Having covered the child care industry for nearly a decade and experienced the ins and outs of different types of care with my own two sons, I thought I had seen just about everything. But a little over a year ago, I came across a news story that stopped me in my tracks. In an attempt to address child care shortages, lawmakers in Wisconsin were proposing putting teenagers as young as 16 in classrooms as teachers, potentially in charge of group sizes that would be larger than ever before.
As I dug into Wisconsin’s efforts, I found it wasn’t the only state proposing to loosen regulations, increase staff-to-child ratios or pare down training requirements. A quiet wave of deregulation seemed to be sweeping across the country, masquerading as a solution to child care staffing woes.
But the same states that are making these proposals already have deep problems with their child care systems that won’t be helped by looser standards, as I found when I and my colleague Sara Hutchinson dug through hundreds of pages of child care inspection reports.
These reports, from four of the states that are considering or have passed deregulation legislation, show that child care teachers were struggling mightily even before deregulation efforts began. That was true in programs of all sizes and types.
Within these reports, from Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin, we found:
Infants were “forced to drink bottles” and hit, thrown on the floor, kicked and yelled at when they became restless at one program, according to records. When one baby cried, a staff member muffled the noise by holding a bib over the infant’s mouth and nose.
Other documents describe staff failing to comfort crying injured children, and letting young children play on unsafe gym equipment.
A staff member called children “pussies” when disciplining them, according to records.
At another program, records say two staff members placed a crying 23-month-old child in the bathroom for almost 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Nearly two dozen accounts of children left alone, including multiple situations where teachers were sleeping when they were supposed to be monitoring children.
More than four dozen accounts of staff members yelling at children — including swearing at them, calling them “pussies” and telling them to “shut up” — and abusing children. Teachers slapped children, put them in dark bathrooms alone during nap time, sprayed them with water bottles for not napping and withheld food as punishment.
More than 20 examples of staff working without completing sex offender registry checks or background checks.
Two dozen reports of hazardous items being left within reach of young children, including cleaning supplies, medication, a gun safe with ammunition inside and the key in the lock, alcohol, a rat trap, knives and a saw.
Deregulation advocates say removing some of the rules could make it easier for programs to operate and help get teachers into classrooms more quickly. That would theoretically allow programs to take in more children. (And many child care directors and experts can certainly point to regulations around paperwork or zoning that are burdensome and don’t directly change the experience for children.)
But the push to deregulate didn’t address the challenges I was hearing about from providers. They needed more funding, higher salaries, support dealing with challenging child behavior and professional respect — not less. Raising group sizes and ratios, in particular, will hinder a teacher’s ability to give each child ample attention and support, educators and experts told me, something that is especially critical during the first pivotal years of brain development.
In the coming year, the country will have a presidential administration that is unlikely to stand in the way of the deregulation attempts that are quietly transforming child care programs across the country. I spent a year reporting on the major players and trends — and the stakes for children. You can read the full story, published in partnership with The Nation, by clicking the link below.
This story about child care regulations was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with substantial support from the Spencer Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School. Sign up for the Early Childhood newsletter.
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