The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) has released the Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024.
The index takes a rigorous look at the state of the workforce and shares recommendations on how to improve environments and outcomes for children and for early educators.
The index includes “a data snapshot of the national early care and education workforce” as well as data from all 50 states on educators’ wages and poverty rates.
The goal is to provide advocates and policymakers with the information they need to build stronger early childhood systems.
The need is huge. Covid reminded the country of how important early education and care programs are for families and for children’s long-term success. But once Covid ebbed, supportive federal funding expired, leaving early educators to struggle in cash-strapped settings.
As the index’s executive summary explains, “Despite their important work, complex skills, and considerable experience, early educators’ working conditions currently undermine their well-being and create devastating financial insecurity well into retirement age. In turn, these conditions lead to high turnover rates and teacher staffing shortages, which limit the availability of care for families.”
The key lesson for the country: “How early educators are treated affects how our children learn. Ensuring educators’ working conditions and well-being enables them to thrive as teachers and caregivers during the most important years of a child’s life.”
Massachusetts is a welcome exception. The state has invested its own funds in Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grants to continue the support that federal Covid funds provided.
Unfortunately, in every state, including Massachusetts, early childhood programs are plagued by low wages.
“The work of teaching and caring for young children is highly skilled and complex, yet employment in early care and education has largely failed to generate wages that allow early educators to meet their basic needs,” the index notes. “Instead, this career has been a pathway to poverty for many early educators, compromising not only their financial stability, but also their physical and mental well-being.”
“Nationally, early educators earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour. Hourly wages vary by location, ranging from $10.60 in Louisiana to $18.23 in Washington, D.C.”
In 2022, in Massachusetts, “the median wage for the ECE workforce was $16.95.”
In addition to low wages, “Poverty among early educators is nearly six times higher than among elementary school teachers.”
What can be done?
The index points to positive state actions. In 2023, for example, Vermont approved a payroll tax to raise revenue for early childhood programs. And Washington State has “made outstanding progress” on their education requirements, “changing their licensing rules to require an initial ECE certificate or equivalent, such as the CDA Credential, as a minimum for all early educators to work in center- or home-based programs.” Educators have until 2026 to complete these requirements, and the state provides grants to help them.
The index also highlights policy solutions to promote higher education, improve work environments, and increase salaries. These solutions include efforts to:
• “Ensure that all members of the current and future workforce have opportunities and support to acquire education and training at no personal financial cost.”
• “Design and fund specific strategies to facilitate the attainment of associate and bachelor’s degrees among historically oppressed racial and ethnic groups as well as individuals who speak English as a second language.”
• “Develop intentional mechanisms to engage educators as partners in the process of developing workplace standards to ensure these standards reflect their needs and experiences.”
• “Provide ongoing financial resources and technical assistance to enable programs to implement standards in a reasonable period of time and to sustain compliance with these standards over time.”
• Ensure “All ECE workers earn at least a locally assessed living wage”
• Address “Pay inequities, such as racial wage gaps or lower pay for infant and toddler teachers,” and
• provide benefits such as paid time off, comprehensive health insurance plans, and funding for retirement plans
As the report explains:
“To realize the vision of an early care and education (ECE) system in which all early educators are well compensated and supported to thrive requires a nationwide overhaul of the ECE system and vastly increased public investment. The current system overburdens parents financially, yet still underfunds programs and educators.”
“The time is past due to overcome sticker shock about the costs of an effective and equitable ECE system that is appropriately funded. Federal programs like the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), Head Start, and Preschool Development Grants Birth-Five (PDG B-5) continue to be important sources of funding for early care and education. Nevertheless, state policymakers have considerable leeway—and therefore, the responsibility—to prioritize early care and education in their own state budgets.”