Fredericksburg Parent

8 The FXBG Advance • Special Issue 2025 When caring for young children and their education, the gulfs regarding best practices, rights and wrongs, and how to define success are as yawning as the divide in the Great Rift Valley. However, when excellent childcare begins to disappear, the outpouring from families and communities belies our con- sensus - regardless of our political orientation. Here in the Fredericksburg region, the announcement that Kids' Station would be closing unified the community around saving what is generally recognized as one of the better childcare facilities in our area. Mary Washington Healthcare and the parent company that operates Kids' Station pivoted 180 degrees, publicly apologized, and agreed to keep the center open until a better solution could be found. As of January 2025, Kids Station is scheduled to move to space behind the Spotsylvania Towne Centre, fur- ther from the hospital campus. If loss can unite us, why is it so difficult to find a way to address the problem? The answer to that, unsurprisingly, is complicated. DEFINING 'HIGH-QUALITY' Defining what constitutes a high-quality childcare experi- ence is fraught with difficulties. The one metric that people default to when looking at any- thing related to academics—test scores, longitudinal data sets, and meta-studies—delivers mixed messages. A 2022 report from the Economist found that while there are plenty of success stories about the impact of early childhood education, there are important counterbalances. A meta-analysis of 22 experiments conducted between 1960 and 2016 shows that children enrolled in preschool were less likely to need special education services or repeat years and graduated from high school at higher rates. But the improvements were minor. One study published in 2021 of programs in Boston found that attending preschool did not affect adolescent test scores but boosted high- school graduation and college attendance. -The Economist, Feb. 2, 2022 Other analyses are more optimistic about the impact of high-quality childcare. A 2023 meta-study by the Office of the Administration for Children & Families, for example, found that: The benefits of high-quality ECE for the child often last into kinder- garten, and some studies show lasting effects into middle and high school. The quality of later schooling that a child experiences can either build upon or counteract these benefits. Even though evidence for the long-term effects of ECE on child development is mixed, some studies show that high-quality ECE yields long-term advantages for individuals and society, including higher educational attainment, bet- ter adult health, and less involvement in crime. Even here, however, the study softens as it discusses the long-term effects of high-quality early childhood education. In short, tracing long-term effects via traditional testing methods, while not unbenefi- cial, has its limits. PART OF THE PROBLEM IS WRAPPED UP IN DEFINING "HIGH QUALITY." The American Academy of Pediatrics has made some progress in this area and argues that our understanding of what constitutes high- quality childcare is becoming more apparent as research measures and the breadth of research grow. The definition of quality in ECE is becoming more evidence- based as newer, validated measures become available. State licensing standards have been the traditional benchmarks, but they set a minimum standard that is typically considerably less than the recommendations of health and safety experts. National organizations, including the AAP, the American Public Health Association, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children, have developed standards and voluntary systems of accreditation that are often more robust than state licensing regulations. The publication Caring for Our Children, Third Edition 21 includes evidence-based practice standards for nutrition, safety, hygiene, staff-to-child ratios, and numerous other subjects that have been shown to improve the quality of child care. -The American Academy of Pediatrics, August 2017 The indicators of successful childcare are the most compelling of the AAP study. Most of the ones the AAP study identifies would align with what many would consider "commonsense" matters: infection control, good nutrition, a clean and healthy environment, physical activity, injury prevention, and emergency procedures. When talking to parents searching for good childcare, it's not uncom- mon to hear that they've walked into facilities - whether home-based, church-based, for-profit, or non-profit – and quickly walked out because these commonsense items are not in sight. This helps explain the very public reaction to the situation between Kids' Station and MWHC. When a daycare that has a track record of meeting commonsense standards is shuttered, the reality that finding a comparable center to place your child will be challenging sets in. Declining Daycare High-Quality Childcare Hard to Define, Find WRITTEN BY MARTIN DAVIS

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