daycare: corporate welfare

Supporters of the state preferentially funding non-parental child care (all day kindergarten, 'pre-kindergarten,' daycare) are supporting an agenda coming from the World Bank and the OECD to coerce parents into spending more time than they would freely choose (if all choices were equally funded) as 'labour supply', or "employees and consumers" as RBC's daycare lobbyist Charles Coffey has put it.

The Humam Early Learning Partnership mentioned in the article is a top promoter of this agenda, funded by the BC gov, and headed by long time World Bank worker, Clyde Hertzman. A number of other HELPers designing child policy are also with the WB.

Funding non-parental care is a subsidy to employers - ie corporate welfare. This is because according to the OECD and the World Bank and The Economist magazine it:

1 - is intended to artificially swell the labour supply - a large supply means a lower price ie lower wages

2 - lower the price of labour by indirectly subsidizing low wage jobs - a policy of MCJobs for Mums

3 - increase the commodification of uncommodified production (like looking after your own or friends' children, or cooking your own food), ramp up the rat race, and thereby create more corporate profit making opportunities (eg frozen dinners, fast food, daycare) at the expense of society and children's well-being.

Fund families directly and let us choose. Or: do we still think women are too stupid to figure out what's in our own and our children's interests?
More info : www.kidsfirstcanada.org

early care and learning

BC parents and the BC economy are desperate for a system that offers enough spaces, meets the needs of working parents, pays staff a decent wage and is affordable, high quality and accessible. Publicly funded and publicly delivered - the same model as K-12 system - we know the education system is not perfect but its a darn site better than the child care status quo.

When will we build BC's Childcare Program if not now?

The "Emerging Plan for an Integrated System of Early Care and Learning in BC", is clearly a thoughtful and comprehensive starting point. As with most broad plans, there is always room for constructive input and well thought out adjustments or additions to make it even better.
The building blocks are here. Let's use them.

Child and family poverty in B.C. is a continuing disgrace year after year. After housing, childcare is the single largest monthly expense for many working families. Our society cannot afford to continue our failure in addressing these vital community needs and the waste of our human resources.

@ Kids First Pare...

I don't think so.

The Quebec experience actually debunks your claims - providing affordable and accessible and carefully monitored universal daycare has been a stunning success for Quebec parents, Quebec employers, Quebec early childhood workers and Quebec children.

The idea of paying people to permit them the 'choice' of chasing scare resources - rather than ensuring the resources are available at an affordable price - is Gordon Campbell and Pee Wee Rambo's neo-con mantra and nothing more.

Québec's Day-Care Mess

They're trying to clean it up but it has been a gold mine for some. "Carefully monitored", ho ho.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/quebec-moves-to-tighten-rules-for-private-daycare/article1786458/

Kindly check some actual professional studies

There are several available R/man.

Devastating Professional Sudies

Here's one by two academics:

quote"
"The study was done by economists Michael Baker of the University of Toronto, Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia.

"For almost every measure, we find an increased use of child care was associated with a decrease in their well-being relative to other children," the authors write."

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/montreal/story.html?id=d16cc6be-0622-4719-8b4d-bba03a6a8a76

Another type of professional study is being demanded by the PQ:

"On Thursday, the opposition Parti Québécois demanded an investigation following revelations made by a daycare owner and Liberal party donor."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/03/18/mtl-daycare-permits-resold.html#ixzz14nWBavBK

What's important? The ideology that says that government must take care of our children, or the children themselves?

By just about any measure studied, the children are suffering.

Added to that is the massive debt that these poor children are being given. As they graduate from state funded for-profit daycare (on government and taxpayer borrowed money) they should be given a little certificate showing them that now they are among the highest debtors in the world. Right up there, and ahead of Italy and Greece! What a heritage!

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/782673--quebec-a-poor-little-rich-province

In FACT, the Québec debt, by far the biggest in Canada, is growing by $22 million A DAY!

http://www.iedm.org/main/content_en.php?content_id=27

funding daycare is a Neo Con agenda

The left getting into bed with and getting the $ backing of the powerful corporate right neo-cons/neo-libs is the reason we have billions going to institutional child care so parents can swim in the never-full-enough labour pool.

The 2 Bush presidents put billions into daycare that they and Clinton removed from the poor thru' 'welfare reform', as was also done in Canada.

The World Bank is a neo-con institution.It is the leading backer internationally of states preferentially funding institutional child care far above financing parental care.

Leading promoters in Canada of this agenda working for the World Bank include:

-Clyde Hertzman head of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP)in BC

- his close colleagues Fraser Mustard who quotes the Bank and even its ultra neo-lib-con former head Paul Wolfowitz in his Early Years Study II, co-authored by frozen food billionaire Margaret McCain, and called "godfather" by Ontario's 'Early Learning Advisor Charles Pascal)

- Charles Coffey of the RBC

-also working with Hertzman/HELP: Jane Bertrand, Allan Pence, Magdalena Janus, etc.

The neo-libs include Paul Kershaw of HELP and a lead man in daycare promo in BC author of
"Carefair: Gendering Citizenship 'Neo-Liberal' Style"

this is discussed in this paper by a leading Canadian daycare apologist
"Transnationalising (Child) Care Policy: the OECD and the World Bank"
http://www.cccg.umontreal.ca/RC19/PDF/Mahon-R_Rc192009.pdf

for more info and sources
http://www.kidsfirstcanada.org/TYEE-2feb2010.pdf

Quebec day care

http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/mar04/lefebvre.pdf

"Mediocre quality of care provided:

Over the years 2000-02, the Longitudinal Study of Child Development in Quebec conducted on-site evaluations of the quality of the different settings where children aged 30 to 48 months were cared for, using well-known instruments.

Data from the 1,188 evaluation visits show that the majority of settings (59 percent of not-for-profit and 53 percent of for-profit centres) scored rather low on a scale from inadequate (1) to excellent (7). Although not-for-profit centres are of better quality than for-profit centres,about only one-third of the not-for-profit centres (34 percent) are of good quality (5 or more on the scale), whereas only 7 percent of the for-profit centres were of good quality. About one-third of the forprofit centres (34 percent) are of poor quality (1 on the scale), whereas only 7 percent of the not-for-profit centres have this rating.

Also disturbing from this survey
is the evidence that socio-economically
disadvantaged children are more likely to be cared for in poor quality services than are children from more affluent families. Children from low-income or less-educated families may be triply disadvantaged by being less likely to receive stimulating care at home, less likely to be enrolled in educationally oriented care outside the home and more likely to be receiving low-quality service when they
are in child care.

Milligan's study is laughable

It finds diverging trends in child and family outcomes between Quebec and the rest of Canada, but it does not provide any convincing evidence that the child care reforms are the cause of this divergence, nor that these effects are continuing, rather than transitory.

Further

The evidence that affluent parents have disproportionately taken reduced-fee child care spaces is faulty. When the figures are corrected, there is no basis for this claim based on data from the NLSCY.

Big Box Child Care not the way to go

Good to see the Emerging Plan to integrate Early Care and Learning featured in this article. Readers can download the Plan at http://cccabc.bc.ca/cccabcdocs/integrated/files/emerging_plan_2010.pdf

Just to clarify an important point - the Plan does not suggest that corporate child care is the way to go. In fact, the Plan is part of a response to the threat posed by the growth of big box child care in BC.

Instead, while the Plan welcomes existing providers who are prepared to be accountable for public funds into the new system, it recommends that all expansion be through services developed and delivered by Boards of Education.

An approach that I hope CUPE and others would support.

GWest

You suggested that one look at studies and then the first one that comes up you don't like, even though it was done by three academics from UBC, UT and MIT. Are we surprised? They didn't find out the right things, did they?

benefits are disproportionate

excerpts from a fairly comprehensive review ...

EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION: LESSONS AND PUZZLES by William T. Gormley Jr.(2007)

”A recent Canadian study reached fairly negative conclusions about the relative merits of child care, as opposed to maternal or paternal care. Because the province of Quebec established a policy of universally available child care (at $5 per day), while other Canadian provinces did not, the authors were able to compare outcomes in Quebec with outcomes elsewhere. They found that a variety of socio-emotional outcomes
(hyperactivity, anxiety, aggressiveness) and some health outcomes (child’s general
health; ear, nose, and throat infections) were worse in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada (Baker, Gruber, & Milligan, 2005). No cognitive differences were discovered, but only one measure was used (the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test).

Although intriguing, the Canadian study suffered from several flaws. A key weakness is that the data excluded children from single-parent families, who have been shown to benefit disproportionately from child care outside the home.”

”The child care literature indicates, for example, that disadvantaged children benefit more from high-quality child care than other children do. And yet disadvantaged children have less access to day care centers than more affluent children (Capizzano & Adams, 2004; Meyers, Rosenbaum, Ruhm, & Waldfogel, 2004, p. 233). Lower-class children enrolled in day care centers also experience lower quality care than upper-class children, though
Not necessarily than middle-class children (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 321).”

Milligan Que study/Que system harm to cognitive scores

The Milligan/etc study was published in the rigourously peer-reviewed Journal of Political Economy and won the Purvis Prize for economics. Most "child care" literature is not peer-reviewed.

Que's program did result in lower cognitive scores , says peer reviewed study:

"the policy had substantial negative effects on preschool children's Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores. The negative effects are found to be stronger for children with mothers who have lower levels of education.
see:
"Childcare Policy and Cognitive Outcomes of Children: Results from a Large Scale Quasi-Experiment on Universal Childcare in Canada"

http://ideas.repec.org/p/lvl/lacicr/0823.html

Que financed its daycare programs (which is far from universal)by de-funding families - taking the CTB, birth bonuses , etc so
"72 percent of Quebec families are worse off under the present system than they
were before the 1997 reform of family assistance programmes"

http://www.irpp.org/choices/archive/vol6no1.pdf

Quebec's ratios (1 staff for 5 babies 0-18 months)virtually make "high quality" impossible.

No one claims that mediocre quality care benefits children. Even programs rated "high quality" on some scales have been called "psychological thalidomide" by Edward Zigler - the father of Head Start in the US.
see
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/20/news/review-television-hidden-cameras-at-day-care-centers.html

I disagree

Why would anyone look to an economist for a study of child care?

In fact, there is an excellent theoretical case for government investments in preschool and early childhood education and care services to correct the problems we've created by developing an 'economy' which requires the vast majority of families to have two parents working outside the home.

In fact, the only upward mobility - marginal though it is - we have in this society comes as a result of that fact.

High-quality child care is beneficial for all children, and especially for children from low-income families. Benefits include the cognitive, academic, social and behavioural and the positive evidence is strongest for centre-based care and for children between about two and five years of age.

Quebec’s reduced-fee child care reforms have had strong effects on reducing the barriers to employment for mothers of children 0-4 years. Their child care reforms are estimated to have increased employment from about 61% of this group to about 69% over the course of a few years – from below the Canadian average to above the Canadian average, and, for the taxpayers among us, the implications are strong for government revenues – close to half the annual cost of the program is covered by the extra government revenues generated.

You aways disagree

It would be expected that more mothers were able to enter the workforce but what about the detrimental effect clearly demonstrated on the children? Collateral damage?

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11832

Added to that is the humongous debt that these possibly damaged children will inherit.

http://www.iedm.org/main/content_en.php?content_id=27

Is that irrelevant too?

We know that you want taxes raised and government services expanded, you constantly repeat that belief. Why don't you present us with a couple of peer-reviewed studies, explaining the benefits of what you believe is being thwarted by stupid neo-con government policies, rather than a customary
and repetitive disagreement.

You want studies

Start by looking at what goes on in Finland - and stop wasting your time with neocon economic studies more interested in proving that government 'can't' do anything properly.

Furthermore

Unlike this backwards country and in this even more backwards province; (where the government bends over backwards to provide funds for independent schools while it starves public ones); where early childhood education is little more than an opportunity for the premier to 'tear up' when he’s emoting about how much he ‘cares’ about BC families and how he’s providing them with ‘choice’.

In Finland, Local authorities are legally obligated to provide a day-care place in the form and at the time.

It’s the LAW.

And, when you're doing that research, maybe you can find out how well teachers are paid in Finland compared to what happens here; how highly regarded they are in that country - compared to what the CEO thinks of them.

Enjoy.

Or, if you prefer, stick to the Fraser Institute – they have lots of ‘studies’ you’ll appreciate.

errata

That's: In Finland, Local authorities are legally obligated to provide a day-care place in the form and at the time requested by parents...

It’s the LAW.

And you can check it out yourself.

collateral damage?

Whether you agree or disagree with mothers of children under 6 entering the workforce the reality is that almost 70% of them are already there. Young children are being “warehoused” every day in unlicensed daycares or with family members (even mothers) who have no interested in providing a stimulating (or possibly even safe) environment for children. Right now family daycare licensees are monitored mainly for health and safety issues rather than quality of programming or licensee training – which is minimal. Likewise group daycares vary greatly in quality depending (I believe) mainly on the skill and dedication of the staff.
So if we want to prevent young children from becoming “collateral damage” we need to raise the standards of care. We need to provide the funding to pay a decent wage to childcare providers so that we’ll attract many more talented people to the field. Now, if a childcare has a big budget it can afford to hire “the cream of the crop” of ECEs and invest in high quality equipment and supplies. If the budget depends solely on the parents’ ability to pay (as it does now) then it’s pretty obvious the richest families will get the best quality childcare. By making early learning and care part of the education system we can raise and equalize the overall quality of care. In fact we can direct more resources to children at risk.
We can either pay now for high quality care for all children, or we can pay later for the lost human potential that results from ignoring the “warehoused” children who don’t have access to good childcare. Parents are still going to be free to decide whether their children are better off at home or in childcare but at least they won’t have to make the decision based on their ability to pay.

GWest

"Quebec's system has flaws - "

I suppose we should be appreciative for this tiny rectification after having before been sternly told that the Québec system has been a, "stunning success ...".

Yes, we agree. The Québec system has flaws.

We hear about them all the time.

http://www.iedm.org/main/show_editorials_fr.php?editorials_id=521

...and it's not just the significant increase
in throat infections.

Finland

Interesting features of the Finland childcare system. Note that, by law, it is the municipalities that have to provide the care. Note too that compulsory schooling starts at age 7.:

The Finnish ECEC-system consists of municipal and private services.

The day care fees are based on family size and income level.

The staff in day care centres is required to have at least a secondary-level degree in the field of social welfare and health care.

One in three of the staff must have a post-secondary level degree (Bachelor of Education, Master of Education or Bachelor of Social Sciences).

The adult-child ratio in day care centres is one to seven for 3-6-year-olds and one to four for children under the age of three in full-time day care.

G West: you ares citing Milligan Que study

Your info is from the economists Milligan/etc study you disregard - re the increase in mothers' labour force participation and the amt (actually 40%) of program cost covered by increased tax revenue from those mums .

Covering only 40% of the operating costs is pretty not a selling point for the system . It means a huge net $ loss to the public from this program.

Labour Force Participation includes people who are 'unemployed', on paid or unpaid leave from jobs, doing ANY amt of paid work at all, or doing UNpaid work in a family enterprise.

No one asked the Que mothers about their choices : the direct financial support they had (for low income especially) OR try to get a McJob and maybe a place in low quality care for your child.

the investable child

While not a study, Susan Prentice’s … High Stakes: The “Investable” Child and the Economic Reframing of Childcare … found in Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2009, vol. 34, no. 3, gives a clear picture of what state sponsored childcare is all about.

“In the economic reframing of childcare[see note below], we can find benefits. A positive and approving policy discourse increasingly surrounds childcare, and some forms of childcare service are expanding. Yet we also see that economic reframing sidesteps gender injustice and thus may act as a brake on social equity and feminist mobilization. In this mix, the investable child—as frame and remedy—both enables and forecloses political choices. Advocates are struggling to maximize the opportunities afforded by the social investment paradigm yet are also struggling to minimize its risks, including the enhanced space for corporatized services.

While programs and policies for children appear to open up under the business case, the space for challenging gender inequality appears to be closing down. Taken on balance, the economization of childcare is a high-stakes gamble for women.”

NOTE: “Frames are more than neutral vehicles that simply reflect reality. They also play an active role in shaping how we think. The business case for childcare both is subject to ideational expectations and generates ideational expectations. There is a logic to the economization of childcare that is bigger than just the advocacy-inflected “you’ll-get-a-return-on-the-spending” argument.”

In the case, for example

The assumption(s) seem entirely well-founded; given that the countries with the best child care and early education programs also have the best educational results.

We already know that education is, in the final analysis, the best driver of upward mobility and social equality.

You either believe in that assumption or you don't - I believe in it - just as I believe that those who pretend to the idea that we can turn back the clock are, in the final analysis, spitting into the wind.

We should go with what works - and what we're doing HERE and NOW does not work.

Other countries, like Canada and the United States aren't doing so well.

In fact, the use of economic measures isn't always an problem although I have lots of quibbles about people who only measure results in terms of GDP.

In the case of British Columbia - where we lead the nation in terms of child poverty I have no difficulty supporting the idea that, like Quebec has shown, things would get better if we adopted more of their kinds of reforms.

As for the argument that childcare somehow works against women and their role in modern society, as I pointed out to realisticman, talk to some young women from Quebec.

There's an excellent overview of the early education and child care situation in Finland with detailed analysis of their results that I think used to be available on the web.

I'll see if I've kept a copy.

no evidence of improved outcomes/Fin, Swed, Can educ outcome

The top 'expert' economist on the idea that you save more than you spend on daycare , routinely cited by the daycare lobby (OECD, World Bank, CRRU, HELP, etc) is Nobel Laureate James Heckman.

They claim him as a supporter when in fact he opposes universal systems saying:

"None of this evidence supports universal preschool programs."
see
"The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children," p. 35
http://jenni.uchicago.edu/human-inequality/papers/Heckman_final_all_wp_2007-03-22c_jsb.pdf

and he hopes

"that early childhood provision doesn't come to resemble a government bureaucracy,"

He supports targeted vouchers for very under-privileged families to use in a wide variety of competing programs run by community and faith groups.

see
Interview with Heckman p 28
http://www.bernardvanleer.org/Family_stress_Safeguarding_young_childrens_care_environment

Finland also offers families considerable cash (tho' not equal to that spent on a daycare space) for caring for their children themselves and that is the choice that the vast majority make, not daycare centre care. Kids spend only 20 hrs/wk including lunch at primary school.

Finland ranks #1 for academic tests at age 15 on OECD PISA tests.

Canada ranks very near Finland and far above the OECD average and big daycare nations like Sweden and France which are below OECD average.

see
"Measuring Up: Canadian Results of the OECD PISA Study The Performance of Canada's Youth in Science, Reading and Mathematics: 2006 First Results for Canadians Aged 15"
p60-64
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-590-x/81-590-x2007001-eng.pdf

Sweden has what the OECD calls the "model" daycare system. Yet the OECD and the Sw Min of Educ also say there are "problems of quality",and "unintended consequences" like too many children per staff, and inadequate facilities, and too much emphasis on school-type learning.

After a generation of funding daycare only, the Swedish gov reports:
-rising rates of youth suicide and youth violence
-rising domestic violence vs women
-kids in daycare centres 6.78 times more likely to be sick than kids in parental care
-a highly sex-segregated workplace with women concentrated in low pay job