Tag: early learning
New Bills Target Child Safety
May 10th, 2024
As we wrote in March, a handful of tragic incidents across the state have shone a spotlight on child safety and abuse risks at child care centers. Health and safety complaints to the Office of Child Care Licensing are up 30 percent over the last year, according to the Department of Education, which oversees child care licensing. In...VIEW ARTICLE
Early Literacy Efforts Remain Front and Center in Delaware
March 25th, 2024
Delaware continues to focus on early literacy, a critical benchmark for a child’s educational development, and an area where Delaware (along with most of the nation) has declined in recent years. Recent focus has been on the NAEP scores, which have put Delaware below most other states and well below some of our neighbors, and with one of...VIEW ARTICLE
Tragic Child Care Incidents: Wake-Up Call for Delaware
March 18th, 2024
Although Delaware has some of the strongest licensing policies in terms of what types of child care are required to be licensed (almost no program is exempt) and what the requirements are for the workforce, several incidents of injury and even death of children have occurred in recent years. These include murder, smothering, physical abuse...VIEW ARTICLE
Delaware Crunching the Numbers on Child Care Investment Rates: Is Support on the Way for Providers?
March 15th, 2024
As we have written about in the past, the rates at which Delaware funds child care remain too low for providers to support quality—let alone to cover basic costs required to operate, like paying staff, rising wages and costs, driven by minimum wage increases and inflation. Delaware has long relied on a "market rate" study to set those...VIEW ARTICLE