As universal pre-kindergarten grows in popularity, more states and cities are trying to determine policies that develop the educator workforce and ensure all age-eligible children have access.
To that end, a group of New England mayors met earlier this week in Providence, R.I., to discuss improving access to and the quality of early childhood education. At least four states and the District of Columbia offer universal pre-K to 4-year-olds, according to the Education Commission of the States, and eight more states have universal eligibility, meaning programs are open to all 4-year-olds but not necessarily available to everyone. Some cities, like Boston, have their own programs.
In Providence, 83% of 4-year-olds have access to some sort of pre-K seat, whether it’s full-time, part-time, public, or private, said Mayor Brett Smiley. During the conference, Smiley touted Rhode Island’s mixed delivery model, which allows families to choose from different programs, including Rhode Island’s state-funded pre-K program, federally funded Head Start program for children from low-income households, and local community pre-school programs.
Additionally, Rhode Island is among the five states that meet all 10 of the quality benchmarks for pre-K, set by the National Institute for Early Education Research, a nonpartisan organization focused on early childhood education access and quality.
During the conference, Smiley called for more federal support for early childhood education.
“We can’t do this alone; there is no local community that could fill the gap that the federal government has the potential to create,” he said, referencing Head Start, which has experienced funding delays and policy whiplash under the Trump administration. Even with the government reopened, some Head Start programs remain fully or partially closed, according to the National Head Start Association.
Smiley shared more details about the city’s efforts to expand pre-K access and the importance of workforce development in a conversation with Education Week.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is hosting this conference important now?
One, there’s a host of uncertainty at the federal level, and it’s an important opportunity for us to come together and coalesce around a shared agenda for federal advocacy to make sure that we don’t slip backwards in terms of how much early childhood we’re able to offer.
Two—specifically for mayors—all of us have a different level of authority over our K-12 school systems. The local context for education varies pretty widely, but all mayors have a role in early childhood and child care. In a world in which everyone is focused on the affordability crisis, we know that child care is one of a family’s top expenses.
Prioritizing early childhood education is one of the most meaningful ways that all mayors can help lower the costs of living for families in their communities.
What do you hope to learn from other leaders who work on universal pre-K programs?
In Providence, we have a mixed delivery model where we have pre-K that’s offered in our public schools. We certainly have a lot of Head Start providers and seats, but then we also have home-based providers.
Other communities have different systems; we’re looking to learn from one another for where there are opportunities to do more, to reach more families, and how to afford [providing] more seats.
Everybody is resource-constrained, and particularly if there’s going to be federal cuts, we’re going to need to be innovative. We hope to share those innovations about different ways to deliver early childhood education based upon what’s working in other communities.
Only 23% of 4-year-olds in Providence had access to a state-funded pre-K seat in 2022-23. What do you make of the statistic, and how do you think the state can meet the demand for pre-K?
That gets back to the delivery model—the Rhode Island Pre-K program is full-day and high-quality, which is the gold standard. We support its expansion.
We’re the largest community in the state, but we’re also not putting all of our eggs in that basket or waiting on state action to take place because we can reach families in other ways. The academic research is clear that any pre-K is better than no pre-K, and why we want to continue to expand.
The alternative might be just child care or staying at home a half day or a different delivery method, which could be in-house care from a provider or a center—it’s a step in the right direction and will still yield benefits.
In Providence, we’ve been advocating at the statehouse every year for increased funding for early childhood, but we’re not relying on that to reach universal access.
How can the federal government support early education?
I think the most impactful thing the federal government can do is to increase funding for Head Start. In the proposed federal budget, Head Start is level-funded, but in a world in which the costs for everything, including wages for early childhood educators, are going up, level funding is actually a cut.
The only way you’ll be able, as a provider, to work on level funding is either [by] laying off staff or reducing seats. So, at a minimum, Head Start funding needs to keep up with the cost of inflation.
We would hope that they actually would expand it—dollar for dollar, early childhood education remains an incredibly good investment, and the cost to educate a 4-year-old, and help with early development, pays off for the rest of their educational career. It’s an excellent federal investment, and it’s probably the most important thing that the federal government can do.
The other area which is related is the upward pressure on wages. Of course, we have to and want to pay our early childhood educators more. Through the pandemic, there have been a lot of people who’ve left the field—many providers are struggling to attract early childhood educators who are credentialed. Workforce development programs are another excellent investment from the federal government or our state governments to get more people into the profession and to help with the wage gap.
In many places, including here in Providence, you can make more as a kindergarten teacher than as a pre-K teacher, and they’re both important. We don’t want to have to choose, but it’s leaving classrooms empty because there’s no educator to fill them.
Do you have any proposed changes to help increase the workforce?
There’s a pipeline program that we’re developing now where you can be a teacher’s assistant without a credential, but we want to move them up the career ladder. We’re exploring a program whereby we provide community college courses, either with grant funding or other public funds, to upskill those [teaching assistants].
These are adults who have already indicated an interest in the field and are already in our classroom working with our kids, but because they’re not credentialed, they’re not able to earn the teaching position. [This] will help them earn more money for their family [and] also help us expand access. Upskilling and creating a career ladder for professionals already in the field could solve multiple problems at once.