How the Pandemic Devastated State-Run Early Education
Categories: US Education News
The coronavirus pandemic wiped out a decade of progress in increasing preschool enrollment – slashing care for more than a quarter-million children – even as it led to major decreases in state investment and made it nearly impossible for operators to meet best practices.
While child care and preschool operators, teachers and parents have long lamented the pandemic’s impact on the early education system in the U.S. – one already rife with long-standing challenges surrounding access, cost and quality – a new assessment of state-funded care for 3- and 4-year-olds shows just how precarious the system is.
"Without precedent for something like 20 years, enlistment in state-financed preschool declined and the pandemic eradicated a whole 10 years of progress in preschool enlistment," he said. "Difficulties, for example, wellbeing gambles, shut study halls and distant homerooms upset a generally delicate system."
Among different things, the report shows that enlistment in state-financed preschool dropped without precedent for 20 years, eradicating 10 years of development and bringing about a downfall of almost 20%, or 300,000 youngsters, in a solitary year. The best adverse consequence was on kids from low-pay families and racial and ethnic minorities.
“States did a remarkable job to support their programs despite the pandemic, helped critically by the federal pandemic relief funds, which played a key role in preserving funding levels,” Barnett said. “Unfortunately, funding remains far short of what's needed for high-quality programs, full-day programs.”
Strained budgets, staffing shortages and general health risks involved with operating early education programs impeded best practices for children, the report found, and meant the vast majority of providers were operating with inadequate quality and not able to provide developmentally appropriate activities.“Many of us know how the pandemic set us back,” Health and Human Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a call with reporters. “It is critical that we learn from what the pandemic has taught us to move forward.”