Addressing childcare and education in this country has been a challenge for decades, but according to our next guest, fixing it comes down to one thing - acknowledging that we’re thinking about the whole system upside-down, and flipping it right-side-up. Dan Wuori, known globally for his uplifting and educational social media, joins us to talk about his new book, “The Daycare Myth: What We Get Wrong About Early Care and Education (and What We Should Do About It)".
Reach Out and Read
The Daycare Myth
Reach out and read, where books build better brains. This is the Reach out and read podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Depession of Saria, practicing pediatrician with degrees in public health and children's librarianship. I'm a clinical professor of human development and family studies at the School of Human Ecology and a professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and Public Health, both at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. At Reach out and read, we dream of a world in which every child is read to every day. Our show explores how children and families flourish and thrive through a combination of individual well-being, confident parents, supportive communities, strong public health, and good policy. Join us here for thought-provoking conversations on these issues with expert guests, authors, and leaders in the field of early childhood health and literacy. Research shows that reading physical books together brings the strongest benefits to children. That's why we're happy to have Boise Paper, a responsible paper manufacturer as the founding sponsor of this podcast. Through their paper-with-purpose promise, Boise Paper looks for ways to make a difference in local communities. Thank you to Boise Paper for investing in our Reach out and read community. For a century, America's early childhood policy has been premised on a myth. This falsehood, which dictates that childcare and education are somehow separate and distinct, not only sub-optimizes the most important window into all human development, but costs American taxpayers an untold fortune. That's from the jacket of a recent book. Addressing childcare and education in this country has been a challenge for decades, but according to our next guest, the author of that book, fixing it comes down to one thing, acknowledging that we're thinking about the whole system upside down, and we need to flip it the right side up. Our guest today is Dan Worre. Dan is the founder and president of Early Childhood Policy Solutions. He serves as a strategic advisor on early childhood at the Saul St. Charitable Foundation and was the founding director of early childhood at the Hunt Institute in Kerry, North Carolina. He's a former kindergarten teacher, school district administrator, and state agency administrator. His new book is The Daycare Myth, What We Get Wrong About Early Care and Education and What We Should Do About It. Dan, welcome to the show. DePesh, thank you so much for the invitation. I'm thrilled to be here. So, let's just jump right in. You start early in the book by saying that there's a fundamental rule that where you argue all environments are learning environments. Tell us more. Yeah, you know, I think that the title of the book, The Daycare Myth gets to the idea that we have just sort of misconceptualized what these early childhood environments are all about for the better part of 100 years, as you mentioned in the intro. And by that, what I mean is that we have fooled ourselves into coming to believe that young children require care, whereas slightly older preschoolers get involved in learning and education. And, you know, that for the better part of a century now, our primary federal investments in childcare, in particular, have really been more premised on the workforce participation of adults than they have been around the optimal development of young children. We know, though, that learning does not begin in kindergarten. It's funny in my bipartisan policy work. I have worked with so many state elected leaders, for example, who have articulated this goal that we want children to come to kindergarten ready to learn as though that's where learning begins. And we know very definitively that that is not the case. In fact, you know, we know that even to say that learning begins from day one is a bit of a misnomer, that increasingly we understand that there are some very important forms of early learning that are beginning, even in utero, in particular during that final trimester, as, you know, as hearing becomes active and young children begin absorbing the rhythms and the patterns of their mother's native language, for example. And so, you know, we know that learning is beginning even before children enter the world. And that's a very different way of thinking about, of conceptualizing, you know, what these early, early childhood environments are about. And so, you know, the daycare myth in question is, you know, this myth that childcare or daycare is, you know, exists in its own separate little bubble that is about care and not about education. But as you mentioned, you know, we understand well at this point that for young children, all environments are learning environments. It really is a question of how good a learning environment is. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and you went on to not only, you talked about the title of the book, The Day of Care myths, but you also think that we should just be getting away from the word care in general, even childcare, because this really is about learning. - Yeah, and I want to be really thoughtful about that part of the conversation. You know, I think care has multiple different connotations. And I think, you know, in the context of this public policy conversation, what I am not talking about is the definition of care that means nurture, right? That, you know, that we know that for infants, you know, that that form of care, that those, you know, loving, nurturing, attentive relationships with highly engaged adults is really what it's all about. So, you know, I definitely don't want to despair. - Of course. - Certainly that notion of care. From, you know, wearing my public policy hat though, you know, and working with states around the country, there is this sense that, you know, these early childhood environments are primarily, you know, exist for kind of basic health and safety, right? This sort of custodial caretaking that, you know, that these are warm, safe environments where, you know, you can have a reasonable expectation that you can drop your child off in the morning and their diaper will be changed and they will be fed and they will be reasonably intact eight hours later when you come back at the end of the day from work. But that definition of care that is playing out in state policy all across the country is an incredibly low bar for these environments and leads to, you know, any of a number of unintended consequences, one of which is, you know, that we think of and we compensate the professionals who are, you know, very much involved in the work of brain building as being babysitters, you know, and, you know, accordingly we, you know, we know that teachers in childcare settings in this country make, you know, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 59 cents an hour less than we pay dog walkers, right? Increasingly pay, you know, or are paid, you know, not only less, but dollars an hour less than, you know, people that we employ to hand French fries through a window. And so, you know, it is time that we acknowledge just how important, you know, a phase when a uniquely consequential window of human development these early years are. And, you know, compensate and respect and, you know, plan our public policy very differently for young children. - So early in the book, you also talk about the three simple truths. And I kind of hope you have a old piece of parchment and that you can unscroll and brandish at people. But the first one that you mentioned is that learning begins in utero and never stops. Can you tell us more about the second and third? - Yeah, I think, you know, I think we've at least tangentially hit on all three, right? So, you know, the first chapter of the book sort of summarizes, you know, what we know from decades of, you know, research on the developing brain and, you know, the science of early development. And so I've, you know, sort of boiled that down to, again, you know, what you, what you correctly described is the three simple truths of early development. The first being that learning begins in utero and never stops. The second being that the period from prenatal to three is that, you know, a uniquely consequential, you know, period of development. It is during that time that the fundamental architecture of the brain is wired in ways that will ideally go on to support our, you know, our long-term success in both school and life. And then the third of those truths is that the optimization of that brain development is very much dependent on stable, nurturing, you know, relationships and interactions with highly engaged adults, which, you know, speaks to, you know, again, you know, some of the error of our ways, you know, when, you know, to this question of, you know, the sort of two different definitions of care. Right, right. You know, so that, you know, those three truths, I think certainly affirm the definition of care as nurture. But definitely pose some real challenges to this idea that, you know, that we're, what we're looking for in the early years is basic health and safety. Of course, we, of course, we want basic health and safety as well, but let's not forget that. Not the only thing that we want. And so, you know, the way that some of this is playing out in public policy though, has some very big implications. For example, you know, there are states where, you know, policymakers right now have said, gosh, the, you know, the childcare sector is in crisis financially. You know, we need to strip away any regulation that is not just about that basic health and safety. And the one that they seem to leap to immediately is, you know, student teacher ratios. Right, right. And so, you know, the, you know, and anyone listening who has ever had a child, you know, all the parents listening know just how challenging and how, you know, exhausting. It can be to, you know, attentively meet the needs of even a single newborn in our homes, right? And then, you know, I frequently ask audiences like how many of you are parents of quadruplets, right? And they, you know, mostly sort of collectively gasp at even the idea of trying to simultaneously meet the needs of four different newborn babies. And yet that really is the gold standard in childcare in the country, right? That a ratio of one adult to four babies is, you know, what can get a program nationally accredited, you know, among many other requirements. And so, you know, it is troubling to see that, you know, there are states that are, you know, looking to solve affordability and access and childcare by saying, well, you know, what if we, what if we added just one or two more children into the mix? - Yes, just a couple of newborns. It's fine. - It's like six babies at once instead of four. And so, you know, I think this is an opportunity in those three simple truths, I think, hopefully offer a helpful framing device to help us to think through why that's not a good plan, right? That, you know, if the definition of care is just, you know, we wanna place the children will be, you know, their basic health and safety will be met, you know, could you, you know, could you keep six babies reasonably intact for eight hours? It wouldn't be a fun job necessarily, but, you know, you probably could do it. Could you optimize the kinds of one-on-one interactions that those children need, you know, during that time to, you know, really optimize their potential to develop their language skills and, you know, so on? You know, the answer is clearly no. And so I think, you know, part of the challenge, I hope that the book presents is an opportunity to really reflect on kind of the error of our ways and to, you know, to pose the question about, you know, whether we are ultimately paying much more in the long run as a result of our, you know, our poor decisions during the early years now, you know, the book posits that we are, you know, we are saddling taxpayers for decades and decades to come with the result of our failure to get things right in the first place, that we know that, you know, that investments in high-quality early childhood programs yield better results academically. They, you know, they reduce, you know, remediation needs. They reduce grade-level retention and special education placements. They reduce in adulthood, our dependence on social services. They reduce, you know, poor long-term health outcomes. They even reduce our, you know, our interactions later in life with the criminal justice system. And so, you know, I'm posing the question here as to, you know, whether we have gone astray by, you know, failing to get things right. - So you alluded to one of my favorite chapters in the book, which is how not to solve the crisis. And you mentioned one of the pitfalls about saying, "Oh, well, we'll just tweak with the ratios." Another couple of kids will be fine, right? What are other pitfalls we don't have time to go through all the ones you enumerated? But are there other key ones that you'd like our listeners to know about about the things we should avoid doing? - Well, I think, you know, gosh, that's a, you know, tinkering with ratios is certainly one of them. States, you know, obviously have to set up a standard there. And so, you know, there's gonna be a standard, but loosening those ratios is definitely not the way forward. It's, you know, it may be, what's the saying, penny-wise and pound foolish, right? - So, you know, that's not the way forward. Simultaneously, there are states that are looking at, you know, decreasing the age of individuals who, you know, could serve unsupervised as lead teachers, you know, looking at going down to, you know, young people as young as 14 years old, you know, serving as lead teachers. - Well, at least they didn't go to eight-year-olds. I mean, but, you know, you know, children, supervising children is not the solution to this. I think, you know, another place that, you know, state policymakers need to be very thoughtful is in thinking through the role of the public school system in solving this problem. And I want to be very clear here as well, that as a former kindergarten teacher, a former school district administrator, this is not in any way a criticism of public schools. In fact, some of the most remarkable early childhood classrooms I've ever been in, you know, are school district programs. The question, though, really is, you know, what are the unintended consequences of too much expansion in the public schools? And if you, you know, if you follow and know anything about how the childcare industry operates, you know, you'll know that it is almost impossible to deliver infant care in particular, even at a break, even. - Yeah, it's a lost later, yeah. - We just, you know, we just marked pre-holiday, Black Friday here. And, you know, I think about the, you know, like, as you said, the loss leaders, those doorbuster deals that they give out at four o'clock in the morning, and you can get a, you know, a big screen TV for $25 or whatever the, you know, the crazy price is. But, you know, infant care is that same sort of loss leader. It's so labor intensive. It is so costly that families can't reasonably afford it. And so, you know, the childcare industry and the business model is very much premised on the presence of older preschoolers who can be served in slightly larger numbers and therefore, you know, turn a little bit more of a profit on a per classroom basis to help to offset the, you know, the incredibly inefficient and costly, you know, provision of service to infants and toddlers. And so when, you know, when states decide, well, we're gonna expand a pre-K and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna pull all of the four year olds out of that kind of, you know, mixed public, private ecosystem that has traditionally delivered that service and, you know, siphon them off into public school districts. That then creates a real existential threat to, you know, to the availability of infant toddler care and even to the, you know, sustainability of childcare programs across the country because it's, you know, it's pulling off the only kids that help to balance out the financial model. So I think that, you know, that is one of the major pitfalls that the book addresses and a reason that states have increasingly, as they're looking at these investments, gone to what we call mixed delivery models, which simply means that, you know, the private and the faith-based and the community-based preschool providers who have historically delivered this service have the opportunity to do so, you know, as partners of the state in a way that, you know, keeps that revenue on site and keeps, you know, keeps infant toddler care healthy and sustainable at the same time. - Yeah, and another element to that is that, of course, to a teacher of four year olds, when the local school district opens up a 4K program, you're now looking at school district level pay and benefits, which I'm not at all pretending that public school teachers are, you know, rolling in the dough or anything like that, but to an early childhood educator, it looks fantastic. - Yeah, if you're, you know, if you're making 10 or $11 an hour in a childcare setting, then, you know, that's very enticing, for sure. - It also speaks to something else you pointed out as a pitfall about creating demand without supply because just before we got on for this recording, I was meeting with my early childhood health consultation program team, and we were looking at a map that of data of where people, where early childhood centers are in the state and kind of cross-referencing the local poverty and things like that in an effort to kind of decide where to focus attention for some down-the-road programs and projects we're thinking about. And I pointed out that the data actually showed capacity in centers as in, this is what they're licensed for. - That's right. - And I said, please realize that doesn't mean that there's actually that number of kids there because they might be licensed for it, but they may not have the staff to be able to actually staff those rooms, so. - That's right, and that's very much a function of the compensation crisis that we find ourselves in, right now, we have examples all across the country, not only of providers who have within child care programs that are operating empty vacant classrooms, but we see increasingly examples of centers that are having to close down entirely, not necessarily because there is a lack of demand, right? There's the one sad example that I have shared here many times recently is a program called El Dorado Baptist Church in El Dorado, Kansas. They, a program that had been operating for six decades and recently made the difficult decision to close their doors. And you would think, oh, well, did the congregation decide that they couldn't support it anymore and no, that wasn't the problem. And was there just not enough demand to keep the program up? And well, no, there were actually dozens and dozens of families who were on a waiting list hoping to get into this program. The reason that this historic church preschool program closed is that they had teacher vacancies and they advertised for them for months and months and in the three months prior to making the decision to close down that program, they received exactly zero applications from adults who were available to work for the compensation they were able to provide. And so one of those lessons as you mentioned in the book is that we can't necessarily remedy this problem strictly from the demand side. I think we've got, we have examples of states that have tried to do just that where they have said, okay, we're gonna expand childcare subsidy or we're gonna expand pre-kindergarten and the way we're gonna do that is we'll fund it. We'll fund X number of new slots for our pre-K program where we're gonna fund this many new childcare subsidies. They put it in the state budget, they make those dollars available, but in many cases, they're finding that they fall well short of the goals that they had to set there because the supply simply doesn't exist. That there aren't teachers that are at the ready and able to staff those classrooms for the compensation that they're able to make. So one of those important lessons in the book is that states that are looking to comprehensively address this question really need to approach it both from a supply building perspective and a demand perspective. It's great that they would set aside the resources to make more services available to families, but ultimately if we can't compensate teachers in a way that we can bring them in and staff those classrooms, then that demand building is an empty promise. Indeed, indeed. So, I'm sure our listeners are wondering how do we fix all of this? At the end of each chapter in your book, which I might point out is actually beautifully, elegantly short, right? So that someone can get through it, hear your argument, hear all the supporting information and then figure out, okay, what am I supposed to do next? I imagine that was deliberate on your part to not only do toddlers have short attention spans, sometimes policymakers do as well. So. - You're right, and again, very much deliberate. In my work with policymakers, the challenge is always to try to keep things limited to a page or two, right? And so when I set out to write this as sort of a book length conversation, I really reflected a lot around how my home office and how my living room and my bedroom, I've got piles and piles of books that I have read a chapter or two of and maybe not gotten around to finishing. I worry sometimes even as a self-professed reader that we maybe aren't reading as much as we used to. And so, in setting out to write this really deliberately, wanted to challenge myself to can we write something that people will really read from cover to cover, right? That is concise and plain spoken and an easy read to elevate this conversation without it being a doorstop or a coaster on your desk that you haven't finished. - So you say that parents, professionals, and policymakers all need to work together to sort this out. So you have details in the book at the end of each chapter, but broadly speaking, what should they be doing? Can I have a big picture to kind of come together and really solve this problem? - Yeah, well, I think that the main premise of the book is that we are suffering from a crisis of understanding, right? And so that we're failing to recognize the early years for what they are in terms of their incredible life-changing importance. And so as you mentioned, the end of each chapter, it takes the content that has been presented and breaks it out in terms of what does this mean for you as a parent? Or what does this mean for you? What might you do in your sphere of influence as a policy maker here? What does it mean for you as an early childhood teacher, professional? I think that there are a couple of different messages. I think for parents, I think that the primary takeaway of the book is what happens to your child during these early years is of life-changing consequence. And your decision as to how to approach these early years is one of the most important decisions that you will make, whether you choose to stay home with your child for a period, whether you choose to enroll in a program outside of the home, that your child's needs can be met, but that we need to be very thoughtful here, that ultimately when you are choosing an early childhood program, you're not selecting a babysitter, right? That you are literally selecting the adults who will help to co-construct your child's brain. And that's a powerful question to think through. So for parents that they need to make this choice incredibly thoughtfully, for professionals, I think one of the main messages is that in order for the rest of the world to see the early childhood field in the way that they need to, that we in the field ourselves need to claim the right titles, right? And so the more that we refer to these settings as daycares or childcares, as opposed to school, frankly, is maybe to our own detriment, that the professionals who work with young children, they are teachers, they are brainbuilders, they are not babysitters, they are not daycare workers, they are educators. And then for policymakers, I think, as you mentioned, the overriding message of the book for policymakers is that we need to look at this question with new eyes, we need a transformative investment in young children and families, but we also need to recognize that ultimately we're already paying for the system that we ultimately need, we're just doing it in all the wrong ways, right? That we seem content to pay for incarceration and for worse health outcomes than adulthood and for more reliance on social services and the list goes on and on, rather than getting things right in the first place. I've worked with enough policymakers on a bipartisan basis to know that those sorts of transformative changes rarely happen in one fell swooped. And so while arguing that we need that transformational change, the book, as you mentioned, the final two chapters, sort of lay out a blueprint for policymakers around some of those places that we're just, with all the right intentions, getting things wrong, some low-hanging fruit that we could address and some simple corrections that could be made in our state systems. And then the book closes with examples from the states around places that are really getting things right. And I'd be careful to say, I don't think any state has fully solved the puzzle here. But there are some incredibly promising practices happening in states around the country that we could look to as models. - Well, we're about out of time, but I wanted to turn from the book for a moment that completely separate from all this. Also, you're making quite a name for yourself on social media with sharing videos of adult child interactions just briefly. Why do you think people love these so much? - Well, you're right, my social media presence, and I feel it very much actually is going hand-in-hand with the policy book. I think what I have done in recent years on social media, I think very much of as being a sort of a public education campaign, kind of a constant drumbeat around the importance of the early years. And as you say, the importance of these nurturing adult child's interactions, which then goes hand-in-glove with the book, which says, if this is true, right, if we know that these years are this important, then what do we need to do about it? But what you'll find, I think if you visit my social media channels, and maybe you experience this as a pediatrician too, Dimash, but I think about my background as even a pre-service teacher in early childhood, when I set out to learn about child development, most of what I learned I had to read about, right, to learn it in a book, and maybe you're lucky enough to go to a lab preschool or something where you can observe through a two-way mirror or something for an hour, but both as parents and as educators, we tend to learn a lot about young children on the job. And so it has occurred to me in recent years and been very much affirmed on social media that the internet is now just a treasure trove of amazing illustrations of the concepts of child development. And so I think where I have carved out a niche there is helping to curate some of those videos and uplift them as more than just cute, right? The guests, these videos are adorable, but they also teach us really important lessons about how children are developing and the great things that their parents are doing to help to support their development. >> I would sum it up as interaction show and tell. >> That's right. >> That's a good way to describe it. >> Dan, thank you so much for both that work as well as the policy work and for putting it so beautifully together in this amazing book. >> Well, thank you so much for the invitation. I'm always glad and then such a fan of Reach Out and Read. >> Thank you. (bell dings) >> Welcome to today's 33rd page or something extra for you, our listeners. I wanted to share two sections of our guest's book, The Daycare Myth with you. I'm a fan of quotes and he has many great quotes throughout this book, many that are actually his, but there's two places where he references someone else's quotes and I thought I would share them. In his book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear set forth an idea that continues to hit me like a gut punch. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Clear was speaking about the power of personal habits in helping us reach our goals, but I think the same holds true for those struggling within child care's own deeply flawed system. Undoing a hundred plus years of ill-conceived public policy and poorly-informed public perceptions is a big hill to climb and a task that isn't within your personal wherewithal. It's something that will take a groundswell and perhaps a crisis of such proportion that policymakers are forced to act. I believe we're approaching critical mass on both fronts. Until then, we will continue falling to the level of our systems, which is why early childhood systems reform must be America's most pressing domestic public policy priority. The second segment is actually at the very end of the book. I'd like to close out with a word of advice common to all three groups. He's referencing parents, policy makers, and early childhood professionals, best captured in a quote commonly attributed to Maya Angelou, although existing in multiple variations since at least 1910. The Angelou version supposedly conveyed as personal advice to Oprah Winfrey who had been lamenting poor decisions she made early in life goes like this. You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better. This idea of tying action to knowledge has always had special appeal to me. In much of life, we act on the basis of cultural norms and popular wisdom. The associated peer pressure can be powerful, not leading us actively astray as much as creating conditions in which we never even pause to question widely held assumptions. Until we know better, that is. At which point, we are all called to act. It is my sincere hope that having engaged with this book, you now know better when it comes to the value of the early years and the brokenness of our associated systems and policies. What happens next is up to you. And that's today's 33rd page. You've been listening to the Reach Out and Read podcast. Reach Out and Read is a nonprofit organization that is the authoritative national voice for the positive effects of reading daily and supports, coaches, and celebrates engaging in those language-rich activities with young children. We're continually inspired by stories that encourage language, literacy, and early relational health. Visit us at reachoutandread.org/podcast to find out more. And don't forget to subscribe to our show wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review. Your feedback helps grow our podcast community and tells others that this podcast is worth listening to. Our show is a production of Reach Out and Read. Our producer is Jill Ruby. Laurie Brooks is our National Senior Director of External Affairs. Thank you to our founding sponsor, Boise Paper, for making a difference in local communities like ours. I'm your host, Dr. DePassion of Saria. I look forward to spending time with you soon. And remember, books build better brains. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]