Fort Worth council discusses SMU study on child care, academic outcomes. What did it say?

The Fort Worth City Council discussed on Tuesday a study outlining the academic progress of children in various child care programs throughout the city and county, keeping eyes on a struggling sector that’s been especially highlighted by Mayor Mattie Parker.

Researchers at Southern Methodist University, which contracted with Child Care Associates to do the study, found that although classrooms in the area show strong outcomes for children, there are gaps in preschooler instructional support, toddler engaged support and infant responsive caregiving.

The study was done during fall 2023 and included 176 classrooms in licensed programs that were community-based, part of pre-K partnerships and operated by Child Care Associates, which is one of the largest child development nonprofits in Texas and serves more than 16,000 vulnerable young children annually. The study also looked at programs enrolled in Texas Rising Star, the state’s quality rating and improvement system for early childhood programs.

“The child care workforce crisis has impacted the quality of teacher-child interactions and quality in child care. Average wages for child care educators remain in the $12-$14 (per hour) range and annual turnover is estimated at over 40%,” according to the study.

City Councilmember Gyna Bivens thanked Parker for influencing her to focus on child care issues and how they impact the city.

“Thanks to the mayor, this topic is very important to me now. It hasn’t always been, but I think that the general population would appreciate this,” Bivens said.

Bivens asked Assistant City Manager Fernando Costa how the city can do more to help the sector. Costa highlighted Parker’s efforts to raise awareness of the issues facing the industry and how it connects to children’s success in school in later years. Parker pointed to recent policies passed by the City Council, including a 100% property tax exemption for qualifying child care providers.

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“We’re leading the way in a lot of different aspects, and this council should be commended on supporting those efforts,” Parker said. “Because to your point earlier, this is not something we control, but it is absolutely something that impacts the daily lives of residents that live here.”

Kara Waddell, CEO and president of Child Care Associates, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday because she is on vacation, according to her Chief of Staff Joanna Crain.

The assessment system and its findings

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS, was used to assess the classrooms, specifically their quality of teacher-child interactions, “which research correlates with strong child outcomes,” according to the study. Each classroom was given a score between 1 and 7 — with 7 being the highest score — when observing various categories within teacher-child interactions. This includes responsive caregiving for infants; emotional and behavioral support and engaged support for learning for toddlers; and emotional support, instructional support and classroom organization for pre-K classrooms. The high-quality thresholds range from 3.25 to 5.5 depending on the category.

SMU researchers described this tool as “a gold-standard” in early childhood education while noting that there is no universal curriculum utilized by all child care programs and no universal child assessment approach. Most of the studies on the CLASS system have been done in diverse settings that serve at-risk populations of children, such as dual-language learners, and have shown that programs with higher CLASS scores have better academic and social outcomes for children when looking at teacher-child interactions.

“...it is not whether materials are present or being utilized, but rather it is what teachers do with the materials they have and within their interactions with students that may determine the difference in quality among early childhood classrooms,” the study states.

Positive findings of the study show that despite the challenges faced by the sector, 93% of preschool classrooms exceeded the high-quality threshold for emotional support and 91% exceeded the same threshold for classroom organization. Additionally, 88% of toddler classrooms met the high-quality threshold for emotional and behavioral supports.

“CLASS assessments help us collectively understand areas that need improvement, guiding county-wide public investments and training as well as coaching efforts,” according to the study.