State subsidies and regulation made childcare more expensive, less available, and less effective.

by Rob Roper

The Vermont Futures Project’s Economic Action Plan has a page or so touching on childcare. It notes that “over the past decade, Vermont has seen a decline in childcare capacity, particularly with the closure of home-based providers.” Hmmm…. What happened a decade ago that would have precipitated the rapid closing of hundreds of home-based childcare providers? Oh yeah! Act 166 of 2014 for “Universal [not so much!] Prekindergarten.”

The Agency of Education’s official webpage describes this law thus, “Act 166 of 2014 provides access to publicly-funded [that’s your property tax bill going up, folks] prekindergarten education for Vermont students. All prekindergarten education programs, including Head Start and public school-operated programs, must meet specific requirements to operate in Vermont. The State Board of Vermont created administrative rules to guide Act 166 implementation by the Agency of Education and the Agency of Human Services.” Or, as Ronald Reagan may have interpreted this, “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help with childcare!”

The intention of the lawmakers was to drive the ostensibly “low quality” home-based childcare facilities out of business via unbearable regulatory burden and shift kids and resources into ostensibly “high-quality,” center-based programs that are within or overseen by the (failing) public-school system . The first part worked. The home-based providers shut down at a record pace. However, the generally negligible growth in center-based care openings didn’t come close to making up the loss of capacity.

In fact, the chart provided by the Vermont Futures Project shows the total number of childcare providers in Vermont dropping from about 1450 in 2012 to about 900 in 2023 entirely because of the loss of home-based providers – as orchestrated by the legislature. So, the law promising “universal” childcare is, well, not delivering on the promise. Quite the opposite. State government meddling has made childcare significantly less available.

And, shocker, per the Vermont Futures Project, “center-based care is significantly more expensive.” That is if you can find it. How much more expensive? “51%, 50%, and 42% higher for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers respectively.”

Because of this politically driven shift to a more expensive, less accessible system of delivering childcare, Vermonters are now paying higher property taxes and, as of last year, a brand new payroll tax coming directly out of all our paychecks to the tune of an extra $100 million per year to subsidize and prop up this fiasco. But, hey, at least we’re getting a higher quality product, if less of it, for all our excess spending, right? That would not be right.

The Agency of Education’s own 2019 report on how the grossly misnamed universal Pre-K was getting along, “…did not detect a difference in child outcomes or classroom quality between teachers with a BA vs. an AA, or between teachers with and without a BA.” In other words, there is no difference as far as the kids are concerned (and it’s all about the kids, right?) as to whether they are cared for by a “credentialed,” government approved teacher or a mom with a high school education who runs or works in a home-based childcare business.

Moreover, if you look at student outcomes in our elementary schools, which have also been dropping in Vermont faster than any other state over the past decade (coincidence?), you’ll see that the more children who matriculate through Vermont’s “universal” “high-quality” pre-k system the worse their overall test scores have become when those kids hit fourth grade and beyond. Yep… turns out handing over our three- and four-year-olds to the same bureaucrats who wrecked our K-12 system to the point where Mississippi is doing better than we are was a pretty dumb-ass policy decision in every respect.

This should be three strikes – availability (whiff!), affordability (whiff!), effectuality (whiff!) – and the program is OUT. But, of course, it’s not. The politicians and NGOs that profit off this quagmire are doubling down.

A recent story in VT Digger tells that Vermont is receiving a $13 million federal grant to “strengthen it’s childcare and pre-Kindergarten programs, among other early childhood services.” What are the priorities for this money? “[E]nsuring that child care providers have the business planning assistance necessary to survive or expand, and developing a workforce in Vermont that keeps pace with the industry’s expansion.” Which sounds an awful lot like building a bureaucracy to me, and not providing direct service to children and families. The same formula that is driving our k-12/property tax crisis.

And, not for nothing, it’s the same formula of government intervention that made “universal” healthcare unaffordable and unavailable. Housing unaffordable and unavailable, labor unaffordable and unavailable…. They never learn. Or, maybe what they’ve learned is that voters never learn.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.