*p≤.05, **p≤.01
a Highly trained defined as a degree in early childhood education or more than 24 units of early childhood education training
Arnett Sensitivity Subscale .36** .04 .02
ECERS Language
Reasoning subscale .44** .01 .02
ECERS Activities
subscale .32** .12 .13
ECERS Interaction
subscale .31** .07 .08
ECERS Program Structure
subscale .29* .12 .03
Total ECERS Score .30* .12 .08
ITERS Adult Needs subscale .34 .57* .44
C-COS-R, % of time child was unoccupied
or watched TV -.23* .04 .08
C-COS-R, % of time
child attends to provider .05 .14 .23*
C-COS-R, % of time
child smiles or laughs .06 -.17 -.25*
Percentage of staff with BA or
higher
Percentage of staff with a degree in early
child-hood education
Percentage of highly trained
staff a
9
Director turnover also has adverse consequences for the quality of care provided in center-based programs.The early care and education provided to children and families ranged from environments that were highly supportive of children’s health, safety and develop-ment to environdevelop-ments that fell well below thresholds of adequate care. This is a common finding in the child care literature. What this community sample adds to this evidence of extensive variability is a por-trait of the licensed child care market, in which chil-dren are exposed to different experiences depending on where and with whom they spend their days.
Specifically, the quality of care and educational experiences observed in licensed family child care homes extended into a lower range that was rarely seen in child care centers. This was the case with regard to overall environmental quality, most sub-dimensions of environmental quality, and, to a some-what lesser extent, to our observations of caregivers’
sensitivity to children’s needs, interests, and bids for social interaction. Moreover, among licensed family child care homes, arrangements based in middle-income neighborhoods were of higher quality, while those that enrolled children of subsidized (and thus very low-income) families were significantly less likely to offer opportunities for learning that foster school readiness.
This pattern is of concern in light of the high concen-tration of children of low-income families in subsi-dized family child care homes. It fits with prior evi-dence indicating that less advantaged and more advantaged children are equally likely to receive developmentally supportive care in child care cen-ters, but that this is less likely in family child care arrangements (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997; Phillips et al., 1996). Moreover, it highlights the negative consequences of a subsidy system that favors serving larger numbers of families rather than protecting the safety and quality of care received by any given subsidized family.
Also consistent with prior evidence, children of dif-ferent ages were not evenly distributed across types of care. Less well documented, however, is the dis-proportionate responsibility of serving children with special needs and children receiving public subsidies that appears to be borne by child care centers. Of perhaps even greater significance, in an increasingly
diverse society in need of interracial understanding and respect, is the ethnic and racial stratification that characterized children and the workforce in both cen-ters and family child care homes.
The findings also replicated prior evidence about the importance of training in early childhood education and ongoing professional development for providing developmentally supportive care and education in all types of licensed arrangements. In family child care homes, where the quality of care is highly dependent on a single, relatively isolated adult, the training of the individual provider is extremely important. In center-based arrangements, it is the training of the teaching staff considered as a unit – and particularly of the share of teachers with BA-level preparation in early childhood education – that most strongly influ-ences the quality of children’s experiinflu-ences. Director turnover also had adverse consequences for quality of care in centers. Our data do not permit us to offer a clear interpretation of this association. It is con-ceivable that there is some level of turmoil that affects teachers in a center that loses its director even prior to her departure (e.g., a “burnt-out” director may not be as effective a leader), or lower-quality centers may place more stress on directors and thus create higher turnover (Whitebook & Sakai, 2004).
Associations found between participation in the Child Development Corps and the quality of care, while possibly a function of self-selection into the Corps program, further suggest that structured oppor-tunities for professional development, accompanied by financial rewards, can serve to support the provi-sion of high-quality care and education. As seen in Chapter 4, they may also play a role in the retention of a qualified early care and education workforce.
Chapter 2
49
Discussion
Two Years in Early Care and Education: A Community Portrait of Quality and Workforce Stability
50
Endnotes
1 The large majority of the children in our sample were predominantly English speakers, both in child care and at home.
2 We caution the reader that these comparisons are of homes and centers that were recruited into the study using the same inclusion criteria, but somewhat different strategies (see Chapter 1, “Introduction and Study Design”). They do not represent an identically selected sample of each type of care. In fact, while centers in the study were comparable to cen-ters in the county overall, in terms of teacher education, licensed family child care providers were substantially more educated than is found among such providers county-wide. Participation rates, however, were highly similar across the two types of care.
3 Figures on the four subscales are available from the authors.
4 Because the subsidized centers included a small number (six of 25 cen-ters) that depended primarily upon vouchers rather than contracts as their form of payment for subsidized children, we also compared the subset of contracted centers to non-contracted centers (those accepting vouchers plus those not receiving subsidies). The results for Personal Care Routines remained significant (i.e., low-income non-contracted centers were of significantly lower quality than other centers) (F(2,66)=5.43, p<.01). Two additional subscales became significant. Contracted cen-ters received significantly higher scores than low-income non-contracted centers on the subscales capturing Space and Furnishings (e.g., their amount, maintenance, safety, and developmental appropriateness) (F(2,66)=3.38, p<.05, Games Howell post hoc test mean difference=.67, p<.05) and Provisions for Parents and Staff (e.g., provision of informa-tion to parents, staff interacinforma-tion and cooperainforma-tion, staff continuity, and opportunities for professional growth) (F(2,66)=3.50, p<.05, Games Howell post hoc test mean difference=.62, p<.05).
5 Our sample was insufficiently large to thoroughly explore the role that community-based or informal (as opposed to college-based) training plays in teacher or provider interactions with children and the learning and caregiving environments they establish. The majority of licensed family child care providers and center-based teaching staff who had completed college-level training had also participated in informal ing. Further research is needed to understand the role of informal train-ing in caregiver behavior with respect to child care environments and their own professional development.