Are declining births an opportunity to invest in early childhood?

Shrinking K–12 student counts could create room to invest in birth-to-five services

Recently, my friend Theresa Hawley from the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity emailed me with an interesting question. She wrote that:

I have this (perhaps irrational) hope that as student enrollment continues to fall (which it almost certainly will, given the recent significant drops in births), state and local budgets will be able to free up resources to invest in early childhood.

Is it crazy? So far, district leaders have mostly tried to hide from enrollment losses. They have been reluctant to close under-enrolled schools and have used financial windfalls to boost staffing numbers. But can they be more proactive and actually divert some of that money to invest in younger kids? What would that take?

Theresa Hawley is the executive director of the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity at Northern Illinois University

Theresa and I sat down recently to talk about her idea. What follows is a lightly edited version of our conversation.

Chad Aldeman: We’re talking today about the problem, or opportunity, of communities with declining enrollment thanks to declining birth rates. If they’re serving fewer kids, can funds be put to better uses? You came to me with this idea. Can you explain what you’re thinking?

Theresa Hawley: As I look at it, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in births in this country, and that’s going to translate over the next couple of years into dramatic declines in the number of school-age children, especially in the early grades. Depending on the state, we’re talking about declines of 15% over the last 10 to 15 years of the number of kids being born. That’s the equivalent of more than a grade’s worth of children.

We also have a financing system for K 12 education based on local property taxes and state investments. That’s likely not going to go down in terms of the revenue stream that’s available to the system, but the number of kids that need to be served is going to go down a lot.

So I look at this as an opportunity for early care and education to say, “How can some of those resources be put towards serving more children at younger ages? How can we use some of those resources to meet the age-old problem in early childhood, which is that we need to start educating our children younger?” We absolutely need to invest more in early care and education. My whole career I’ve been told, “Unfortunately, we just don’t have the resources.”

Aldeman: As additional context, could you also talk about your team’s comparison of spending in K 12 education versus early childhood?

Hawley: Unfortunately, no matter how much we believe that it’s important to invest in the earliest years, our country doesn’t. We spend 21 cents on the dollar for preschoolers and only 11 cents on the dollar for infants and toddlers compared to what we spend on kids once they enter the door at kindergarten.

That ranges quite a lot across different states, but even the very best states are spending a fraction on kids at age four that they’re spending on them when they turn age five and enter kindergarten.

This is an opportunity for us to widen our frame a little bit and see the education system starting a bit younger, and getting resources into the system to invest earlier. We know that would make a positive impact on kids’ long-term development.

Aldeman: What you’re asking is for governors and mayors to look out a little bit further in the future than they’re normally accustomed to. Rather than just looking at two- or three-year enrollment projections, they should be looking five, 10, or even 15 years out. My fear is, if they don’t do that, they’ll continue to be reactive. They’ll just keep doing short-term fixes. Does that sound right to you, and how do we change that mentality?

Hawley: This is absolutely my fear. These [enrollment shifts] are going to be slow and gradual, 1% a year, 2% a year. In that scenario, the resources that are in the K-12 system will just continue to be absorbed by K-12 schools, and there won’t be any room for investments in early childhood.

So I think it’s important for us to zoom out and to make the case. If we’re serious about the need for our country to invest in kids at younger ages, we have to look at the revenue systems we already have and opportunities that might be coming in them to be able to make new investments.

Aldeman: Talk to me about some of the benefits of doing this. One might be just that more parents would have a place for their child to go. Potentially, you could also have better alignment from early childhood into K-12. And three, we could see better services for kids. Is that right, or what else would you add to the list?

Hawley: I think there are two big questions here. One is the question of the money, and the other is the question of which entity should provide the services to children and families.

Let’s start with the money. Just because I’m saying that the resources may be there thanks to a shrinking need in K-12, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the public schools must be the ones who have to serve even younger children.

We’ve seen a lot of really good models out there. Many schools do a great job of providing pre-K education to 4-year-olds, sometimes to 3-year-olds. But public schools could also partner with community-based organizations and pass funding through to those organizations so that they can serve kids with full-day, year-round services, in settings that are a little bit smaller in scale and more intimate and more conducive to the needs of young kids. Those kids are more likely to have to take a nap in the middle of the day than your average elementary students would be.

There are benefits to seeing early care and K-12 services as part of a larger education system. That includes aligning the curriculum that’s used in a 3-year-old and 4-year-old program with what that child is going to encounter when they enter kindergarten and first grade. Ideally that becomes a seamless continuum, so that kids are building up language skills that move straight into reading readiness, they are building up quantitative skills that lead right into math readiness.

There’s tons of research that shows that the partnership between public schools and community-based settings where younger kids are being served makes a huge difference in how effective those investments are in shaping the long-term trajectory of child development.

Aldeman: Are there any models here that you’re thinking of? What places have done this well already?

Hawley: Yes, you can look at Washington, D.C. as a city that led early on in terms of investing in 3- and 4-year-old education. They’ve been taking that seriously for more than a decade now. Kids receive services not just in schools but also in community-based settings, and in charter schools. Regardless of the different kind of settings that kids might be in, they have universal access to those services.

New York City is has made tremendous strides as well. Again, it uses a mixed delivery system across multiple settings, but the city and the school system is investing in those younger grades.

Aldeman: I appreciate the point about being neutral to who is actually providing the services.

I also want to throw in a new study out of the Urban Institute that looked at universal pre-k in D.C. They found that it actually boosted enrollment for the K-12 schools as well, because the families were more committed to the system. So there’s another upside for the systems that are part of it.

Hawley: For sure, and actually I think that’s why a lot of cities do invest in 3- and 4-year-olds.

It’s part of why cities have been in the vanguard of this, because there’s an understanding that if they can get kids into the school system and keep families in the city when their kids are three and four, they may be able to keep them when their kids are five, six, seven, and eight. Or, if a younger sibling is three or four and receiving services, that may keep those kids and families in city schools. You see that in Washington, D.C., for sure, and I think you’ll see it in New York over time as well.

Aldeman: Are there any downsides here? Who would oppose this?

Hawley: I think exactly what you first said. Someone needs to actually see the opportunity for what is as a long-term play, because this transition is going to be pretty gradual as the younger grades start losing children. The temptation is going to be to keep the funding for all of the K-12 parts of the system exactly the same, regardless of the smaller number of kids that are being served.

There is also a fear on the part of some folks in early childhood that if the public schools become too involved in the funding of early care and education, then that will crowd out the providers that are serving families now. In particular, I don’t think many people believe that the schools are going to be a great place for infants and toddlers. The funding system right now is set up in a way that in order to serve infants and toddlers, you have to serve preschoolers too, because you can only make money on the preschoolers, and that helps subsidize the infants and toddlers.

If we’re going to take this approach and capitalize on the opportunity, we’re going to need to do it in a way that comes up with strategies for funding the entire birth-to-five system. The investments that schools may be able to make, especially in 3- and 4-year-olds, could be an important part, but it can’t be the whole thing.

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