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Developing a Bilingual Associate Degree Program for Spanish-Speaking Early Childhood Educators

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Introduction

On a brisk Saturday morning, a group of infant and toddler teachers is engaged in a discussion about what it means to be a leader. These educators are enrolled in the first cohort of an innovative associate degree program that is offering them coursework in their native language of Spanish. Their course instructor, Jill McFarren Aviles, asks them, “Cómo se relaciona el liderazgo con su trabajo sobre desarrollo infantil?” [How does leadership relate to your work in infant development?] One student explains, “Necesitamos estar abiertos a las ideas e intereses de los niños. No podemos decirles lo que tienen que hacer todo el tiempo. Debemos dejarlos explorar por sí solos.” [We need to be open to the ideas and interests of the children. We can’t just tell them what to do all of the time. We need to let the kids explore for themselves.]1 They continue the conversation and settle on one key ingredient to leadership: listening.

Indeed, the District of Columbia’s first Spanish-English associate degree program in infant and toddler education was the result of leaders listening to the needs of the field. Developed by leaders at the University of the District of Columbia Community College (UDC-CC) with input from community stakeholders and organizations, the program was a response to regulatory changes passed by the city in 2016 that sought to increase the education and credentials of the early educator workforce. These regulations mandate that by December 2022 all child care center directors must have a bachelor’s degree and that by December 2023 center-based teachers and expanded home providers2 must have an associate degree in early childhood education.3 As of February 2018, a total of 1,037 teachers across center and home-based settings needed an associate degree.4

According to Hanseul Kang, D.C. state superintendent of education, the rationale behind the new requirements was, first, research demonstrating that the first three years of life are a crucial period for brain development, and second, the desire to better align birth-to-three education with pre-K education. “The increase in the minimum education requirements is meant to provide the early childhood workforce with the skills and the knowledge they need to maximize this incredibly important time and ensure our children are given a solid foundation,” Kang explained. “We hear from so many of our schools that our pre-K students are already walking in the door with significant gaps,” she said, which “really pushed us to think about…how can we improve the quality of the care they're receiving…in the infant and toddler years?”5

Many leaders in the early childhood education field nationwide are focused on raising credential requirements to help strengthen the skills and competencies of the workforce. This work has been motivated by the seminal Transforming the Workforce report, which recommends that lead early childhood educators at minimum hold a bachelor’s degree with specialized knowledge and competencies.6 But despite being embraced by some, these ideas have faced pushback, with some arguing that increased degree requirements threaten to push some educators out of the profession due to a lack of support structures to help them access and persist in degree programs.7

When the regulations were passed, the city’s Multicultural Spanish Speaking Providers Association sent a petition with over 200 signatures to the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) asking for a degree program in Spanish.8 A smaller number met with Elizabeth Groginsky, former assistant superintendent for early learning at OSSE, to express concern that they would need to spend extra time in school learning English before they could pursue a degree.9 “When the regulations came out we, like everybody, were saying, ‘How’s this going to work?’ The [language] piece has been a big concern to early childhood practitioners in the field for a long time,” said Elizabeth Bowman, adult education director at Briya Public Charter School.10

While the city does not track the percentage of early educators who speak a language other than English, the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) reports that 41 percent of Early Head Start teachers in D.C. speak a language other than English.11 In addition, at least 56 child care centers in the District offer some form of instruction in other languages and 26 support Spanish, in particular.12 Nationally, research paints a clear picture of linguistic stratification within the workforce, with immigrant and linguistically diverse providers taking on lower-paid and lower-skilled (e.g., teacher assistant) roles.13 Unless more educational options are offered, the push for increased credentials threatens to force some multilingual providers out of the profession entirely—a potentially large problem given the current shortage of high-quality child care in the city14 and the growing population of dual language learners (DLLs).15

These linguistically diverse educators are essential for meeting the needs of the city’s dual language learners, who represent over 20 percent of young children in Washington, D.C.16 These children are in the process of developing English proficiency while mastering their home language. Research suggests that DLLs’ linguistic, academic, and social development are best nurtured in environments that support home languages. Early learning programs have an advantage over the K–12 education system in that they employ staff who are more racially and linguistically diverse, thus offering greater capacity to support home languages. But these caregivers and teachers face academic, bureaucratic, linguistic, and other barriers to obtaining degrees.17

The bilingual associate degree program at UDC-CC was designed to address these barriers by providing early childhood educators with the opportunity to take courses in Spanish at close to no cost, receive support with the enrollment process, be part of a cohort structure, and continue to work while earning their degrees. This brief will explore the design process, key features, and supports offered to students in the program, with a look at how one local employer worked to help increase access to the program.

Washington D.C.’s Early Childhood Landscape

Washington, D.C. leads the nation in both the percentage of the three- and four-year-old population enrolled in pre-K and in per-pupil spending.18 The Pre-K Enhancement and Expansion Amendment Act of 2008 codified D.C.’s commitment to universal pre-K with an unprecedented investment of local dollars to create capacity, provide scholarships to educators, and raise quality. However, the policy had the unintended effect of drawing three- and four-year-old children out of community-based settings and into the public schools. This left child care centers and family child care providers19 in the financially precarious position of decreased enrollment of three- and four-year-old children, increased cost of predominantly caring for infants and toddlers, and little to no revenue to support additional education for their staff.20

Child care licensing regulations in D.C. stand out as among the most aggressive in the country. Besides D.C., only one state requires center directors to obtain a bachelor’s degree21 or teachers in community-based settings to obtain an associate degree.22 D.C.’s decision to put the requirement in regulation means that all legally operating child care providers in the city are mandated to comply. Most states take a softer tactic, opting to incent degree attainment only when public funding for increased compensation and requisite supports are available.23

In addition, the District of Columbia faces a child care capacity shortage and the regulatory changes further exacerbate the issue, putting the current pool of providers at risk of being shut down if they are unable to retain or attract faculty who meet the educational requirements for licensure. D.C. is home to 27,157 children three and younger, but only has the capacity to serve 8,214.24 The limited care that exists is often too expensive for families to afford, with 32 percent of children three and younger living in neighborhoods where the cost of center-based care exceeds 50 percent of median household income.25

Recognizing these challenges, D.C.’s early childhood advocacy community built on the success of the universal pre-K movement to advocate for the Birth-to-Three for All DC Amendment Act of 2018 to create high-quality and comprehensive systems of care for infants and toddlers. While it has not yet been fully funded, the Birth-to-Three Act provides higher payment rates for child care providers, increases educator salaries, and creates higher education pathways for the infant and toddler workforce. The Birth-to-Three Act requires the University of the District of Columbia to partner with three community-based organizations to provide an infant and toddler associate degree program in community-based settings and requires one of the sites to provide coursework in a language other than English.26

Citations
  1. The authors observed this during the class discussion of UDC-CC class “Orientation to Infant/Toddler Professional Practice” on March 2, 2019 in Washington, DC at Briya.
  2. The District of Columbia has three kinds of child care programs: child care centers, home providers (also called family child care providers) that care for up to 6 children, and expanded home providers that care for 6 to 12 children.
  3. In 2017, OSSE passed revised regulations extending the deadline to December 2023 for center-based teachers from the original date of December 2020 and for expanded home providers from the original date of December 2019.
  4. Early Childhood Education (ECE) Workforce, Increased Minimum Education Requirements: One Year Later, (Washington, DC: Office of the State Superintendent of Education, 2018).
  5. Interview in Washington, DC, June 6, 2019.
  6. LaRue Allen and Bridget B. Kelly, eds., Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2015), source
  7. Increasing Qualifications, Centering Equity: Experiences and Advice from Early Childhood Educators of Color (Washington, DC: National Association for Young Children and the Education Trust, 2019), source
  8. Interview with Cecelia Alvarado, Washington, DC, November 29, 2018.
  9. Michael Allison Chandler, “D.C. Childcare Workers Push Back Against New College Degree Requirements,” Washington Post, June 6, 2017, source
  10. Interview in Washington, DC, February 8, 2019.
  11. W. Steven Barnett and Allison H. Friedman-Krauss, State(s) of Head Start (New Brunswick, NJ: National Center for Early Education Research, 2016), page 121, source
  12. Email from OSSE, June 20, 2019.
  13. Maki Park, Margie McHugh, Jie Zong, and Maria Batalova, Immigrant and Refugee Workers in the Early Childhood Field: Taking a Closer Look (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2015), source; and Marcy Whitebook, Fran Kipnis, and Dan Bellm, Diversity and Stratification in California’s Early Care and Education Workforce (Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Childcare Employment), source
  14. Based on the authors’ analysis of available data, only 29 of the 268 licensed child care providers receiving child care subsidies in DC received the highest designation of “high-quality” on the quality rating and improvement system. The analysis was conducted using information found at the OSSE website My Child Care DC, source
  15. Maki Park, Anna O’Toole, and Caitlin Katsiaficas, Dual Language Learners: A National Demographic and Policy Profile (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2017), source
  16. Maki Park, Anna O’Toole, and Caitlin Katsiaficas, Dual Language Learners: A National Demographic and Policy Profile.
  17. Kaylan Connally, Amaya Garcia, Shayna Cook, and Conor P. Williams, Teacher Talent Untapped: Multilingual Paraprofessionals Speak About the Barriers to Entering the Profession (Washington, DC: New America, 2017), source; and Robert Stechuk, Leanne Ryder, and Hiram Cortez, Latina Teachers and the “BA Challenge”: Impacts and Conditions of Increasing Degree Requirements in Early Childhood Education (Washington, DC: UnidosUS, 2020), source
  18. Allison H. Friedman-Krauss, W. Steven Barnett, Karin A. Garver, Katherine S. Hodges, G. G. Weisenfeld, and Beth Ann Gardiner, The State of Preschool 2019: State Preschool Yearbook (New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research, 2020), 71–72, source
  19. The term family child care provider is used to describe licensed small businesses where a child care provider cares for non-relative children in his or her home. There are several names for these providers, including child development homes, home-based providers, or child care homes.
  20. DC.gov (website), Office of the State Superintendent of Education, “Modeling the Cost of Child Care in the District of Columbia—2016,” source
  21. Cara Sklar, “Center Director Preparation: How Do We Prepare a Renaissance Woman?” EdCentral (blog), New America, October 28, 2019, source
  22. We Can Do Better: Child Care Aware of America’s Ranking of State Child Care Center Regulations and Oversight (Arlington, VA: Child Care Aware of America, 2013), 29, source
  23. Stacie G. Goffin and Laura Bornfreund, eds., Moving Beyond False Choices for Early Childhood Educators: A Compendium (Washington, DC: New America, 2020), source; Some states are incenting degree attainment via Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, for more see: National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance, QRIS Resource Guide, (Fairfax, VA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families), 10, source
  24. Emily Dowdall, Ira Goldstein, and Jacob Rosch, Early Learning Supply & Demand in the District of Columbia: Using Data to Identify Critical Gaps (Washington, DC: Bainum Family Foundation), 14–17, source
  25. Dowdall, Goldstein, and Rosh, Supply & Demand, 10.
  26. Birth-to-Three for All DC Amendment Act of 2018, D.C. Law 22-179, source

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Developing a Bilingual Associate Degree Program for Spanish-Speaking Early Childhood Educators