The pandemic has increased awareness of the central role that early care plays in our society. At the same time, it has underscored the challenges the sector faces—including high costs, low profit margins and a workforce that is chronically underpaid and under-appreciated. There is growing consensus that our system of early care is in crisis—even as a flood of cutting-edge research confirms how critical it is for developing brains.
Many funders are well aware of the early childhood education crisis. Indeed many, including the Irving Harris Foundation and Buffett Early Childhood Fund, have been working on fixing it for a long time.
Both funders teamed up with nonprofit Start Early to create Educare schools. Today, at almost 20 years old, the Educare Learning Network includes 25 schools around the country, as a result of a growing number of partnerships between governments and private philanthropies. The network, which works to close the opportunity gap for kids in under-resourced communities, takes a comprehensive approach that many experts believe provides the best way to prepare children for kindergarten—and beyond. This sweeping approach includes birth-to-five care and education, and supports for both children and families.
Jessie Rasmussen, president of Buffett Early Childhood Fund, hopes the Educare model will influence bigger, broader change in the troubled early care system. “BECF helped build this network and continues to support its work because of the positive impact on the lives of the children and families served by the Educare schools, but also for the potential it has to make significant contributions to building a highly effective early childhood system for all children and families in our country,” she said.
Start Early
The first Educare school was created in 2000 in Chicago, the result of a partnership between Start Early (formerly called the Ounce) and the Irving Harris Foundation. The goal was to help families rebuild the local community after the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, a cluster of 28 public housing towers in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
Susie Buffett, the daughter of investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett and founder of Buffet Early Childhood Fund, learned about Educare through the Irving Harris Foundation. In 2003, with the help of Start Early, Buffett replicated the model in Omaha, Nebraska. When other philanthropists, including Susie’s brother Peter Buffett in Milwaukee, and George Kaiser in Tulsa, learned about Educare’s approach, they wanted to create schools in their own communities. Since then, the Educare Learning Network has steadily grown.
Educare schools are public-private partnerships: They rely on federal Early Head Start and Head Start funding, as well as state dollars. But this funding isn’t enough to cover costs, so support from philanthropies like BECF, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and funders at other Educare locations is critical to maintaining the network’s approach to early care.
This comprehensive strategy is central to the Educare model, and reflects the prenatal-to-five approach developed by Start Early, a pioneer in child development and early care since its founding almost 40 years ago. Start Early, itself a public-private partnership that receives support from Buffett, Irving Harris, the Gates Foundation, the Ballmer Group and several other funders, works with the Educare Learning Network to facilitate strategy, share innovations and best practices, and advance policy.
“The research is completely conclusive about how much the early brain is growing and developing, which means that every interaction a child has is shaping that foundational brain architecture,” said Kristin Bernhard, Start Early’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “Every part of the system that surrounds that young child and their family needs to be strong in supporting that brain growth. When you say that, most people think about childcare and preschool, but family coaching, family supports, home visits and healthcare access are also important. The whole wrap-around system of comprehensive support is so critically important throughout a child’s life trajectory, but particularly in that prenatal-to-five space.”
The Educare model
Educare also begins early: Schools accept infants starting at six weeks old, and children can stay in the program until they are ready for kindergarten. Along with early education, Educare provides support for families and connects them to resources to help with housing, food insecurity, health and mental health needs and other issues.
“Intensive family engagement” is a key element of the Educare model. “It’s important to engage parents and primary caregivers from the start, because children are going to leave our program and go on to kindergarten through 12th grade,” said Cynthia Jackson, executive director of the Educare Learning Network. “Parents and families are the linchpin, the cornerstone that helps children be successful; parents and families are their children’s best advocates. So our model involves parents and elevates parent voices.”
“Embedded professional development” and “high-quality teaching practices,” are two other key pillars of the Educare model. “There is a continuous process of professional development and learning at Educare,” Jackson said. “It isn’t the one-off kind of training where you go somewhere and come back and the learning sits on the shelf and you never implement it. This is a very supportive environment where professional development is a continuous process of improvement. We’re always trying to get better at what we do.”
Part of the way Educare improves its approach is through “data utilization,” the Educare model’s fourth core feature. Educare teams up with researchers to conduct evaluations of its programs and outcomes. It uses those findings to improve its programs and provide families with information about ways to boost their children’s learning.
Jessie Rasmussen of BECF calls Educare “an initiative by private and public partners to do two big things: change the life trajectories for the children who come into our care, and change the way America approaches and funds high-quality early care and education. By doing what science tells us we need to do in terms of providing quality, we are narrowing and even closing the achievement gap. By working with peers across the country, we’re showing what it takes to deliver such high quality, including a well-prepared, well-compensated workforce, a reliance on data-driven practice, and care that partners with families and nurtures the healthy growth and development of every child.”
High cost of doing nothing
Many early childhood experts today support this comprehensive approach—including the influential Nobel laureate, James Heckman, who calculates that high-quality birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% per year return on investment.
These experts believe it’s past time for the U.S. to create and support a quality early education system—and the effectiveness of programs like Educare, along with research by Heckman and others, support that consensus. The U.S. stands out among its peers in its stinginess on early care, as the New York Times pointed out recently: “The U.S. spends 0.2 percent of its GDP on child care for children two and under — which amounts to about $200 a year for most families, in the form of a once-a-year tax credit for parents who pay for care. The other wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development spend an average of 0.7 percent of GDP on toddlers, mainly through heavily subsidized child care.” And a UNICEF report that examined childcare in affluent countries found that the U.S. ranked near the bottom in terms of family leave, as well as childcare access, quality and affordability.
Judging from the key role of enhanced child care, pre-K, family leave and family supports in President Biden’s agenda, the current administration also believes it’s time to fix the system. Private funders can support these efforts by getting the word out about the early care provisions and their potential impact. And if the plans are enacted, philanthropy can play a critical role by assisting with implementation.
Opponents who argue that the price tag is too high should listen to Heckman, who points out that the cost of doing nothing is even higher:
“Child poverty is growing in the United States; investing in comprehensive birth-to-five early childhood education is a powerful and cost-effective way to mitigate its negative consequences on child development and adult opportunity. The gains are significant because quality programs pay for themselves many times over. The cost of inaction is a tragic loss of human and economic potential that we cannot afford.”