全球智库信息集成服务系统

America’s economy is dependent in no small measure on the 2 million educators who comprise the early childhood workforce.¹ Without this largely female workforce, millions of working parents with no or few high-quality child care options would be unable to participate in the U.S. labor force. Despite the importance of early childhood educators—to the economy, parents, and young children—low wages, minimal benefits, and a lack of professional supports are commonplace.

One of those early educators is Carmella Salinas, who was interviewed by The New York Times in July 2016.² According to The New York Times, Salinas earns just $12.89 per hour as a teacher in a child care center in Española, New Mexico, after almost 15 years in the field. Her center cannot afford to provide her with benefits, so she is limited to working 32 hours per week. This past summer, however, Salinas was without work because not enough parents could afford the center’s full tuition, which is offset by pre-K funds during the school year. Salinas had to wait for a new school year to begin in September when state pre-K funds could pay her salary.

The volatility of her wage situation has taken a toll on Salinas and her family. She struggles to afford her utility bills, and it takes her months to save enough money to cover additional expenses such as car repairs. At one point, Salinas got a second job to supplement her child care wages. She then earned too much to qualify for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program but too little to comfortably afford groceries and the two inhalers she needs for her chronic asthma. Salinas told The New York Times that she found herself rationing the medication—taking just one puff instead of four per day—to save money.

The story from The New York Times went on to explain that many early educators—including Salinas—have limited opportunities for career advancement. Although policymakers and researchers increasingly see a bachelor’s degree as a needed credential for high-quality care programs, degree programs are inaccessible to many teachers. While New Mexico, for example, offers a stipend to help teachers earn degrees and stay in the field, underfunding means that the program nevertheless falls far short of covering the cost of attending and graduating from college for many teachers. Salinas’ stipend only covers one class per semester, but there is simply no way she can afford the cost of extra classes on top of meeting basic needs.³ Consequently, she has been taking classes toward her bachelor’s degree for more than a decade.

Salinas’ experience is not unique: Early educators across the country struggle to make ends meet on dismal wages and limited benefits. Child care workers and preschool teachers are in the bottom quintile of annual salaries in the United States, averaging less than $30,000 per year.⁴ Child care workers are also less likely to have benefits compared with similar workers in other industries.⁵ When the adults working in early childhood programs face stress associated with poverty and income volatility, the children they serve are affected as well. Research consistently shows that high-quality early childhood programs depend on a professional, well-compensated, and skilled workforce, but early childhood educators remain underpaid and undervalued in the current U.S. early childhood education system.

Low wages and limited professional development opportunities are symptoms of an early childhood system that is underresourced and fragmented. States have made laudable efforts over the past decade to professionalize the early childhood field with limited resources. However, these efforts have generally been piecemeal—applying only to particular teachers in particular programs—or have lacked robust funding sources to meet the workforce’s needs. Moving forward, the workforce must be a priority in comprehensive legislation for early childhood care and education. In addition to increasing funding levels, the federal government must craft comprehensive policies to ensure that early childhood workers receive adequate compensation, benefits, and support for their professional growth—no matter where they work or who they serve.

This report identifies six policies that the federal government should include as part of significant federal financing reform for early care and education. These policies will be implemented in partnership with states and communities. 

• Develop and maintain a comprehensive professional development system with stable funding and measures for quality assurance.

• Develop or revise statewide career pathways that provide a road map for early childhood professionals to advance in their careers through increasing levels of education, experience, demonstrated competencies, and compensation.

• Make progress toward compensation and benefit standards at parity with kindergarten teachers.

• Promote data-driven policies and programs for the workforce with a statewide workforce registry.

• Bolster scholarship programs for early educators.

• Reward degree completion with wage supplements or tax credits.

With more than 6 million children in child care and preschool,⁶ early educators play a significant role in young children’s daily lives. The country’s underresourced and fragmented early childhood system undermines the quality of care and education that these workers can provide. The federal government must work with states to implement coordinated, integrated policies to promote a diverse early childhood workforce that is skilled, supported, and adequately compensated.

The challenges facing teachers such as Carmella Salinas reflect the shortcomings of the child care and early education system as a whole, which is underresourced and fragmented. Teachers work in a variety of settings, including public schools, private child care centers, and targeted preschool programs such as Head Start.⁷ Public funds for child care typically include per-child rates that assume historically low wages for providers.⁸ In the private market, most parents cannot afford higher fees, but current prices do not allow for needed wage increases, comprehensive benefits, and supports for professional development.⁹

Unsurprisingly, poor pay and higher levels of teacher stress are associated with lower observed classroom quality in early childhood programs.¹⁰ Moreover, programs that serve predominantly low-income children are especially less likely to have the resources to compensate and support highly qualified teachers, meaning that these children may be experiencing high levels of stress from multiple sources.¹¹

Fragmented policies and inadequate resources present significant barriers to creating a high-quality early childhood system. These challenges include inadequate compensation and benefits, inconsistent workforce standards, and uncoordinated professional development systems.

Inadequate compensation and benefits

A poorly resourced early childhood system means that early educators’ salaries are low, averaging less than $15 per hour and below compensation levels for other industries.¹² Almost half of all child care workers are enrolled in at least one public assistance program.¹³ Salary data are more difficult to quantify in the home-based child care workforce, but among listed providers,¹⁴ one-third lived in households with incomes below $35,000 per year.¹⁵ Data on early educators’ access to and utilization of benefits are fairly limited. One analysis found that less than 40 percent of child care workers and preschool teachers had access to health insurance through their employers, and less than one-third had access to retirement plans.¹⁶

While wages are low across the board, there are also persistent inequities in teachers’ compensation and benefits within the system itself.¹⁷ Disparities exist across program sponsorship—such as state-funded pre-K and federally funded Head Start—as well as across age ranges. Notably, public investments in infants and toddlers are lacking: The majority of infant and toddler teachers are privately funded through parent fees, and the cost of infant care is higher than care for preschool-age children. The average annual salary for an infant and toddler teacher is almost $9,000 less than that of a preschool teacher.¹⁸ Meanwhile, teachers and lead teachers in school-sponsored early education programs—specifically programs that are administered by a local school district—typically fare the best, earning an average of $23.50 per hour.¹⁹ However, salaries for pre-K teachers in public schools remain significantly lower than those for similarly qualified kindergarten teachers.²⁰

Economic stress has a profound negative impact on physical and mental health.²¹ When teachers are unsure of how they can pay their bills or put food on the table, it is infinitely more difficult to focus on the needs of the children in their care.²² These stressors are exacerbated by variable work schedules and a lack of or limited benefits such as paid time off and employer-sponsored health insurance. In a survey of California’s early childhood workforce, one-third of all educators expressed concern about having their hours or benefits cut.²³

Poor compensation undermines efforts to recruit a highly qualified workforce. Early childhood education has the lowest lifetime earning potential of all college majors,²⁴ likely reducing the field’s appeal for new graduates, particularly those with significant student debt. Low wages and poor benefits also affect retention.²⁵ Among centers that experienced any turnover in 2012, the average turnover rate was 25 percent.²⁶ Some teachers leave the field altogether, while others remain in education but seek higher-paying positions with better benefits and supports.²⁷

Inconsistent standards for the workforce

Like wages, baseline standards for teachers’ credentials are too low and inconsistent across states. Perhaps because wages are so low, only 11 states have a minimum education requirement beyond a high school diploma for teachers in center-based child care settings outside of public pre-K. Just two states require a Child Development Associate Credential or vocational training for both center- and home-based staff.³³ These minimal requirements are inconsistent with the importance of the work. From birth, children experience rapid growth and development that lay a foundation for future success. Early childhood teachers face a demanding and complex set of tasks each day: They must manage challenging behavior; identify warning signs of developmental delays; and engage in developmentally appropriate interactions with the children in their care.³⁴

Publicly funded pre-K programs—serving 3- and 4-year-old children—typically have higher standards for teacher qualifications. Roughly half of all state pre-K programs require that lead teachers have a bachelor’s degree to teach in both district schools and community-based programs. Teachers with higher levels of education are commonly incentivized to leave lower-paying private or Head Start programs for school-based pre-K, which may offer more professional work environments and higher compensation.³⁵

Uncoordinated professional development systems

Professional development encompasses education, training, and technical assistance, including coursework toward a degree or credential, basic health and safety trainings, skill development workshops, and ongoing mentoring or coaching.³⁶ High-quality, effective professional development is important to support teachers’ practical skills in the classroom and to promote career advancement. However, the existing professional development systems reflect the underresourced and fragmented early childhood system itself.

Despite the availability of resources and support from the early childhood field,³⁷ most states have no comprehensive system for professional development, meaning that training requirements and how teachers access professional development vary considerably by program and setting. Public programs typically have more resources to support early educators’ participation in professional development. For example, teachers in Head Start or other publicly funded pre-K programs with relatively robust budgets are more likely to receive on-the-job training.³⁸ Publicly funded programs are also more likely to incorporate professional development opportunities into the school calendar, so teachers are not required to take paid or unpaid time off to fulfill training requirements. Conversely, teachers in private programs are often required to participate in off-site trainings or college coursework in the evenings or on the weekends.³⁹ Even in public programs, resources for professional development are commonly too limited to provide intensive, ongoing support such as coaching and mentoring. (see Figure 1)

Without a centralized system of professional development, workshops, trainings, and college coursework all operate largely in isolation from one another. Consequently, professional development content is not necessarily aligned with the most recent research, standards of practice, or needs of employers.⁴⁰ In addition, the skills and competencies that are acquired through professional development or coursework do not necessarily translate into progress toward advanced degrees or credentials. This is extremely costly to an already low-wage workforce, both in time and money.

Supporting a diverse early childhood workforce

As of 2015, children of color comprised more than half of the population of children under age 5.⁴¹ As the population of young children continues to diversify, it is critical to ensure that the demographics of the workforce reflect those of the children in its care. The early childhood workforce is relatively diverse at present—particularly compared with the K-12 workforce. (see Figure 2) Maintaining and building diversity in the field should be a parallel goal to professionalization.

Teachers of color tend to be employed in positions with lower credential requirements and lower compensation relative to white early educators.⁴² Consequently, the challenges of working in the field—including poor pay, lack of benefits and supports, and increasing educational demands—have a disproportionate impact on teachers of color, who have also historically faced more systemic barriers to higher education. Early educators of color are also more likely to report that the cost of higher education is an obstacle to advancing their careers in early childhood education.⁴³ Recent analysis showed a significant pay gap of 84 cents on the dollar for African American teachers compared with white, non-Hispanic teachers.⁴⁴

Policymakers must ensure that more stringent credential requirements are accompanied by comprehensive support for teachers’ continuing education and training. Targeted supports for working student teachers—such as scholarship programs, evening or online classes, and coursework offered in multiple languages—can help maintain diversity and reduce stratification across roles.⁴⁵

Significant advancements in early care and education policy are long overdue. It is critical that the United States shifts away from piecemeal initiatives toward comprehensive reform. Future legislation must infuse enough funding to simultaneously reduce costs for low- and middle-income families, promote high-quality services, and improve conditions for the workforce. The Center for American Progress proposed one possible approach that would expand tax credits for child care and funding for voluntary universal preschool—calibrated to the cost of operating full-day, high-quality programs.⁴⁶ These strategies would provide programs with higher levels of funding per child, which would serve to boost early educator salaries.

On top of a new financing approach, reform must address the existing barriers and challenges created by historical underfunding and fragmentation. Solutions aimed at only addressing one problem—such as increasing education and training requirements without improving compensation—will likely exacerbate the existing problems with turnover and have a disproportionate impact on teachers from lower-income communities and the children they serve.

The following six policies should be incorporated into federal reform for early childhood care and education with the goal of promoting a professional early childhood workforce. These policies should ultimately be implemented by states in partnership with the federal government.

Develop and maintain a comprehensive professional development system

States need coordinated professional development systems to prepare and train a skilled early childhood workforce. The benefits of professional development are maximized through a coordinated network of education, training, and technical assistance.⁴⁷ Various forms of professional development should both align with and inform one another such that they work in combination to provide teachers with core knowledge and skills.

Federal legislation must include a stable federal investment that, in combination with state dollars, funds the development and maintenance of comprehensive professional development systems. These systems should be available to teachers across programs, settings, and roles. States should work with stakeholders—including institutes of higher education, vocational or technical schools, professional development providers, and other credentialing bodies—to design a system of professional development opportunities that meets the following criteria:

• Has credentials with labor market value. Credentials have labor market value when they qualify early educators to fulfill a particular role or position.⁴⁸ More advanced credentials should allow teachers to progress forward on a given state’s early childhood career pathway, leading to more advanced roles and higher compensation.⁴⁹

• Has portable credentials. Credentials should be portable or widely accepted as a verification of teacher qualifications.⁵⁰ This means credentials are acknowledged across educational institutions; program settings; and ultimately, across states. A teacher with a particular credential should be qualified to fulfill a corresponding role in a child care center, Head Start, or state pre-K classroom.⁵¹

• Has stackable credentials. Stackable credentials build upon each other, are reflective of increasing knowledge and skill, and typically connect progressive levels of education.⁵² Stackable credentials can help early educators make the jump from shorter-term certificate programs to longer-term degree programs.

• Is accessible. Education and training must be targeted to early educators balancing coursework with full- or part-time employment. Programs should be available through a mixture of online and in-person mediums, during the evenings and weekends, and in accessible locations. Coursework and training must also be available in multiple languages to support non-native speakers.

• Extends beyond traditional coursework. Teachers should have the opportunity to participate in shorter-term workshops and trainings that target specific knowledge or skills and complement classroom-based learning. For example, a teacher might participate in a series of workshops related to integrating technology into the classroom or effective data collection practices. Trainings and workshops should be augmented by supervised practice in the classroom. In particular, states should establish forms of continuous technical assistance such as mentoring and coaching to support ongoing skill development.

• Provides credit for prior learning. Early educators should have opportunities to demonstrate what they kn