This report examines the demographic, educational, and employment characteristics (including compensation and benefits) of staff employed in center-based ECE [early care and education] programs throughout Marin County. The findings bring attention to the low wages and economic insecurity of the ECE workforce, particularly against a backdrop of one…

Often overlooked in discussions related to how to ensure accessible and affordable high-quality early childhood education is the heavy burden that has been carried by the early childhood workforce; the data reveal a level of exploitation of this workforce that must be considered and addressed. This chapter will focus attention on the economic…

Safety net programs emerging from the War on Poverty and later antipoverty efforts such as Head Start, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among others have reduced poverty, and strengthened longer-term outcomes for poor children, leading to better health and greater economic…

Most early educators are paid less than $15 per hour, and many of them report high levels of economic insecurity evidenced by their worry about meeting monthly family expenses or paying for bare necessities such as food and housing. Coupled with low wages, few early educators can expect to work in settings that provide basic professional supports…

Great progress has been made in providing pre-kindergarten (pre-K) public education throughout the United States. The percentages of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled nationally have grown from 3% to 5% and 14% to 29%, respectively, between 2002 and 2015. By 2015, 42 states and the District of Columbia were in varying stages of offering pre-K programs…

The COVID-19 pandemic created a major upheaval to an already fragile early care and education (ECE) system. As a result of the pandemic, families face additional challenges accessing care and child care providers are experiencing greater financial difficulties and struggling to keep their programs open. The pandemic has also exacerbated the…

Despite increasing attention being paid to early childhood services as the foundation for lifelong learning, one issue seems to be consistently ignored--staff wages. The authors argue that this constitutes ongoing exploitation of childcare staff, and that this exploitation is a result of gendered and classed discourses around caring labour. As…

Many pre-K teachers across the nation are expected to earn a bachelor's degree, similar to their peers teaching older children. Yet salaries and benefits remain consistently lower for pre-K teachers than for elementary school teachers. Increasingly, compensation parity is perceived as an achievable policy goal rather than a lofty ideal, yet there…

There is well-established evidence that the quality of early childhood education workforce impacts upon children's learning. Attracting qualified teacher graduates to work in early childhood centres is an essential component towards the provision of quality care. Significant investment by the Australian Government has been made to prepare early…

The ECE workforce experiences high levels of stress, partly because they have low incomes and limited access to professional and personal supports for their own well-being. In addition, the ECE workforce experiences sociopolitical stressors (i.e., stressors that arise from political legislation or from political leaders' threatening rhetoric).…

Experts know that effective teachers are central to quality early care and education. It is no surprise, then, that many quality improvement efforts have focused on increasing education requirements for teachers and bolstering access to professional development and training. However the United States continues to pay most early childhood educators…

The State of the Early Childhood Workforce (SECW) Initiative is a groundbreaking multi-year project to shine a steady spotlight on the nation's early childhood workforce. The SECW Initiative is designed to challenge entrenched ideas and policies that maintain an inequitable and inadequate status quo for early educators and for the children and…

California offers an array of state and federally funded early care and education (ECE) programs for children birth to age 5, particularly those living in or near poverty. However, California's ECE system is complex and fragmented, often making it difficult for policymakers, providers, and families to understand. This brief, which is based on the…

Early care and education (ECE) can have a positive effect on many aspects of children's development, including the language, literacy, mathematics, executive functioning, and social-emotional competencies needed for a smooth transition into kindergarten and later life success. But for many families, high-quality ECE is out of reach. California has…

The aim of this article is to examine current national early years' policy reform, which emphasises the importance of service integration, national quality standards and a quality knowledge base for educators concerning the provision of early childhood education and care. Using Queensland, Australia, as an example, a policy discourse analysis…