An alternative might be a college loan forgiveness program based on years spent as a child care provider following college, or Associate degree completion
Many of the benefits of child care are like those of primary schooling, because child care is early childhood education. These early childhood educational experiences affect children’s readiness for prie way that primary schooling affects children’s readiness for secondary schooling. In both cases many benefits are external to the child and family. The community at large would benefit from the cognitive, language, and behavioral competencies that are associated with higher-quality child care. The argument for equality of opportunity is similar as well.
A high-quality child care system also is needed if welfare reform is to succeed. The recent change in welfare policy, establishing work requirements, means that more parents, particularly single parents, are working, because work is their only potential source of income. Requiring work means that more parents must find child care for their children. Given this increase in demand, the issue of child care quality becomes even more important. Unfortunately, as described in earlier sections, much of the child care in the United States is not of high quality. Over 60 percent of children under the age of 3 are receiving care in which positive caregiving is not characteristic.
A wide variety of approaches might be used to improve child care. Figure 7 provides a path model that attempts to identify the various links between interventions and quality, taking into account parents‘ resources.
Only 10 percent are in care settings that are described as excellent
Most of the interventions would be included in the elements of the left column. (mehr …)