Early Care & Education Through Racial Equity Lens

Expanding Access to High-Quality Early Care and Education through a Racial Equity Lens: High-Quality ECE Generates the Largest Gains for Black and Hispanic Children
By Saras Chung, Sam Evans, Ana Hernández Kent, and Jessica Coria

NOTE: The full article from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis explores findings from human-centered-design focus groups conducted with Early Care and Education (ECE) providers and parents of young children.

Executive Summary
Child care is important for cultivating the future workforce. It also ensures that working parents of today can participate in the economy. Long-standing and widespread constraints in the child care sector are compounded by the current COVID-19 crisis, heightening the urgency to address structural issues in the child care ecosystem that limit the ability of low-income working parents to access affordable, quality care for their kids. Although these challenges affect the majority of low-income parents, Black and Hispanic parents have experienced higher levels of child care disruptions, leading many to report working less or not working at all.

Supporting Black and Hispanic parents’ reentry into the workforce is critical for the livelihoods of their families and carries the potential to impact future generations. This moment provides an opportunity to pause and consider the barriers to high-quality early care and education, focusing specifically on the racial inequities present in the sector. Addressing the barriers using a racial equity lens can lead to greater access to high-quality care for families of color and the creation of a resilient child care ecosystem that will enable the full potential of our economy. The primary factors preventing Black and Hispanic parents from accessing high-quality ECE include accessibility and affordability. Black and Hispanic parents are more often living in segregated neighborhoods (PDF), making it harder for them to access high-quality ECE. Additionally, parents of color reported considering diverse cultural and linguistic care opportunities as high priorities, which may be even more difficult to locate.

Key Takeaways

1. Nearly 35% or 7,361,431 of young children (up to age 4) are Black or Hispanic. Therefore, racial inequities that disadvantage Black and Hispanic children in the ECE system present a current and future economic detriment to these children, their parents, ECE workers, and providers.
2. Black and Hispanic children are less likely to be enrolled in high-quality ECE settings. Black and Hispanic early educators are more likely to be in the lowest-paid positions in the ECE sector. Supports for non-center-based providers serving Black and Hispanic communities are often excluded from grant opportunities and initiatives that could enhance care.
3. A racial equity lens can better support families in gaining access to quality care, prevent burnout and increase retention among the workforce, and help providers access opportunities to enhance their practices.
4. Creating racial equity in the ECE system requires deep and continuous listening to gauge the extent to which affected children, families, ECE workers, and providers are disenfranchised by the current structure and to incorporate their ideas to support a system responsive to their needs.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (2022, January 28). Expanding access to high-quality early care and education through a racial equity lens. Saint Louis Fed Eagle. Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.stlouisfed.org/community-development/publications/expanding-access-to-high-quality-early-care-education-through-racial-equity-lens?utm_source=Federal%2BReserve%2BBank%2Bof%2BSt.%2BLouis%2BPublications&utm_campaign=c1554d9610-IEEAlert_03-08-2022&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c572dedae2-c1554d9610-64073864

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