coverMitchellStoneycomments

November 30, 2010

To: ACF Reports Clearance Officer

Administration for Children and Families

Office of Administration

Office of Information Services

370 L’Enfant Promenade, SW

Washington, DC 20447

Submitted via email to: [email protected].

From: Louise Stoney and Anne Mitchell

Co-Founders, Alliance for Early Childhood Finance

Re: Comments on DRAFT CCDF Pre-Print

The Alliance for Early Childhood Finance has worked extensively with state policymakers and ECE leaders on planning, development and implementation of early care and education policy and finance. It is with this perspective that we review the proposed CCDBG State Plan draft. We are very pleased with the approach taken by the Office for Child Care (OCC) in this plan. The use of check lists, coupled with a very comprehensive approach to early care and education finance, is a refreshing and welcome change. We believe that such an approach will not only help OCC gather data but will also expand their understanding of how states are approaching the task of planning and implementing a systematic approach to child care and development services through investment in child care assistance and quality improvement. The check list format outlines key elements for states to consider and provides a critical set of questions in many areas of early care and education.

We want to underscore that we strongly support the Office of Child Care’s decision to include quality best practices in the preprint, including components of integrated Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, as well as a focus on early learning guidelines, child assessment, program standards and the capacity to achieve them, professional development and the early childhood workforce.

Attached are detailed comments on the draft plan, provided in the order in which they appear.