American child care regulations are mediocre or poor in every state because state legislators are setting standards far too low, thus posing a threat to children's development. That is the finding of a Yale study, which joins a spate of recent reports in painting a gloomy picture of child-care quality nationwide.
In a report published recently in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, developmental psychologists at Yale and the Commonwealth Fund in New York City rated the quality of regulations governing center-based child care for infants and toddlers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Not one state had regulations that earned a combined quality score of good or better; only one-third had minimally acceptable standards, while two-thirds were rated poor or very poor.
"I feel sorry for the mothers and fathers in these states," says Edward Zigler, Sterling Professor of Psychology, director of Yale's Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, and one of the architects of the national Head Start program. "They think regulations stand for child care that is good for their children. But it's not true. States are setting their standards far too low to make good child care readily available to working families."
"Dimensions of quality" studied. The researchers evaluated how the state laws enacted before July 1990 regulated three different "dimensions of quality" -- grouping (staff/child ratio and group size), caregiver qualifications (education and training), and programming (facilities, equipment, and approach to children). Quality criteria were drawn from the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Child Care Policy, from the guidelines for infant and toddler care established by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and from the Federal Inter-Agency Day Care Regulations of 1980.
Low-quality care harmful to children. "Numerous studies have shown that child care that falls below a minimum threshold of quality is harmful -- it compromises children's optimal growth and development at a critical stage. We also know that the quality of child care improves when standards are more stringent," says Professor Zigler, who developed the School of the 21st Century, a plan implemented in 17 states and more than 600 schools that uses public schools for child care and family support services. Professor Zigler collaborated on the study with Kathryn Taaffe Young of the Commonwealth Fund and Yale graduate student Katherine White Marsland.
Approximately 1.3 million infants and toddlers were in day care centers in 1990. Another 2.3 million were cared for in family day care homes or the homes of relatives. "Our new knowledge of rapid brain development in the early years underscores the importance of having enriching environments for our infants and toddlers," Professor Zigler says.
In the Yale study, Minnesota was the only state to receive a rating of minimally acceptable or better for its 1990 regulations in all three dimensions of quality. A comparison with regulations enacted eight years earlier -- in 1982 -- showed that half the states improved their regulations for programming, 13 states made improvements in grouping, but regulations for caregiver training actually became more lax. The authors also noted that the states with good or acceptable ratings for their regulations concerning programming often earned poor or very poor ratings in the other two categories.
"Structural features such as ratios, group sizes and caregiver training largely determine quality of care," Professor Zigler says. "It is hard to imagine that one adult can possibly ensure the safety of nine or more infants, let alone provide an appropriately nurturing and stimulating environment, yet this scenario meets regulatory guidelines in 37 states."
The study did not consider staff compensation and turnover, which are also important factors in providing quality child care, because these issues do not fall under state regulations. Nor did the study attempt to measure the extent to which regulations are enforced in each state.
"Minimally acceptable" states. The 17 states with regulations that were rated as minimally acceptable overall are: Alabama, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin. Four states were found to be very poor or unregulated: Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina and Wyoming. All other states were rated as poor.