Browsing: Early Education

The childcare sector is highly regulated in ways that drive up costs without clear evidence that the related regulations improve safety or quality.

With important reforms, Wisconsin can meet both the demands of ensuring safe and affordable childcare for Wisconsin families while controlling overall costs.  

Wisconsin ought to show mercy to families struggling with childcare costs by re-examining which cost-escalating regulations actually matter for kids.

Wisconsin’s Republican lawmakers recently introduced Assembly Bill 660, aiming to help employers provide support for working families in meeting the costs of childcare. While the bill’s intentions are commendable, the approach of directly subsidizing employers to create and subsidize childcare slots has proven ineffective in other contexts.

Childcare & Early Education Featured Analysis Overregulated Childcare: Wisconsin’s 2023-’25 biennial budget and the path ahead Off Track: An Assessment…

Legislative reforms mesh with recommendations in Badger Institute paper Sometimes, the most helpful thing a government can do is to…

The Legislature appears ready to confront one of the primary factors driving up childcare costs in Wisconsin: overregulation. Failing to confront this reality would miss an opportunity to improve the affordability and accessibility of childcare without adding to the budget. Eliminating unnecessary or unverifiable regulations can reduce compliance costs for childcare providers without sacrificing quality — savings that they can pass on to families. Fewer regulations will increase competition among childcare providers, return authority to parents and ultimately make childcare more affordable for Wisconsin families.

The landscape of childcare in Wisconsin faces a problem: Evidence suggests that an overemphasis on quality regulation likely has driven some providers out of the market, resulting in fewer low-income children served by Wisconsin Shares, the state’s subsidized childcare program, and less overall parental choice and higher costs, without measurable improvements in outcomes.

Raising children, as can be fully appreciated only after you’ve done it, takes place in real time. They eat, sleep and grow whether you’re ready or not. So as parents supply children with the most crucial material treasure they ever will receive — a stable, loving home — many rely on some outside help in caring for their children while earning a living.

Some of the governor’s budget proposals to help low-income families are ineffective, ripe for abuse or better left to the private sector
By Angela Rachidi
March 16, 2021

Early childhood and special education teacher Sheila Noordzy has her hands full teaching a class of 18 3-to-5-year-old children in the Chequamegon School District in Park Falls. She often puts in long hours, partly due to federal paperwork that takes her away from working with the children. Federal requirements in special education are especially burdensome, educators tell the Badger Institute in a survey.

Investment in young children supports economic development by boosting the long-run productivity of the labor force and reducing public costs.