Cost of Child Care vs. College

     What an interesting thought to ponder: the current cost of child care is higher than in-state tuition in most states. Early Childhood Education in our country has been growing since the civil rights movement when more women were joining the work force and children did not have other family members to care for them during the day. Once Head Start was created, an emphasis grew on quality care and what exactly that might look like. In 2014 we are struggling with many issues related to early childhood education and what quality centers look like:

- How do we assess quality?
- Why does quality matter?
- Should quality change price of care?
- How can middle-class families afford quality care? (Low-income families benefit from child care assistance and/or Head Start when eligible)
- How do programs afford to pay programming costs and equitable teacher wages?
- There is a lack of early childhood teachers who hold degrees directly in early childhood 
- How do centers meet national expectations for teacher certifications if they can't find those certified? 
- Should the government take more of a role in funding early childhood educational efforts in addition to Head Start Programs? 

Below is a picture taken from Qualistar's 2013 Signature Report showing the child care costs in Colorado. As Colorado has urban, rural, and resort areas prevalent to study, the differences in costs can easily be seen. It's astounding to think that finding quality care can be so expensive, and this is after locating it at all (The report states that licensed facilities are only at capacity to serve 23% of Colorado's children). If you read the rest of the report, you will learn more astounding information about Child Care in Colorado, which is similar to many other states around our country. 

The rest of the report can be downloaded from Qualistar's website: http://www.qualistar.org/early-learning-research-data.html