Today, Explained - The cost of free preschool

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

President Biden wants to give Americans four more years of free school: two years of pre-K and two of community college. In a two-part series, Today, Explained’s Haleema Shah explores the challenges of expanding public education. Today’s show was reported by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Firman. I don't personally have any kids, but increasingly all my friends do and my neighbors do. And what I hear is they're very expensive. I know a guy who moved to Louisiana from D.C. because he couldn't afford child care here.

Because child care in D.C. costs more than his mortgage. President Joe Biden wants to do something about this. He wants free universal preschool for all three and four-year-olds in America. It's something he talked about on the campaign trail, and now it's in his Build Back Better Act, which Congress is debating right now. Free preschool has never been attempted on a scale this large before, on a national scale. But we have tried it locally in the United States. On the show today, our very own Halima Shah is going to walk us through what we can learn from that local experimentation. Halima, where do we start?

I'm going to start with saying this right off the bat. The benefits of free, high-quality preschool are hard to argue with. Speaking from the White House on May 18, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the first grant under Project Head Start. As part of his war on poverty, President Johnson launched Head Start, a government-funded preschool program for America's poorest children. We set out to make certain that poverty's children would not be forevermore poverty's captives. President Johnson wanted the program to make sure kids hit their developmental and health milestones. And he also wanted it to prepare them for school. Most of the children that we have are very much unprepared for school.

They have to learn how to get along with one another. They have to learn how to listen. The original Head Start program was only an eight-week summer program. Today, over 50 years after it was launched, Head Start offers services for the full school year. And studies show that children who go through the program have a higher probability of finishing high school and a higher probability of going to college. And that Head Start graduates have stronger self-esteem and self-control all the way into adulthood. They have to learn how to concentrate. We do this through painting. Even a child is painting a picture, we never disturb him while he's painting that

picture because at that moment he's learning to concentrate. What I get to see is the confidence or lack of confidence children have and then that allows me then to help talk them through something that's challenging. That's Asuba Mema'a. He's a Head Start teacher in East Harlem, New York. Look, come on, you got it. Look, look, now take this leg, put it here. Now reach over there. I met him during playtime, when he was teaching one of his preschoolers how to get up a playground climber.

Look at that. You did it. You did. Don't put that on that slide. That slide is dirty. Asuba has worked in this community for over 20 years. And you can tell. You don't remember my name.

Based on the former students who stopped by to say hello. Since I knew you, I met like 80 other kids. How old are you now? Nine. I'm eight. Asuba's classroom is at the center of a high-rise apartment complex. Preschool and some other services here are provided by a non-profit called Union Settlement, which has served this community for over a century. It's in the center of East Harlem, and they're well-known for their love of all of the people.

It's a very diverse community. So you have Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Mexican Americans, Italian Americans, and they have identified with everyone's needs. Head Start's success has inspired local governments to create their own free or subsidized preschools to reach more three- and four-year-olds. But they vary a lot in terms of quality and access. Some are glorified daycares, while others prepare kids for school. In some places, any kid is eligible to go. And in others, there simply isn't a public option. But President Biden thinks he has an answer for that.

Two years of universal high-quality preschool for every three-year-old and four-year-old, no matter what background they come from. Biden wants to set aside $450 billion so all three- and four-year-olds in the U.S. can go to preschool and lower the cost of childcare. Data shows that when kids are in preschool, more mothers can work and a family's overall household income increases. But to truly achieve a nationwide preschool program, the Biden administration is going to have to deal with problems that local ones have been struggling with. One of the biggest experiments in early childhood education

started in 2014, when New York City expanded preschool to all of the city's four-year-olds. Mayor Bill de Blasio championed the program as a key part of his progressive agenda. What we're doing today will be felt in this city, not only a decade from now, two decades from now, three decades from now, as we have more kids graduating high school on time, more kids getting into college. But the program would also face immense criticism for doing little to alleviate the challenges that teachers faced. Challenges like poverty-level wages, massive compensation disparities depending on where you work, and credential requirements that pushed some out of the industry altogether. When the pre-K expansion kicked off, Asuba had been a licensed Head Start teacher for over five years, and he had about 15 years of classroom experience and a master's degree. In 2014, I was making $48,000 with a household of six, four kids, myself, and my wife.

His assistant teachers, whose credentials ranged from a high school diploma to an associate's degree, made even less. They were probably making maybe $29, $28, something like that. Asuba's assistant teachers have seen moderate raises since then, thanks to New York City's minimum wage hike. But when you look at national data today, preschool teacher salaries are still pretty dismal. The median pay for all preschool teachers, whose education might range from a high school diploma to a master's degree, is about $32,000 a year. That's $15.38

an hour. So it's no surprise that with poverty-level wages, early childhood educators have really high turnover rates. The industry's turnover rate is somewhere between 26 and 40 percent, and that's going to be a problem if President Biden's universal pre-K plan is approved. Thousands of American kids will become newly eligible for pre-K, and there would be an unprecedented demand for people who can teach them. But the supply of pre-K teachers could stay short thanks to the meager wages they're paid. Biden wants a raise for them,

but it's not clear if Congress will approve it. Biden's plan pushes for all pre-K employees to earn at least $15 an hour. The impact of that would vary a lot from state to state. A $15 minimum could pack a punch in Florida, where preschool teachers are paid a median of about $12 an hour. But if you're like Asuba, living in an expensive city with debt from grad school, $15 an hour isn't going to cut it.

We're making more than that. What is the value of what you're doing to your city, your state, your country? What is the real value to it? We know that those first three years of life are essential for cognitive and social-emotional development. Maria Mavrides is a faculty member at CUNY's Hunter School of Education and former early childhood educator. If we know that, why are we paying people that are with our kids eight hours a day that are educating our kids such low wages?

She said that on top of the already low wages, the universal pre-K rollout in New York City created a second problem, major pay disparities between teachers in different classrooms. In the first years of the expansion, the differential in salary ranged from 30 to 40 percent less than public school teachers. That big range has to do with the fact that New York City's preschool teachers work in a lot of different kinds of classrooms. The city calls it a mixed delivery system, and it's the kind of model we'd likely see if universal pre-K goes national.

Mixed delivery basically means free pre-K seats will be available in a variety of settings. In New York, that meant 40% of pre-K seats would be in public schools, and the other 60% would be in for-profit institutions or community-based organizations like the one Asuba works at. Maria says there's some benefits to doing things this way. This approach to service delivery is very common in different implementations across the country because they really leverage existing investments. And the other piece is these child care centers include access to extended hours and year-round services for working families that public schools typically don't offer. But in New York City, it also meant teachers with the same qualifications

would be paid differently depending on where they worked. When universal pre-K started, a community-based preschool teacher with a bachelor's degree made $9,000 less than a public school teacher with the same qualifications. And if you were like a suba with a master's degree, you made $12,000 less than a public school teacher with the same qualifications.

In Head Start, your master's degree and your license didn't get you anything. That was just something that you had and that you did. So there was in essence no real reward. That salary disparity is why pre-K teachers from Head Start and community-based organizations left for public schools in droves. But Asuba didn't, because this work is about so much more than the money for him. God called me. That's why I'm here. It's like I'm a member of this East Harlem family. I can't walk down the street without being noticed by a family or a student that was mine, whether it was a year ago or 15 years ago. Head Start and community-based teachers like Asuba wanted to be paid better, without leaving the jobs that they loved.

I stood up and I spoke with the intelligence God gave me and my education gave me, that we deserve parity. Now is the time! Now is the time! In 2018, a suba and teachers held rallies asking to be compensated, just like teachers in public schools. What we teach children is what they're gonna take the rest of their life.

What elementary school does is build on what we've given them. In 2019, New York City listened. Salary equality, once and for all, as long as you're in a union. That was the deal Mayor Bill de Blasio and labor leaders representing more than 4,000 early childhood education workers announced Tuesday. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that over the course of three years, teachers in community-based classrooms would start to see raises until salary parity is reached. All the folks who work in our early childhood centers, all the folks who make such a difference, everyone will benefit and everyone deserves to benefit in this agreement.

By October 2021, any unionized teacher with a master's degree will be paid about $69,000 a year. That's a huge jump from where Asuba started when Universal Pre-K first launched. But even with that raise, he says he's hardly gotten parity. Public school teachers still get seniority pay and benefits that Head Start teachers like Asuba don't. As someone with 12 years as a licensed teacher with an additional, say, 10 years experience in public school would be making like $125,000. And Maria agrees. Benefits are not comparable. Health insurance is not comparable.

Pension is not comparable. There are a lot of teachers that are not unionized that have no benefits and no pension. So as a total compensation, there is no parity. There's another problem. When New York City launched its salary parity efforts, there were some teachers who were completely left out because the salary parity only applies to teachers with a bachelor's degree or more. Which means 50% of all teachers are not included in this quote-unquote parity. Part of the reason this happened is because New York City's universal pre-K program basically professionalized the field.

It required preschool teachers to have a lead teacher with at least a bachelor's degree. Maria thinks that's a good thing. You want highly qualified people teaching your kids. But she said the city didn't consider what this meant for teachers with experience, but no license or degree. The city has marginalized truly qualified early childhood professionals. There is an element of education, of course, that is needed. Understanding learning trajectories, development, culturally responsive pedagogy,

all of that is important. And I do think that teachers across age groups, not only pre-K, need to know these things. But experience has great validity as well. We cannot dismiss the collective experience of mostly women of color that have been working for decades in the early childhood system. Asuba said that he's seen a lot of assistant teachers leave. The last one was Miss Wendy. Miss Wendy was here with me for five years. She left to become an assistant cook in the public school. I mean, and there's so many stories like that.

Head Start employees, teachers, and supporting staff will likely return to the bargaining table again at the end of the year and discuss raises. If things go his way, Asuba says he'll stay at his job longer. If they don't, he'll have a tough choice in front of him. I love the children that come through here, but I know my time is limited. Not that I'm going to die, but I can't see me really working another 10 or 15 years. Maybe six or seven years, but another 15 years from now, I'll be 80 years old. I don't want to have to work.

But yeah, it's a question that my family asks me a lot. So is the moral of this story pay preschool teachers like any other public school teacher and they'll stay? Yeah, but it's also not that simple. Washington, D.C. does have teacher parity, but it's also had some unintended consequences. Okay, well, we'll save it for after the break. Cool. Cool. Thank you. by Wirecutter. AuraFrames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected

over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Okay, so Halima, when we left off, you suggested that D.C. solved New York City's teacher pay problems, but then came up with some other problems. Is that right?

Pretty much. Washington, D.C. has a much older universal pre-K program than New York City's. And the main difference is that most of D.C.'s pre-K seats are inside elementary schools. I have to own my bias on this, which is that my two oldest kids went through the public pre-K program here in D.C. And then my youngest, Will, eventually. And it was unbelievable. It's a godsend. It's why we stayed in the city. That's Connor Williams. He's a dad in D.C. and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, where he studies early childhood education.

He says the D.C. model for preschool is good for two reasons. First, teachers are paid on essentially the same scale as the rest of the district's K-12 teachers. So because D.C. runs almost all of its pre-K through its elementary schools, they also made the call to pay D.C. pre-K teachers basically on the same scale as D.C. K-12 teachers. And second, he says the system provides pretty solid educational outcomes. So in D.C., most of the time, when your three-year-old shows up in pre-K,

they're also at their elementary school. They're in the same building. So let's say, you know, if you're in a pre-K setting that has been carefully scoped and sequenced to prepare a specific vocabulary and specific phonics instruction and specific play-based, developmentally appropriate social and emotional learning that lines up with what is planned for kindergarten in that same building, that's going to be a much stronger benefit for the kids. That sounds like great news for D.C. parents with kids over three. But there's one problem. The biggest knock on the universal pre-K program in D.C. is it was so successful that it kind of broke the child care market.

By broke, Connor means it made child care, which was already ridiculously expensive, more expensive. In D.C., if your child is in a child care center, you're paying an average of $23,000 or $24,000 per kid. That's about $10,000 higher than the national average for child care, which is already way too expensive for most people. My wife and I have both, at various points, stalled our careers out because the child care cost for our two kids was so high that we couldn't afford.

I mean, there was no way we couldn't have paid for child care. The reason child care costs are so high in D.C. is because universal pre-K totally disrupted how child care providers operate. I went to Ms. P's Child and Family Services, where I met Angelique Marshall. I am the owner, and I've been owning it for the last 25 years with my mom, who just passed away two weeks ago. Ms. P's is actually named after Angelique's mom. Some of the kids recognize her picture, which is printed on a pillow that sits on the rocking chair that Miss P used to watch them from. I'm not sure if they understand, but every day they talk to her. They're actually noticing that she's not here, so I'm missing her a little more.

Angelique and I stepped outside into a fenced area. Have a seat. It's at the center of the townhouse complex she lives in. You see the red and yellow little tykes car out there along with toys. Angelique told me that beyond the loss of her mother, her business has had to adapt to a lot of changes. When it first launched over 20 years ago... All we offered in the beginning was just supporting children with special needs. So if you had cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, I was able to support you. So I didn't have a lot of students coming to me. So I just started

supporting children who didn't have disabilities. From six weeks on up to five. And that's how the business ran until about 2009, when D.C. expanded universal pre-K. The number of three- and four-year-olds that Angelique got started to drop as free pre-K seats became available inside D.C. public schools. If the three-year-olds were going back to school, I had to get toddlers. And toddlers and infants are more expensive to care for than preschool age kids. They need more attention and a smaller child to adult ratio, usually four to one. Two year olds and under, they need our care. They need us right there because you can have sudden infidel death syndrome. They can get their hand caught in something, leave outside. One second can change the rest of your life. And, as if on cue, when we went back inside,

one of Angelique's students put a toy frog in her mouth. Don't eat him. You don't eat frogs. Oh, no, you ate a frog. Give it here, Sabrina. Give it here, give it here, give it. Hey, here, give it here. I got it. But the preschool-age kids are a different story.

Three or four, you know, their immune system is growing, their brain development is going. Infants have brain development, but their immune system is definitely targeted. So we don't know if they're allergic to anything. So you have to definitely make sure that you're caring for them and supporting them 100%. Which means they cost more money. If we're open 10 hours a day and I have to pay $15.75 for an employee to come in here and I got four of them, we're not making any money. Angelique now charges way more for child care since universal pre-K rolled out. I used to charge $300 a week, and now I'm up to $5.75 a week. Which means that parents in the District of Columbia

are saving on child care and education for their three- and four-year-olds, but spending a fortune on care for their infants and toddlers. But Joe Biden thinks he can change that, too. Low- and middle-income families won't spend more than 7 percent of their income on child care for children under the age of five. The most hard-pressed working families won't have to spend a dime. But the universal nature of Biden's plan is exactly what might make it hard to pass. In an op-ed, Republican Senator Richard Burr wrote that a federal program for child care and universal pre-K is unnecessary, that Congress should instead build on programs that already exist, like Head Start. He went on to say that, quote, Democrats want to see families

in a one-size-fits-all system in which child care decisions are made in Washington instead of at home. I reached out to Senator Burr's office for comment, but they didn't respond. And Republicans haven't introduced any alternative legislation for pre-K and childcare. They're also unlikely to vote for Biden's plan. So if Democrats want to pass this, it'll be through a special procedure party-line vote. And Connors says if universal pre-K does become a reality,

it'll be the start of a new era for parents in the U.S. Biden's proposals are the most comprehensive plans to have even a chance of being enacted in at least a generation. It's been at least 30 or 40 years since anything like this has gotten this close. It would make a significant difference to tens of millions of American families. And those families would then see those benefits immediately. But Conner also says that the country can't afford the same salary mistakes that New York City made, where credentialed teachers pay varies widely, and where other teachers are pushed out of the classroom because of new qualification requirements. If we're going to expand American public pre-K, we can't afford to let any teachers out of the field.

We need all the early educators. There simply isn't a pipeline of highly credentialed, highly trained early education field experts waiting to swoop in. So we're going to have to both work with the teachers we have, many of whom are outstanding, many of whom could still improve, and bring in a bunch of new teachers. Which means that if the expansion goes through, there could be room for all of those teachers. As long as efforts to keep them in the classroom and pay them a living wage work. That's Halima Shah reporting on universal pre-K for all American three and four-year-olds,

something that could be a game changer for American kids and parents. Tomorrow, she's going to dive into another big educational game-changing proposal from President Biden, free community college. It's Today Explained. Thank you.