What’s Behind Leftist Opposition to Cost-Cutting Education Reform?

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Health and Human Services has received 13,000 comments on its rule to deregulate the federal low-income childcare program, Head Start, many of which bemoan the move to no longer set student-to-teacher ratios.

Early childhood education nonprofits have also criticized the decision to remove “evidenced-based student-teacher ratios.”

However, there is evidence that ratios raise costs, but no evidence that they improve student outcomes, according to a new brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS.

“No single ratio or group size is uniformly viewed as necessary for quality care,” the brief says.

“Ratio choices carry direct cost implications: lower ratios may increase cost per child because the same staffing costs are spread across fewer children,” the brief continues.

In August, the Administration for Children and Families overhauled Head Start to include less regulation and lower administrative costs, while increasing the number of spots available. Created in 1965, the program serves low-income families by providing early education and health programs for pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and preschool children.

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The proposed rule removes federal student-to-teacher ratio requirements, instead allowing Head Start programs to choose what works best for them as long as the ratio is not less stringent than the state’s requirement.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children said the rule change is “removing critical standards such as those governing staff-to-child ratios, group size, and staff qualifications.” The First Five Years Fund said, “A federal floor and local flexibility are not opposites.” Start Early said “Eliminat[ing] staffing requirements as well as the evidence-based teacher-child ratios required to support child development and ensure child safety.”

But the brief demonstrates that there is no optimal ratio for child outcomes: “The relationship between ratios and outcomes is typically mixed, weak, or inconsistent, with somewhat more evidence on the lower end of the ratio range and for younger children.”

An HHS senior official told the Daily Signal that “there’s a reasonable range of ratios as opposed to a single definitive ratio that has been proven to be optimal.”

“The tighter you run the ratio, the higher cost per child, and therefore the fewer kids that can be covered,” the HHS senior official said. “If it doesn’t definitively improve quality, but it does drive up cost, where do you set that trade-off? So, rather than having a one-size-fits-all trade-off that we dictate federally, we are moving those decisions to programs where programs working with their parents, working with their staff, could decide what the ratio is.”

The Obama and Biden administrations granted waivers allowing programs to bypass federal ratios.

“There’s no evidence that those less stringent ratios in Head Start itself have led to poorer outcomes,” he said. “There’s been a tendency to equate regulation with quality, whereas quality can occur independent of regulation, and the two are not always directly correlated.”

The debate should be based in evidence, not emotion, the official said.

“What we’re seeing in terms of reaction to it is visceral and emotional,” the official said, “and we understand that because this is an important program that’s been around for six decades, but ultimately HHS makes decisions based on evidence and actuality, not emotion.”

It’s better to set ratios locally, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach, the official said.

“Nobody knows their children better than their parents,” he said. “Nobody knows their communities better than these local providers, parents and the providers should have a reasonable range of how they set these things, rather than us set them for all 1600 programs nationwide.”

Edward Timmons, vice president of policy at the Archbridge Institute, agreed there is good evidence that more stringent staff-to-student ratios have higher costs, but a lack of proof that stricter ratios improve safety.

“There was an analysis that looked at staff-child ratios across the states, and wasn’t able to find any evidence of more accidents in states,” he told the Daily Signal, “And I’ve also done some comparisons, looking at states that have different staff-child ratios, and wasn’t able to find evidence that states that have more flexible staffing ratios have more accidents.”

Timmons said states are better positioned to determine their own ratios.

“Giving states the flexibility to decide what ratio makes the most sense for them makes a lot of sense,” he said. “The federal government isn’t necessarily going to know what the market looks like in Maine versus Florida, so I think giving each individual state the flexibility to set their own standards makes a lot of sense.”