By Ann Schimke, Chalkbeat
Efforts to improve child care quality in Colorado gained steam in 2016 amid ongoing concerns about abysmal pay for child care workers and excessive regulation in the field.
The year kicked off with a red-letter moment for the state’s child care rating system, Colorado Shines, which awarded its top Level 5 rating to the first two programs in the state. (Today, there are 25 child care facilities with Level 5 ratings.)
In the spring, a group of teen moms from Denver’s Florence Crittenton High School led the charge for a law change that makes it easier for teen mothers and domestic violence victims to secure state financial help for child care. The state also ushered in rules to inspect child care centers more often and give higher reimbursements to child care providers that earn high ratings.
But the focus on quality wasn’t just for licensed child care providers. Programs aimed at training unlicensed providers, including Spanish-speakers and undocumented immigrants, also ramped up in 2016.
On the innovation front, Westminster Public Schools’ in August began using a new financing mechanism to pay for full-day preschool — an effort that will be closely watched by other school districts over the next couple years.
The same month, U.S. Secretary of Education John King sang the praises of Colorado’s work to improve its early childhood systems during a visit to Denver.
One of 2016’s biggest unresolved early childhood conversations was about the suspension and expulsion of young children from preschool and early elementary school. While advocates had hoped to bring forward legislation on the issue during the 2016 session, a variety of factors, including concerns about the accuracy of discipline data, stymied those efforts.
Still, the state did significantly expand a program designed to help child care providers handle challenging behavior before it spirals into suspension or expulsion. In addition, a one-of-a-kind child care center opened in a poor northeast Denver neighborhood with a mission to serve local children, including those with challenging behavior.
Finally, there was much public conversation about the problem of harsh early childhood discipline — including a Chalkbeat Colorado’s panel discussion on the topic in May, a meeting of state and national experts at the Governor’s Mansion in August and a series of fall meetings by advocates planning for legislation during the 2017 session.
This is the first in a series of posts this week looking back at the year in Colorado education.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
