This is Massachusetts’ Moment to Fix our Broken Early Education and Care System

We are at a pivotal, once-a-generation moment for early education and care in Massachusetts. 

On November 23rd, the Massachusetts legislature will hold its first Committee hearing on the Common Start legislation (H.605/S.362), a bill that would transform early education and care in Massachusetts. It would make our system more affordable and accessible for families, improve the quality of care for children, provide financial stability for providers, and - finally - ensure respectable wages for educators.

Neighborhood Villages is proud to support this legislation and will be submitting testimony to urge the Massachusetts legislature to favorably report out the Common Start legislation so that it may become law. 

Let’s talk a bit about why we need this bill, and why we need it now.

Why need the Common Start bill: It’s imperative that we pass this legislation because the child care system as we know it today is broken, unjust, and untenable. Our current system is failing everybody. It is too expensive, too inaccessible, and leaves far too many children and families behind. 

Instead of treating early education as we do our country’s K-12 education system – as a public good – we have instead left parents, families, and children on their own. The child care system was broken before COVID-19, but its deep flaws and inequities have only been exposed even further since the pandemic began. We’ve also seen how much our kids, families, and economy rely on the early education and care system and what happens when we lose that foundation. Early education and care is a public good, and we need to treat it as such. And that must begin now. Our families, our children, and our state cannot afford to wait.

Why we need this bill to pass NOW: There are lots of reasons, but here is one of the most fundamental: the child care crisis is one of the biggest social justice issues we face. Fixing it is critical to making good on our commitments to racial equity, gender equity, economic equity, and educational equity. Access to early learning is foundational to children’s education attainment and employment success and families deserve the care solutions they need to work, to thrive, and to aspire for themselves and their children.

Creating the high-quality early education system outlined in the Common Start bill is a key to rectifying education disparities experienced by communities of color. Children who participate in early learning demonstrate greater levels of education achievement and higher earnings and better health outcomes over their lifespans. Indeed, these benefits have been shown to narrow the education achievement gap and to raise reading and literacy outcomes for low-income children and students of color. If we want to close the racial education achievement gaps that have existed for generations, it starts with making early education available to all.

This bill also ensures that early education and care teachers – who are 92% women and 41% people of color – are provided the salaries and benefits that they deserve. Currently, some early educators earn wages as little as $14 an hour, and 15% of them live in poverty. The Common Start bill ensures that educator wages are raised -- and that these improved salaries are sustained. 

We cannot have true gender equity without affordable, accessible child care. The pandemic caused an exodus of millions of women from the workforce. Data shows that a significant contributor to women’s slow return to the workforce is lack of child care. Child care reform is critical to getting the millions of women we lost from the labor force during the pandemic back on track to pursuing their careers. 

A bonus? Solving the child care crisis is good for the economy. While the price tag for fixing early education is substantial, it’s a smart investment. One study found that solving the child care crisis would create $4.8 billion in new economic activity in Massachusetts. 

Long-term, there’s a 13:1 return on investment for every dollar we spend on early education. That’s a better return than anything else we do as a nation. Kids who attend early learning programs do better in school, are more likely to graduate from high school, have better overall health, and go on to earn more money over their lifetime. Not only is child care reform the right thing to do – it also makes good economic sense.

All eyes are now open to the undisputed fact that early education is essential infrastructure - for children, for families, for employers, and for the Commonwealth. Now is the moment to lay the foundation for that infrastructure. Now it’s time to act on what we know.

Massachusetts is truly poised to be a national leader once again. Massachusetts was the first to recognize the power in a free public K-12 education for all children. Let us be the first to do so with early education programs beginning at birth. 

Child care should not be a privilege, it should be a right for every family and every child. The Common Start legislation will finally put us on that path.

 The need, and the opportunity, have never been greater. We can’t let it pass us by. Educators can’t afford to wait. Parents can’t afford to wait. Children, especially, can’t afford to wait. 

This is our moment. Let’s seize it and make sure that the Common Start bill is passed into law.