The 2022 Legislature invested $200 million in expanded public preschool facilities in a significant effort to achieve universal access to early learning by 2032. In the recent primary election debates, the focus on universal pre-K expansion and opportunity for Hawaii’s families centered on classroom capacity.
Decades of educational research remind us how much more is needed to ensure access to high-quality early education. Access without high-quality measures will only disappoint when outcomes are measured.
Most research finds that children benefit from high-quality early learning into adulthood, especially low-income children. Some studies find that achievement scores do not always last beyond elementary school. Still, higher graduation rates and less repeating of grades do persist. Researchers also find that improved social-emotional skills lead to enhanced self-control and fewer suspensions. In addition, pre-K graduates tend to have health problems identified earlier.
Significantly, the effects of quality preschools are more extensive for children from low-income families, children of color, and families who did not finish high school. Positive impacts appear less substantial for upper-income children. Studies have shown that disadvantaged boys are notably aided by pre-K attendance, perhaps because they are more responsive to developmental interventions.
The most consistent research findings are that the benefits of early learning only can occur in high-quality settings; otherwise, pre-K can harm or lead to mediocre results.
Things crucial to quality settings are developmentally appropriate teaching and learning, research-based curricula, stimulating classrooms and materials, small group sizes, excellent teacher preparation, and ongoing professional development. Most important is the quality of student-teacher interaction. The best pre-K teachers provide focused moment-to-moment interactions and use developmentally appropriate language, emotional support, and proven problem-solving techniques, among other strategies.
Additional benefits of preschool investments include freeing women to re-enter the workforce and persist. This has been a critical issue in the slow recovery of the world of work after COVID-19. Other parental impacts include enhanced parental involvement and interest in childhood development and opportunities for valuable family education.
Universal preschool does best when it includes children from al! socioeconomic backgrounds, which will be the case in Hawaii, “reschools have been viewed nationally as a silver bullet that can cure complex economic and social ills that have led to political division and considerable income inequity.
Early learning led by well-qualified, well-compensated teachers is a significant contribution to Hawaii, but it is not alone a panacea. But given the opportunities to create good social and educational trajectories for children, substantial investments in academic quality must also be on Hawaii’s legislative agenda.
In 2023, the shrinking of the early educational workforce due to the prolonged period of Covid-19 and demographic and economic changes have moved up the issue of rebuilding a high-quality workforce. The crisis in the number of teachers also results in part from poor compensation, Hawaii’s housing shortage, and the high cost of living. Solutions will require joint efforts by private early education funders and state and federal government action.
The Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation is committed to restoring adequate numbers of well-educated early learning educators. To that end, we have sought opportunities to work with the government for system-wide change. The Castle Foundation worked with House of Representatives Education Chair Justin Woodson and advocates such as Kamehameha Schools to pass a bill to fund tuition stipends at the University of Hawaii’s campuses. Our role was to promise to fund the first three years of the Stipend Bill with the hope and expectation that the state government would fully fund the program when finances allowed. The Castle Foundation provided $100,000 as its first-year funding and pledged another $200,000 (total) for 2024 and 2025 if needed. In 2023, we celebrated at a gathering of many political leaders and UH officials at Castle Memorial Hall to celebrate supplemental funding authorized by the legislature and signed by Governor Josh Green. The legislature provided matching funds of $660,000. The stipends covered tuition and fees for students willing to teach in Hawaii for at least two years. The first four outstanding students covered by Castle Foundation stipends gave compelling personal stories at the gathering.
In addition, we are making another $125,000 in regular scholarship dollars across the 10-campus University of Hawaii. Chaminade University of Honolulu has also received $135,000 in scholarships for its educational program for early learning educators. We intend to support both the University of Hawaii and the Marianist liberal arts Chaminade University indefinitely with scholarships and instructional augmentation dollars as part of our effort to interest young students in the field.
To ensure underserved rural students are not left out, we are working with Kamehameha Schools and the Weinberg Foundation to connect high school students with Hawaii Community College on Hawaii Island and the University of Hawaii-Hilo. The connection through scholarships and apprenticeships is intended to create new career choices and opportunities for a population left out of traditional college recruitment and career information.
The number of teachers alone will not be enough. High-quality university instruction must be supplemented by investment in ongoing education for existing teachers. Hawaii’s public preschools and elementary schools provide decent compensation and public dollars for continuing education. In 2023, Governor Green announced a 14% pay raise for all educators pre-k to grade 12. The private preschools, however, cannot match that level of compensation, and many underinvest in ongoing professional educational opportunities.
The Castle Foundation alone cannot make enormous grants to provide equity in private preschool education. It does, however. Substantially invest in professional development opportunities through such programs as arts education, special teacher instruction in social-emotional learning and early mathematics and early literacy, STEM, and faith-based pre-k instruction. Through our ongoing commitment to accreditation for preschools state-wide, we also sequester funds for required teacher training and PD as part of the accreditation and re-accreditation process. We will continue proactively seeking new forms of teacher education as we highly value better outcomes for children due to better teaching.
Finally, in the coming years, we will retain our desire to co-fund early learning with other local, regional and national private foundations, educational organizations, and the federal and state governments. We may also want to support another attempt to ask the public to amend the constitution to allow public tax dollars to be invested in private preschools. In many states, such a mixed delivery system has reduced cost and stabilized the finances of the private educational sector that now educates about 90% of our three and four-year-olds. To make this happen, we will need leadership from our political leaders and continued investment in public information and advocacy by private donors and institutions. Perhaps most important, it will take enthusiastic support from families and early educators.
From its 19th-century origins, the Castle Foundation has sought and worked to benefit from the national foundation and academic partners. Part of this work with national donors has entailed sharing ideas with our partners about what Hawaii’s early education sector does exceptionally well and what is still needed to ensure more significant educational equity. In 2023, working with our early education colleagues in the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative in Washington, DC, Partners in Development Foundation’s CEO, Dr. Shawn Kana’iaupuni, joined Al Castle in November at ECFC’s semi-annual conference. An expert in curricular and teaching evaluation of young children, Shawn and PIDF have been grantees for several years. The organization, started by an educational and community leader, Jan Dill, has innovated in cultural-based early learning and developmental curricula for infants and toddlers. Hawaii has been a national leader in cultural-based early education, as the national foundation is increasingly interested in a more significant opportunity for early education and care in America’s indigenous population. Shawn shares the latest information about Hawaii’s pioneering with a cultural renaissance, a language rebirth, and innovations in parent education and education. Hawaii has been blessed with grants in the tens of millions of dollars over the past 20 years from prominent foundations such as the WK Kellogg Foundation. The state is regularly visited by Native American educators and Funders interested in seeing the power of Hawaiian culture in improving outcomes for young children and families. In 2023, two of our dozen infant and toddler providers state-wide have been indigenous-governed, managed, and staffed by Hawaiian educators and community leaders. The Castle Foundation looks forward to our continuing investments in our host culture in 2024 and beyond.
On August 8, 2023, Lahaina, Maui, once the historic capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was destroyed in massive fires. Maui County was unprepared for such a catastrophic event, which killed at least 98 people and destroyed over 2,200 structures. Some twelve daycare and preschool facilities and providers saw programs destroyed. Massive amounts of federal, state, and county funding are helping the community to recover. Still, total recovery will take years and perhaps a decade to effect. The Castle Foundation immediately provided $100,000 for relief measures within three days of the fires. We are working with the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund and leveraging our dollars with the dollars of numerous corporations, foundations, community groups, and individuals. Our resolve remains to assist Lahaina’s early education and care community and provide primary trauma-informed care to the area’s Keiki. We will focus on these efforts in multiple ways throughout 2024 and perhaps beyond. To that end, we envision investing much of our popular preschool tuition dollars in Maui at least through 2024. Our infant-toddler provider partners are already providing services, and a few of the area private preschools are planning to apply for our RFPs in tuition assistance, quality enhancements described on the national NAEYC standards, and minor capital improvements. Finally, we look forward to working with our community partners in the public and private sectors. The goal of universal access to high-quality learning and universally nurtured, safe, and healthy infant toddlers is our passion and our guide to philanthropic action.
Hawaii faces significant challenges but also possesses a diversity talents in our population. We look forward to our family foundation’s role in making the possibilities for equitable and outstanding outcomes for children and families realities.
Alfred L. Castle
Executive Director and Treasurer
November 1, 2023