Legally-Exempt Child Care

Legally-Exempt Child Care: What Does it Mean in New York State?

Asil Ali Özdoğru, Rebekah M. Widrick, and Jessica Klos Shapiro

While it is widely accepted that high-quality care is important to future outcomes, a significant number of New York’s young children are receiving care in a setting known as legally-exempt child care which is subject to minimal regulation and oversight. There is little information about the quality of this form of child care and many questions about the impact on children. New York uses more of its federal child care funding on legallyexempt care in comparison to other states. In 2011, New York State had a capacity for 680 thousand children in its licensed and registered child care system. In the same year, 246 thousand children received subsidized child care. Over 95 thousand of the children in subsidized care received legally-exempt care.

This paper provides a look at the legallyexempt child care in New York by reviewing research on unlicensed child care, examining how other states support legally-exempt care, and identifying key issues for further research and discussion. The paper lays out the known and unknown conditions and outcomes of legally-exempt child care with the goal of drawing attention to legally-exempt care and initiating a discussion on the accessibility and affordability of quality child care for all citizens of New York.  Policy recommendations are included for further discussion.

Press Release: What is legally-exempt child care? (February 12, 2013)
http://earlycareandlearning.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-is-legally-exempt-child-care.html

Citation: Özdoğru, A. A., Widrick, R., & Klos Shapiro, J. (2013). Legally-exempt child care: What does it mean in New York State? Albany, NY: Early Care & Learning Council. Retrieved from http://www.earlycareandlearning.org/resources/documents/LegallyExemptChildCareWhatdoesitMeaninNewYork_001.pdf

Humor 2013

Humorous Cartoons in College Textbooks: Student Perceptions and Learning

Asil Ali Özdoğru and Robert F. McMorris

We investigated effects of humorous cartoons on students' perceptions and learning of psychological concepts with sense of humor as a moderator. One hundred fifty-six college students studied six one-page concept presentations, three with and three without content-related cartoons. All students responded to the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, multiple-choice test items on the given concepts, and survey items including demographic questions and Likert-scale items on their perceptions of the concept presentations. Students reported favorable attitudes for inserting cartoons in reading passages. However, there was no apparent effect of humorous cartoons on students' learning of the concepts. Methodological considerations are discussed in terms of their likely effects on the findings of the study and suggestions for further research are offered.

Keywords: humorous cartoons; humor in learning; memory; student perceptions of humor; sense of humor

Citation: Özdoğru, A. A., & McMorris, R. F. (2013). Humorous cartoons in college textbooks: Student perceptions and learning. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 26, 135–154. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humor-2013-0008