TOPIC

Access, quality & alignment in early childhood education

Early Childhood Eduction

More than 24 million children ages 5 and younger live in the United States, and about one in eight of them—a little over 3 million—lives in California. Given the rapid brain development during a child’s first five years of life, which lays the foundation for all future learning, California has a compelling interest and responsibility to ensure that programs for young children provide a safe, socially supportive, and effective educational environment.

Considerable research shows that children attending high-quality preschool programs receive significant benefits. California has many good providers; but for a state that once led the nation in early childhood education, early childhood education today is marked by diminished investments in quality, low wages, and highly fractured oversight and implementation.

PACE’s work related to early childhood education is designed to help policymakers understand the challenges in current state policies and develop paths forward toward a high-quality, aligned early childhood system that benefits all California children.

Recent Topic Publications
Child Care Selection Under Welfare Reform: How Mothers Balance Work Requirements and Parenting
How Mothers Balance Work Requirements and Parenting
This paper examines the reasoning and experiences of mothers in selecting childcare while trying to meet welfare-to-work requirements. Three theoretical positions that have been used to look at child care selection—rational choice, structuralist,…
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An old idea in economics, boosting purchasing power has become the novel device to expand working parents’ ability to buy child care. Rather than simply building more child-care facilities, policymakers have vastly expanded the availability of…
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This report is the result of a study conducted for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. With an expanding economy and increasing numbers of CalWORK's participants moving into the workforce, demand for childcare in Los…
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Mothers Balance Work and Child Care Under Welfare Reform—Executive Summary
In the summer of 1998, we began to invite single mothers with preschool-age children—all entering new welfare programs—into a four-year study. Our premiere aim was to learn how the upbringing and development of children may be altered by the…