The Hill

Op-ed by Mario Cardona, CCAoA Chief of Policy and Practice

President Biden’s child care and universal preschool proposals have received a lot of attention, much of it focused on whether the proposals will survive negotiations in the Senate around what to maintain in the Build Back Better Act, the President’s “human infrastructure” bill. 

What has attracted less attention is how the policy design represents a distillation of some of the best thinking on how to create universal preschool and a child care entitlement that guarantees nearly every family access to affordable, accessible, high-quality early learning opportunities.

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Associated Press

“Early learning is no longer seen as just a women’s issue or a children’s issue. It’s really seen as an economic issue. It’s about workforce participation,” said Mario Cardona, policy chief for Child Care Aware of America. “It’s about employers who don’t have to worry about whether they’ll be able to rely upon employees.”

Child Care Aware of America estimates 9% of licensed child care programs have permanently closed since the pandemic began, based on its tally of nearly 16,000 shuttered centers and in-home day cares in 37 states between December 2019 and March 2021.

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USA Today

State administrators are trying to balance the need to act quickly while also making wise investments in using the COVID relief dollars, said Mario Cardona, chief of policy and practice of advocacy group Child Care Aware of America.

"A lot of these systems are not built to serve as many as we're hoping to serve," he said, noting the child care sector saw declines in the workforce before the pandemic. "There are systemic issues that have long linked childcare in the form of poor compensation, inadequate or non-existent benefits. And at times, unsteady availability of work." 

Some classrooms have empty seats that providers are unable to fill because they don't have sufficient staff to meet the demand, Cardona said. 

"I don't think that we can ask providers to do any more than what they're currently doing," he said. "It's really an area that's going to require increased levels of investment from the government. And so right now states are in a position to help leverage some of the funding that they received through the different relief packages."

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USA Today

Mario Cardona, chief of policy and practice at Child Care Aware of America, also points to economic reverberations later in life. Mothers who are forced to work part-time or leave their jobs entirely to care for their children aren't able to put more money into their 401(k) plan or other mechanisms that exist to support retirement.  

An average woman with two children could see an increase in lifetime earning of $97,000 with access to affordable child care, according a report from Columbia University and the National Women's Law Center released earlier this year. About 1.3 million women in the U.S. could see a collective $130 billion boost in incomes over their lifetimes.  

"By not providing affordable, accessible high-quality child care for folks to take advantage of, it hurts decades later when they're looking at retirement because they weren't able to save as much as they could have potentially by being engaged in the labor force," he said. 

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The 19th

“The reality is if we can get this done, we are still going to have to work with states,” said Anne Hedgepeth, the senior director of federal and state government affairs at Child Care Aware of America, a child care advocacy group. “That’s where we can really also create the guardrails needed to make sure that no particular kind of early learning setting or age group faces unintended consequences as a result of what could be a tremendous influx of long-needed resources.” 

The pandemic has also already created something of a roadmap. Earlier this year, states got an unprecedented $39 billion to spend on improving their child care systems — the largest boost in child care funding to date.  

In the months since, states have started to work through where they would put those funds, building up better lists of where child care providers are located, what the needs are and how to reach them. 

“Even though there are gaps for sure … it does tell us there is some real ability for state-led agencies to adapt and to make this happen,” Hedgepeth said. 

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CBS Evening News

CCAoA CEO Lynette Fraga spoke with CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes about the current state of child care and how the federal funding proposal will help parents.

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New York Times

But the experience of the military provides crucial lessons. Before its transformation, the military child care system was plagued by many of the same problems that plague America’s national child care system today: no clear teaching standards, inconsistent quality and low teacher pay, said Lynette Fraga, chief executive of Child Care Aware of America, a national child care advocacy organization.

“Taking the lessons they’ve learned,” Fraga said, “could be incredibly important to reimagining the civilian system.”

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Think Tank with Steve Adubato (New Jersey PBS)

Steve Adubato speaks with Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CEO, Child Care Aware of America, about the ways the COVID crisis impacted the child care industry, the challenges families face in accessing affordable, quality child care, and the importance of the Biden administration’s plans for child care and early care education.

Watch the interview.

The 19th

As Senate Democrats  hammer out the final details of a $3.5 trillion package this week that is expected to include many of President Joe Biden’s proposals aimed at helping women and families, advocates for additional investments in child care are determined that lawmakers seize what they see as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for systemic change.

A coalition of nonprofit, advocacy and business groups are planning a week of action in Washington to keep lawmakers’ focus on overhauling an already-broken child care system that broke down further during a global pandemic that caused the worst economic slump for women in American history, they said.

Child Care Aware of America’s Anne Hedgepeth said the message they will be delivering to Congress this week as lawmakers set funding levels for caregiving proposals, along with climate and immigration priorities, is that “a big, bold investment is needed.”

“If negotiations go on, if cuts happen decreasing the amount of funds for child care and early learning, it would be fewer families, fewer programs and fewer communities that we can reach,” she said.

Child Care Aware of America is looking at this week as a “kickoff” when they can “demystify and answer any questions or concerns [lawmakers] may have.” There will be one-on-one conversations and trainings, followed by on-the-ground conversations, roundtables and other events throughout the August congressional recess, Hedgepeth said.

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Reuters

Those are some of the ways about 39 million U.S. households could benefit once they start receiving monthly federal checks Thursday as part of a massive expansion of the child tax credit. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University estimates that the expansion can reduce the U.S. child poverty rate by up to 45%.

The approach is notable both for its wide reach - the checks issued this week will reach nearly 90% of U.S. children, according to Internal Revenue Service estimates - and for distributing half the money monthly instead of in one lump at tax time.

“It’s really giving families the help that they need in the moment to help meet some of their basic needs,” said Mario Cardona, chief of policy and practice for Child Care Aware of America, an advocacy group.

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