Here’s How the Kirwan Commission Wants to Expand Early Childhood Education

A quick, no-spin breakdown of the Commission’s pre-K plan

If you’ve been following MSEA Newsfeed, you know we’re focused like a laser on the Kirwan Commission — a 25-member panel of state leaders, education experts, and public education advocates working on a plan to address Maryland’s $2.9 billion funding shortage with innovative strategies to improve our schools. It’s a once-in-a-generation chance to close resource and opportunity gaps in our state education system.

After starting its work more than two years ago, the Commission has released a set of preliminary policy recommendations. They now plan to build a new school funding formula — based on the cost of those ideas — for the Maryland General Assembly to take action on in 2019.

School Notes: Commission delivers preliminary report on state education funding

But in the meantime, we’re engaging educators and our community partners to make sure the Commission gets the policy recommendations right. So MSEA is writing a series of briefs designed to help you get up to speed and give you a chance to voice your thoughts.

First up, early childhood education…

Expanding Access to Pre-K

The Commission’s early childhood plan is based on a recommendation to expand to publicly-funded pre-kindergarten programs:

“Maryland must expand its current early childhood education program so that all four-year-olds, regardless of income, have an opportunity to enroll in a full–day program.”

Here’s how it would work:

1. Right now, the state requires school districts to offer free, voluntary half-day programs to all four-year-olds from families at or below 185% of poverty (about $45,000 for a family of four). The Commission is recommending that this free access be expanded to 300% of poverty (about $74,000 for a family of four), and that all programs be full-day.
2. For families above 300% of poverty, the state would offer program seats on a sliding fee depending on income. So a family at 301% of poverty would pay a very small fee, while a family in the top 1% of income would have to pay a considerably larger fee.
3. Three-year-olds from low-income families — presumably at or below 300% of poverty, if the state uses the same definition as for four-year-olds — would also be offered access to free, voluntary, full-day programs.
4. Because of capacity and staffing costs associated with scaling up access, the Commission recommends phasing in these policies over time, and using a mixed delivery system of both public and private providers. Right now, the state allows districts to contract with private child care providers who meet quality-control standards. This would be continue to be utilized under the Commission’s plan.

Ensuring High-Quality Programs

The vast majority of academic research shows pre-kindergarten is very effective in boosting student outcomes and closing early achievement gaps if the programs are high-quality. The Commission’s consultants calculated that the return on investment — or how many dollars the state gets back for every dollar it invests — for public pre-K is $6.16.

To ensure that the programs are indeed high-quality, the Commission recommended a series of policy ideas:

1. The state should require that all pre-K teachers — at both public and private providers — meet the state’s teacher certification requirements and be placed on the same salary and leadership system as K-12 teachers. The Commission also wants to ensure that all pre-K teachers have the same access to differentiated professional development as their K-12 colleagues.
2. Right now, the state has a rating system it uses to measure program quality for private providers: the EXCEL system, which is measured on a 1–5 scale. The criteria used includes: condition of school building, class size and educator-to-student ratios, teacher certification, and developmental appropriateness of curricula and learning materials. The Commission is recommending that only private providers that get a 5 on EXCEL — the highest score — receive state funding.
3. In order to measure whether students enter kindergarten ready to learn, and therefore whether the pre-K programs are having their intended effect, the state should work with kindergarten teachers to develop a new assessment tool — or improve the existing Kindergarten Readiness Assessment — that would be given to students before they reach kindergarten (either in the summer before or at the end of the pre-K program).

Birth to Age 3 Matters, Too

While the Commission hesitated to make detailed recommendations outside of the current pre-K through 12 system, it did urge the state to consider family supports between birth and when pre-K programs begin:

“We strongly urge that the State significantly expand its network of Judy Centers and Family Support Centers to reach all the low-income families and their children who need them, increase child care subsidies so that working families have access to affordable, high quality child care, and expand the current infant and toddlers program that provides support to families with special needs children.”

What Do You Think?

Agree with the Commission’s plan? Think they could make some improvements? Comment on the Facebook post you clicked to get to this story.