From Foresight, Vol. 6, No. 2
published 1999
Here we present the results of an interview conducted by Michael T. Childress, Executive Director of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, of Dr. Kim Townley, Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood Development. Mr. Childress’ questions appear in bold print followed by Dr. Townley’s answers. Later this year, the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center will issue a report on options for the improvement of child care and child outcomes.
When was the Office of Early Childhood Development created and what is its principal purpose?
Governor Patton announced that he would be creating this office in April of 1998. He filled the position in November of 1998 and I came on board full-time in January of 1999. It’s a relatively new office and its purpose is to advise Governor Patton and legislators in policy related to early childhood development. Our first big project is working with a task force and six topical work groups to develop a 20-year plan for Governor Patton that addresses all the issues related to early childhood development.
What are the six work groups of the task force?
The six work groups break into chronological order. Research tells us that 90 percent of the infrastructure of a child’s brain is developed by the age of three. So we’re looking at the environments in which children live and what we can do to help parents and communities support those environments.
The first environment children spend a lot of time in is the family environment, and we’re calling that “Supporting Families.” It’s broken down into two work groups. The first work group is “Prenatal,” looking at what conditions must exist so that when children are born they have good birth weights, they’re not addicted to any drugs, and they’ve had good prenatal care so they’re ready to hit the ground running. The second work group that’s part of “Supporting Families” is looking at the in-home environment and the parent-child relationship. How do we support families so they can provide the best environments for children in their own homes? In our society today we see a variety of family units: they can be single-parent homes; they can be dual-career family homes; they can be foster homes. There’s a greater incidence of grandparents raising children these days too, so that might be the environment in which young children live. Different families need different levels of support at different times.
While children spend a good deal of time at home, children of parents who work outside the home spend much time in child care. These work groups are looking at the environments that children spend time in outside of the home—and they spend large amounts of time in those environments. The Early Care and Education workgroups are addressing 0-5 issues and school-age issues. The Children’s Defense Fund says that a child will enter the child-care setting at six weeks, stay within that setting until going to public school, and spend more time in child care than in the public school system, K through 12. So we need to look at those environments and make sure they are nurturing, stimulating, and encouraging the best possible growth for children.
The last two work groups are related to this whole environmental issue but they’re not as directly tied to the child. We have a work group that’s looking at public awareness and how to get the information out to legislators and the public. We want to let them know how they can participate in this initiative and that we’re trying to support them as they raise their children in a healthy, productive manner. The last work group is “Professional Development” and this work group is looking at how to provide a seamless system of pre-service and in-service education for people who are working with young children in out-of-home environments. We have our most valuable resource in very young children and we oftentimes have the most unskilled, untrained people working with those children for large amounts of time. What do we need to do in order to pull current systems together and make them seamless and comprehensive so children are in environments where the best trained teachers work with them?
Those are the six work groups, and that’s pretty much how the task force will attack their 20-year plan: to be looking at the chronological age of the child and what needs to be available at those times; then at the environments in which the child spends time; and then at the support to those environments.
You mentioned a 20-year plan, what will these work groups be doing?
The Governor’s task force started March 19th and it will end April of 2000. It has a very specific charge from the Governor to develop this plan and then to help move it through the legislative process in the next session of the General Assembly. The task force, the work groups, and 10 community forums across the state will answer the same three questions: (1) What is the state of the art in Kentucky right now? Where are we, so to speak? (2) What is, as the governor called it, the “Cadillac” model? Where do we want to be in 20 years? What are the outcomes we want to see? (3) How do we get from where we are to where we want to be in the next 20 years? What are going to be the priorities? That’s what they’ll all be answering.
The Governor requested a 20-year plan because he understands that quality early childhood programs cost; consequently this plan will need to be phased in. It will be phased in across 20 years, with not only federal and state funding but also additional funding from foundations, businesses, industry, civic organizations, and the state community—those kinds of things broadening the base.
In the community forums, we’ll be asking these questions: What’s working well in your community? Where are the gaps? How do we fill those gaps? Where are we now? Where do we want to be? And how do you suggest we do that? All of the information from the ten forums will be fed into the work groups and the task force. In July the six work groups will be making their recommendations to the task force and in August the task force will craft the plan.
The task force is going to “sunset” in April of 2000, but what is going to happen to the Office of Early Childhood Development?
I anticipate one recommendation that we will see from the task force is to establish this office in legislation. I expect the Office of Early Childhood Development will continue to provide policy information to the governor and to the legislature on early childhood issues, and implement some of the recommendations from the task force.
We’re covering a lot of territory–looking at prenatal all the way to school age. Could you tell us what some of the state-of-the-art programs are? Part of your effort, as you indicated, is to identify those exemplary programs. Could you elaborate on one or two noteworthy programs?
We’re not the first state to look at the early childhood initiative and in many ways that’s a benefit because other states have gone before us and have developed programs. One initiative in northern Kentucky is called “Healthy Families.” It comes out of Hawaii and it’s been very successful. It is a prevention program and there is considerable data that shows it does benefit children and their families. There is also a state-funded program out of Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health Services called HANDS; it’s a home-visiting program for first-time mothers who are at risk.
A program that Missouri developed years ago is called “Parents As Teachers.” Several of the Family Resource and Youth Service Centers have implemented the program. It looks at the parent-child relationship and how to support parents and help them provide a stimulating environment for their children.
We are exploring several models in North Carolina that are intriguing. One of them is called “TEACH,” which looks at the whole area of professional development. The turnover nationally in child care is about 40 to 45 percent. That’s not good when we want good, healthy environments, one factor of which is a stable caregiver. So in North Carolina, they have used the TEACH model to reduce turnover, and they’ve done that in a couple of different ways. Number one is actually pay teachers bonuses when they complete educational programs. It also addresses the issue of tuition cost and low salary.
In this state, there are some programs that are actually paying college tuition at the community colleges for child-care providers to go back to school. We’re doing that on a very limited basis and that’s something I think we might see more of.
Smart Start is also an initiative that provides improved educational environments for young children in North Carolina. Georgia has a good statewide four-year-olds program that is different from ours. Specifically, theirs is universal. They serve all four-year-olds, they fund it with their lottery money, and it’s unique in that it isn’t all administered through the public schools. There are many private child-care centers—some of them are for-profit, some of them are nonprofit—providing services, so there’s a real collaboration and a partnership between the state government and programs that are already serving four-year-olds.
Ohio has many interesting initiatives. They have chosen to put large amounts of state dollars into Head Start to serve more children. Colorado also has interesting initiatives in the whole area. There are various models and we’ll be looking at those to see how we can fit them to meet Kentucky’s needs.
In order to develop this “Cadillac” plan—as Governor Patton has referred to it—over a 20-year period in Kentucky, do you think it’s going to require a substantial investment of state money?
When you look at a comprehensive program like this—and you’re looking at supporting families when the children are in their homes as well as when they’re out of the homes while the families are working—good, quality child care is not cheap: it’s expensive. And that burden can’t be borne by the state exclusively or by the federal government, and that’s why we’re interested in encouraging the business sector and local communities to become more involved than they already are. Private foundations can support these efforts—other states have examples of how that has worked. In business there is a continuum of participation: not every business has to build an on-site child-care center in order to be involved. They might do something as simple as flex-time, or allowing their employees to use their sick leave when their children are sick.
Kroger has just donated $25,000 to the Child Care Fund, which helps support working poor families who are above the eligibility guidelines but still need help with their child care. The state currently provides a child care subsidy to families up to 160 percent poverty, and this Child Care Fund will allow the working poor to have some assistance for their child care. On average, it costs a family more to pay for a child to go to child care for a year than it does for a child to go to any state-supported institute of higher education.
The national statistics say that 80 to 90 percent of child care in this country is poor to mediocre and if we’re paying a lot of money for poor-to-mediocre care, it only stands to reason that good care is going to cost more. We need to pull different partners in so the cost is shared.
What gives rise to all this? One gets the sense that there is a movement across this country focusing on kids age zero to four. What do you think the catalyst or the impetus for that has been?
Since Piaget and Montessori started doing their observational research, I think that we have known that children grow by leaps and bounds in those first few years. We have observational data to show us what babies can do at six months and what they can do at nine months. What technology has given us in the last five to eight years is the ability to see inside the brain. PET scans can actually show where brain development is taking place. I heard a neurobiologist say—and I think this is really helpful—that when you’re born you have a 100 billion neurons in your brain: that’s as many trees as there are on this whole planet. Those neurons have the ability to make 18,000 synapses—or connections—to other neurons during brain development: that’s as many leaves as there are on all the trees on the whole planet. The brain grows rapidly the first three years, but it will only grow if the environment is responsive, stimulating, and encouraging: if it isn’t, those synapses just don’t develop. We have PET scans of children who spent most of their young years in Romania, who have been adopted and have come to this country, and you can just see “black holes” in their brains where the connections were not made. That can be remediated, but it’s just like an adult who has a stroke: it can take twice as long, it’s more costly, and it’s never as good as if you’d done it right in the first place.
I think the technology has really spoken to many of the governors in these states, and it suggests prevention as opposed to remediation. Instead of spending more and more money to build prisons, which is a kind of remediation—it’s after-the-fact—why don’t we invest that money early on so we don’t have to have as many prisons or as much remedial education? You can even make the point that if we make those first three or four years very valuable, then there might not be the need for expanded four-year-olds programs. The environments of young children are critical. If you look at it in dollars and cents, studies show that for every dollar you invest, you save $7 to $10 later on. So if you have to look at it from a strictly economic point of view, it makes sense to invest the dollars early instead of spending them later.
* Dr. Townley has been involved in the field of early childhood development and education for almost three decades, beginning as a kindergarten teacher. Throughout her career, Dr. Townley’s research has encompassed the broad domain of environmental influences on the development of young children. She has investigated teacher burnout, has been part of a research team conducting a longitudinal study of the Kentucky Preschool Programs, and has conducted research related to children’s perception of peace and how early childhood programs might implement peace education. Return to text.