Delaware
K-12 public schools in Delaware enroll more than 125,000 students, with 39% in poverty, 6% learning English, 48% minorities, and annual expenditures of about $1.5 billion. (Most recent NCES data)
Litigation
Delaware is one of only five states in which no case challenging the state's education finance system has ever been filed.
“The General Assembly shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and efficient system of free public schools, and may require by law that every child, not physically or mentally disabled, shall attend the public school, unless educated by other means.” Del. Const. art X, § 1.
Pre-K
The Delaware preschool program, the Early Childhood Assistance Program (ECAP) is rated an exceptionally high 8 out of 10 on the established quality indicators but serves only 7% of 4-year-olds.
In an Executive Order creating the Early Care and Education Council, the Governor acknowledged the extensive research demonstrating the link between high quality pre-K and later success in school. The Governor also stated that Delaware’s policymakers and business and community members agree that all Delaware’s young children need access to quality early childhood care to assist them in becoming fully prepared for school.
ECAP is a state-funded extension of Head Start. Public or private providers, including Head Start centers, may provide ECAP services, and all providers must meet Head Start performance standards. Following Head Start guidelines, ECAP programs are required to operate at least four days a week for a minimum of 3 ½ hours a day. However, most ECAP programs operate at least 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and some are full-year and/or full-day programs.
Ninety percent of children enrolled in ECAP must come from families with an income at or below 10 percent of the federal poverty level and 10 percent of available slots must be allocated for children with disabilities. Due to new mandates in the Head Start Reauthorization Act of 2007, the Early Childhood Assistance Program now allows programs to take up to 35 percent of their funded enrollment from children living in households with incomes at 100 to 130 percent of the federal poverty level and count those children as income-eligible. Children above the poverty level may be enrolled where space permits.
ECAP is funded by general appropriations, but there is no state mandate to fully fund services for all eligible children. The Interagency Resource Management Committee is given discretion to allocate grants to local providers.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), Delaware served only 7% of all four-year-olds in its state preschool program in 2009-2010.
Quality Standards
ECAP has been given an exceptionally high rating of 8 out of 10 by NIEER.
ECAP does not require that teachers have a bachelor’s degree or that teacher assistants have Child Development Associate degree, failing these NIEER benchmarks.
The program does have a limited class size, an appropriate student to teacher ratio, and screening and referral services. In addition, it has a monitoring and site visit program.
The state is in the process of implementing a quality rating improvement system (QRIS) for early childhood programs and Teaching GOLD, a web-based assessment that will monitor the progress of children who are enrolled in the ECAP program. Through the 2008 Child Outcome Study, the ECAP program was evaluated for program impact/child outcomes.