Financing Access to High Quality Early Care and Education for All of Mississippi’s Children

This report discusses an approach to providing financial access to high-quality early learning experiences on a voluntary basis for all Mississippi children. A set of policies are presented that can help States achieve this goal at moderate budgetary costs while targeting a majority of funds to the most vulnerable children and families in the State. Analysis shows that achieving high-quality early care and education (ECE) for Mississippi’s children would require significant increases in hourly costs to ensure well-qualified and adequately compensated teachers. It also requires investing about 10 percent of total costs in quality promotion and accountability. Achieving high-quality ECE would drive costs beyond the level that middle-income parents can afford if they are not given some form of financial assistance. The analysis also shows that it is possible to design a partially subsidized ECE system that provides high-quality care at prices parents can afford with moderate impact on the State budget. Access to high-quality early learning for children age birth to 5 years could be achieved with additional public (State-local) and private spending equivalent to about an 8 percent to 10 percent increase in total public education spending, phased in over a number of years. This would cost only one-sixth as much as a universal prekindergarten approach. There are many different ways that such an approach could be phased in: gradually increasing the requirements for staff qualifications and compensation, focusing on particular age or income groups, gradually expanding outreach efforts to achieve full participation, and serving certain geographic areas of the State.