The strong gains Pennsylvania has made in the past decade to increase access to pre-kindergarten programs are starting to erode, according to a new national study by the nonpartisan National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).

The State of Preschool 2011: State Preschool Yearbook shows the percentage of Pennsylvania 4-years-olds benefiting from state-funded pre-kindergarten programs increased to 16 percent in 2011, up dramatically from only 2 percent in 2002. As a result, Pennsylvania’s “access ranking” among states moved upward from 33 in 2002 to a high of 24 in 2010, but it fell slightly to 25 in 2011.

In other words, access to pre-kindergarten in Pennsylvania is starting to slip after years of strong gains.

NIEER Director Steve Barnett expressed concern that pre-K accessibility in Pennsylvania could be further harmed by the failure to fund the Accountability Block Grant program. ABG funds are used, in part, to support pre-kindergarten and other evidence-based practices to improve student achievement, such as full-day kindergarten.

In the current school year, $100 million in Accountability Block Grant funding has been made available to school districts, but Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed budget for fiscal 2012-13 eliminates all funding for ABG. Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children is seeking restoration of $100 million in ABG funds in fiscal 2012-13.

“If Pennsylvania wants to build and maintain a competitive, world-class workforce, we should be making investments in early learning a priority and work to expand efforts to provide high-quality early learning opportunities,” PPC President and CEO Joan Benso said.

In addition to restoration of ABG funding, PPC also is calling on state lawmakers and the governor to:

• Restore Pre-K Counts in the 2012-13 budget to the $82.8 million appropriated in the enacted 2011-12 budget to maintain an annual service level of 11,400 children.
• Restore the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program line item (which supplements federal Head Start funding) to the nearly $37.3 million appropriated in the enacted 2011-12 budget to maintain an annual service level of 4,900 children next year.

Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts, Head Start and public school pre-kindergarten are among the best investments we can make in children’s education. Every dollar invested in these programs helps prepare our youngest learners for success in school and in life. It also saves the commonwealth much more money in the long term, by reducing the need for special education and remedial instruction, increasing the likelihood of graduation and college enrollment, and decreasing dropout rates, crime and incarceration.

High-quality early learning is especially beneficial to children whose educational opportunities are hindered by poverty or other circumstances. When at-risk children benefit from early learning investments like Pre-K Counts or the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program, they enter K-12 better prepared and less likely to struggle to keep pace with their peers.

Economists and business leaders are increasingly convinced that high-quality early education is a sound investment - creating a productive workforce, stimulating the economy, and yielding significant financial returns. The question is not how can we fund worthwhile programs like these, but rather, how can we afford not to?

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This week marks the second anniversary of the signing of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), more commonly known as health care reform. While some facets of this landmark health care law don’t take effect until 2014, it’s worth noting that some aspects of the law already have begun benefiting Pennsylvania’s children and young adults:

- More than 1.1 million Pennsylvania children are benefiting from the law’s prohibition of lifetime limits on care.

- Insurance companies are no longer allowed to deny coverage for children in Pennsylvania with pre-existing conditions.

- Pennsylvania is taking steps to develop a health insurance exchange that will enable families with children to obtain and maintain health insurance in a simplified, streamlined way.

- Young adults up to age 26 can now, in most cases, remain on a parent’s health insurance coverage, benefiting nearly 65,000 young adults in the commonwealth.

Simply put, the reforms enacted two years ago are helping to keep Pennsylvania’s children healthy, creating a ripple effect that benefits everyone in the commonwealth.

Kids who have access to quality, preventive health care are less likely to suffer from chronic illness. They are less likely to miss school or cause their parents to miss work to care for a sick child. Families are less likely to put off medical care for their children and run the risk of needing more costly and complicated medical treatments later on. Healthy kids grow up to be healthy adults who are more likely to make a positive impact on our economy and society.

While there are lots of opinions about health care reform - and there is vigorous discussion about the future of health care in Pennsylvania and the nation - there is no disputing federal health care reform already is helping millions of Pennsylvanians receive the medical care they need to get healthy and stay healthy.

And that benefits all of us.

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Three years ago, Pennsylvania took a major step toward ensuring our high school graduates can compete and succeed in a global economy. The state enacted a plan to phase in a series of end-of-course exams – called Keystone Exams – in 10 core subjects.

Today, the Keystone Exams are at risk as the state looks for ways to save money. A proposal now under consideration by the State Board of Education would drastically scale back the number of Keystone Exams from the original 10 to only three: Algebra I, biology and literature.

The plan would eliminate exams for English composition, chemistry, geometry, Algebra II and three social studies exams. This would be a major setback for those who believe a high school diploma should be a guarantee that graduates are proficient in these critical subject areas and graduates shouldn’t need remedial classes for these subjects when they move on to any form of postsecondary education.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children believes eliminating Keystone Exams in such important subject areas is totally unacceptable and severely undermines efforts to ensure our students are prepared for success after high school.

PPC President and CEO Joan Benso testified before the State Board of Education today, urging the board not to eliminate seven Keystone Exams. Any short-term savings to the state would come at great expense to our graduates and the commonwealth’s long-term competitiveness, she told the board.

“For the class of 2010, more than 88,000 young people in Pennsylvania either failed to graduate with their class or graduated without demonstrating proficiency on the 11th grade PSSAs or the 12th grade retake,” Benso said. “We need to do more – not less – to ensure graduates are ready for the challenges of postsecondary education and/or careers. The regulations under consideration do less!”

PPC understands the difficult fiscal environment the commonwealth faces, and we appreciate that it may be challenging to develop and implement all 10 Keystone Exams in the time frame originally envisioned. There are ways to preserve the intent of the Keystone Exams despite fiscal challenges. PPC has offered two options:

- Extend the timeline for developing and implementing all 10 Keystone Exams, which draws out the costs of the exams without compromising their intent.

- Reduce the number of Keystone Exams from 10 to five – keeping exams in Algebra I, biology, civics, English composition and literature – and requiring students to demonstrate proficiency on all five starting with the 2019 graduating class (two years later than initially proposed).

When Keystone exams were first approved by the State Board of Education, the purpose was to ensure all students, regardless of which high school they attend or school district they live in, graduate with a meaningful diploma that guarantees the educational foundation needed to succeed beyond high school.

We cannot afford to retreat on this commitment to our young people or our commonwealth.

As Pennsylvania's Task Force on Child Protection prepares for its next public meeting*, it seems timely to pass along the latest news about the horrific impact of child abuse.

While we’ve long known the costly emotional toll child abuse can have on its victims and others in their lives, a new study sheds some light on the lifetime financial toll abuse takes on victims.

The study, released by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates the average lifetime cost of child abuse at $210,012 per victim – an amount that includes $144,360 in productivity losses, $32,648 in childhood health care costs, $10,530 in adult medical costs, $7,999 in special education costs, $7,728 in child welfare costs, and $6,747 in criminal justice costs.

The CDC study estimates total lifetime financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed fatal and non-fatal abuse cases - including physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect – to be a staggering $124 billion.

“Compared with other health problems, the burden of child maltreatment is substantial, indicating the importance of prevention efforts to address the high prevalence of child maltreatment,” the study concludes.

While the solutions to reducing abuse are complex and multi-faceted, the CDC cited several programs that have proven effective in this effort, including investments in Nurse–Family Partnership, which offers support and guidance to first-time parents.

If you know or suspect a child is being abused,callChildLine at1-800-932-0313.

* The Task Force on Child Protection meets at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 8, in Hearing Room 1 of the Capitol's North Office Building. 

The number of Pennsylvania children living in high-poverty communities has grown since 2000, and about 1 in 9 commonwealth children – nearly 300,000 kids in all - live in high-poverty communities today, according to a new KIDS COUNT^®Data Snapshot from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The data snapshot shows 11 percent of Pennsylvania children now live in a high-poverty community, compared to 8 percent in 2000. Nationally, the percentage of children living in high-poverty communities also has risen to 11 percent, up from 9 percent in 2000.

A high-poverty community is defined as one in which at least 30 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level, which today is about $23,000 a year for a family of four. But not all families living in these communities are below poverty level. Nationwide, in fact, almost half of the children in these high-poverty communities are in families above the poverty line and nearly three-fourths are in families where at least one parent is in the labor force.

Still, these children feel the effects of poverty. Research shows that, as neighborhood poverty rates increase, opportunities for success decrease.

The latest statistics should be a concern for all Pennsylvanians because kids in these high-poverty communities are at risk for health and developmental challenges in almost every aspect of their lives, from education to their chances for economic success as adults.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children President and CEO Joan Benso said the cuts to children’s programs in Governor Tom Corbett’s proposed 2012-13 budget could make an already dire situation even worse for these children.

“Investments in proven programs like early childhood education and adequate funding of public schools, as well as providing health care coverage to kids, are critical ways we can help struggling families today, and help these young children rise out of these high-poverty environments in the years to come,” Benso said. “The cuts the governor is proposing would only make it more difficult for children living in impoverished neighborhoods to get out.”

Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and data at the Casey Foundation, agreed.

“Transforming disadvantaged communities into better places to raise children is vital to ensuring the next generation and their families realize their potential,” Speer said.

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President Barack Obama recently unveiled a 2013 federal budget that bolsters investments in children, with an emphasis on early childhood and K-12 education.

“While the spending plan is certain to be vigorously debated in the coming months, it offers a promising and fiscally responsible starting point for discussing investments in our children,” said Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children President and CEO Joan Benso. “The president’s budget plan shows a commitment to many programs that have been proven cost-effective to taxpayers and beneficial to children and families.”

Overall, the president’s budget invests an additional $1.4 billion in programs that benefit children, a modest increase of less than 2 percent over the current year’s budget. His budget plan calls for:

• $6 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, an $825 million increase (in discretionary and mandatory spending) that will serve an additional 70,000 kids and build on the progress of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge.
• $8 billion for Head Start, an $85 million increase.
• $12.4 billion – a $20 million increase – for special education funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
• Level funding of $14.5 billion for Title I grants to aid economically disadvantaged students.
• $850 million for Race to the Top to continue pursuing innovations in education.

The budget proposal also calls for the establishment of a $5 billion competitive grant program to help states and school districts reinvigorate the teaching profession. The goals include building educator evaluation systems that rely on multiple measures to gauge teacher effectiveness and expanding professional development opportunities for teachers.

"Our goal is to work with teachers and principals in rebuilding their profession and to elevate the teacher voice in federal, state and local education policy,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan explained. “Our larger goal is to make teaching not only America's most important profession, but also America's most respected profession.” 

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Two recent studies suggest the ever-widening income gap between wealthy and poor families in America has led to a similar widening of the education achievement gap between the wealthiest and poorest students.

In one study, Stanford University sociologist Sean F. Reardon found the gap in standardized test scores between high- and low-income students has been growing for about the last half century, and that gap is 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than it was among children born 25 years earlier.

“As the children of the rich do better in school, and those who do better in school are more likely to become rich, we risk producing an even more unequal and economically polarized society,” Reardon notes in his research.

Another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, found a growing disparity between rich and poor children in college completion in recent decades. The study examined two groups of students – one born in the early 1960s, the other around 1980 – and found rates of college completion among the two groups increased by only four percentage points for low-income students, compared to an increase of 18 percentage points for those who grew up in high-income families.

Much of the data in both studies predates the recession that began in 2007, raising debate over whether the effects noted in both studies have been exacerbated in recent years by the economic downturn.

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Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children President and CEO Joan Benso today made the following comments on Gov. Tom Corbett’s 2012-13 budget proposal, which includes harmful cuts to key programs that help children and their families.

“On the whole, the governor’s budget priorities fail to show adequate commitment to the well-being of Pennsylvania’s children, and his short-term attempts to cut costs will cause long-term setbacks to the commonwealth’s efforts to build a competitive workforce,” Benso said.

The governor’s proposed budget calls for more than $30 million in cuts to high-quality early learning programs, despite Corbett’s campaign pledge in 2010 to double the number of children who benefit from these proven programs. 

“As a candidate for governor, Tom Corbett vowed to make early childhood education funding a priority, yet halfway through his term, we see no signs of that campaign pledge being put into action,” Benso said. “Every year that goes by with inadequate funding for early childhood education is another year of missed opportunities for tens of thousands of young Pennsylvanians.”

Similarly, the governor’s proposal for funding K-12 education falls short, according to Benso, who noted the elimination of the Accountability Block Grant program likely will mean fewer children benefiting from full-day kindergarten. In addition, a number of line items to fund public education services have been blended into a newly created Student Achievement Education Block Grant, resulting in a net loss of more than $78 million to meet the public education needs of Pennsylvania’s children. 

Benso also questioned the governor’s projected Medicaid costs for the Department of Public Welfare. In recent months, DPW has removed more than 88,000 children from the Medicaid rolls, allegedly because they were ineligible, yet many families have claimed they are eligible and their children were cut from Medicaid due to bureaucratic backlogs in processing paperwork.

DPW officials have publicly claimed the reduction in the Medicaid rolls will yield savings. “However, if children who were improperly dropped from Medicaid due to bureaucratic issues re-enroll, those estimated cost savings will diminish and possibly disappear entirely,” Benso said.

“In the interim, those affected children might have to seek medical care through avenues such as hospital emergency rooms, which are considerably more costly than a physician’s office visit,” Benso added. “In the worst cases, parents might defer medical care for a child due to a lack of insurance, risking greater medical issues, higher medical costs and possibly life-threatening situations.”

A bright spot in the governor’s budget is the proposed implementation of the federal Fostering Connections act, meant to promote adoption and legal guardianship and provide greater support for older youth who remain in foster care.

“Fostering Connections can increase the number of older youth who find permanent families through adoption or legal guardianship and save the commonwealth and its counties money,” Benso said. “It is a great example of public policy that helps young people while using taxpayer resources wisely.” 

For an overview of specific line items in the budget proposal that impact children, click here. 

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Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children launches a new initiative today, Making the Grade:  Effective Teaching in Every Classroom

Making the Grade: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom is our new project designed to create awareness about the importance of an effective teacher in every classroom and to advance the public policies required to assure that every child benefits from effective teaching every school day.

We believe that every student – in every classroom - deserves to be taught by highly effective teachers every year.

What is effective teaching?  While there are many intangibles that contribute to great teaching, a working definition is: an effective teacher ensures that each child learns at least a year’s worth of knowledge for every year spent in the classroom.

The focus on effective teaching is to ensure teachers have the tools and opportunities to do the best job possible so all students in Pennsylvania acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to compete successfully in a 21^st century marketplace.

We’ll be distributing regular emails about the Making the Grade initiative. Through the Making the Grade emails, this blog and our monthly public policy newsletter, we’ll do our best to keep you apprised of our goal to help drive an improved teacher effectiveness model in Pennsylvania.

Joan L. Benso is president and CEO, PA Partnerships for Children