School is around the corner and here are a few facts and findings before child care, preschool and kindergarten open for many parents.

Babies apparently get stressed out and remember when mom or dad leaves them, a study out of Canada found.

It isn’t just emotional for parents. A new study shows that when babies as young as six months old are stressed, they have a biological response and can remember it for at least 24 hours.— “Babies feel and remember stress when parents don’t respond.” Parentcentral.ca. 8/25/10.

In this country, the U.S. Census Bureau found more than half of three- and-four-year olds, 53 percent, were in school in 2008.

And nearly three-quarters, 72 percent, of children age 3 to 6 who were in kindergarten attended school all day in 2008, according to the same report, “Back to School: 2010-2011.”

In the not shocking category, children are less likely to be in child care during the summer, the Census said in a separate report “Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2005/Summer 2006,” with 55 percent of preschoolers not in regular child care.

Back in Washington D.C., the U.S. Education Department announced the second wave of Race to the Top winners (Washington State did not make the cut). Check out Early Ed Watch’s take on “How Will ‘Race to the Top’ Winners Address Early Ed?”

(Third story in a series on special needs in early learning.)

When Anna’s son was born with a rare disorder four years ago her world changed and that included her child care. Her options shrank to nearly nothing.

During her four-month maternity leave, Anna looked for a high-quality program around Seattle, but nothing seemed to work. Initially, she hoped to enroll her new baby in a home-based child care near her North Seattle home. While they said they would be happy to add him, they were not equipped for his special needs tied to Ohdo syndrome, a disorder characterized by eating, movement, speech, learning and other disabilities.  

“I would rather have that answer than have him sit in the corner and not get what he needs,” Anna, who requested that her name be withheld, said.

Eventually, Anna found an option, Northwest Center, a long-running resource for children and adults with disabilities. But, the center was too expensive for a family that relies on Anna’s public teacher’s salary and her husband’s income as a Boeing Co. Machinist.

They tried an Au Pair for 18 months, but it didn’t work out. Then Anna heard of a good nanny through friends – an expensive option she was unsure would meet her son’s needs – and hired her. Three years later, the nanny remains a sweet and helpful part of the family, but also a costly addition to their already complicated juggle of half-day preschool at the University of Washington’s Experimental Education Unit, medical appointments and weekly physical therapy.

Parents often complain about the challenges of finding high-quality child care – waitlists, extensive individual research and the shock of fees that can run as high as college tuition. But families with special needs children have a far harder time. They may need accommodations, though not as expensive as some think, have few choices and bigger bills. These barriers may explain why one parent often stops working.

But Anna didn’t have that option. Like many modern American families, she and her husband live in an urban area where two salaries are often needed to cover the steep cost of living.

“I have to work. I don’t have a choice,” said Anna, who also has an 11-year-old child.

Hurdles in special needs child care not only make Anna’s life and others more difficult, but may push these families and their children further outside the mainstream. At a time, when many educators say they are striving for greater inclusion of children with disabilities in kindergarten through high school, these kids often start the first years of their education on the outside.

Complicating their child care juggle, Anna’s family, like many with special needs children, has bills other parents don’t.  Their son has medical treatments, prescriptions and physical therapy that sometimes are not covered by their health insurance.

And while some people may think Anna gets a lot of help with these bills from state and federal programs, Anna points out that isn’t the case.

 “I don’t have any assistance from the state,” Anna added.

As Anna’s son prepares for kindergarten next year, everything is once again changing. Anna will need to find care for her son before and after school. They are on the waitlist for Northwest Center, but they don’t think they will get in.

Anna and her family are not looking for sympathy or charity. It took Anna a year to grasp the idea that raising her son will be a lot different than raising her first child. But now the family accepts the future will always hold unknowns.

“It is just a different lifestyle, and you just accept it and go on. You don’t have a choice. You just do,” Anna said.

 Perhaps they should have a few more choices for child care as they do.

Today, Gov. Chris Gregoire announced cuts of $51 million to the WorkFirst program for the rest of state fiscal year 2011 (which ends June 30, 2011). WorkFirst is our state’s “welfare to work” program, which helps low-income families become self-sufficient through training and support services. WorkFirst includes the Working Connections Child Care program, which offers child care subsidies to low-income families who are working, looking for work or in job training.

Read more about today's announcement on the Department of Early Learning's blog, DEL Connect.

Child care keeps getting more expensive, with fees rising faster than family income and inflation in many states, even as the nation struggled to emerge from one of the worst recessions in decades, a new report found.

The report is packed with examples of the broken economics of child care. For example, average child care center fees for infants were more than what a family paid, on average, for food last year in every region of the country, according to the report “Parents and the High Cost of Child Care.” (Click here for the full report). Families with kids also aren’t imagining it, over the last decade child care costs rose twice as fast as their median income, the report said.

And the average annual cost of center-based child care for an infant was higher than the average annual tuition and expenses at a four-year college in 40 states, the report found. These costs jumped in an industry where workers’ wages can be depressingly near working poverty levels. 

Overall, the cost of child care for an infant ranged from $4,550 a year to $18,750 a year. Sadly, Washington State ranked among the least-affordable states for center-based child care for a four-year-old. Those states are: Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine, Pennsylvania, Montana, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The annual snapshot of child care costs also has ideas on making good quality care more affordable, including:

• Lowering barriers to aid for child care costs.
• Helping expand the capacity of the child care system to meet the needs of more families.
• Working to help publicly funded prekindergarten and Head Start programs provide all-day child care during the entire year.

Check it out.

California is still struggling with a massive budget deficit, but advocates have scored some success in defeating Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed funding cuts that would eliminate child care slots and support for providers, according to reports.

After the governor proposed the cuts last month, advocates launched the Campaign to Save Child Care and then gained legislative support in recent weeks.

In less than a week after the Governor proposed the total elimination of state general fund support for child care subsidies and support services as well as total elimination of CalWORKs, the Assembly budget subcommittees (in a joint hearing) on Education and Health & Human Services voted on May 19th to reject both May Budget Revision proposals. At the May 25th Senate Budget & Fiscal Review Committee hearing, Senators also voted to reject both proposals. – California Child Care Resource and Referral Network.

The budget cycle, though, is not over. Still, the tone among legislators is a hopeful sign for advocates still worried about deep cuts to child care programs.

“The CCCRRN (California Child Care Resource and Referral Network) and the California Department of Education estimate that a total 200,000 children would be affected by the (governor’s) cuts; 100,000 working parents would have to leave their jobs to care for their children; and 130,000 jobs in the child care field would be eliminated.” – “Child Care Funding on the Potential Chopping Block of State Budgets,” CLASP, 6/10.

This Sunday is Father’s Day and here are a few of the nation’s top dad bloggers to help you keep track of news about the modern dad:

• Daddytypes: A Weblog for New Dads.
• Dadcentric: Join the Movement
• RebelDad: Putting Fatherhood Under the Microscope.
• Evolution of Dad (Website with a blog about a new film by the same name.)

In the United States, new moms are increasingly older, better educated and born in other countries, a new study found, and these shifts promise to change child care, preschool and pre-kindergarten.

Perhaps the most influential shift in motherhood for early learning was that the percentage of U.S. births by foreign-born mothers jumped to 24 percent in 2004 from 15 percent in 1990, according to the Pew Research Center report. While this development’s impact is still emerging, it appears to support even more outreach efforts to immigrant communities. (For one great example, check out the outreach doula program for Somali and Latina communities in White Center, one of the two Thrive by Five Washington Demonstration Communities.)

“According to Pew Research Center population projections, 82% of the nation's population growth through 2050 will be accounted for by immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after 2005 and their descendants, assuming current trends continue. Of the 142 million people added to the population from 2005 to 2050, according to the projections, 50 million will be the children or grandchildren of new immigrants.” – The New Demography of American Motherhood, 5/6/10.

In another development that could influence child care, a large percentage of new moms are single. In 1998, 28 percent of births were to single women. By 2008, the number had jumped to 41 percent.

The growing ranks of older moms is well known – the birth rate of women age 40 and older has tripled since 1990 – and not surprisingly new moms are better educated today. A majority (54 percent) of new moms had some college education, compared to 41 percent in 1990, and 71 percent of moms age 35 and older had spent some time at college, according to the report.

Another interesting development was that while the U.S. birthrate stood at or only “slightly below” the replacement rate needed to match the current generation of parents, it was above many developed nations, Pew found.

Finally, the vast majority of parents (87 percent) said they had their first baby for "the joy of having children.”

What does this mean for early learning? It isn’t exactly clear, but if more new moms are born in other countries, single, older and better educated, some elements of child care are bound to change. For starters, the demographic shifts are a call for more research into the changing nature of motherhood. (You can check out the full report here.)

Thanks to MomsRising for highlighting this new report in Who Is Giving Birth in the U.S.?

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed deep cuts in early learning programs – elimination of a welfare-to-work initiative and its child care support and subsidized child care services – in an effort to close a $19.1 billion budget deficit, advocacy groups are reporting.

The May budget proposal would eliminate state support “for the need-based, subsidized child care programs,” saving $1.2 billion and cutting roughly 142,000 subsidized slots for children in the process, according to the Sacramento-based Child Development Policy Institute. The new plan also proposes deep cuts in other child care programs. You can see details here.

Now, the suggested cuts are far from a done deal. In fact, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s ideas were not well received by Democratic legislators, who objected to many of the budget proposals and called the plan “a non-starter,” according to First 5 LA.

“If God forbid this budget became a reality, California would be the only state in the union to not have a safety net for children,” Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said.

California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell had similar worries.

“…I have grave concerns that child care for thousands of preschool age children will be eliminated,” O’Connell said “This cut is yet another severe blow to poor- and middle-class working families who are struggling to provide for their families.”

(Both quotes were provided by Preschool California.)

As the nation’s biggest state, California’s budget-balancing steps tied to child care are worth watching, and there are a lot of details in the Child Development Policy Institute’s report about how deeply this important state could cut.

Pesticides linked to ADHD: Exposure to pesticides may be contributing to the rise in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Pediatrics reports.

“The present study adds to the accumulating evidence linking higher levels of pesticide exposure to adverse developmental outcomes. Our findings support the hypothesis that current levels of organophosphate pesticide exposure might contribute to the childhood burden of ADHD.” – “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Urinary Metabolites of Organophosphate Pesticides,” Pediatrics, 5/17/10.

MSNBC.com has more, “Pesticides in kids linked to ADHD: Researcher advises parents to buy organic, wash produce.”

“Exposure to pesticides used on common kid-friendly foods — including frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries and celery — appears to boost the chances that children will be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, new research shows.” – “Pesticides in kids linked to ADHD.” 5/17/10.

The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity didn’t waste much time. This week it unveiled a new 120-page plan on how to create a healthier generation of children that included a section on early learning.

The report is packed with information, including a finding that among licensed child care sites in California, Head Start programs had the highest scores on meal quality.

But, this is not another report that only outlines the obesity problem in today’s youth. It also offers solutions and benchmarks, including an endorsement of quality rating improvement systems.

States should be encouraged to strengthen licensing standards and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems to support good program practices regarding nutrition, physical activity, and screen time in early education and child care settings. – “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation: White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President.”

The report is full of alarming findings that should spark action among educators and parents, such as that approximately one in five children are obese by the time they turn six.

Other findings include:

• “Between 1980 and 2001, the prevalence of overweight infants under six months almost doubled, from 3.4 (percent) to 5.9 (percent).”
• “Maternal smoking during early pregnancy is associated with a 500% greater risk of obesity at age 5, and a 260% greater risk at ages 9-10.
• “Many women return to work soon after their baby’s birth, yet 75% of employers do not offer accommodations for them to breastfeed or express milk at work.”

(See the report for footnotes.)

Early Ed Getting More Funding?  U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggests the Obama administration may have more money coming for early learning.

“We were hoping in higher education, Bill, to have a significant influx of resources for early childhood education. That didn't happen. But we're going to actually going to reconfigure our proposed FY11 budget to put a lot more money in there.” – Secy. Duncan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, 4/19/10.

Child care subsidies offer working poor parents a crucial boost up the economic ladder, helping them keep jobs and move on to better paying work. But, the number of families using these subsidies actually dropped in recent years.

This week, the General Accountability Office reports the number of children served under the Child Care and Development Fund fell ten percent between 2006 and 2008. While the exact reasons the number of kids helped are not crystal clear, the GAO suggested a few possibilities:  changing state-level requirements; shifting economic needs during the recession and state decisions on allocating resources.

The other important news in this report is how few eligible families use these subsidies. Roughly a third of eligible children received subsidies from 2004 to 2007, the GAO found.

Over at CLASP, there is a great analysis of the report, including the observation that numbers dropped while the poverty rate rose.

“In other words, the number of children receiving help has fallen while the number of children living in low-income families potentially eligible for assistance has grown. The result may be a larger share of unserved children today, as compared to 2000.” – GAO Releases New Report on Child Care Assistance, CLASP, 5/6/10.

I have covered child care subsidies for awhile and this report offered one of the clearest, if somewhat dry, explanations of how these subsidies work.

Chocolate Formula: Daddytypes has an amusing take on Johnson & Johnson’s new chocolate- and-vanilla-flavored formula for toddlers, Nestle Is NOT Amused By Enfamil's Sugary, Chocolatey Toddler Formula.

I will take a break from writing about the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act soon, but I have to mention Lisa Guernsey’s compelling column about why early learning belongs in the debate, “Don't dismiss early education as just cute; it's critical.”

It is a tight read, so I won’t rehash everything here.  But, the top by the director of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative should get you to read the rest.

Picture an arborist puzzled by an ailing tree. He has tried giving it more water. He has protected it from blight. Why won't it grow?

If the tree stands for public education, the arborist is today's education reformer. Ideas continue to pour forth on how to help students, fix schools and revamp No Child Left Behind. But none tackles the environments the tree experienced as a sapling, when its roots never got the chance to stretch out and dig in. – USA Today, 4/28/10.

Head Start in Jeopardy: It is a day of calls to action.  Washington’s Head Start advocacy group says more than 1,000 kids in the state and 64,000 students around the country would lose quality early learning education services if Congress doesn’t add $989 million to the federal budget of Head Start and Early Head Start.

The Washington State Association for Head Start & ECEAP has links to phone numbers and email addresses of representatives and senators on its website.

Child Care Cuts: Child Care Resources has watched its core service funding budget drop by 28 percent over the last two years thanks to state budget cuts.

“This cut impacts CCR’s ability to assist families who are looking for child care and the quality improvement support CCR staff gives child care providers. These cuts further jeopardize children and families who are already vulnerable and living in poverty,” Child Care Resources chief executive Deeann Burtch Puffert wrote in an email to supporters.