SUMMARY

Early Education and Care:
Overlap Indicates Need to Assess Crosscutting Programs

Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management,
Restructuring and the District of Columbia, U.S. Senate
United States General Accounting Office
April 2000

SUMMARY

In April 2000, the United States General Accounting Office produced a report entitled "Early Education and Care: Overlap Indicates Need to Assess Crosscutting Programs." The report was provided in response to the interest in early childhood education of the Senate subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia. It is an update of a 1994 report on multiple early childhood programs. The report addresses the current federal programs that support and provide for the education and care of children under the age of 5. This summary of the report was prepared by Melissa Franklin for the Alabama Child Care Consortium, June 2000.

Federal programs for education and child care for children under age 5:

Sixty-nine federal programs provided or to some degree supported education and care in FY 1999.

Nine different federal agencies and departments administered these programs with Departments of Education (Education) and Health and Human Services (HHS) operating most of them.

For 29 (40%) of these programs, education and care was a program purpose. For the remaining programs, education and care was an allowable activity or was facilitated in some way by the program.

The extent to which these programs focused on education and care varied. For example: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) was included because of its funding of child care. Head Start provides education and care directly, and, in the bilingual education programs, preschool was one of the grade levels served.

Of these 29 programs, the Department of Education administered 22, HHS administered 6, and the Department of the Interior administered 1.

Spending on early childhood education and care:

Twenty-one of the 29 programs with an education and care program purpose provided data regarding budget allocations. The remaining 8 programs could not provide an estimate.
Eleven spent 40% or more of their budget authority on education and care of children under age 5.
The remaining 10 spent 13% or less of their budget on education and care of children under age 5.
The 29 programs spent at least $9 billion to provide education and care in FY 1999. Three programs, Head Start ($4.4 billion), Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) ($2.2 billion), and TANF ($1.3 billion), administered by HHS, spent approximately $8 billion of the total $9 billion.

Participation in federal programs for children under age 5:

Twenty-four of the 29 agencies were able to estimate the number of program participants under age 5. These numbers ranged from 102 to over 2 million children.
Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), Twenty-first Century Community Learning Centers and CCDF each reported serving over 1 million children under age 5.
The number of children participating did not equal the number of children eligible for the programs. For example, HHS reported that Head Start served approximately 38% of its eligible children nationwide and CCDF provided child care subsidies to only 15 % of eligible families in 1998.

Types of children targeted by these federal programs:

Three major groups of children were targeted by the 29 programs, children who were economically disadvantaged, had special needs, or were members of certain native populations.
Ten programs targeted economically disadvantaged children, 13 programs targeted children with various special needs, such as disabilities or limited English proficiency, and 6 programs were specifically for native populations.
Eligibility criteria for the 29 programs included child’s age and family income.
The age criteria for the programs varied and overlapped with other programs serving similar populations. For example, one program for children with disabilities targeted the 0 to 21 age group, while another included only preschoolers age 3 to 5.
Family income eligibility criteria varied with the federal government, states, and school districts defining "low income" differently for different programs.

Services provided by these federal programs:

In addition to early childhood education and child care, most of the programs were allowed to provide a broad range of services including health, dental, mental health, social, parental, and nutritional services, speech and hearing assessments, and disability screening.
Only four of the 29 programs actually provided most of the services to a high proportion of children under age 5. These included Head Start, Even Start-Migrant Education, and two residential treatment programs for substance abusing women and their children.
The remaining programs provided services to a small proportion of children under age 5 or were unable to provide estimates.
As an example of potential service duplication, the four bilingual education programs each reported providing early childhood education and parental services to all or most of their participants under the age of 5. Additionally, they reported providing social services to some of the children under the age of 5.
Ten programs targeting economically disadvantaged children provided the same types of services, parental, nutritional, and early childhood education, to all or most of their participants.

Determining the overall efficiency of federal early childhood education and care programs:

The 29 early childhood education and care programs were administered by eight offices in three federal departments.

When multiple agencies administer multiple early childhood education and care programs, mission fragmentation and program overlap can occur.
Duplicative programs can consume administrative resources and confuse those seeking services; differing eligibility requirements may unintentionally exclude some members of the target population; and programs may not be able to provide adequate coverage to fully meet participant needs.
To identify the best method for addressing potential inefficiencies, policymakers need to determine if the programs are (1) fulfilling a unique role or are unnecessarily redundant, (2) being managed in the most effective way to meet program and federal strategic goals, or (3) configured to best serve the participants.
To address program duplication and service gaps, policymakers could direct agencies to better coordinate programs, integrate program services, and consolidate several programs into one.
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) should equip policymakers with information regarding program performance and necessary additional data regarding inefficiencies due to overlap.
Decisions modifying the programs could affect participants in different ways and, if service mechanisms change, have administrative and budgetary consequences in state and local governments.