Childcare Unionization Will Hurt BOTH Working Families & Small Businesses

The childcare unionization attempt that was halted by a judge and about which we warned and reported in 2011 and 2012 (see background here and here) has returned with a vengeance in this legislative session under DFL control. Although more properly trying to unionize childcare and home care providers via legislation instead of executive order, this idea has many problems that are outlined below in the written testimony submitted by Education Liberty Watch in the hearing on SF 778, authored by Senator Sandy Pappas that occurred, March 4th in the Senate Local Government Committee.  These include lack of constitutionality, higher costs and decreased access to childcare and home care workers for struggling poor and working families that receive state subsidies, including the early childhood scholarships proposed for a huge expansion this year.  We understand that bills to increase government control over every aspect of our lives are coming at breakneck speed this legislative session, but if you care about small business’ freedom from forced unionization, the quality, cost and availability of childcare and home care, and the right to provide education and care for your family members without government interference, please consider contacting your legislators (House, Senate) and Governor Dayton.   The March 4th hearing will be continued with a vote taken on SF 778 tomorrow, March 6th at 3 PM in Room 15 of the Capital, but the event is ticketed and no testimony will be taken. The House companion bill, HF 950, authored by Rep. Michael Nelson will be heard by the in the House Early Childhood and Youth Development Committee at 5:30 PM, Thursday March 7th, in Room 200 of the State Office Building. Thank you!

Education Liberty Watch’s written testimony prepared by Dr. Karen Effrem for the Senate hearing is linked here and available just  below.

Written Testimony Against Childcare Unionization – SF 778

Dear Chairwoman Pappas, Ranking Member Hall, and Members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee,

Thank you for accepting this written testimony and for your concern for families in childcare and the providers that care for them.  I am submitting this testimony as President of Education Liberty Watch, which is also a part of the Childcare Freedom Coalition.

We oppose this legislation for the following reasons:

1)      This bill abrogates the First Amendment right of freedom of assembly  – It will force small businesses that are run predominantly run by women or family members taking care of sick or elderly relatives  to unionize against their will or to pay fair share fees.

2)      Increased costs for working families – Providers will be forced to pass along the increased costs of union dues or fair share fees to their clients or in the case of home care providers caring for their own family members, have to absorb these increased costs when premiums, taxes on medical devices, etc. are increasing, the economy is still struggling and unemployment is still higher than it should be.

3)      Decreased choice, especially for families receiving subsidies – If taking children who receive any kind of childcare subsidy, including the proposed Early Childhood Scholarships, or hiring any kind of homecare provider results in unionization, many of these small business owners will cease to take these children or provide care for these sick people  – analogous to what is happening with  the Affordable Care Act and doctors not being able to afford to care for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

4)      Politically unpopular across a wide spectrum – This is not popular even among Democrats!! KSTP/Survey USA poll from 2011: “Should daycare workers in the state of Minnesota form labor unions and be considered as public employees?” 68% or survey respondents said no, with only 19% in favor of the idea. Opposition was the majority opinion across all noted demographics, including political affiliation. 73% of Republicans opposed the plan as well as 60% of Democrats and 70% of independents. (See the poll results at Survey USA, especially Question 3 at http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=98e06008-a002-4bda-b2dc-d5093903734a). Many states that have had unionization laws have repealed them.  Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat governor of the, or one of the most liberal states in the nation, vetoed a childcare unionization bill.  When Minnesota House Democrats had the opportunity to vote to amend the unionization vote legislation into a bill, even Democrat legislators voted overwhelmingly against it. The vote on that was 16 in favor (all DFL members) to 114 opposed. (See House Journal, page 9336 at http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/cco/journals/2011-12/J0428112.htm#9336)

5)      This could lead to teacher evaluations for preschool teachers and providers – As with unionized teachers dealing with the Common Core standards and their evaluations based on those standards and test results in K-12, even pro union childcare providers may not like all of the bureaucracy and loss of autonomy from being turned into teachers and assessors of young children having to teach, assess and be rated by one set of government mandated standards  as the use of Parent Aware spreads across the state.

Thank you again for your consideration of our views in this important issue.

Studies on the Effectiveness of All Day Kindergarten after 2000

Proponents of All-Day Kindergarten say that the overwhelming preponderance of studies since the 1970’s and 1980’s show a positive benefit of all day kindergarten.  Yet here are quotes from two large studies done after the year 2000, done by the federal government and the Rand Corporation, neither being conservative standard bearers, and a meta analysis of many studies that show there is fade out of any benefits, decrease in positive attitude towards school, and actual harm to math ability:

A meta-analysis found that attending full-day (or all-day) kindergarten had a positive association with academic achievement (compared to half-day kindergarten) equal to about one quarter standard deviation at the end of the kindergarten year. But the association disappeared by third grade. Reasons for this fade-out are discussed. Social development measures revealed mixed results. Evidence regarding child independence was inconclusive. Evidence was suggestive of a small positive association between full-day kindergarten and attendance and a more substantial positive association with the child’s self-confidence and ability to work and play with others. However, children may not have as positive an attitude toward school in full-day versus half-day kindergarten and may experience more behavior problems. In general, the research on full-day kindergarten would benefit from future studies that allow strong causal inferences and that include more nonacademic outcomes. The authors suggest that full-day kindergarten should be available to all children but not necessarily universally prescribed.   Harris Cooper, Ashley Batts Allen, Erika A. Patall and Amy L. Dent – Effects of Full-Day Kindergarten on Academic Achievement and Social Development – REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 2010 80: 34 DOI: 10.3102/0034654309359185  http://rer.sagepub.com/content/80/1/34 3/24/10

We found that both academic and nonacademic school readiness skills at entry to kindergarten were significantly related to eventual reading and mathematics achievement in fifth grade. Controlling for nonacademic readiness skills at kindergarten entry eliminated the black-white achievement gap in reading at the fifth grade, while attending a full-day kindergarten was unrelated to reading performance. Attendance in a full-day kindergarten program was not related to achievement in mathematics in fifth grade except when nonacademic school readiness factors were included in the model. When those factors were considered, full-day attendance was negatively related to math achievement. In other words, after controlling for nonacademic readiness at kindergarten, children who had attended a full-day program at kindergarten showed poorer mathematics performance in fifth grade than did children who had attended a part-day kindergarten program. This finding raises the possibility that earlier studies may have failed to find relationships between full-day kindergarten and outcomes because they omitted important information relating to nonacademic dimensions of readiness. Future studies should explore whether the inclusion of such variables changes interpretations about the effectiveness of full-day programs. Le, et al – School Readiness, Full-Day Kindergarten, and Student Achievement: An Empirical Investigation – Rand Corporation, http://www.aecf.org/upload/publicationfiles/ec3624j67.pdf, 2006

“In terms of Kindergarten program type, there is little meaningful difference in the level of children’s end-of-year reading and mathematics knowledge.” (Amy Rathburn, Jerry West, and Elvira Germino-Hausken, “From Kindergarten Through Third Grade: Children’s Beginning School Experiences,” U.S Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, NCES 2004-007, August 2004, 33, available at nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004007.pdf)

“This report did not detect any substantive differences in children’s third-grade achievement relative to the type of kindergarten program (full-day vs. half-day) they attended.” (Rathburn, et.al)

“Third-grade reading, mathematics, and science achievement did not differ substantively by children’s sex or kindergarten program type.” (Rathburn, et. al.)

State of the Union Statistics Mislead on Preschool Benefits

Karen R. Effrem, MD – President

In the State of the Union speech, President Obama put forth the idea that America should spend hundreds of billions of dollars on universal preschool for four year old children and further expand government intervention in the lives of all American families. He justified this grandiose idea by trying to say that there are supposedly positive effects in universal preschool states or because preschool supposedly yields a return on investment.  Read on to find out why his statements don’t hold water and why universal preschool is such a bad idea.

President Obama is clearly ramping up his vision for government involvement in the lives of all American citizens based on the State of the Union speech and this White House Fact Sheet:

“As part of that effort, the President will propose a series of new investments that will establish a continuum of high-quality early learning for a child – beginning at birth and continuing to age 5.  By doing so, the President would invest critical resources where we know the return on our dollar is the highest: in our youngest children.”

It used to be, not all that long ago that statements like this elicited either high levels of mocking scorn or great anger. Sadly, the more and more people seem to be willing to accept government benefits without counting the financial or freedom cost.  Let us analyze what the president had to say in his speech about preschool to show why this idea is no where as good as it sounds:

“But none of it will matter unless we also equip our citizens with the skills and training to fill those jobs.”  

This is not government’s job.  The US Constitution is silent on the issue of education, which means that according to the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the job of education belongs to states and the people, most especially parents.

“And that has to start at the earliest possible age. You know, study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road.”

This is not true either.  According to the 15 pages of research summaries, quotes and charts, compiled on our site under the heading Studies on Effectiveness of Early Childhood Programs, there are eight large-scale studies showing evidence of actual emotional harm for children involved in schooling too early.  These studies were conducted at prestigious institutions like MIT, Standford, and the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development.  Here is one example:

“On average, the report finds that the earlier a child enters a preschool center, the slower his or her pace of social development, while cognitive skills in pre-reading and math are stronger when children first enter a preschool program between the ages of two and three.”

“But today, fewer than three in ten 4-year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program.”

Quality is in the eye of the beholder.  The government idea of quality is a program that teaches a state required radical curriculum so that three and four year olds will learn about careers, environmentalism, social activism and gender identity.  (See Evidence on Effectiveness of Quality Rating Systems and Dayton DOE Admits Plan to Control Preschool Curriculum via State & Federal Funds)      

 “Most middle-class parents can’t afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool.“

It is probably good for their children that middle class parents can’t afford preschool, because some of the studies I mentioned above actually show greater harm to children in middle and upper class families. Here is more information about the large Stanford study:

“The biggest eye-opener is that the suppression of social and emotional development, stemming from long hours in preschool, is felt most strongly by children from better-off families,” said UC Berkeley sociologist and co-author Bruce Fuller.”

 “And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. So, tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”

 It is not the lack of preschool that “shadows” poor children.  It is the lack of two parents.  As we and many others have repeatedly stated, being from single parent families results in almost every bad social outcome that can be named – poor academic performance, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, early sexual activity, and suicide.  We have also repeatedly quoted the failure of preschool programs like Head Start.  More importantly though, we have repeatedly highlighted the research of Dr. William Jeynes of the University of California at Santa Barbara who found:

Using “data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey to examine the impact of student religious commitment and living in intact families on academic achievement among black and Hispanic 12th graders. Students with intact families and high levels of religiosity scored as well as all white students on most achievement measures and higher than their black and Hispanic counterparts without intact families or high religiosity.”

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