Funding FCC Educators to Participate in Publicly-Funded Pre-K: Costs and Considerations

• In Event: Building Equitable Mixed-Delivery Pre-K Systems by Including Family Child Care: Perspectives From States, Researchers, and Practitioners

Abstract

Currently, all but six states fund a public preschool program; some states fund more than one program, and as such, there are 63 state-funded preschool programs operating in 44 states (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2023). Most permit or require at least one of their state-funded programs to offer services through a mixed-delivery system that includes private providers (e.g., for-profit and non-profit childcare centers and Head Start). Yet although almost all states have a mixed-delivery system, most children are predominantly served in local education agencies (LEAs).

One early learning setting not often included in publicly-funded mixed-delivery systems is family child care (FCC) homes, or home-based care in which one provider typically cares for a small group of mixed-age children from infancy – school age. However, FCC providers are an important part of the early childhood education (ECE) landscape for many reasons; for example, parents may prefer them for a cultural/linguistic match for children, they are often able to offer care during non-standard hours, and they may be one of few options available in rural areas (e.g., Crosby et al., 2019; Henly & Adams, 2018; Porter et al., 2010).

There are reasons to consider the inclusion of FCC homes in these mixed delivery PreK systems, including the aforementioned reasons parents prefer these settings, and also because there is evidence that high-quality can and does occur in these settings (e.g., Raikes et al., 2013). One concern, however, is cost: There are certain economies of scale in offering PreK in school-based settings within larger systems that can batch administrative, professional development, and other costs. This paper will examine ways in which FCC educators could be funded in order to be included in state-funded systems.

To investigate how to fund the inclusion of FCC homes in publicly-funded systems we analyzed the costs associated with implementing quality in FCC settings across three broad cost categories:

1. Personnel costs at the FCC educator level
2. Non-personnel costs at the FCC educator level
3. System-level costs which can be borne at local, regional, and state levels, not by the individual FCC educator

Although the greatest cost driver in ECE is typically wages, accounting for 60-80% of costs in FCC programs (Workman, 2018), state-funded PreK programs in the U.S. are typically underfunded, affecting compensation of PreK educators in home-based and center-based settings. We analyze salary and pay parity of FCC educators (including benefits), and consider how non-personnel costs (e.g., facilities, food, technology, and supplies) and systems-level costs (including workforce, quality assurance and improvement, curriculum/assessment, and data systems) impact overall costs of high quality in FCC homes. We conclude with information on the elements of FCC programs that should be funded to support quality, how educators can blend and braid funding to support their programs, and how policies related to fiscal practices differentially impact FCC educators.

Authors

• Erin Harmeyer, National Institute for Early Education Research

• Georgenne Weisenfeld, National Institute for Early Education Research

• Karin Garver, Rutgers University