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New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

governor.state.nm.us

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Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#681

Post by colechristensen »

9rx wrote: post #511
colechristensen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with more people entering the workforce is that the people never end up better off. Prices just go up and people end up working more for the same result. Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. Making mortgages with a > 20 year term illegal, putting limits on the total principal allowed to loan a…

> Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. You want to change what now? The dictionary definition does not specify any particular time. There is no legal definition for full-time. The IRS uses the term full-time, but they actually use it exactly like you wish: 30 hours per week. People out on the street often…

Sigh. Nobody reasonable would think I was suggesting that a dictionary definition change would be helpful.

In the US the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and an amendment in 1940 established the minimum wage and the 40 hour work week by requiring overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees. [1] Many other countries have many similar things.

What I'm talking about is amending the FLSA down from 40 to 30 hours per week for mandatory overtime and reducing the scope of exemptions so that many more people in professional positions are covered by this or a similar set of requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act_of_19...

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#682

Post by MandieD »

em-bee wrote: post #676
MandieD wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We kind of do both in Germany. I say "kind of" becaue that year of parental leave (14 months total, shared between parents as desired) is capped at the lower of 1800 EUR/mo, or 2/3 of previous year's net monthly salary - that was significantly lower than either of our net pay, but we did it anyway. And once the little guy was a year old, daycare for not quite enough hours to work full time (7am - 4pm) was a mere 500…

strong protections for parents choosing to work part time how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.

About two years ago - it is possible that the policy has been loosened since then, but I'm not in human resources.

The really strong protections are the first three years after a child is born - you have to be allowed to work anywhere from 15 to 30 hours/week, and be allowed to change it with a few weeks' notice ("Elternzeit" - covers both parental leave and this part time working arrangement).

I had to give a reason for wanting to do the next five years part-time, but "child" resulted in no further questions. I had to commit to only being allowed to work part time, and for the weekly hours I requested for those five years; my employer could choose to accept a request to change them or to go back to full time before the five years is up, but they're not legally obligated to.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#683

Post by em-bee »

MandieD wrote: post #682
em-bee wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strong protections for parents choosing to work part time how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.

About two years ago - it is possible that the policy has been loosened since then, but I'm not in human resources. The really strong protections are the first three years after a child is born - you have to be allowed to work anywhere from 15 to 30 hours/week, and be allowed to change it with a few weeks' notice ("Elternzeit" - covers both parental leave and this part time working arrangement). I had to give a reason…

ah, right, there are two independent regulations. i forgot about Elternzeit which includes a lot of flexibility in adjusting your worktime as needed, whereas the other regulation simply allows you to request a fixed reduction of your worktime. which is a change of your contract, whereas Elternzeit isn't.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#684

Post by jjk166 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #613
jjk166 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps caring for your own kids produces much better kids (and eventually, adults). And that may be more of a benefit to society than a large number of people being incentivized to create large number of kids whose care is just outsourced to childcare centers where they receive less attention. We're not talking about some vague value to society of kids. We're talking about the concrete value of the service being p…

If you're trying to be efficient, you could also put 100 kids in a room with an adult to do whatever as long as the adult can keep them alive, but most people would recognize that the services are not equivalent. It's not more efficient; it's lower quality.

That's literally the exact same argument. 100 being too many doesn't mean 1 is ideal. No one is saying there isn't some threshold beyond which quality drops, just that the threshold is higher than 1.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#685

Post by jjk166 »

somenameforme wrote: post #647
jjk166 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you had one caretaker looking after thousands of children, quality would be poor. But that doesn't mean the optimal number is 1. A professional caretaker looking after a manageable number of children can certainly outperform an amateur looking after one or two, and a facility with multiple specialized caretakers can outperform the single professional caretaker. You don't want to minimize students per teacher,…

You've gone from efficiency and economies of scale, to a "professional" outperforming an "amateur." Raising a child is not like making a widget. Endless studies [1] demonstrate that more early non-parental care leads to worse outcomes in just about every single way - worse behavior, health, attention span, long term higher likelihood of police encounters, and much more. An interesting one is that children who spend e…

> You've gone from efficiency and economies of scale, to a "professional" outperforming an "amateur."

These are one in the same. Economies of scale work because of specialization.

> Raising a child is not like making a widget. Endless studies [1] demonstrate that more early non-parental care leads to worse outcomes in just about every single way - worse behavior, health, attention span, long term higher likelihood of police encounters, and much more.

You didn't link to any specific study but that's the exact opposite of what the search results say [1]. The results suggesting that daycare has negative effects all seem to be from the Institute or Family Studies [2] which is a conservative think tank promoting traditional gender roles. If you have credible sources that state otherwise, please share them directly.

> Obviously not all parents are created equal, but it turns out that even bad parents tend to be better than non-parental care, especially early on.

Yeah, you're gonna need a specific source for that claim.

[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/learning-deve...

[2] https://ifstudies.org/blog/measuring-the-long-term-effects-o...

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#686

Post by jjk166 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #614
jjk166 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you had one caretaker looking after thousands of children, quality would be poor. But that doesn't mean the optimal number is 1. A professional caretaker looking after a manageable number of children can certainly outperform an amateur looking after one or two, and a facility with multiple specialized caretakers can outperform the single professional caretaker. You don't want to minimize students per teacher,…

Amateurs regularly outperform professionals in schooling (they seem to perform somewhere between "at least as good" to "decently better" on average), and studies in the 80s found that 1:1 tutoring with mastery learning is wildly more effective than normal classes (with the average tutored student performing at the 98th percentile of control students).

Would you mind providing a link to one of these studies?

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#687

Post by ndriscoll »

jjk166 wrote: post #684
ndriscoll wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to be efficient, you could also put 100 kids in a room with an adult to do whatever as long as the adult can keep them alive, but most people would recognize that the services are not equivalent. It's not more efficient; it's lower quality.

That's literally the exact same argument. 100 being too many doesn't mean 1 is ideal. No one is saying there isn't some threshold beyond which quality drops, just that the threshold is higher than 1.

Your characterization of the service provided is "adult physically present in the vicinity of children to take care of issues". That sounds to me like a lower quality "service" than what e.g. my wife provides, which is actually raising them, teaching them, giving them emotional support, taking them on errands around town, etc. Even with your own kids it's way more difficult to give them as much attention when there's 1 vs 2, so I find the assertion that quality of care doesn't drop after 1 to be dubious as well.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#688

Post by somenameforme »

jjk166 wrote: post #685
somenameforme wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've gone from efficiency and economies of scale, to a "professional" outperforming an "amateur." Raising a child is not like making a widget. Endless studies [1] demonstrate that more early non-parental care leads to worse outcomes in just about every single way - worse behavior, health, attention span, long term higher likelihood of police encounters, and much more. An interesting one is that children who spend e…

> You've gone from efficiency and economies of scale, to a "professional" outperforming an "amateur." These are one in the same. Economies of scale work because of specialization. > Raising a child is not like making a widget. Endless studies [1] demonstrate that more early non-parental care leads to worse outcomes in just about every single way - worse behavior, health, attention span, long term higher likelihood of…

The Institute for Family Studies doesn't independently carry out studies. It just provides an objective review of the studies available while providing links to each study for each and every point they make, so that you can easily verify what they say. The paper you linked to, by contrast, is being actively disingenuous. For instance they claim that:

> "Other reported benefits of attendance at high-quality child care include less impulsivity, more advanced expressive vocabulary, and greater reported social competence (Belsky et al. 2007)."

You probably thought they were comparing high quality daycare to parental care, because that's certainly what they're implying. Here [1] is the paper they're referencing, which unsurprisingly they chose to not provide a link to. They are comparing high quality daycare care against poor quality daycare! Both had overall negative effects relative to parental care! In particular all non-parental childcare was directly associated with lower social competence, poorer work habits, conflicted relationships with teachers (and their mother!), and so on.

That paper itself is based on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development series. You can find a more casual overview of that study's findings here. [2] And an opinion piece, 'daycare - yes or no', based on an overview of the available evidence (including the NICHD study) here. [3]

[1] - https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007....

[2] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-beyond-intelli...

[3] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-matters/20...

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#689

Post by somenameforme »

jjk166 wrote: post #686
ndriscoll wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amateurs regularly outperform professionals in schooling (they seem to perform somewhere between "at least as good" to "decently better" on average), and studies in the 80s found that 1:1 tutoring with mastery learning is wildly more effective than normal classes (with the average tutored student performing at the 98th percentile of control students).

Would you mind providing a link to one of these studies?

Again, I think if you simply searched for studies on these things - you'd find a million results. Here [1] is one with volunteer tutors improving student performance on the order of about 0.3 standard deviations relative to their peers.

I don't entirely understand the fetishism of expertise among a certain segment of society. Don't you realize that most of all teachers and other educational institutions are staffed by those who would be considered nominally experts? And this has even been taken to the next level by widespread adherence to a national curriculum (common core), again composed by even greater ostensible experts. And all of this has been complimented by the 5th highest spending per student in the world. And the result? Educational outcomes are falling off a cliff.

Obviously this isn't to say that anti-expertise is the answer, but rather that motivated people of reasonable intelligence and objectivity, regardless of expertise, are a [measurably] excellent source of value in just about everything. And, by contrast, expertise itself does not guarantee good results nor effective performance, especially in the context of other issues that might otherwise impair performance like large class sizes, minimal motivation, poor work environment, etc.

[1] - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291335232_The_Effec...

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#690

Post by ndriscoll »

jjk166 wrote: post #686
ndriscoll wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amateurs regularly outperform professionals in schooling (they seem to perform somewhere between "at least as good" to "decently better" on average), and studies in the 80s found that 1:1 tutoring with mastery learning is wildly more effective than normal classes (with the average tutored student performing at the 98th percentile of control students).

Would you mind providing a link to one of these studies?

https://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf
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