care centers.66

In Oregon, licensed providers areof the following three types:

Registered Family ChildcareHomes: Residence-basedproviders that serve at leastthree children of other familiesand a total of no more than10 children (including theprovider’s own children) mustbe registered by the state. Thehome must meet health andsafety standards, and theprovider must have aninfant/child CPR and first-aidlicense, a food handler’slicense, and training in recog-nizing and reporting childabuse and neglect. All adultsin the home must be enrolledin the Child Care Division’sCriminal History Registry.Registration must be renewedevery two years, and theprovider must complete eighthours of training in each two-year period. A representativeof the Child Care Divisionmakes one announced visitduring the two-year registrationperiod; additional visits may bemade to investigate com-plaints. As of 2005, the statehas approximately 5,000 regis-tered family childcare homes.67

Certified Family ChildcareHomes (Group ChildcareHomes): Residence-basedproviders that serve no more


17 community-based entities thatcontract with the Child CareDivision to maintain databases ofproviders in their respective areas,which may be one or more coun-ties.* Statewide, the networkincludes approximately 6,562providers, of which about 4,140are voluntarily listed on a search-able online database.74 APortland-area parent searchingfor an appropriate program forhis or her child can search forproviders by ZIP code, by type ofcare desired, and for availablecare for a specific age group. Thedatabase also specifies regulatorystatus, days and hours care isprovided, capacity and vacancies,activities available, professionalaffiliations maintained by theprovider, and national accredita-tion.

While this information is useful toparents, R&Rs offer only referrals,not recommendations. Further,the system provides no specificdata on quality of care, largelybecause such data have not beencollected. (As noted earlier, aMultnomah County pilot projectto assess and report on quality

indicators in center-based care isunderway.) Under the presentsystem, providers give informa-tion listed in the network voluntar-ily, and it is not always verifiedthrough calls or visits.* Providerviolations (that is, complaintsinvestigated and substantiated bythe state) are not currently includ-ed in the database; consumersneed to contact the Child CareDivision’s licensing program tolearn if a provider has any record-ed violations. Substantiated com-plaint information is expected tobe online when the state makestechnology upgrades, but a targetdate has not been stated.

In addition to making referrals,the R&R network staff assistproviders becoming licensed,improving their early childhooddevelopment knowledge base,developing business and financialskills, and networking with otherproviders for support and profes-sional growth.


• specialty care: supervised,child-focused enrichmentclasses such as dance, drama,music or religion

• government care: facilities andprograms operated by aschool district, political subdivi-sion of the state or a govern-ment agency.

The largest category of exemptcare is informal, in-home careprovided by parents, siblings,other relatives and babysitters,yet no one knows with muchaccuracy or certainty how manychildren under age 5 thisincludes, nor the quality of carethey are receiving. Bobbie Weber,of the Oregon Child CareResearch Partnership, estimatesthat 40 percent of children (inchild care) are in “nonmarket”care, that is, exempt small-servicecare and care provided by family,friends and neighbors.71

Nationally, an increase in the useof informal care has been linkedto the high cost of market-ratecare and parents’ need for flexibleschedules and unconventionalhours. Family and friends oftenare more willing to accommodateschedules that are outside thetypical workday.72

Some expert witnesses inter-viewed by your committee

expressed concern that exemptcategories represent significantloopholes in Oregon’s childcarelaws. Tom Olsen, Administratorof the Child Care Division,acknowledged that he would “loveto be able to license all pre-schools,” but “the fiscal impactwould be large — lots more staff— and the Legislature has notbeen disposed to spend generalfunds on that sort of thing.”73

Your committee concludes thatregulation of early care and edu-cation is an underutilized oppor-tunity to ensure that publiclysubsidized settings meet stan-dards for safe, high-quality care.

Government’s Role inProviding ConsumerInformation and Education

Your committee found that par-ents, when seeking child care,turn to friends and families, useword-of-mouth referrals, bulletinboards, fliers, newsletters andnewspapers, the Yellow Pages,employee assistance programreferrals, schools, governmentagencies and the Internet tolocate early care and educationproviders in their communities.

Oregon has a Child CareResearch and Referral network of


* The local R&R entities that contract withthe Child Care Division are Child CareResource and Referral of Multnomah andClackamas Counties (www.ccrr-mc.org),and Child Care Resource and Referral ofWashington County (www.communityaction4u.org).

* In cases in which a provider/facility isregulated or licensed by the Child CareDivision, certain regulatory requirementshave been met; however these do not fullyrepresent the quality standards identifiedearlier in this report.

Nationally, governments subsidizeabout 39 percent of childcarecosts. In Oregon, public support isa smaller percentage, with fami-lies paying an estimated 67 per-cent of costs. This sectionexplores ways government pro-grams help Oregon families payfor care. Public assistance forproviders is also discussed.

Financial Assistance toFamilies*

General tax benefits for familiesinclude a federal tax deduction of$3,200 per child or dependent,the federal Child Tax Credit of upto $1,000 per child (which isphased out at higher income lev-els), the federal Earned IncomeTax Credit and Oregon’s EarnedIncome Tax Credit for low-incomeworking families. In addition, fed-eral and state tax credits, flexiblespending accounts and subsidiesare also available to eligible work-ing parents.

Childcare Tax CreditsOne federal and two state child-care tax credits are also availableto qualifying families in Oregon.None of these credits cover theentire cost of child care, and allrequire parents to pay providersfirst, then claim credits at the endof the year with proof of pay-ments.

The federal Child and DependentCare Tax Credit provides assis-tance to eligible tax filers if theyor their spouse need child care inorder to work or look for work.The credit decreases as adjustedgross income increases, with amaximum credit of $1,050 forone child or dependent and$2,100 for two or more for fami-lies with adjusted gross incomesof $15,000 or less. At the highend, with an adjusted grossincome above $43,000, the maxi-mum credit is $600 for one childor dependent and $1,200 for twoor more. Also, unlike the federalChild Tax Credit, this credit isnonrefundable, meaning familiescannot obtain a refund if thecredit exceeds total taxes owed.


• 7 PUBLIC SUPPORT FORFAMILIES AND PROVIDERS

* Tax information in this section is for the2005 tax year.

experiences for children becauseeligibility is tied to income thresh-olds. Even a minor increase inincome can result in a suddenloss of benefits that may begreater than the income increase,thereby forcing parents to find adifferent (less expensive) childcareprovider. This is disruptive for thechild, parents and provider.

Student Child Care ProgramCreated in 2001, this programprovides childcare assistance to alimited number of low-income par-ents who are students. The pro-gram, administered by theDepartment of Human Services,disburses the subsidy directly tochildcare providers. The 2005Legislature renewed $1 million infunding for the 2005-2007 bienni-um, which will aid 100 families peryear. At least 700 families are ona waiting list.76 The OregonStudent Association, an advocatefor the subsidy program, notesthat “student childcare programsare at the intersection of two pow-erful and cost-beneficial factors fora strong economy: post-secondaryeducation and quality child care.”77

Financial Assistance to Providers

As an incentive for providers toincrease their education level, theDepartment of Human Services

provides an enhanced ERDC sub-sidy rate of 7 percent to individu-als and centers that meet specificrequirements, including trainingstandards established by OregonCenter for Career Development inChildhood Care and Education atPortland State University.*

The percentage of subsidizedproviders that received theenhanced rate increased from14.9 percent in 2000 to 21.5 per-cent in 2002.78 While this is a wel-come sign that a greater numberof providers are enhancing theirprofessional development, a 2004market rate study showed thateven Oregon’s enhanced subsidiesare generally inadequate to fullycover the cost of market childcare. Only 21 percent of toddlerslots were covered by theenhanced subsidy rate, down from38 percent in 2000 and 24 per-cent in 2002. Subsidies are par-ticularly insufficient for center-based care, where rates are higherthan the enhanced ERDC benefit.79


Oregon is one of 26 states to offera state Child and Dependent CareTax Credit. Available only to fami-lies with adjusted gross incomesbelow $45,000, this tax credit ofup to $1,800 is determined byincome level.

The Oregon Working Family ChildCare Tax Credit is for families withincomes defined by the federalEarned Income Tax Credit (earnedincome of $31,030 or less for sin-gle with one child, up to $37,263if married with two children).Families earning a minimum of$6,750 annually can receive creditof up to 40 percent of qualifyingchildcare expenses with no limit.This credit is refundable, meaningif it exceeds taxes owed, the fami-ly will receive the difference.

Child Care Flexible SpendingAccountsAlso known as Dependent CareAssistance Plans, these accountsare offered through employers andoffer employees the opportunity topay for child or dependent carewith pre-tax dollars. Up to $2,500if filing individually ($5,000 ifmarried and filing jointly) can beplaced annually into a specialaccount where proof of paymentis required in order to be reim-bursed. These dollars cannot beclaimed for the Child andDependent Care Tax Credit.

Employment Related Day CareSubsidyFunded largely by federal dollarsand administered by the state,this early care and education sub-sidy program provides monthlyfinancial assistance for approxi-mately 9,500 Oregon families whoearn less than $29,025 annually(150 percent of the federal pover-ty level). The subsidy is availableonly to families when all potentialadult caregivers are working, andonly up to a maximum rate thatdepends on the number of chil-dren in child care, their ages, thelocation of care and type of care.

Only 20 percent of eligible chil-dren in Oregon currently are bene-ficiaries of this subsidy, largelybecause of the high co-paymentsparents must make. The ERDCprovider reimbursement rate (orsubsidy) in Oregon is lower than inany other state. Actual disburse-ment goes to the childcareprovider and parents are responsi-ble for a co-payment that is basedon family income. Paying marketrates produces high co-paymentsfor parents, so they are ofteninclined to purchase less expen-sive care that is below the subsidyrate.75

Subsidies help families pay forcare, but being “on assistance”can also result in unstable care


* National Early Childhood TechnicalAssistance Center, Oregon's ChildhoodCare and Education Career DevelopmentSystem certifies six professional develop-ment levels based on knowledge in 12care categories, including human growthand development, guidance and disci-pline, learning environments, nutrition andothers.

These relationships include the allocation of resources — dollars, leader-ship and time. The relationships, or systems, are not restricted to achild’s or family’s immediate surroundings. Your committee found thatprograms and policies, funding sources and institutions that influence achild’s development extend from Portland’s neighborhoods all the wayto the federal government. Layers of complexity and social attitudesinfluence the use of resources at every level, reaching across city, county,state and federal political jurisdictions.

Early care and education by broad definition is every experience — men-tal, physical and social — that a child has from birth to age 5. Theseexperiences shape human potential; making sure they are favorable tohealthy development is of vital importance. Negative experiences —poor birthing care, trauma, malnutrition, lack of consistent caregiving,severe illness — also leave imprints on the developing brain that are asenduring as positive ones. No longer ought our society assume thatattending to our youngest citizens when they arrive at kindergarten isadequate. Doing so would be economically short-sighted and irrespon-sible as outlined repeatedly in social and scientific studies and articles.


A young child, a family, employ-ers, a community of friends, pub-lic and private institutions, govern-ment, and society as a whole —what are the connections between

these systems and early child-hood care and education? Yourcommittee suggests the followingfigure as one way to conceptual-ize the relationships:


• 8 DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS“Early care and education by broaddefinition is every experience —

mental, physical and social —that a child has, from birth to

age 5. These experiences shapehuman potential, so making sure

they are favorable to healthydevelopment is of vital importance.”

A

socie

tyth

atva

lues

the

early

year

s(o

ften

expr

esse

dth

roug

hea

rlych

ildho

odadvoc

ates, faith-based organizations, media, health and

CHILDRENBIRTH TO AGE 5

nutritionadvocates, academ

icresearch,educators,policy-m

akersand

others)

Empl

oym

ent

pol

icie

san

dpra

ctic

es

•

Public investment

•

Governm

entoversightandregulation

•

Non

pare

ntal

care

that

ofte

noc

curs in childcare centers, preschools, pre-kindergarten

andother

settings

Parents, family and friends

••

Safe and healthy home environment

Supplementary care

sponsored health insurance to make ends meet and single parents havefewer options. These are the parents who often patch together childcarearrangements that are chosen for affordability or flexibility over quality orconsistency. As your committee learned, consistency of a caregiver,whether parent or other adult — what is referred to as attachment — isbelieved to be the most critical element to support healthy child devel-opment.

While supplementary care issues affect all income levels, the challengeis most severe at the lowest end of the income spectrum. Your commit-tee strongly emphasizes that any policy discussions about early careand education, including health care and nutrition, must include thevariable of family income. The Annie E. Casey Foundation andChildren’s Defense Fund note that the numbers of children living inpoverty is the most widely used indicator of child well-being.Multnomah County’s rate of children living in poverty (23 percent in2003-2004) brings this issue home to Portland.80 For three years run-ning, Children First for Oregon has given the state a failing grade for“family financial stability.” For low-wage earning parents, the competing


Start Early

With the knowledge of early braindevelopment and the need foroptimum conditions early in achild’s life, guaranteeing access tohealth care and nutrition for preg-nant women and all children frombirth to age 5 should be the foun-dation of early childhood policy.Medical providers have a uniqueopportunity to screen a child’sphysical, social, cognitive andemotional development, and workwith parents to make treatmentand referral decisions at the earli-est possible time. Yet today some35,000 Oregon children underage 5 have no insurance — publicor private, meaning they areunlikely to be followed by a pedia-trician during this critical stage ofdevelopment.

Health care has, in fact, beendescribed as one variety of “earlyintervention,” a term applied toan array of services and strate-gies from outside the family thatwork with families to maintain orimprove young children’s well-being. Earlier in this report, yourcommittee cited examples ofearly care and education pro-grams that target specific popula-tions of children and their fami-lies in the Portland area, includingthe Healthy Start screening pro-gram and relief nurseries. Yourcommittee believes that invest-

ment in early intervention pro-grams is a logical response tobrain development research anda wise use of public resources.These programs prepare vulnera-ble young children for social andacademic success. Yet our com-munity and state have failed toexercise public leadership tosecure the resources to adequate-ly deliver the successful earlyintervention programs that areavailable to some, but not all. Asrecently as July 2005, state budg-et cuts pressed Healthy Startadministrators to find ways toreduce the number of babiesscreened.

Shore Up Subsidies

Your committee stresses thatquality early care and educationis not a “welfare issue for thepoor,” but one that crosses socio-economic lines. Many, if notmost, Portland-area parents, atone time or another, are con-cerned with finding and keepingreliable childcare providers sothey can go to work and school.Some parents have many child-care choices, including the choiceof “staying at home” or having anurturing, consistently presentgrandparent or other relative par-ticipate in caregiving. But middle-and low-income parents whoneed two salaries and employer-


“While supplementary care issues affect allincome levels, the challenge is most severeat the lowest end of the income spec-

trum. Your committee stronglyemphasizes that any policy discus-

sions about early care and education,including health care and nutrition,

must include the variable of family income.

Increasing provider wages withoutputting even higher costs on thebacks of parents is a challenge,but one that has been addressedin some areas with innovativesolutions. Some 27 states fundprograms that link early child-hood training with wage supple-ments.

In Oregon, a wage-enhancementproject, “Lane County CARES,”used city of Eugene, Lane Countyand federal funds to help coverthe cost of training for childcareteachers while providing them amodest wage supplement.Positive results prompted theintroduction of two bills in the2005 Legislature asking for anallocation of $1.5 million to cre-ate an Oregon CARES program,as noted earlier. The failure ofthe House bill suggests the lowpriority for this issue, a furtherindication that the childcare pro-fession is undervalued and lacksclout.

At the same time, labor unionshave emerged as a voice for earlychildhood care providers inOregon. The impact of unionorganizing on providers and fami-lies remains to be seen. Your com-mittee, nonetheless, encouragespublic and private partners todirect resources toward improvingthe quality of Oregon’s early careand education work force.

Inform Parents AboutQuality

Your committee heard fromexperts who advocate for greaterregulation and standards forchildcare settings, not becauseunregulated care is inherentlypoor or that regulated care wouldguarantee greater safety or quali-ty, but because study after studydemonstrates a clear linkbetween accreditation and quality.Yet it is difficult to criticize unreg-ulated or nonaccredited care ingeneral terms because this cate-gory includes many nurturing andattentive individuals, often grand-parents, other family membersand close friends, who may beparents’ best choice for qualitycare. Public agencies in Oregon,like their counterparts in otherstates, walk a fine line betweenestablishing and enforcing guide-lines that support safety andquality, while respecting thechoice of families to hire some-one with whom they have a per-sonal and positive relationship,even if that person is not a regu-lated provider.

Your committee recommends theimplementation of a public infor-mation system that will help par-ents make informed choiceswhen selecting a provider. Thestate’s current Resource andReferral system gives limited


costs of housing, transportationand other necessities severelyimpair their ability to providebasic economic and emotionalsecurity for their children, includ-ing the stability of a consistentcaregiver.

Oregon’s Employment RelatedDay Care program, which pro-vides child care assistance to low-income working families, receives90 percent of its funding fromthe federal Child Care andDevelopment Fund block grant.At the time of this writing, theblock grant is subject to budgetcuts that will eliminate day-caresubsidies for an estimated330,000 children nationwide. Forseveral years already Oregon’sERDC administrators have care-fully balanced provider reimburse-ment rates — the lowest in thenation — with numbers of fami-lies served and co-payment rates.Current co-payment rates areamong the highest in the nationand exceed Oregon’s 10 percentof household income benchmark.Experts believe that these are thecircumstances that drive manyparents to use “nonmarket care,”about which little is known. Evenas the state was already rankeddismally in childcare assistance,the 2005 Legislature threatenedto cut the ERDC budget by $12.7million. While this cut was avoid-

ed, failure to adequately fund theERDC program would appear toviolate the spirit, if not the letter,of the Family Support Act of1988, which states that “federalfunding requirements have stipu-lated that child care subsidy ratesbe informed by market rates.”According to the 2004 OregonChild Care Market Rate Study,federal policy requires states toconduct market rate surveys inorder to establish maximumchildcare subsidy rates highenough to enable families receiv-ing assistance to enter the child-care market able to find andafford care.

Value the Profession

Childcare providers are some ofthe lowest paid workers inAmerica. This holds true inOregon. The under-valuing of thisprofession is in stark contrast tothe importance of the work: theseare the individuals who interactwith a child during the critical earlyyears. Low salaries and few, if any,benefits for providers leads to highturnover, which disrupts a child’ssense of security and attachment.Higher wages are also linked withhigher quality of care. Efforts toenhance wages should be consid-ered by policy-makers.


kindergarten, and several statesare moving in that direction (e.g.,California, New York, WestVirginia, North Carolina andFlorida). In Oregon, conversationsand collaborations that promotepre-kindergarten programs haveintensified in recent years, withthe possibilities of targeted oruniversal systems being consid-ered by advocacy organizations,educators and elected officials.Your committee heard and readroutinely that school readiness isnot just an issue for at-risk chil-dren or children from low-incomefamilies. Universal programsguarantee access without moni-toring family income, which oftenfluctuates and can result in incon-sistent eligibility for a child. Inaddition, universal programs arebelieved to receive greater publicsupport because they areincome-neutral and support thenotion of equal access.

While respecting those argu-ments, your committee was influ-enced by expert witnesses whocautioned against the delivery ofa pre-kindergarten program in amanner that sacrifices quality forquantity. If under-funded, spread-ing limited resources across theentire population of 3- and 4-year-olds could dilute the quality,impair the potential of a child’sgrowth and, hence, the economic

viability of this investment.Prioritizing quality programs for3- and 4-year-olds whose familyincome is 150 percent of povertywould be, your committee con-cludes, a strategic first step.

Your committee acknowledgesthe concerns of early childhoodeducators and policy-makers whocaution that part-day preschoolprograms must correspond witha family’s supplementary carechoices and support a smoothtransition to kindergarten. Theseare elements of quality that mustbe included in a blueprint for afirst-rate pre-kindergarten pro-gram in Oregon.

Establish Leadership

Multiple bureaucracies at variouslevels of state, county and citygovernment are involved in sup-porting young children and theirfamilies and each has a specificinterest. While this can lead toconfusion and possible duplica-tion of efforts, your committeedetermined that, in the past twoyears, progress has been madetoward integrating separate stateentities under the Early ChildhoodSystem, which requires communi-cation between departments andintegration of services. Yourcommittee found that individuals


information about quality. TheChild Care Quality IndicatorsProject has the potential to informparents about the quality of spe-cific provider settings, encourageprofessionalism for providers, andidentify programs worthy of fund-ing. The cost of Oregon’s informa-tion system when fully implement-ed statewide will be little morethan the current Resource andReferral budget because itexpands and improves an existingprogram rather than creating anew one. Development costs forthe first two years are estimatedto be $200,000, including$80,000 in public funds and theremaining from private donors.81

Earlier in this report (page 14),your committee listed sevenobservable and measurable char-acteristics of early care and edu-cation settings. In addition tothese, parents must also considerthe flexibility of caregivers’ sched-ules and the parents’ own abilityto balance work and family life.82

Your committee was challenged todetermine the balance betweenwhat is best for a child and whatworks for the parent given thatparents’ personal satisfaction, orlack of, also impacts children. Weconclude that an active societalappreciation for the early years,including workplace solutions thatencourage parents to be both pro-

ductive employees and engagedparents, is needed. We believethat employers must play agreater role in this area and chal-lenge Portland’s business leadersto design and implement systemsthat benefit their employees’ fami-lies, without compromising theirbusinesses’ bottom lines.

Expand Pre-Kindergarten

With compelling longitudinal evi-dence that early investment in thelives of children fosters schoolreadiness and holds great promisefor our economic and societal well-being, a publicly supported pre-kindergarten program for Oregon’s3- and 4-year-olds was identifiedby your committee as a potentialwin-win remedy for today’s chil-dren and tomorrow’s economy.Oregon is fortunate to already havea respected comprehensive pre-kindergarten model in place, butbecause of limited funding thou-sands of eligible children in thestate are not enrolled, andbecause eligibility is restricted tofamilies at 100 percent of poverty,thousands more low-income chil-dren who would benefit from theprogram are shut out.

Two states (Oklahoma andGeorgia) have charted varyingcourses to fund universal pre-


current state administrative budg-ets, your committee estimatesthe annual cost of this office tobe $375,000.

Readers should note that yourcommittee has made recommen-dations that will require allocationof federal, state and local dollarsto remedy gaps in the delivery ofa comprehensive Early ChildhoodSystem, without identifying rev-enue sources. Distributing limitedresources among competinghuman services programs, edu-cation, economic developmentand public safety needs requiresa deliberative legislative processthat is beyond the scope of ourcharge, particularly because itwould involve detailed analysis ofcity, county, state and federalbudgets, all of which contributeto the services and programs wehave identified as critical needs.

Revenue sources used by otherstates might guide individualsand groups whom we hope willmove forward with your commit-tee’s recommendations. Georgia,for example, uses lottery dollarsto fund universal pre-kinder-garten, and South Carolina raisedits sales tax by one cent to fundpre-kindergarten. California’s pre-kindergarten initiative, to beplaced on the ballot in 2006,would be funded by raising stateincome taxes on those making

more than $400,000 per year. InOregon, past legislatures haveconsidered targeting CommonSchool Fund distributions, whichby state law are to be distributedbased on each county’s popula-tion of 4- to 20-year-olds.Proponents of this idea, includingformer Secretary of State and for-mer Superintendent of PublicInstruction Norma Paulus, believethat revenue from the CommonSchool Fund is relatively insignifi-cant for the state’s K-12 budget,but when dedicated to early child-hood, the concentrated effectwould be vastly greater. Yourcommittee believes this ideadeserves further consideration.

Ideally, innovative, stable and ade-quate funding solutions will bebrought forward by the manyindividuals and groups whounderstand the implications forquality early care and educationin Oregon, and who will press for-ward in leadership roles to get thework done. It is hard for yourcommittee to imagine a publicpolicy issue with more agreementamong scientists, governmentofficials and child advocates.With this report, your committeerecommends that City Club ofPortland join an emerging move-ment of private and public sectorleaders calling for early invest-ment in the welfare of children.


at every level of government aredeeply involved in improving earlycare and education practices andpolicies.

Yet while many qualified programadministrators, business owners,elected officials and other citizensunderstand and care about youngchildren, your committee heardfrom a number of expert witness-es that more focused leadershipis needed. Among those voiceswas Multnomah CountyCommissioner Lisa Naito, whotold your committee “there are nolonger any early childhood cham-pions in the state Legislature tomove decisions forward.”83

Duncan Campbell, founder ofFriends of the Children andChildren’s Institute told your com-mittee that “an early educationchampion would hopefully with-stand the political turnover ofleaders like the governor, mayorand county chair.” As a candidate,Mayor Tom Potter stated that thecity’s highest priority should be itschildren, yet his agenda in thisregard remains unclear to yourcommittee.

Your committee concludes thatOregon needs a statewide leaderwho is focused solely on thestate’s early childhood missionand can raise the visibility of earlychildhood policies, build on col-

laborations, and use his or herbully pulpit to advance the welfareof young children. This idea isnot original. New Jersey has anOffice of the Child Advocate, andMassachusetts has an EarlyEducation and Care Commission-er. In January 2006, WashingtonState Governor Chris Gregoiretook a more drastic approachcalling on their Legislature to con-solidate all early learning pro-grams into a single agency.Washington’s situation is similarto that of Oregon: multiple pro-grams spread across numerousagencies with no clear vision.

Your committee is calling on stateofficials to strengthen Oregon'sstatutory effort (ORS 417.727and 417.728) to coordinated dis-parate early childhood programs.Your committee recommends thecreation of a new position in theexecutive branch of state govern-ment for a “chief advocate forearly childhood” to lead the EarlyChildhood System and be thepublic voice for the early years.The position will be the state’s topadvocate for informed, visible andaggressive leadership in earlychildhood care and educationissues and serve as a liaisonbetween the governor’s office, theLegislature, and the Partners forChildren and Families collabora-tion. Based on figures used in


9. With childcare costs in Portland among the highest of any major met-ropolitan area in the nation, and increasing faster than average annualincomes, your committee is gravely concerned about the decreasingaffordability of high-quality early care and education.

10. Oregon’s childcare subsidies are inadequate and restrict childcarechoices, particularly for low-income families.

11. Available data often misrepresent the true picture of childcare avail-ability by not accounting for common family-specific variables such aslocation, hours of operation, age of children (e.g., infant care vs. toddlercare)

12. Low wages and inadequate employee benefits are significant barri-ers to attracting and retaining qualified providers and, as such, are barri-ers to high-quality early care and education.

13. Regulation of early care and education is an underutilized opportu-nity to ensure that publicly subsidized settings meet standards for safe,high-quality care.

14. Sustained leadership, adequate and stable funding and a broadpublic understanding of the vital importance of early childhood develop-ment are necessary to ensure high-quality early care and educationopportunities for all of the state’s youngest citizens.


1. Early care and education is a critical public issue, as important asother civic issues such as public safety, economic development and envi-ronmental standards.

2. Federal and state family leave programs intended to support workingfamilies provide little benefit for parents who cannot afford to takeunpaid leave from their jobs.

3. Public and private investment in early care and education will, in themid and long term, produce significant cost savings and increase taxrevenue through greater economic output.

4. Brain research provides a clear and powerful road map to guide earlychildhood care and education policy in our local communities and state.Research has proved that the fundamental social, emotional and intel-lectual skills necessary to become a healthy, productive adult are largelydetermined by development during the first five years of life.

5. Your committee endorses widely accepted scientific research aboutthe importance of proper health care and nutrition during the earlyyears of a child’s life.

6. Many at the forefront of early care and education in Oregon have cor-rectly begun to link research that clearly identifies the features of high-quality early care and education with measurable characteristics of sup-plementary care and education settings.

7. Little is known about the quality of supplementary care in Oregon,largely because state and local governments have failed to collect ormake available comprehensive information about the quality of individ-ual settings in their jurisdictions.

8. Free-market conditions have not and will not adequately support theearly care and education needs of families with children. Governmentmust, therefore, fill the gap or accept the consequences, which are morecrime, lower economic output and greater societal costs.


• 9 CONCLUSIONS

9. City Club of Portland should join an emerging movement of privateand public sector leaders calling for investment in the lives of young chil-dren, in accordance with the conclusions and recommendations of thisreport.

Respectfully submitted,

John Butler, M.D.Ben CannonWilliam Connor, M.D.Shirley Deale, M.D.Peggy KingJudy MooreNan NewellJake Oken-BergMarilyn Richen

Bethany Wurtz, co-chair Julie Young, co-chair

Mark Magnuson, research adviserWade Fickler, research director

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This labor of love benefited greatly from the many contributions ofMarilyn Richen, who chaired this committee for two years and KrisAlman, who regrettably was unable to continue with the committee dur-ing its final months. Andy Sloop, first as our research adviser and lateras chair of City Club’s Research Board, provided valuable insight andpractical guidance at key points in the study. Your committee is alsodeeply grateful to the true experts on this subject, listed on the followingpages, who graciously contributed to the education of your committee.We are particularly appreciative of Bobbie Weber and Tom Olsen whoresponded promptly and thoughtfully to our many inquiries over thecourse of the study.


1. Access to health care and nutrition support should be guaranteed forall young children and pregnant women in Oregon.

2. State, county and city leaders should assure full funding for earlyscreening and early intervention programs for all eligible children frombirth to age 3 and their families.

3. A new position of “chief advocate for early childhood” should be creat-ed in the executive branch of state government that would lead Oregon’sEarly Childhood System and be the public voice for the early years.

4. Funding for pre-kindergarten in Oregon should be increased to ensureaccess for all income-eligible 3- and 4-year-old children statewide.

5. State- and federally funded childcare subsidies should be increased toa level that enables parents to afford quality care in the context of theirfamily budgets.

6. Resources should be directed toward improving the quality of theearly care and education work force by linking wages to training andexperience and providing more opportunities for training and education.

7. A statewide information system on childcare quality should be estab-lished to inform parents and the public about the quality of individualearly care and education settings. Publicized information should includethe seven observable and measurable characteristics identified in thisreport: (1) adult-child ratio, (2) group size, (3) education and traininglevel of providers, (4) caregivers’ compensation, (5) caregivers’ turnoverhistory, (6) accreditation and (7) record of substantiated complaintsagainst the provider.

8. Employers should provide parental leave benefits, flex time, breast-feeding opportunities and other polices that increase the time that par-ents can personally care for their children.


• 10 RECOMMENDATIONS


• CITATIONS

1 Oregon Employment Department. (08/19/05).2 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (March 2000).3 Oregon Historical Society. (2002). The Oregon History Project.4 Oregon Department of Education. (10/12/05). Statement to your committee by Dell

Ford.5 Baglin, Carol Ann and Michael Bender, ed. (1994). Handbook on Quality Child Care for

Young Children: Settings, Standards and Resources. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group,Inc.

6 Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries.7 National Center for Women and Aging & the National Alliance for Caregiving. (1999).8 Oregon Department of Human Services. (1996). Transitional Assistance to Needy Families

(TANF) State Plan.9 Center for Law and Social Policy and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (July 2001).

State Policy Documentation Project.10 U.S. Census Bureau. (2004). American Community Survey.11 Early Care and Education Collaborative. Early Childhood Education Fact Sheet.12 Schweinhart Lawrence J., High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. (2005). The

High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40: Summary, Conclusions and FrequentlyAsked Questions.

13 Economic Policy Institute. (2004). Exceptional Returns-Economic, Fiscal, and Social Benefitsof Investment in Early Childhood Development.

14 Shonkoff, Jack P. and Deborah A. Phillips. (10/03/2000). National Research Council andInstitute of Medicine of the National Academies. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: TheScience of Early Childhood Development.

15 Shore, Rima. (1997) Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development. Familiesand Work Institute.

16 Zigler, Edward, Matia Finn-Stevenson and Nancy W. Hall. (2002). The First Three Years andBeyond: Brain Development and Social Policy. New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress.

17 National Center for Children in Poverty. Columbia University. (June 1999). Poverty andBrain Development in Early Childhood.

18 Oregon Department of Human Services.19 Oregon Department of Human Services.20 Brazelton, T. Berry and Stanley I. Greenspan. (2000). The Irreducible Needs of Children:

What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing.21 Ibid.22 Zigler, Edward, Matia Finn-Stevenson and Nancy W. Hall. (2002). The First Three Years and

Beyond: Brain Development and Social Policy. New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress.

23 Oregon Child Care Research Partnership: Improving Child Care: Providing ComparativeInformation on Child Care Facilities to Parents and the Community. (Summer 2003). Asimilar list is found in Essential Elements of Programs for Children: ImplementationPlan for Quality, Oregon Head Start Collaboration Project. (1999). This report was co-managed by the Child Care Division in the Department of Employment and the HeadStart Collaboration Project in the Department of Education.

24 Emlen, Arthur, Paul E. Koren and Kathryn H. Schultze. A Packet of Scales for MeasuringQuality of Child Care from a Parent's Point of View with a Summary of Method and Findings.(November 2000). The Oregon Child Care Research Partnership. Portland StateUniversity.

25 Oregon Commission for Child Care: Report to the Governor and Legislature. (2003-05).p. 6.

26 Pediatrics, Vol. 115 (1). (January 2005). Quality Early Education and Child Care from Birth toKindergarten.

27 Helburn, Suzanne W., ed. (1995). Cost, quality, and child outcomes in child care centers.Technical report. Denver: Department of Economics, Center for Research in Economicsand Social Policy, University of Colorado at Denver.

28 Children First for Oregon. (September 2005). Report Card 2005.29 The Business Journal of Portland. (02/10/04). Day Care Costly in Portland, Study Finds.30 Oregon Child Care Research Partnership. (February 2003). Child Care and Education in

Oregon and Its Counties: 2000.31 U.S. Census Bureau.32 Oregon Progress Board. (April 2005). 2005 Benchmark Report.33 Leachman, Michael. Oregon Center for Public Policy. (September 2004). In the Shadows

of the Recovery: The State of Working Oregon.34 Center for the Study of Women in Society. University of Oregon. (January 2001). Oregon

Families Who Left Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) or Food Stamps: A Studyof Economic and Family Well-being from 1998 to 2000.

35 National Women's Law Center. (April 2004). Child Care Providers: Increasing CompensationRaises Women's Wages and Improves Child Care Quality.

36 Wire, Carol. (07/13/05). Deputy Director, Oregon Commission on Children and Families.37 Oregon Progress Board. (April 2005). 2005 Benchmark Report.38 Weber, Bobbie. (08/24/05). Coordinator, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership Family

Policy Program, Oregon State University. Statement to your committee.39 Children First for Oregon. (2004). Status of Oregon's Children, County Data Book.40 Weber, Bobbie. (08/24/05). Coordinator, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership Family

Policy Program, Oregon State University. Statement to your committee.41 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. ( May 2004).42 Helburn, Suzanne W., John R. Morris and Mary L. Culkin. (2002). Family Child Care

Finances and their Effect on Quality and Incentives. Early Childhood Research Quarterly,17, No. 4, pp.512-538.

43 MacDougall and Associates. (December 2003). Six-County, Oregon Child CareCompensation Study. Prepared for the Commissions on Children and Families and ChildCare Resource and Referral Agencies in Clackamas, Jackson, Lane, Marion, Multnomahand Washington Counties, Oregon.

44 Zigler, Edward, Matia Finn-Stevenson and Nancy W. Hall. (2002). The First Three Years andBeyond: Brain Development and Social Policy. New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress.

45 Weber, Roberta and Jerri Wolfe. (Summer 2003). Oregon Child Care ResearchPartnership. Improving Child Care: Providing Comparative Information on Child CareFacilities to Parents and the Community.

46 Oregon Commission for Child Care. (2002). Report of the Oregon Task Force on FinancingQuality Child Care.

47 Johnson, Angela and Sherrena Torrence. (06/16/05). Interview with your committee.48 Oregon Commission for Child Care. 2003-2005 Report to the Governor and Legislature.

79 Grobe, Deana, Clara Pratt and Roberta Weber. (August 2004). 2004 Oregon Child CareMarket Rate Study prepared for Oregon Department of Human Services. Oregon StateUniversity Family Policy Program, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership.

80 Oregon Center for Public Policy. (08/30/05). News Release.81 McGowan, Heidi. (12/18/05). Director, Child Care Quality Indicators Project, Statement

to your committee.82 Emlen, A.C. (1998). From a parent's point of view: Flexibility, income, and quality of child

care. Paper presented at the SEED 2000 meeting "Child Care in the New PolicyContext," NIH Campus, Bethesda, MD.

83 Naito, Lisa. (04/21/05). Multnomah County Commissioner. Interview with your commit-tee.


49 Tepperman, Jean and Jessine Foss. (May-June 2004). Children's Advocate. Unions inChild Care? Action Alliance for Children.

50 Solomon, Abbey and Faye Zepeda. Interviewed by your committee on 05/05/05 and05/10/05 respectively.

51 NPC Research. (June 2004). Healthy Start 2003-2004 Status Report.52 Ayre, Art. Oregon Business. (May 2005). Oregon companies wrestle with turnover.53 Halpert, Julie. The New York Times. (04/28/02). “The nanny is late. You have a speech.

What now?”54 Bond, James T., Ellen Galinsky and Jeffrey E. Hill. (2004). When Work Works — Summary

of Families and Work Institute Research Findings.55 Oregon Commission for Child Care. 2003-2005 Report to the Governor and Legislature.56 Oregon Commission for Child Care. (2005). Child Care and Education: Investment in a

Strong Economy. Report to the Governor and Legislature.57 Oregon Child Care Information Partnership. (January 2003); and HR Magazine. (January

2004). Do your family friendly programs make cents?58 Oregon Commission for Child Care. 2003-2005 Report to the Governor and Legislature.59 Ayre, Art. (05/23/05). State Employment Economist, Oregon Employment Department.

Statement to your committee.60 Hunsberger, Brent. The Oregonian. (09/20/05). Few companies use child-care credit.61 Hurkes, Cynthia. (11/10/05). Business Liaison, Oregon Child Care Resource and

Referral Network. Statement to your committee.62 Oregon Employment Department. (January 2003). 2002 Oregon Employer Survey Results.

Portrait of the Workforce: An Oregon Employer Perspective.63 Anderson, Jennifer. Portland Tribune. (02/01/05). Child-care center falls to budget ax.64 Oregon Employers of Choice. www.oregonemployersofchoice.org65 RMC Research Corporation. (July 2003). Evaluation of Oregon's Early Childhood System of

Services and Supports: Baseline Data Report.66 Oregon Revised Statutes Chapters 657A.250 through 657A.460.67 Olsen, Tom. (05/19/05) Administrator, Oregon Child Care Division. Statement to your

committee.68 Ibid.69 Ibid.70 Compilation of types of care described by expert witnesses, consumers of care and

ORS 657A.250.71 Weber, Bobbie. (06/23/04). Coordinator, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership Family

Policy Program. Statement to your committee.72 Kaufman, Leslie. The New York Times. (05/10/04). Day Care Choices Few for Women off

Welfare.73 Olsen, Tom. (02/27/04). Administrator, Oregon Child Care Division. Statement to your

committee.74 Oregon Commission for Child Care. (2005). Child Care and Education: Report to the

Governor and the Legislature.75 Weber, Bobbie. (06/16/05). Coordinator, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership Family

Policy Program, Oregon State University. Statement to your committee,76 Cowling, Morgan. (11/02/05). Legislative Director, Oregon Student Association.

Statement to your committee.77 Oregon Student Association. (2005). Legislative Fact Sheet.78 Oregon Progress Board. (January 2004). A Framework for Improving State Government's

Child Well-being Results.


Heidi East McGowan, Project Director, Multnomah County Child Care Quality IndicatorsProject; consultant for Oregon Child Care Commission

Mary Nemmers, Executive Director, Oregon Child Care Resource and Referral NetworkSue Norton, Director, Lane County Resource and ReferralKristen O’Dell, Research Associate, Child Welfare Partnership, Portland State UniversityTom L. Olsen, Administrator, Oregon Child Care DivisionAndy Olshin, Evaluation Director, Children’s Investment FundNorma Paulus, Former Oregon Secretary of State; Former Superintendent of Public

InstructionLisa Pellegrino, Program Director, Children’s Investment FundCarolina Peterson, Owner, The Learning TreeVicki Phillips, Superintendent, Portland Public SchoolsKitty Piercy, Chair, Oregon Commission for Child CareDiane Ponder, State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Planning Initiative Project

Manager, Child and Maternal Health, Department of Human ServicesGary Rebello, Vice President, Human Resources, Mentor Graphics CorporationDiane Ruminsky, Healthy Start Program Manager, Multnomah County Health Department.Steffen Saifer, Director, Child and Family Program, Northwest Regional Educational

LaboratoryAimee Schoenky, Director, The Learning TreeMichael Schrunk, District Attorney, Multnomah CountyNita Shah, Business Consultant, Child Care Resource and Referral of Multnomah and

Clackamas CountiesSusan Skousen, Program Director, Childcare Resource & Referral of Multnomah and

Clackamas CountiesAbby Solomon, Organizer, SEIU Local 503, OPEUTripp Somerville, Interim Executive Director, Children First for OregonMarilyn States, Project Coordinator, Child Care Improvement ProjectAnn Stone, Success by Six/Vision Council Manager, United Way of the Columbia-

WillametteSherreena Torrence, Certified In-home Childcare ProviderJon Ulsh, Executive Director, Children’s Relief NurseryKathy Walsh, Director of Development, Children’s Relief NurseryBobbie Weber, Coordinator, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership Family Policy

Program, Oregon State UniversityDavid W. Willis, M.D., Medical Director, Northwest Early Childhood Institute Carol Wire, Deputy Director, Oregon Commission on Children and FamiliesSue Woodbury, Oregon WIC Program Manager, Department of Human ServicesGary Withers, Executive Director, Children’s InstituteDavid Wynde, Board Co-Chair, Portland Public SchoolsFay Zepeda, Child Care Education Specialist, AFSCME Council 75


Titles are as of time of interview.

Swati Adarkar, Executive Director, Children’s InstituteRenea Arnold, Early Childhood Specialist, Multnomah County LibraryArt Ayre, State Employment Economist, Oregon Employment DepartmentLorraine Barton, Division Director, Children and Family Services, Volunteers of America

(Oregon)Richard J. Bjelland, State Housing Analyst, Oregon Housing and Community ServicesAngela Braxton-Johnson, Certified In-home Childcare ProviderJody Burnham, Head Start Director, Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action AgencyJ. Duncan Campbell, Founder, Friends of the Children, Children’s Resources, and the

Children’s Institute; Chairman, The Campbell GroupSusan Castillo, Superintendent, Oregon Department of EducationMyra M. Classen, Manager Worklife, Life EraJoann Contini, Director, Center for Career Development in Childhood Care and Education,

Portland State UniversityBarb Eakins, Teacher, The Learning TreeJonah Edelman, Executive Director, Stand for ChildrenJill Eiland, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Knowledge Learning CorporationElena Emlen, Early Childhood Coordinator, Multnomah County Commission on Children,

Families and CommunityDell Ford, Education Program Specialist, Head Start Collaboration Project, Oregon

Department of EducationRandy Franke, Lobbyist for Oregon Commission on Children and FamiliesHeidi Franklin, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Portland Public SchoolsDoug Geisler, Organizer, SEIU Local 503, OPEUBeth Glascock, Communications Coordinator and Child Care and Development Program

Specialist, Oregon Commission on Children and FamiliesSheila Hale, Executive Director, Children’s Relief NurseryNancy Hamilton, Co-Director, Children’s Investment FundJim Harper, Executive Director, CASH OregonJean Hart, Executive Director, Social Venture Partners PortlandRon Herndon, Director, Albina Head Start; Board Chair, National Head Start AssociationCynthia Hurkes, Business Liaison, Oregon Child Care Resource and Referral NetworkPatsy Kohout, Program Specialist, Center for Career Development in Childhood Care and

Education, Portland State UniversityTina Kotek, Policy Director, Children First for OregonNancy Latini, Assistant Superintendent, Office of Student Learning, Oregon Department of

EducationConstance Lehman, Principal Investigator, Child Welfare Partnership, Portland State

UniversityJack Levine, President, Advocacy Resources Meg McElroy, Program Specialist, Children’s Investment Fund


• APPENDIX A: WITNESSES ANDOTHERS CONSULTED

City Club Reports

City of Portland Ballot Measure 26-33: Five-year Levy for Children’s Investment Fund.(10/18/02). Vol. 84, No. 20.

Survey of Child Care Benefits Provided by Portland Metro Area Employers. (4/17/87).Vol. 67, No. 46.

Survey of Child Care Benefits Provided by Portland Metro Area Employers. (2/7/86).Vol. 66, No. 36.

Survey of Child Care Benefits Provided by Portland Metro Area Employers. (3/15/85).Vol. 65, No. 42 .

Child Care Needs of Working Parents in the Portland Metropolitan Area. (3/30/83).Vol. 63, No. 46.


Association for Portland Progress. (1992). Child Care Task Force Report.Brazelton, T. Berry and Stanley I. Greenspan, The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every

Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2000.Bronfenbrenner, Urie. Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R, Russel Sage Foundation,

1970.Citizens Crime Commission. (2000). Kids Intervention Investment Delinquency Solutions

(KIIDS).Children First for Oregon. (2004). Status of Oregon's Children: County Data Book.Children First for Oregon. (2003). Status of Oregon's Children: County Data Book.Children's Institute. (2005). Early Childhood Development: Investing in Oregon's Economic

Future.Early Childhood Strategies and city employees. (1999). Draft report to Portland City Council:

Enhancing the Quality of Child Care and Education in Portland: Research Findings andRecommendations.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. (December 2003). The ABCs of ECD — TheEconomics of Early Childhood Development: Lessons for Economic Policy. The Region. Vol.7, No. 4 Supplement.

Hofer, Myran. The Roots of Human Behavior, 1981.Kilman, Gilbert W. and Albert Rosenfeld. Responsible Parenthood: The Child's Psyche

Through The Six-Year Pregnancy. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1980.Leach, Penelope. Children First. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The

Science of Early Childhood Development. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press,2000.

Oregon Child Care Division, Oregon Employment Department. (June 2005). The EconomicImpact of Oregon's Child Care Industry.

Oregon Commission for Child Care. Report to the Governor and the Legislature. (2003 and2005).

Oregon Commission for Child Care. (2002). Report of the Oregon Task Force on FinancingQuality Child Care.

Oregon Head Start Collaboration Project. (1999). Essential Elements of Programs ForChildren: Implementation Plan for Quality.

Portland/Multnomah Progress Board. (1998). Children's Readiness to Learn: Strategies forImprovement.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind — Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience.New York: Guilford Press, 1999.

Weber, Roberta and Wolfe, Jerri. (Summer 2002). Oregon Child Care ResearchPartnership. We Can't Get There Without Them: Addressing the Barriers to ParentParticipation in Building America's Child Care System.

Zigler, Edward, Finn-Stevenson, Matia, and Hall, Nancy W. (2002). The First Three Years andBeyond: Brain Development and Social Policy. Yale University Press: New Haven andLondon.


• APPENDIX B:OTHER RESOURCES


• APPENDIX C:RELATED FRIDAY FORUMS NOTES

Audio and video recordings available for most programs.

Blackwell, Angela. (06/25/93). Ending the Cycle of Poverty for Children.Campbell, Duncan and Orin Bolstad. (09/10/93). Hopeful Strategies for Portland’s Children.Foley, Ramona (06/23/2000). Protecting Our Children: Addressing the Marked Increase in

Oregon’s Child Abuse Cases.Francesconi, Jim. (10/22/99). Uniting Portland, Its Children and Its Families.Friedman, Dana. (04/18/86). Child Care? It’s None of our Business. Fuks, David. (06/24/94). A Look at our Children’s Future: 2010.Goddard, Jewel. (05/10/85). Making the Difference in Children’s Services.Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. (06/14/91). Cost of Neglecting our Children.Kagan, Sharon. (02/23/01). Reinventing Early Childhood Care and Education.Kitzhaber, Governor John. (02/09/01). State of the State Address (Oregon Children’s Plan).Knitzer, Jane. (03/12/99). Oregon’s Children: Protecting Our Families, Our Youth, Our Future.Kuhl, Patricia. (03/08/02).The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains & How Children Learn.Kulongoski, Governor Ted. (03/05/04). State of the State Address.Levine, Jack. (06/11/04). Our Children, Our Future. Liederman, David. (06/06/97). Protecting Children is Everybody’s Business.Pellegrino, Lisa, Margaret MacLeod and Diane Yatchmenoff. (01/27/06). Raising

Opportunity: Where Investment in Early Childhood Programs Makes a Difference.Schore, Allan. (04/20/01). Early Brain Development and Our Sense of Self.Toran, Kay. (07/16/99). Our Children, Our Families: The State of Oregon’s Future.

The Early Years: A City Club report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth to Age Five 61

901 SW Washington St., Portland, OR 97205503-228-7231 • 503-228-8840 [email protected] • www.pdxcityclub.org

The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth ... · 2017....

Documents

Transcript of The Early Years: A City Club Report on the Care and Education of Children from Birth ... · 2017....