Overview
States and communities need to build simpler, better, fairer approaches to funding early learning services that will more effectively meet the needs of all children and families. CELFE can help.
We are doing the detailed work of connecting learning, program, and workforce standards to infrastructure, funding, and governance systems—across funding streams—to redesign equitable and effective ECEC systems at the state and local level. We work with agency and program staff to inform the design of data systems to drive policy and build accountability metrics around equity and adequacy.
Right now, many of the highest quality programs pay for their program by being savvy and leveraging more than one funding stream and ‘layer the per-child funding’ they have to run their program. This places the burden of navigating different funding streams on individual programs. This is what has been standardized as a way to make up for inadequate funding in any one funding stream/program. We believe states need a mechanism by which funding is distributed that overrides the disjointed nature of the ‘system.’
