Texas must invest in quality early education

In the book of Matthew, Jesus relates the well-known parable of “wicked and slothful servant” who did nothing with his master’s principal, choosing to bury the money instead of investing it wisely.

In Texas, our children are our most important resource — so why are we making the same mistakes as this subject in the parable?

The data is in: Investment in early education matters, and the kids who get high-quality child care will outperform those who don’t.

But for many Texas parents, quality child care is scarcer than water in a desert. If we want to see our kids grow and flourish to their greatest possible potential, then we must get serious about child care in Texas.

In recent years, the concept of food deserts — areas with little or no access to fresh foods — have been widely publicized and frequently studied. Borrowing from that concept, experts have coined the term “child care deserts” to identify another crucial commodity with limited availability. These child care deserts are areas where there is a significant population of children too young for public school, a lack of quality early education centers and limited availability of highquality child care providers. What is the situation in Texas? Half of our state’s children are living in low-income households, and child care costs are rivaling college tuition. For the 41 percent of single mothers in Texas with children under age 5 living in poverty, child care for just one infant could account for more than half of their entire income.

In 60 percent of Texas households with young children, all available parents are already in the workforce; this number is even higher in lower-income households. Many of these families struggle with finding affordable, appropriate and high-quality child care.

This lack of access is significantly worse for low-income and rural families. The result is often the warehousing of young children in the only day care available or with the “nice lady” down the street.

In order to help these low-income parents join or stay in the labor force, Texas provides state-funded child care through the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). In fact, this is half of the TWC’s annual budget — more than $500 million per year. About 60 percent of all child care providers in the state accept children through this subsidy program. Yet, only approximately 13 percent of these providers are certified as quality providers. This is a striking problem when we begin to understand the years of critical child development we are disregarding by not ensuring access to quality early education.

It is just bad public policy and disastrous economic policy for Texas to provide poor-quality child care for our most vulnerable youth during their most critical years of brain development. Many studies show that children in poverty receive the greatest benefits from a highquality early education. They are more likely to be school-ready, more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, less likely to be depressed, and many other benefits.

By 2020, two-thirds of jobs are predicted to require a career certificate or college degree; however, only one-third of adults in Texas currently meet those standards. Investing in high-quality child care and giving vulnerable children a boost toward academic success is a winning strategy to close that gap and ensure that our state can rely on Texans to fill jobs and attract businesses.

We should take heed of what happened to the recalcitrant servant in the parable: His uninvested resources were given to another who had stewarded his money wisely. Do we want a state that is an economic desert? Or do we want to rely on other states to supply us with qualified workers?

We hope Texas chooses that oasis on the horizon, an investment in quality child care.