The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood is currently considering a significant change in childcare policy. They are proposing changing the teacher-child for 2-year old’s ratio in day care settings from 1:4 with a maximum of 8 children in a room to 1:5 with a maximum of 10 children in a room.
I have personally witnessed the negative impacts of larger class sizes. Before attending medical school, I worked as a substitute teacher in Waco, Texas. Many of the schools that I worked at were in lower socioeconomic areas. Most of my class sizes ratios were 1:30 to 1:40. I saw the frustrations of many teachers as they spent more time trying to manage complex social and behavioral issues rather than being able to disseminate the information in their lesson plans. This was directly reflected in lower test scores and pass rates on state exams.
Early childhood education provides children with access to nurturing environments that help develop their emotional, social, and cognitive skills. The National Education Association has done research that shows that high-quality education before the age of five, directly correlates to decreased likelihood of having special needs and increases academic preparedness for primary education.
Smaller child-staff ratios allow for caregivers to create personalized educational and developmental plans that are unique to each child’s abilities. There are more one-on-one interactions which correlate to higher performance scores during school-aged years. Furthermore, there is better personal feedback for parents so that educational and behavioral efforts can continue when the child is in their home environment. During the Covid pandemic and now with the RSV crisis this winter, we have seen how increasing the number of children in close proximity to one another further propagates the potential spread of viral illness which can have negative impacts on health conditions later on in childhood and adolescent years. The proposed increase in child-staff ratios will also have negative impacts on caregivers given that they will be under added stress to provide care and maintain the safety and wellness of more children. Although one of the downsides to smaller ratios is less availability for childcare, lawmakers should appropriate and distribute tax dollars to expanding early childcare facilities rather than increasing the burden on caregivers and negatively impacting early childhood growth and development.
As the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood considers the policy change to increase child-staff ratios for early childcare, they also need to consider the detrimental effect this may have on child development and health, as well as the increased demand it may have on caregivers to maintain a nurturing and safe environment.