The Teacher Quality Debates: Why Early Ed is Different

If the think-tank policy paper mill is any indication of issue salience, teacher quality is a hot topic right now – as it should be. Teachers are critical to students’ academic success, yet many students do not have high-quality teachers, and many of the best teachers are set to retire in the coming years.

Unfortunately, discussions on how to improve teacher quality often ignore the unique challenges of improving teaching in early education. Early education faces many of the same teacher quality issues as elsewhere in the K-12 sector, such as large numbers of teachers who are not trained in the subjects they teach and the fact that the best teachers tend to gravitate towards low-poverty schools. But there are some important differences that affect how well some proposed policy changes will work for our youngest learners.

Why early education is different

Early education teachers work in a marketplace that is fundamentally different from the marketplace for other public school teachers. While most K-12 teachers work in public schools, under standardized qualification requirements and salary scales, early educators work in much more diverse settings. Many–including early elementary and some pre-k teachers– work in the public school system. But early educators also work in private or community-based settings. These teachers often have lower qualifications, and receive lower compensation, than teachers in public systems. The average salary for teachers in center-based pre-k is about $10 an hour, contributing not only to low teacher quality, but high turnover as well.

Given the rapid growth of early education across the nation, efforts to improve teacher quality are further complicated by the fact that demand for high-quality early educators outpaces the supply. Unfortunately, the number of early education teacher certification programs-both in universities and the increasingly popular “alternative certification” programs-is inadequate to meet growing demand for qualified early educators, and many programs are not of adequate quality to prepare highly skilled teachers specializing in young children’s needs.

Once teachers are in the classroom, policymakers face a third challenge: measuring performance. Education reformers increasingly call for policies that link teacher compensation to their students’ performance on standardized tests, but these proposals rely on assessments that rarely extend below third grade. Valid assessments of young children’s learning do exist: There are a variety of quality assessments to monitor younger students’ progress and guide instructional decisions. But when compared to assessments used in the upper grades, these assessments are generally not reliable enough to provide an adequate basis for designing performance-pay systems or other high-stakes decisions. Classroom quality assessments, such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), offer an alternative way to evaluate teaching using valid, reliable assessments of the quality of interactions between teachers and students. Early education systems are increasingly using CLASS, but K-12 policymakers have shown little interest in it, even though it can be used in the elementary grades. The challenge is finding a way to seamlessly link different age-appropriate accountability systems together.

Ways to bring the two together

Right now, we seem to be having two entirely separate discussions on teacher quality–one at the K-12 level, and one in early education–but there are steps that policymakers can take to bring them together:

1. Start thinking about early education teacher quality in tandem with overall PK-12 efforts, while recognizing that different age ranges each pose different demands on quality. Several existing teacher quality initiatives can support quality teaching in early education. Federal and state policymakers must provide additional clarification and guidance for local policymakers and practitioners on how they can use these funds for early education. Integrated teacher quality discussions are a step towards aligned PK-12 education, which is especially important in the early grades.
2. Raise teacher qualification standards for publicly funded pre-k to match those of K-12. If we are going to talk about pre-k teacher quality and K-12 in the same breath, teachers need to be starting from the same level. This effort will require one-time investments to help current teachers obtain higher qualifications while also improving the quantity and quality of teacher education programs. In particular, the federal Head Start program, which by law needs to have half of its staff holding an bachelors degree by 2011, could be investing more of its own money to bring all of their instructors to that level.
3. Beef up teacher preparation programs for early educators, and strengthen the early education component of teacher preparation programs for early elementary educators. Place a particular focus on programs that allow returning teachers to get more qualifications or students to transfer from community colleges in to a four-year program. As we have proposed earlier, the forthcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law presents an opportunity for a “Pathways to Pre-kindergarten Teaching” certification program to boost the number of B.A.-qualified teachers in growing state pre-k programs.
4. Streamline teacher certification credentials, both within and between states. Aspiring teachers face many credential options — such as N-2, K-3, K-6, and PK-2 –which creates confusion and prevents many quality teachers from moving into grades where they are needed. Often these credentials do not transfer if teachers decide to move to another state. We need to return to the drawing board and create a system that ensures teachers master the content and skills necessary to teach students across the PK-3 continuum while providing them the flexibility to work with students across this age span.
5. Keep working towards universal pre-k. Voluntary pre-k for all who want it is not only a way to ensure that all children are kindergarten-ready, but it is a way to make private and community-based programs compete with public pre-k. A diverse-delivery marketplace for pre-k encourage low-quality providers to step up, while giving the most at-risk children access to high-quality teachers, regardless of their family income.
6. A call for more research. Every day we learn more about how young children learn. Whatever we do, research-based methods must stay at the center of any policy debate on teacher quality.