Stanley Carlson-Thies

When Congress in 2014 reauthorized the federal program that subsidizes child care for low-income families (the Child Care and Development Block Grant), it added a specific requirement that states receiving the funds, as they work to improve and increase child care, must not elevate the use of grants or contracts over the currently prevalent issuing of certificates (vouchers) to parents. This was in response to Obama administration plans to require more grants/contracts in the name of increasing quality and supply. On December 24, 2015, the administration issued draft child care regulations (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) to implement the reauthorized law—requiring states to use more grants and contracts. This is a requirement that will marginalize faith-based child care. Comments are due by February 22, 2016.

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program, first adopted in 1990, was designed from the start to be hospitable to participation by faith-based day care providers—the first choice of many parents. Years before the federal faith-based initiative developed rules for federal programs that mandate an equal opportunity for faith-based organizations to compete for funding, the CCDBG program promoted equal access by creating certificate or voucher funding as an alternative to grants and contracts to pay for federally subsidized child care. When the funding is by certificate given to the parents, then faith-based providers can offer child care that is true to faith understandings and that incorporates faith elements, and they can require employees to honor the religious tenets of the provider. Funding by contract or grant, by contrast, demands a strictly secular day care program and no religious requirements for staff.

Certificate funding, currently used about 90% of the time by states, facilitates participation by faith-based organizations, promotes diverse styles of day care, and encourages parent choice. Given the very many and the varied kinds of day care providers, it is easier for states to manage certificates than to negotiate hundreds or thousands of contracts or grants. Grants and contracts are more amenable to direct government steering—hence the administration’s view that promotion of these alternative payment mechanisms will promote higher quality and new types of services (e.g., after-hours care, care for disabled children).

But expanded use of grants or contracts will decrease faith-based involvement, reducing parental choice. And, of course, because faith-based providers may be both high quality and ready to offer innovative new services, adopting a funding mechanism that discourages or excludes them is counterproductive. Other elements of the NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) also tend toward marginalizing faith-based day care. In the drive to promote professionalization, there is little acknowledgement of the diverse understandings of child development and early education. There is an insufficient emphasis on the importance of states, in order to provide diverse care options for parents, reaching out to religious schools, preK programs, and child care networks. And there is no requirement that states adopt accreditation standards that acknowledge alternative (faith-centered) curricula. Moreover, while the NPRM notes that some parents specifically desire faith-based daycare, little is proposed that would make it easier for parents to know which of the day care options available to them are faith-based and how faith shapes those providers.

Quality daycare and faith-based daycare are not mutually exclusive categories. And Congress specifically instructed states and the administration not to diminish certificate funding in the drive to increase quality and new types of daycare. This NPRM needs substantial change—and for that, it needs extensive pushback from commentators. Remember that deadline and submit your comment electronically here.