Living: The Child-Care Dilemma

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Not all day-care centers are so conscientious. Day-care staffers rank in the lowest 10% of U.S. wage earners, a fact that contributes to an average turnover rate of 36% a year. Says Caroline Zinsser of the Center for Public Advocacy Research in Manhattan: "It says something about our society's values that we pay animal caretakers more than people who care for our children." Gilda Ongkeko is delighted with the quality of the Hill an' Dale Family Learning Center in Santa Monica, Calif., attended by Jason, 4. In her job as owner of a preschool-supply company, she has come to appreciate how unusual it is. "I've been to over 1,000 child-care centers," she says, "and I'd say that 90% of them should be shut down. It's pathetic."

Experts worry that a two-tier system is emerging, with quality care available to the affluent, and everyone else settling for less. "We are at about the same place with child care as we were when we started universal education," says Zigler of Yale. "Then some kids were getting Latin and Greek and being prepared for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Other kids were lucky if they could learn to write their own name."

In 1827 Massachusetts led the way to universal education by becoming the first state to require towns with 500 or more families to build high schools. Now it is showing the way to universal child care. Aided by a booming economy, the state has worked out a program with employers, school boards, unions and nonprofit groups to encourage the expansion and improvement of child-care facilities. Small companies and groups can receive low-interest loans from the state to build day-care facilities. Funds are earmarked for creating centers in public housing projects. School systems can get financial aid for after- school programs. A statewide referral network serves both individual parents and corporations looking for child care.

Emilia Davis, 38, of Boston's working-class Roslindale section, is the beneficiary of another of the state's far-reaching programs. After years of dependence on welfare to support herself and her five children, Davis, who is separated from her husband, is now going to college with the ultimate hope of finding a job. The state's E.T. (employment and training) program provides her with vouchers for day care in the public housing complex where she lives. "Child care is an absolute precondition if one is serious about trying to help people lift themselves out of poverty," insists Governor Dukakis. Though the state will spend an estimated $27 million on day care under the E.T. program this year -- and a total of $101 million on all child-care related services -- it claims to have saved $121 million in welfare costs last year alone. Next month the state will begin a pilot program that will pay 20% to 40% of child-care costs for 150 working-class families.

San Francisco has adopted another innovative approach. It requires developers of major new commercial office and hotel space to include an on- site child-care center or pay $1 per sq. ft. of space to the city's child- care fund. The state of California is spending $319 million this year on child-care subsidies for 100,000 children. It also funds a network of 72 resource and referral agencies.