Low pay and unequal wages make it hard to recruit and retain the high-quality early educators that young children need to thrive in early care and education (ECE) programs. Not only are early educator wages lower than those of comparable workers, but there may also be racial and ethnic wage disparities within the ECE workforce. Using a…

An all too common complaint in the early childhood field is that low salaries for preschool teachers and lack of pay parity with K-12 teachers in the public schools creates serious problems. These include low morale and difficulty recruiting and retaining strong preschool teachers. State policies can contribute to or resolve these problems in…

This is the executive summary for the report, "From Unlivable Wages to Just Pay for Early Educators." Teaching in early care and education (ECE) programs is one of the lowest-paid occupations in the United States. Low wages for early educators are not a new challenge. Compensation has been low in this field since its inception, but only…

One of the goals of pre-K programs funded by states is to support the learning and development of young children. Research finds that only high-quality programs can achieve positive, long-term outcomes in areas such as student achievement, educational attainment, personal and social behavior (e.g., reductions in crime), and adult health and…

For state-funded preschool programs the compensation of teachers is a critical issue for program quality and effectiveness. If preschool programs are to attract and retain teachers comparable to those in primary schools, preschool teachers must receive comparable pay and benefits. This brief assesses compensation parity between state-funded…

Although the phrase "compensation parity policy" for preschool teachers may seem clear at first, the term is used in a variety of ways and refers to a range of different policies. All of these policies seek to improve the financial rewards for teaching preschool relative to teaching older children, but they differ in how far they go…

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE), in partnership with the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), has produced a series of materials that explore state policy efforts to move toward compensation parity between pre-K and K-3 teachers. This report forms the third part of the series, examining a small set of…

To date, 29 public pre-K programs in 23 states and one U.S. territory have established salary or compensation parity policies to address low and disparate levels of workforce compensation in the early care and education (ECE) field (Friedman-Krauss & Kasmin, 2018). These policies aim to raise the pay or compensation of ECE teachers to the…

Teaching in early care and education (ECE) programs is one of the lowest-paid occupations in the United States. Low wages for early educators are not a new challenge. Compensation has been low in this field since its inception, but only recently have the public, policymakers, and other stakeholders begun to appreciate the full ramifications of…

In the past decade, various stakeholders in the public and private sectors in Hawai'i have sought to increase the state's investment in child care and early learning programs. A new Executive Office of Early Learning was established in June 2012 to build a statewide early childhood development and learning system. The state also established a…

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…

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…

The purpose of this study is to examine the level of teacher stress experienced by Turkish early childhood education teachers working in public and private preschools serving children from three to six years of age. The participants of the study include 1119 early childhood education teachers gathered through simple random sampling. The data are…

Child care is the first out-of-home learning opportunity for many children. For low-income children, a high-quality child care placement can provide many of the experiences and skills that help build a foundation for later school success. Among the many measures of child care quality, some closely linked to later success in school are those…

This report explores the extent to which states (and several large cities) are positioned to provide high quality preschool education on a large scale. States and cities that are already doing so or that could do so with modest improvements offer opportunities for advocacy to advance access to high quality early education as well as for rigorous…