LIFELONG LEARNING I: EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

The unmet need for early childhood education and child care is greater today than it has ever been.

First, we now know that the individual develops up to 50 percent of mature intelligence before age four. Another 30 percent develops between ages four and eight. Children whose intellectual growth is neglected in those very early years suffer immeasurable damage to their learning ability.

Second, growing numbers of women are working and they are forced to leave their children without the care and attention they need. Other mothers, on public assistance, want jobs but cannot find adequate child care. Six million children under 6 years old have working mothers. Twelve million children live in female-headed households where the median income is $6,195 if the mother works and $3,760 if she does not.

In increasing numbers, poor, working poor, lower middle class, and middle class women need and want to work, and they need good educational care for their young children.

Third, the schools, facing declining enrollments, have enough available space to provide care and education to the youngsters who need it. There are enough qualified teachers and other school professionals, as well as paraprofessionals, available and eager to serve our nation's youngsters.

By any measurement, the nation lacks a comprehensive system of quality child care services to meet these needs. Some local efforts in the child care field have been undertaken over the years with some success. Thousands of children have received beneficial, high quality services from programs developed by labor unions, parent cooperatives, and local community organizations and church groups. Such programs fill an important need in the communities they serve. These programs, like the excellent centers operated by a number of AFL-CIO affiliates, should be encouraged and continued.

But these scattered efforts, however worthwhile, are clearly far from enough. The only real answer is a massive federal commitment to the provision of early childhood development and day care in communities throughout the country for all children who need these services. While we would not dismantle existing nonprofit programs that meet federal requirements, AFT believes the school system is the most appropriate prime sponsor for child care and early childhood development programs.

The schools have a broad base of financial and community support. They are located in every neighborhood. The school system has democratically elected public leadership and qualified professionals who can plan programs, distribute funds, monitor and maintain standards, and coordinate supportive services. School systems can also provide coordination of diversified services such as in-home child care, family and group day care, homes and centers for children who are too young or not ready for large school facilities, as well as special services for the emotionally and physically handicapped.

Only public and non-profit groups should be permitted participation in early childhood and child care programs. Profit-making entrepreneurs and organizations have a sorry record in the provision of human services, especially in the nursing home, health care, and education fields. Because high quality costs money, profit makers seek to lower standards. Profit makers were excluded from providing day care under Head Start. They should continue to be excluded in any new early childhood and day care programs.

To meet America's need for a high quality early childhood education and child care program, the AFT calls upon the Congress to enact legislation that includes the following elements:

• Achievement as rapidly as possible of the goal of free high-quality comprehensive early child care services for all children who need them. Since the program will necessarily require a period of time to get fully underway, gradually increased funds should be provided toward earliest achievement of this goal.

• Coordination by the public schools as prime sponsor of a range of programs, including heath, nutrition, counseling and other necessary support services and child care in a variety of settings including family and group day care homes.

• Insistence that all services must meet federal requirements and standards as well as all local school and facility codes and laws, and that all construction, renovation and repair undertaken under the program must conform to the prevailing wage standards of the Davis-Bacon Act.

• Denying profit-making operators eligibility to receive federal funds.

• Provision for effective parent involvement in these programs, since they are programs parents voluntarily choose.

• Provision for proper certification and licensing of personnel and for training, retraining and inservice training of professional and paraprofessional staff.

• Provision for full protection of the job rights and employment conditions of workers in child care programs.

We believe that high quality early childhood education and day care can help us begin to solve a number of our pressing social problems: it can reduce underachievement; it can provide health and institutional care for those who otherwise might not have it; it can bring parents closer to the schools; it can stimulate school integration by providing quality programs at earlier ages. Such a program of education for the very young will benefit all of our citizens at every age.