EXCERPTS:
Our 2011 State Preschool Yearbook
got a lot of attention for sounding the alarm on decreasing per-child
funding threatening program quality. Nothing is more important for
providing a high-quality early education than highly effective teachers
and assistant teachers. NIEER’s research-based quality standards benchmarks credit teacher requirements in five different ways:
· Lead teachers must have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent;
· Lead teachers must have specialized training in early childhood education;
· Assistant teachers must have a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential or equivalent;
· Lead teachers must receive at least 15 clock hours per year (or 6 credit hours per 5 years) of professional development; and,
· Regular site visits are conducted to monitor program implementation.
Of the 39 states offering state-funded pre-K in the 2010-2011 year,
only eight states (plus the Louisiana NSECD program) met all five of
these benchmarks for lead and assistant teachers. A related issue is
teacher pay, which is on average much lower in preschools than in
elementary schools. Although 19 states required all lead teachers to
have a BA with specialized training, a mere 7 states had this
requirement and pay them comparably to kindergarten teacher salary as of 2009-2010.
As can be seen in the graph below, the percent of programs meeting
each teacher qualification benchmark has certainly increased over time,
though some more so than others. For example, the increase in programs
requiring at least 15 hours per year of professional development—from 64
percent to 84 percent—indicates a growing understanding that continued
support for teachers is necessary beyond just initial training. The
growth in requiring lead teachers to have a BA has been comparatively
slow, but is especially laudable considering the economic difficulties
of the last decade and the fact that more advanced teacher degrees
likely drive up the program costs.
Where programs still consistently fall short is in the qualifications
required of assistant teachers—only 26 percent of programs required
assistant teachers to have a CDA in 2001-2002, which increased to only
31 percent of programs in 2010-2011. Only two programs exceeded the
benchmark by requiring an AA for assistant teachers in all settings of
their preschool programs (i.e., nonpublic and public), while at least
four programs had no formal educational requirements for their assistant
teachers. It is clear that the focus over the last decade has been
strengthening lead teacher requirements, perhaps out of the assumption
that these teachers have the bulk of the interaction with children.
However, considering that most programs require an assistant teacher in
order to meet the 1:10 staff-to-child ratio we look for, assistant
teachers have a clear presence in the early childhood classroom. If
preschool programs are truly to have effective team teaching, states
must provide adequate pay, supports and training for assistant teachers
to ensure all staff interactions with children are of high-quality and
developmentally appropriate.
The question of how to ensure we have great teachers in pre-K
classrooms is not only for program administrators to answer; teacher
preparation programs need to step up. A recent study from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment explored higher education programs that prepare early childhood education teachers. As noted by Laura Bornfreund of the New America Foundation, diversity across states makes good data hard to come by:
“…[E]arly childhood preparation programs vary greatly for
a few reasons. States lack common education and licensing standards
for teachers of children, birth to 5. Some states don’t require student
teaching at all. At the institution level, preparation programs are
often housed in different departments. Some may be based in the School
of Education but often they are located elsewhere, such as Family and
Consumer Science Departments, for example. And when early childhood
preparation programs say that they are including infants and toddlers in
their scope, they may primarily address K-3.”
In educational settings, diversity is a wonderful thing—there’s
hardly a loftier educational goal than students and staff from different
backgrounds working and learning together. But the current diversity in
the requirements and quality of teacher preparation programs has
nothing to do with ensuring that the teaching force is diverse and
produces a cacophony of bureaucracy and lack of standardization in
preparation that serves neither teachers nor students well.
All this comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report
on the early child care and education (ECCE) workforce that found the
1.8 million employees in pre-K, child care, and Head Start are still
faced with low levels of education and compensation. The report found
that preschool teachers, who were the highest paid among these
professionals, still only made about $18,000 per year (excluding pre-K
teachers in elementary schools). Data from the American Communities
Survey indicated that 72 percent of these workers lacked an associate’s
degree or higher. Clearly, the preparation, support, and compensation of
today’s early childhood workforce is out of sync with what we know is
best to provide our children with a high-quality early education.
Despite these challenges, ECCE teaching staff do the best they can for
our children, understanding that, as Garrison Keillor said, “Nothing you
do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering,
averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them
is never wasted.”
So to the 1.8 million ECCE teachers out there—thanks on behalf of the millions of young children you serve everyday!
- reprinted from Preschool Matters blog