Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

Strategies for Children has just published a new policy brief, “Local Governance for Early Childhood: Lessons from Leading States.” It contains some of the new knowledge that we’ve learned from our work with communities.

What is local governance? Well, think of the K-12 system, which is organized around local school districts, with budgets, programming, and other decisions made by school committees and superintendents. In the birth-to-5 sector, there are no school committees or superintendents. What we have instead, in any given community, is a patchwork of independent programs and services.

Or as Vivian Terkel-Gat, our UMass Boston intern and the author of the policy brief, writes, “Local early education governance is essential for creating a coordinated, early care and education structure.” This helps communities take responsibility for creating shared goals and achieving better results for children.

Specifically, as Lisa Kuh, the director of early education in Somerville, Mass., says in the brief, “Local control helps to tailor the system to the individual needs of the community: 1. Providing access for all families, regardless of income, 2. Aligning curriculum and practices in public and private sites.”

Although Massachusetts is in many ways an early childhood leader – since 2005, the commonwealth has been home to the country’s first Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) – the state still lags in many early childhood policy areas, among them affordability, access, workforce supports, and school readiness measures.

Local governance might be a missing piece of the system that brings new allies to the table and gives communities a clearly defined role in early childhood system-building and advocacy. Some communities, such as Boston and Springfield, already have healthy local governance structures, but this kind of work is being done in a vacuum. There are no state laws or requirements, and minimal state funding to support these efforts.

State law does say that “the EEC Commissioner is required to create a regional coordination system and to maximize statewide coordination of services,” the brief says, adding, “EEC is responsible for supporting the development of community plans by local early education and care councils.”

However:

As of 2019, EEC has only “partially addressed this mandate. Statewide, EEC operates five regional offices that are responsible for regulating EEC-licensed programs, mainly for safety and health issues.”

These offices do not “address larger topics related to program quality and school readiness,” and they do not cover children enrolled in public school pre-K classrooms or in informal non-licensed child care programs. These offices also do not cover children who are not enrolled in any program.”

Massachusetts has tried a version of local governance in the past, through its Community Partnerships for Children (CPC) program. But as the brief shows, a variety of factors led officials to phase the CPCs around the time of the Great Recession. It may be time to reboot them.

“The good news,” according to Titus DosRemedios, Strategies for Children director of research and policy “is that Massachusetts can learn from other states. We can start thinking outside the box about how to build local, early childhood infrastructure. Other states have long since figured this out, but we would want to build something customized to the needs of Massachusetts. Our state agency, EEC, does terrific work, but it would be great if it had some local reinforcement.”

What contributes to local success? Local governance models do differ “from state to state and from community to community,” the brief notes, but there are “a number of key components” the produce results, including:

• coordination and collaboration across sectors and programs

• alignment across health, early education and care, and other service systems; as well as alignment between local and state goals

• sustainability of successful early childhood models and of structures for managing and tracking data collection, quality standards, teacher training, and child outcomes

• efficacy to consolidate funds and reduce unnecessary program duplications, and

• accountability for programs’ quality, equity, and performance of programs

One example of a state with successful local governance is North Carolina. Its Smart Start initiative is “a network of 75 local nonprofit partnerships that serve all 100 North Carolina counties,” the brief explains.

“Smart Start ensures accountability for locally controlled budgets and coordinates a statewide network to create better outcomes for children and families. Each local entity uses data to determine how to improve the development of their children, based on the needs and resources of their local communities.”

Among Smart Start’s accomplishments:

• child care participation increased from 33 percent of children in 2001 to 64 percent in 2018

• child care became more affordable, and

• longitudinal studies found positive child outcomes, including increased math and reading scores in elementary and middle school

The policy brief also looks at the local governance efforts of Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Oregon, and the brief concludes with a list of policy recommendations for Massachusetts.

“Now is a good time to rethink the design of the early education system, and intentionally develop an ideal model,” the brief states.

This could mean:

• filing new legislation that builds on existing laws and clarifies what local governance structures should look like, and

• developing “adequate state-level capacity to support local councils, and a timeline for phasing in councils to reach the entire state”

Massachusetts is well-known for being the home of world-renowned universities. We hope this brief will spark conversations about how the state can become famous for its local preschool and child care excellence.

To learn more about these and other issues, click here for an index of Strategies’ research and publications.