What Is the Role of Race, Class, and Gender in Resolving ECE’s Thorny Knot?

By Linda Hassan Anderson

Introduction to the Theme of Race, Class, and Gender

Race, class, and gender bias were woven into the fabric of American society at its inception and unraveling early childhood education’s (ECE) thorny knot necessitates acknowledging these enduring influences. Solutions to untangling the knot in this context range from Barbara Bowman’s quick strike that frames the conversation as one that should revolve around family diversity and differential staffing to Aisha Ray’s challenge to critically examine “ECE workforce preparation programs’ entrenched whiteness and racialization as unique factors in child development, practice, pedagogy, instruction.”

Alternatively, Nilsa Ramirez speaks to process and advocates for bringing the voices of practitioners and families to the table. For her, excluding these voices perpetuates inequities as well as undermines those in the ECE field’s ability to meet children’s and families’ actual needs. In turn, Maurice Sykes, Valora Washington, and Edna Ranck assert that issues of power, control, and lack of respect for working mothers and the ECE workforce impede equity and progress for children and their early childhood educators.

Unifying all of these positions is the authors’ shared contention that ECE’s problems cannot be effectively resolved without involving those who are most impacted by them. Anything else is “I know best-ism” and white saviorism at play. I agree that this “call” cannot be ignored if ECE is to experience a meaningful transformation. For social justice to be achieved, connections must exist among content, pedagogy, and communities’ social-cultural context. Those in power, who in the ECE field are largely individuals representing the dominant culture, must own their part in excluding and minimizing the full participation of those closest to children’s lives.

Expanding the Conversation

A dominant theme of this series overall has been the merit of early educators having four-year degrees. I am a Black woman with a degree, and my experiences have tempered the optimism fostered by my parents about doors opening for people of color with higher education. My academic degrees have not shielded me from encountering the trifecta of racism, classism, and sexism. As a result, I’m concerned about the limits of disjointed strategies when it comes to these issues.

The ECE field extensively lobbies for money and legislation, failing to recognize that they neither by themselves nor together effectively address racism, classism, or sexism. We widely expound disjoined strategies in books, articles, position papers, and more. Conversely, too often we pretend no problem exists and blame the victim, in this case, educators who won’t invest in their own development. In addition, we continue proposing countless interventions without simultaneously doing our own diversity, equity, and inclusion work to address root causes. Instead of looking outward, ECE should be looking inward at the biases we are bringing to the decision-making table and how to go about shifting them. Given our core value of reflective practice, how does ECE shift from a culture of pointing fingers and blaming to internal reflection and taking responsibility? Too often we naïvely assume that isolated strategies will “untangle the thorny knot.” In other words, we’re good at “talking the talk” but not “walking the walk.”

The “thorny knot” metaphor central to this compendium reminds me of the consequences incurred when one shifts from dissecting a problem to taking an action. In the legend of “the Gordian Knot”¹ an impossibly tangled knot was presented to test the wisdom of the man who would be chosen ruler. According to legend, Alexander the Great, who became king upon solving the problem, either quickly cut the knot with one slice of his sword or simply pulled the linchpin from the post. It is said he reasoned it made no difference how the knot was unraveled.

When, however, it comes to ECE’s thorny knot, I question the king’s approach and sometimes feel as if we have chosen to follow his example. Do we want to commit to the notion that ANY solution is acceptable? Solutions have consequences, both intended and unintended. In this instance, they more often than not perpetuate structures and institutions that honor the status quo when it comes to issues of race, class, and gender. Remember: This conversation is about REAL children and REAL lives. Meaningful ECE solutions will need to be centered on the experiences of those most impacted by amplifying and by empowering multiple non-dominant perspectives.

Heart-wrenching scenarios throughout 2018–19 from immigrant refugee camps have given us a look at the choices made untangling a “thorny knot” when simplistically framed as “a strain on existing resources” or cast as “these are other people’s children.” We have seen insensitivity to images of starving and dying children of color. What makes us think that similar scenarios won’t play out when it comes to closing the achievement gap for children of color or to promoting the economic value of early childhood educators?

Yet, those in the ECE field acknowledge these problems by lobbying others for money and legislation; attempting to mobilize others by preparing position statements and writing treatises; blaming the victim; and supporting discrete, disconnected interventions. In the absence of our doing the work of addressing the impact of racism, classism, and sexism, a void has been created, and others with varied intentions, who are weakly equipped to address the field’s thorny knot, are setting policy and funding priorities.²

Many of this series’ authors challenge us to confront the question of “What is the ECE field’s true commitment to closing the achievement gap and elevating the ECE workforce?” Lisa Delpit³ reminds us “there is no achievement gap at birth.”

Questions for Further Exploration

To have meaningful impact on this dilemma, ECE will best be served by greater self-awareness, recognizing that we are part of the conundrum. The questions that follow should be joined by the intent to own our role in creating the thorny knot and our opportunity to be accountable for its resolution.

Race, class, and gender issues can limit the field’s ability to “untangle its thorny knot” if we don’t acknowledge that their residence exists within a labyrinth of additional variables such as the impact of societal factors, research, and life experiences.

• What do we need to know from other viewpoints/perspectives (families, early childhood educators, community members)? What does ECE need to do to bring these perspectives to the attention of those with decision-making power?
• Is an equity lens being used to surface critical issues and develop plans to mitigate harm and to be proactive about unintended consequences? How do we hold ourselves accountable for advancing equity?
• Of the funding currently allocated or being pursued, do we assess who serves to benefit financially? Are intermediaries studying the problem and considering whether their recommendations directly and favorably impact the quality of children’s experiences or practitioners’ educational advancement?

Moving into Action

• Follow the Money: Document how much money has already been spent on “solutions” that don’t directly impact what we say is most important (i.e., funding for educational advancement of the current workforce).
• Follow the Influencers: Identify the decision-makers. Does their representation reflect the workforce and children we want to impact? Provide ongoing real world experience for leaders, administrators, and professionals with limited or no current field experience.

Linda Hassan Anderson is president and CEO of NIA & Associates, Inc and interim chief program officer for the Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEI) in Portland, Oregon.

By Aisha Ray

The calculus typically applied when linking workforce diversity, increased wages, and early childhood education (ECE) program quality assumes that addressing these factors will reap significant improvements in children’s educational achievement, especially for those furthest from opportunity. From my perspective, the persistence of the achievement gap is the single greatest educational challenge for early childhood educators and those who prepare them. It is the quintessential equity issue of our field.

The achievement gap persists because of multifactorial institutional and structural factors (e.g., poor quality programs, inadequate workforce preparation, deficit perspectives). If we’re to deliver on the promise that untying ECE’s thorny knot will result in children’s improved educational outcomes and an ebbing achievement gap, its fragmented, uneven, and problematic professional development landscape must be addressed.

A Thorny Challenge Awaits Us

The majority of my career has focused on preparing the ECE workforce in institutions of higher education (IHEs), including researching professional development systems and racial equity and diversity, and consulting with states’ ECE leadership to improve professional preparation systems. I’d argue that states presently lack ECE professional development systems that are sufficiently rigorous, robust, flexible, creative, accountable, available, and affordable to all sectors of the workforce. As Albert Wat noted in “Degrees and Credentials for Early Childhood Educators: Inching Towards A Consensus?”, the field lacks scalable exemplary programs and widely available coherent career pathways that link to portable credentials (e.g., CDA, AA, BA, professional certificates) that, in turn, facilitate our workforce’s progression toward career goals. We have a long way to go to prepare the over one million individuals working in center-based and licensed home settings, or the over 900,000 who work in unlicensed settings. To channel Maurice Sykes, this presents a knotty and wicked problem within a still larger knotty and wicked problem.

Tammy Mann, Sally Holloway, Amy Rothschild, and Josephine Queen raise legitimate concerns regarding higher education’s ability to effectively prepare those educating young children, including those of color and those in poverty. Can the daunting realities of ECE higher education be addressed and overcome, including lack of big, ambitious reform efforts; entrenched faculty; insufficient student and faculty diversity; uninspiring curricula; unexamined “whiteness” and explicit/implicit bias; course content heavy on theory versus implications for practice; and issues of affordability and access? For me, the critical questions that link workforce preparation, compensation, quality, diversity, and child outcomes are these: Are ECE preparation programs able to address the demands of a pre-service and in-service workforce responsible for the developmental and educational needs of culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse children, those in poverty, and those furthest from opportunity whose educational success may be most threatened by what we do and do not do in the preparation of the ECE workforce? If not, why not, and how do we create the preparation programs our nation, workforce, children, and families deserve?

Here are seven critical questions our field needs to address in relation to workforce preparation, complex diversity, equity, and IHEs if we are to address and overcome these daunting realities:

1. Is there a research-based understanding of the relevance, depth of treatment, and coherence of course content, of faculty expertise, and of practice experiences provided in IHEs preparing the ECE workforce?
2. Have the competencies related to knowledge, skills, and personal capacities the ECE workforce, at all levels and in all settings, must have to support the development of young children furthest from opportunity and to close the achievement gap been sufficiently defined?
3. Are IHEs able to provide adult learners with high-quality practice experiences in settings with culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse children and families, and the reflective supervision opportunities necessary to improve practice?
4. To what extent are IHEs preparing early childhood educators to understand theory, research, and best practice strategies for bilingual, multilingual, and bi-dialectic English speakers?
5. How deeply do ECE workforce preparation programs address culture, equity, entrenched “whiteness” and racialization as unique factors in child development, practice, pedagogy, instruction, and the achievement gap? Are we, in our treatment of culture, racialization, and equity, reinforcing stereotypes and biases about specific groups? Are early childhood educators supported to address explicit and implicit bias in their work? Are educators helped to develop strong anti-racist/anti-bias practice?
6. Is there sufficient support for both faculty and innovative program development related to reforming or creating new ECE preparation approaches or programs (including credentials, pathways, curricula, practice experiences, increasing faculty diversity) that are grounded in equity and can effectively educate an increasingly diverse workforce?
7. What are the institutional and systemic factors within IHEs and their ECE departments and programs that must be addressed to bring about substantial change, reform, and revolution in workforce preparation so that children and families furthest from opportunity will benefit from highly competent early learning programs and educators equipped to close the achievement gap?

These questions make evident that unwinding the intertwining knotty problems of compensation, quality, diversity, and preparation will demand sustained effort from all of us. Yet given the stakes, we have no choice but to try and do so.

Aisha Ray, PhD, is a professor emerita of child development at Erikson Institute and a distinguished fellow at the BUILD Initiative.

By Sue Russell

Education is a game changer for women⁴ and children. We know a mother’s education predicts a child’s future success⁵ in school and beyond. We know women with more education, in general, make more money⁶ and have better career options. A recent meta-analysis⁷ found better quality classrooms had better educated teachers, and we know higher quality classrooms predict better child outcomes. And, finally, we know women in underdeveloped countries across the world are literally dying in pursuit of the opportunity to go to school and college.⁸ So I’m unclear as to why we are debating degrees for early childhood educators.⁹

I am not insensitive to the challenges, fears, and costs associated with transforming the nation’s ECE workforce. I know them well because it has been my life’s work. North Carolina was my laboratory. In 1988, less than 10 percent of early childhood educators working in licensed child care settings in North Carolina had a two- or four-year-degree. They earned poverty-level wages and had employers who did not support their professional development. Yet when asked, these women overwhelmingly said they wanted to go to college. We began with 21 early childhood educators taking courses to earn ECE associate’s degrees, providing them with (1) comprehensive scholarships to support tuition, books, and paid release time, (2) a scholarship counselor, (3) a wage increase, (4) a retention requirement, and (5) mandated employer buy-in.

Now, 30 years later, North Carolina’s experiment has included over 33,000 early childhood educators, including directors and family child care educators. Scholarships have expanded to support bachelor degrees, teacher licensure, and even master degrees. The complexion of the ECE teaching workforce remains unchanged, but the education of our state’s workforce has been transformed.

What makes North Carolina an interesting laboratory for exploring the interplay among preparation and education, compensation and status, and diversity and inclusivity? First, North Carolina is the ninth largest state. Second, it is a purple state in terms of its political climate. Third, the state began at the bottom in terms of its ECE standards and its workforce education when the experiment began. And finally, about half of North Carolina’s children from birth to kindergarten are children of color and/or Hispanic origin, as is the ECE teaching workforce.

Despite concerns to the contrary, North Carolina has not lost diversity in its ECE teaching workforce, even though our rated facility licensure weights staff education as 50 percent of a program’s license score, and even though our pre-K standards require a BA in ECE with a birth to kindergarten license. In fact, the racial and/or ethnic distribution of pre-K teachers who meet these higher standards does not differ from the distribution before the standards.

All early childhood educators, regardless of program setting, have been supported to achieve this higher standard. Over the last 12 years,¹⁰ there has been a 16 percent increase in African Americans in director and/or owner positions. By 2015, 63 percent of all teaching staff, 81 percent of center directors, and 49 percent of family child care educators had degrees.

I have learned from women who have made this educational journey. Their overwhelming messages revolve around actualization, transformation, and profound appreciation. For many, their perception of themselves as smart, strong, capable women was affirmed. Their understanding of early childhood education and the import of their life’s work was transformed. And for many, there had been this unachievable dream of earning a college degree. With the help of this comprehensive scholarship and a counselor who believed in them, they achieved their dream, graduating debt-free and often exceeding what they thought was possible.

These women are now working across North Carolina in the wide array of jobs our field offers. Many continue in centers, classrooms, or homes as lead educators or administrators; some are working as technical assistants or professional development specialists or have gone on to teach in our colleges and universities. And the complexion of women in these roles is changing the number of women of color in leadership positions.

Making this possible requires a significant investment of time and money in our workforce. North Carolina, a conservative and relatively poor state, made that investment over the last 25 years, and continues to invest so all those in the ECE workforce attain degrees. It has also taken courage to require the workforce to get more education and provide time to do it. We have not solved the issue of compensation, but individuals with degrees earn or have the potential to earn a lot more money. They can move to different teaching settings; they can advance in their roles within their programs; or they can move to other positions within our field. But wherever they go, they now have new assets—a degree in early childhood education; increased lifelong earning potential; new knowledge and competencies; the pride that comes from their achievement; the confidence that they can advance in our field if desired; and the vision that their children and grandchildren will go to college.

ECE is at a crossroads. Our children need better-educated teachers, and our teachers need real opportunities. We cannot fail either. We do not have to choose. Our children can have diverse, well-educated, effective educators, and our workforce can have real opportunities for educational, wage, and career advancement as early childhood educators.

Sue Russell is executive director of T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center.

By Valora Washington

Talk about “professionalizing” the early childhood education (ECE) field is today’s hot topic, and for good reason. More than ever, the field’s expanding knowledge base in child development and the science of early learning has expanded our views of what children can do and increased our focus on the capacity of staff who work with them.

For me, a critical question becomes: What principles will guide us as we envision a future and shared purpose for ECE as a field of practice? While there are no easy answers, and solutions seem costly,¹¹ I see two core concepts as essential elements of change: respect for the workforce and focus on equity issues.¹²

Let me explain.

As CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition, I have the privilege of conferring nearly 50,000 Child Development Associate (CDA) credentials on educators every year. With many occasions to represent and support these educators, I am sad to say that I encounter too many instances where the field’s “thought leaders” critique the infant, toddler, preschool, family-child-care and home-visitor communities that I serve with statements such as: “They” are holding “us” back in “our” efforts to raise the quality and value of “our” profession; “they” are poorly educated and have insufficient vocabularies; “they” are unacquainted with the field’s knowledge base and don’t help children achieve the results that “we” know are possible from research.

Yet the collective “we” often have virtually no teaching experience with young children and are comprised almost exclusively of monolingual, English-speaking white women with graduate degrees. “We” certainly earn more than the minimum hourly wages that “they” do. Yet “they”—without question—exhibit enormous courage and commitment to change through the higher education and reflective practices that are being demanded by the “professionalization” movement.

I offer this experience because it’s real, not to offend anyone. I’m pointing out the “elephant in the room” because, if we want, we can choose to respond differently. But we can’t change what we don’t face.

Expressing support for both professionalization and diversity is de rigueur in our field’s culture. Rationally, we all know that the field’s diversity is a strength¹³ and that workforce challenges are structural and systemic in nature,¹⁴ not endemic to the inherent characteristics of the staff. Nevertheless, in this era of leadership choices,¹⁵ it is still too easy to “blame” the victims of social inequities, perhaps to protect our own vulnerability. To preserve the belief that the world is a just place, we devalue the victims of injustice.¹⁶

I hold deep esteem for the hard work and good intentions of colleagues who have created ECE’s current, dynamic environment. Nevertheless, the gap between our collective intentions and the realities of the current workforce is too big to ignore, despite our own well of goodwill and the impact of innovative efforts such as T.E.A.C.H.¹⁷

A deficient approach to the people who do the incredible work of educating young children, it’s worth noting, is ironic given the field’s strident call for promoting a strengths-based paradigm about children and families. How can so little respect be rendered to individuals deeply immersed in demonstrating respect for the children and families they serve?

Often disrespect is an unintended or unreflective expression of asymmetrical power of one group over another. This happens to us as well as among us. Case in point: We celebrate the amazing power of early brain development yet tolerate widespread poverty and poor working conditions among those responsible for interacting with children in ways to stimulate young brains.

And, speaking of elephants in the room, silence about race—and how professionalizing our field could impact the diversity of our workforce—is not productive to untangling ECE’s thorny knot. A focus on equity matters, and we must be dogged about achieving it. For decades, practitioners of color at all educational levels have reported concerns about inclusion and isolation. Within our field, there are demonstrated racial differences in wages¹⁸ and hiring preferences.¹⁹ Consequently, along with the field’s growth in recent years, concern is escalating that our expanding numbers adequately reflect the demographics of the children and families served, especially among “new” roles such as coaches, mentors, state specialists, and assessors.

The call for “representative leadership"²⁰ is not whining; it is a deeply felt requirement for the field’s advancement. Our task forces, work groups, and committees cannot react with dismissal, annoyance, or gossip when people of color offer feedback that differs from the mainstream opinion. “Whitening the field”—as has happened in other education sectors²¹—should never be an option for us, especially because ECE can take pride in having a more diverse group of educators than many other education sectors, including public schools.

Bringing forth our vision for an esteemed and equitable profession will require us to engage in democratic processes that respect and build on the strengths of the field’s early childhood educator

Valora Washington, PhD, is CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition in Washington, D.C.

By Nilsa Ramirez

As we consider how to untangle early childhood education’s thorny knot, I can’t help but notice that missing from the ECE conversation are the authentic voices of those who are most impacted—early childhood educators and the families they serve. If we want to cultivate quality practice and professional identities, social justice—the balance between equity and equality and the actions we take to get there—needs to be put at the center.

Series authors Luis Hernandez, Jamal Berry, and Fabienne Doucet raise the risk of diluting the field’s diversity if ECE were to require early childhood educators with degrees or credentials. Frankly, I think the ongoing debate between these two options misses the point. Neither will be successful if ECE caregivers aren’t asked what they want and need and if ECE continues viewing social justice as a secondary concept in debates about the workforce because social justice is central to these debates. Without its inclusion in debate on this issue and others, I believe the choices made too often will fail to achieve the balance essential to children’s early learning and development.

As Sara Mead notes in “Values, Beliefs, and Institutions: What's Needed for Early Educators to Unwind ECE's Thorny Knot?”, “conversations about elevating the ECE workforce…rarely address the organization of ECE delivery or the culture and capacity of organizations that provide ECE programs.” While she isn’t specifically referencing diversity, inclusion, and issues of implicit bias and systems of oppression, the message is still clear to me: to untangle ECE’s thorny knot, the interaction of its entangled threads with larger societal issues has to be understood.

The ECE field should be investing in its diverse workforce as its strongest asset and embracing social justice as the engine to better advance the ECE system. Towards this end, we should be elevating the voices of educators and families so a partnership can be formed in service of articulating a shared agenda for children’s learning and development. As Michele Cox-Miller notes for us in her piece, “while parents are young children's first and best teachers, they rely on early educators as partners in preparing their children for success.”

I’m learning firsthand how becoming authentic “partners” with families helps early childhood educators uncloak socio-cultural inequity in their classrooms and incorporate social justice into their identities. As site director for the Rauner Family YMCA child care center on the west side of Chicago, I’m getting a close look at how unearthing implicit biases can be tackled in daily practice. At the Rauner Y, this has meant amplifying voices inside our classrooms with children and outside of classrooms with our families.

If social justice is to be achieved, better connections need to be made among content, pedagogy, and the socio-cultural contexts of the communities being served. As Sherri Killins-Stewart argued in “Are Policymakers and Advocates Reducing or Increasing Early Childhood Education's Inequalities?” policies need to recognize the value educators can bring when it comes to informing culturally and linguistically relevant practice and policies. I’d contend, though, that cultural and linguistically relevant practices and policies are not enough. Social justice also needs to be represented—in partnership with families—in classrooms, and most especially as part of early childhood educators’ identity development.

In the last few years, the Rauner Family YMCA teachers, assistant teachers, and I have participated in peer-based professional learning communities focused on altering instructional practice through anti-bias education and social equity. We’ve dug deeply into issues of race, culture, socioeconomic class, gender identity, family structure, and religion. We’ve challenged our beliefs, discussed our personal biases, and importantly, connected these ideas to how our teaching and learning in ECE settings can be improved.

It has been incredibly difficult work. But it has empowered the center’s teaching staff, and me in my role as the site director, to take risks in our practice and test strategies for working with children and families that feel meaningful and relevant in the broader societal context. This combination—partnership with families, focus on quality practice, and core values linking social justice and equity—has cultivated a sense of pride in our work that is translating to our practitioners’ identities as early childhood educators.

The social justice lens we’ve applied to our practice extends to policy as well. We, as Y staff, are now better equipped to come to policy tables with insights relevant to ECE preparation and professional development that can improve educator practices and better serve children and families.

Professionalizing early childhood educators goes hand-in-hand with how we as a field represent, understand, and internalize our individual voices and the voices of the children and families being served. Most likely, for reasons mentioned throughout this blog series, decades will be needed to untangle ECE’s thorny knot. Nonetheless, I agree with Carol Brunson Day that the time has come to move beyond the “best” educational pathway debate. In its place, let’s pull up a chair, make room at the table, and hand over the microphone to the educators we too often act as if we can speak for, and to the families they serve. Only then can we authentically advance ECE’s workforce for the demands of the 21st century.

Nilsa Ramirez is site program director for the Rauner Family YMCA in Chicago.

By Maurice Sykes

To avoid being misinterpreted or perceived as resisting efforts to raise the academic bar for early childhood educators, let me state from the onset that I support efforts to elevate their competencies prior to entry into the early childhood education (ECE) workforce. And yes, equal pay should be in place for equal work. But if we want to reach this end point, we have to be willing to confront the real barriers blocking attempts to create a well-educated, well compensated, and diversified workforce.

I designed and operated a program known as “Project Headway” for 15 years. It assisted early childhood educators to advance in their careers by moving from the CDA credential to the AA degree and beyond. Its enrollees were similar to those typically referenced in conversations as the “diverse workforce” when discussing early childhood education workforce development.

Yet, contrary to routinely cited statistics,²² we boasted 80 percent workforce retention and graduation rates. Our success can be credited to our not viewing or profiling participants as first generation, minority, low income females dependent on a monthly wage close to or below the poverty line supporting families—or by extension, as too tired and too poor to go to night college, which to this day remains the predominant higher education approach for women in the ECE workforce.

Rather than using a lens of pathology, we viewed enrollees as capable, competent, resourceful learners, some of whom, by dint of the birth lottery, had lived in poor neighborhoods, attended inferior schools and, consequently, needed a good practitioner-based ECE higher education program.

Like others whose writing has preceded mine, we recognized that advancing these women’s formal education required attention not only to their academic lives but also to their work and personal lives. But here’s how we differed: we engaged with their plight as an issue of social justice. While we saw increasing their academic preparation as a way of improving their work and personal life circumstances, we, more importantly, saw it as improving their ability to change the life trajectory of the children they taught.

The time has come to alter the narrative we hold regarding teacher credentialing and teacher compensation that presumes adult career advancement is our end goal. To the contrary: our focus should be on improving young children’s schooling and life outcomes.

Every child needs and deserves a highly qualified, highly effective, and highly competent early childhood educator. This is the reason why we should care about early childhood educators’ competencies and compensation.

So, now a cautionary note is needed as we continue exploring issues of teacher preparation, teacher compensation, and a diverse and inclusive workforce: views that verge, at best, on paternalistic, and, at worst, on racist overtones must be shunned. And if we want to avoid this unsavory impulse, two essential questions have to be probed:

1) Why should we encourage women of color to enhance their educational portfolio only to be consigned to a low-wage, low-status job where they will be paid 84 cents²³ for every dollar their white, female counterparts earn?

2) Remember my reference to night colleges? This venerable American institution historically has catapulted low-income men and women out of poverty and their working class standing and into middle class professional status. People of color have successfully moved from sharecropper to PhD. So what is all of the hullabaloo surrounding recommendations to move people of color from CDA to AA to BA and beyond?

The change literature is replete with references to three types of “messes”²⁴ that motivate an organization to change. There is the hot mess and the holy mess—both of which can be addressed through a solid, strategic planning process. The third is the Wicked Mess. It requires a systems thinking approach.

ECE has a wicked mess on its hands. Demanding immediate attention are answers to two more questions: “Who’s going to fix this conundrum?” and “Who’s going to pay for it?”

Initiating a systems change approach requires dives below ECE’s façade to detect trends, patterns, and behaviors that can help explain ECE’s present performance. We also should be probing what prevents the ECE system from changing. After all, it’s not as if the issues we’re exploring are newly identified.

By diving beneath the surface of ECE’s issues regarding teacher preparation and education, and status and compensation, I suspect we would find the lurking menace of sexism, classism, and racism. If honest with ourselves and with each other, we’d acknowledge that these three realities are integral to mapping and addressing barriers blocking the development of a diverse and professionalized ECE workforce. Frankly, it’s our only hope for addressing this wicked mess.

Maurice Sykes is author of "Doing the Right Thing for Children: Eight Qualities of Leadership" and executive director of the Early Childhood Leadership Institute.

By Barbara Bowman

Stacie G. Goffin describes the tangle of issues facing the early care and education (ECE) field as a knot consisting of threads related to staff preparation and education, compensation and status, and diversity and inclusivity. Thirty experienced ECE professionals have already addressed these issues by presenting their perspectives in this series. I would like to add mine.

Ideas suggested in previous pieces, for the most part, contend that ECE teachers need more education, more diversity, and more pay, with which I agree. Yet I think the knot’s prickliest component is matching ECE’s staff structure, wages, and roles to children’s and families’ needs.

A large difference in wages, education, and training exists among ECE teachers, with child care teachers’ compensation often hovering just above minimum wage, which leads to high turnover and poorly trained teachers. In response, some advocates suggest that all ECE teachers need to have the same education and receive the same pay as public-school teachers, which has huge financial implications—the cost of highly educated teachers for small groups of children over a full workday is overwhelming to many families, as well as to taxpayers.

To move forward, those in the ECE field need to stop trying to force all teachers into the same mold, no matter what their responsibilities, education, or training. The ‘field’ of early care and education needs to forge a policy that coordinates teacher knowledge and skill with wages and family needs. The starting point is child and family diversity. While all children and families need many of the same things, they do not all need them in the same way or at the same time. For example, some working families need infant care, and a grandmother or a relative may nicely fill the bill. Other families prefer the reliability and/or quality of a center and want a teacher who provides an effective learning environment for small groups of children. Infants living in challenging environments (e.g., poverty or drug addiction) or with difficult conditions (e.g., severe disabilities) may need sophisticated services with highly trained teachers and therapists. In other words, every infant needs the care of committed adults, but not every infant needs daily care from a highly educated BA- or MA-level teacher for their healthy development.

Consequently, I suggest a differentiated workforce based on certifiable credentials. I recognize that many adults have years of experience, enjoy working with young children, and have a talent for this work. In building a system, however, the case for formal education and training is strong, and the argument for using individualized assessments based on personal experience is too arbitrary and expensive.

At the same time, we know that not all children need the most highly trained and compensated caregiver all day from infancy through preschool.²⁵ Families differ in their resources and preferences and although all children need a full range of opportunities to develop well, they may not need the same ones or at the same time.

Central to this differentiated model is that levels of education, professional training, and wages are tied to certified professional competencies. The model recognizes teacher preparation for preschool (three-to-five year olds) as entailing more education and therefore, higher personnel costs than basic child care. The rationale is that a solid research base exists²⁶ for the importance of teacher education and skills in preparing children for school while less rigorous research documents the educational benefits of childcare alone.

Four Educator Roles for a Differentiated Model

I suggest the following job descriptions as the basis of such a system.

Assistant Teachers support teachers across ECE settings. They might not have formal education or training, but would be required to pass an organized training program established and paid for by the state before their positions became permanent. They would start at minimum wage and be required to work under the direct supervision of a teacher.

Child Care Teachers are prepared to work in a standard child care program in a center or licensed home. Competent to supervise a group of typically developing children, birth to five, they provide constructive and developmentally appropriate activities, including eating, toileting, napping, and constructive and creative activities (including play). They also are trained in using benchmark child assessments and cooperating with families. While not responsible for teaching academic skills, the Child care teacher facilitates children’s interests and efforts in this domain. Children attending half-day preschool could access child care for the remainder of their day if needed. The child care teacher would have at a minimum a CDA credential or an AA degree; salaries would begin at (at least) double minimum wage.

Preschool Teachers have knowledge and skills that extend beyond those held by the child care teacher. They would have a four-year college degree and advanced training that includes expertise in facilitating academic achievement for children two to five, especially those at risk of school failure. They would be responsible for providing a challenging curriculum that includes literacy, math, science, and technology. They also would be responsible for program alignment with public school standards either as school employees or through regular consultation.²⁷ Additionally, they would be expected to know the criteria for referrals and, when necessary, refer children for a longer school day (full day preschool) and/or therapeutic interventions. This baseline preschool component would be a half-day program for up to 20 children; children from families with low incomes and children with special needs would attend for free. Salaries would be the same as public-school teachers.

Master Teachers (Educational Coordinators) would be responsible for supervising the three roles just outlined as defined by state licensing requirements. They would be responsible for coordinating and supervising services for children with special needs as well. Master teachers would have advanced degrees and training, and their salary scales would mirror those of public school administrators.

Being Realistic Matters

I am proposing a staff structure with different roles and responsibilities for preschool and child care teachers, ones that align with both child and family needs. The model assumes some children will only need developmental child care, while others need only preschool, and still others need both. The model doubles down on the preparation of preschool teachers because children’s formal education is increasingly important in society today given connections between the quality of early instruction and later school achievement. Finally, compensation is based on the complexity of teacher tasks and the depth of their education and training.

I acknowledge this model invites questions tied to preparation and training, financing, and program delivery. It also demands recognizing that the model’s dependency on an adequate supply of child care and preschool teachers. Since teachers of color are currently disproportionately represented in the lowest group for education and training, special efforts must be made to enlist and prepare a diversified pool of Child Care, Preschool, and Master Teachers. Nonetheless unraveling ECE’s “tangle” depends upon first creating a model that aligns the needs of children, families, and communities with teacher roles, responsibilities, and wages.

Barbara Bowman is the Irving B. Harris professor of Child Development at Erikson Institute.

By Edna Ranck

Maurice Sykes was right: Early childhood education’s (ECE) thorny knot—education and preparation, compensation and status, and diversity and inclusivity—is affected by racism, classism, and sexism. The field’s history proves it. For over two centuries, ECE’s child care sector has been trapped in controversy over issues revolving around beliefs and attitudes toward working mothers, resulting in the knot we are trying to unravel because of its entanglement with:

• the role of the federal government in relation to families, especially poor families;
• the roles women in society, particularly working mothers, with bifurcated views tied to race; and
• the purpose of out-of-home care and education of young children, whether for all children or for children deemed “disadvantaged.”

I have been in ECE for over 50 years but only recently have I become aware of just how pervasive maternalism ideology is. As defined by historian Sonya Michel,²⁸ maternalism is a politics that accepts the notion that mothers properly belong at home with their children. Historically, mothers were, and too often still are, denied social rights and civic responsibilities. Fueled by race, gender, and class prejudice, they’ve been kept from earning wages in the workforce, and their domestic work continues to go unrecognized as having public economic value. The results have not only negatively affected mothers and children; they have compromised ECE as a field.

ECE’s Thorny Knot is Inseparable from its National History

With this ideology as our backdrop, we can begin seeing how the strands of ECE’s thorny knot emerged, became entangled with one another, and continue to be tangled²⁹ by maternalism:³⁰

• Rather than provide child care support for working mothers, the federal government has chosen to rely on a class-driven child care system, contributing significantly to ongoing fractures between child care and early education.
• Mothers in more affluent circumstances, especially if white, have been expected to be altruistic care providers, which ECE has historically supported via co-op nursery schools, leading not only to insufficient compensation but to the public’s disinterest in compensation as a significant issue.
• Since mothers, white mothers in particular, “belong at home,” their children are not seen as needing out-of-home care, leading to ECE’s “education” component being viewed as a compensatory intervention.

Our Nation’s Maternalism Is Alive and Well

Between December 2018 and early March 2019, seven articles in prominent newspapers and magazines appeared with titles like these: “The Special Misogyny Reserved for Mothers,”³¹ “Why Fewer U.S. Workers Are Parents,”³² and “The Real Mommy War Is Against the State.”³³ Additionally, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and others have introduced S.1878 – Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act.³⁴ Though well named, it perpetuates the stigma of tying ECE to poverty: Only low-income children will attend free; others will pay on a sliding fee scale.

As a field, ECE needs to take advantage of what this mini-history lesson teaches us and figure out how to transcend it. I see public policy as the way forward: We need to work with others to overturn maternalism, and we need to advance policies that value working mothers by supporting their child care needs in ways that maximize their families’ lives and the well-being of their children.

Edna Ranck, EdD, is an ECE researcher and historian.