Why Do Educators’ Voices Matter in Conversations About the Field’s Thorny Knot?

By Ariel Ford

An Introduction to the Theme of Early Childhood Educators

Three refrains dominate the seven pieces in this section. The first revolves around the absence of early educators’ voices in the early childhood education (ECE) field. It’s a cry for inclusion that is seemingly being ignored. Instead, the martyr-like, undercompensated early childhood educator working in underfunded programs mired in misaligned standards has become a field-wide trope used to cajole elected officials and foundation leaders to advance priorities. In the process, early childhood educators are positioned as beneficiaries versus actors in determining their fate and that of ECE.

Second, these pieces reveal tensions revolving around the push to create a more formally educated workforce, an endeavor too often hampered by teacher preparation programs grappling with integrating theory and practice, including for special populations such as children with disabilities and English language learners. And then there’s frustration with policymakers who hold the authority and ECE advocates who hold the microphone and who together are complicating ECE as a field of practice.

The third refrain speaks to the disconnect between these writers’ use of political rhetoric about ECE’s value and the absence of alignment among the field’s science, policies, and practices. They question those in field’s capacity to develop actionable solutions to tackle issues ranging from scaling programs that work, developing practitioners with skills needed for advocacy, and aligning resources with field-identified priorities. Yet to be examined, however, is why we have failed to promote early childhood educators’ voices.

Expanding the Conversation

I think the answer to this question resides in the fact that ECE has developed,¹ and continues to develop, an infrastructure reliant on intermediary leadership, inclusive of roles such as state administrators, QRIS administrators, and heads of ECE preparation programs. Residing in local, state, and federal systems, this infrastructure is enabling a growing gap between early childhood educators and those with the authority to shape ECE’s present and future. Few opportunities exist for early childhood educators to use their voices within ECE’s multiple systems.

This reality brings us to the overarching question of whether the voices of early childhood educators matter in conversations addressing ECE’s challenges. The answer seems obvious to me: those engaged in teaching and caring for children every day are the most knowledgeable about ECE as a field of practice and have the most at stake when it comes to its credibility. They, more than any of the rest of us, know what is and isn’t working when it comes to program quality and effective practices.

I acknowledge that I am among those who will have to wrestle with diminished authority if early childhood educators are given more. Doing so, however, acknowledges our roles’ differing contributions. Further, it’s worth noting that unlike those of us whose work resides outside of classrooms, early educators typically are not beholden to existing systems, structures, or current political administrations when fulfilling their obligation to make early learning settings places for children’s growth and development. In contrast, my role, and roles like mine operating in local, state, and federal systems, are subject to these pressures. We are expected to avoid disruption and instead sustain and enhance existing systems with slow and methodical quality improvements.

Those of us who are part of ECE’s intermediary leadership structure are authorized to develop and execute programs and systems, determine priorities, and oversee field-wide change efforts without widespread or consistent input or feedback. Typically, early childhood educators in this context are called upon to share opinions and perspectives for the purpose of developing generalizations about the state of the system in question or for gathering high-level feedback.

As a result, early childhood educators are dependent on those with positional authority whose decisions impact not only ECE’s meaning as a field but also their work and careers. In the process, their voices are being marginalized. The reliance on intermediary leadership is unintentionally reinforcing a paternalistic system of authority in which those farthest away from the work hold the majority of power.

Many in the field, albeit slowly, have begun the work of countering its racial inequity.² Appropriately, we are beginning to position racial diversity and inclusion as non-negotiable. I propose that diversity of power in ECE decision making become a non-negotiable element, as well—that all levels within ECE adopt and work within a racial and power equity framework. The inclusion of power equity as a non-negotiable should help propel two results: a dramatic increase in the presence of early childhood educators’ voices and assurances that systems are inclusive of diverse leadership and distributed authority.

I acknowledge that we will need to develop early childhood educators’ leadership abilities as well as the field’s overall capacity to effect the change being proposed.³ Those of us in positions of authority, on the other hand, must confront the anxiety that may accompany the recalibration of power. Mobilizing early childhood educators’ voices, though, will enable the development of systems receptive to their realities and responsive to emerging opportunities.

Questions for Further Exploration

Before we realize a future in which early childhood educators actively help lead and develop ECE as a field of practice, three fundamental questions about the intermediary leadership structure should be investigated: Who benefits from early childhood educators being omitted from conversations such as those initiated by the Thorny Knot blog series? Why haven’t we developed early childhood educators’ capacity to participate in, convene, and lead these conversations? And what mental models will those of us with positional authority have to change to realize this future?

Moving into Action

A sensible first step might be responding to this follow-up question: What should be done differently to authentically engage them? Those of us in positions of authority can begin immediately to examine the choices we’re making and start re-positioning early childhood educators so they can influence conversations relating to ECE’s purpose, the challenges of working in an increasingly diverse and complex social landscape, and the foundations of program quality and educator competence.

Secondly, higher education’s existing structure can be reconfigured to offer fellowships in service to developing content and pedagogical expertise as well as field-wide leadership. Similarly, training and coaching structures can be re-designed to include mentorships that incorporate navigating social, economic, political and policy influences on the field and its practice. These efforts can help early childhood educators better understand the relationship of their role with policymakers and advocates who, in the absence of educators’ authoritative voice, occupy this void with assumed authority.

Resolving ECE’s thorny knot demands more from all of us. I was an early educator in local and state systems and programs, and now I lead a mayor’s office of early learning; I’m continually reminded that my aspirations for ECE, including those entwined within ECE’s thorny knot, cannot be accomplished without the driving participation of early educators.

Ariel Ford is the director of Early Learning at City of Chattanooga.

By Sherri Killins Stewart

Frontline child care providers are a critical, perhaps the most critical, ingredient in ensuring a high-quality, high-performing early childhood education (ECE) service delivery system. Inequities impact not only children but also their communities and the choices available to families for supporting children’s growth and development. Policymakers, advocates, and other decision makers have an obligation to acknowledge historical and current inequities that are influencing the effectiveness of policy decisions regarding the three topics covered in this series—providers’ preparation and education, their compensation and status, and diversity and inclusivity in ECE. Otherwise, we are inadvertently undermining equitable opportunities for children and the adults who work with them.

Policymakers at all levels of government share a near-universal belief that the educational level of frontline childcare providers significantly improves the quality of children’s care and education. Based on this belief, many policymakers have set ambitious goals and established programs to support providers’ completion of higher education degrees. Many state legislatures have also passed laws or created policies requiring frontline providers to complete a bachelor’s degree in order to be licensed, receive increased compensation, or advance in their positions.

However, when I was Massachusetts’ commissioner of early childhood education, frontline childcare providers shared countless stories of their struggles to meet the challenges of work, family, and school. Almost to a person, they were proud of achieving a higher education certificate or degree; yet they saw little connection between this education and their daily work. Most also said their modest pay increases did little to compensate for long hours away from family and friends.

As policymakers, advocates, and other decision makers striving to advance frontline childcare providers’ formal education, we had assumed that given the supports offered, providers would be able to seamlessly and effortlessly integrate what they were learning into their interactions with children and families. In hindsight, though, this thinking was shortsighted. We lacked understanding of frontline providers’ programmatic, personal, and professional challenges. We needed a better understanding of the dynamic interactions among providers’ preparation, education, and compensation, and the ECE field’s diversity and inclusivity.

These three issues cannot be addressed in isolation. To move forward on these issues, though, we have to move beyond false perceptions. Listed below are four questions policymakers, advocates, and other decision makers have to confront when deliberating policies for addressing these interlocking issues in order to help avoid further workforce inequities and reduction of the field’s diversity. Decision makers’ privilege often contributes to erroneous answers to the following questions.

• Do you think frontline child care providers are choosing not to provide children the best learning environment for stimulating their growth and learning?

To combat this perception, those in the ECE field, and especially frontline childcare providers, have to be engaged in developing and implementing policies, regulations, and practices that impact them. The current workforce must be recognized for the value it brings, and messaging about the poor quality it is providing needs to be curbed.

These educators are often from the communities they serve. As policymakers, we not only do a disservice to our providers by minimizing their voices, but we miss out on insights that can lead to culturally and linguistically relevant policies and practices. Our usual approach has to change; we need to highlight the skills, knowledge, and abilities the ECE workforce needs and allow child care providers to participate in designing the strategies to achieve them.

• Do you think all frontline childcare providers have the same opportunity for employment, compensation, and education and are making choices not to advance their careers?

To combat this perception, it’s necessary to understand historical and systemic barriers that prevent many in our frontline workforce from obtaining a quality basic education, higher education degree, and living wage employment. The voices of ECE’s providers have to be included in policy conversation so they can share their struggles and concerns and identified barriers can be reduced.

• Do you think children and their families and communities all have the same opportunities?

To combat this perception, policymakers must understand and address the multiple inequities that lead to poor outcomes for children and families. Frontline childcare providers’ educational attainment will not, by itself, significantly impact program quality or children’s growth and development. Issues such as unsafe or unaffordable housing, limited access to quality health care, food insecurity, poor transportation, and educational systems’ long-term failures create disparities and inequities in children’s growth and development and for families and communities.

• Do you believe individuals have personal responsibility to meet requirements regardless of social context, position, or history?

To combat this perception, policies need to address systemic and systematic interventions so barriers experienced by African American and other diverse frontline providers can be addressed. These interventions need to benefit the ECE workforce as a whole. They also need to include targeted strategies based on the needs of specific populations such as African Americans and other groups.

Recognizing the false clash among the three issues being targeted by this series offers an important first step in creating a fairer and more equitable ECE service delivery system. Let’s turn the elephant around and see the side frontline early childhood workers see to reduce not only inequities children experience but also their families and communities.

Sherri Killins Stewart, EdD, is the director of state systems alignment and integration for the BUILD Initiative and an independent consultant.

By Marica Cox Mitchell

What a time to be alive! As a NAEYC staff member conceptualizing and informing the direction of Power to the Profession,⁴ a 15-member national collaboration defining and advancing early childhood education (ECE) as a profession, it’s exciting to experience the synergy across the country as we advance toward becoming a unified, effective, and accountable profession. I do not, however, speak on behalf of NAEYC or the Power to the Profession task force. My perspective, as expressed below, draws from personal reflections about the complexities, frictions, and mistrust embedded in this discourse.

Two “keep it real” advocate groups routinely energize me—ECE workforce policy veterans and practicing educators. The veterans have experienced more than four decades of what they see as minimal progress and can quickly point to self-inflicted barriers impeding our progress. The practicing educators (including faculty and administrators) are living the field’s identity and compensation crisis. They’ve lost patience with the field’s seemingly never-ending rhetoric.

From ongoing conversations with these individuals, I’ve concluded that addressing ECE’s thorny knot depends on grappling with what I’ve come to think of as five non-negotiables essential to the field’s advancement as a profession.

• Advancing ECE as a profession requires creating a stable 1.0 version, inclusive of compensation, before building more visionary versions.

As we embark upon building a unifying framework for an ECE profession, I believe its first iteration must be capable of lifting up the field across all sectors, while also paving the way for future, enhanced versions. For educators and administrators living daily with ECE’s crisis, moving forward with a version 1.0 is imperative. They have neither the financial nor the social privilege to wait decades for a bold, future vision to materialize. They want a “right now” movement that guarantees compensation parity.

In contrast, my workforce policy veterans are driven by a more daring and visionary future. They’ve experienced too many incremental and isolated wins and want assurances that version 1.0 will be neither static nor regressive. They want the visionary seeds they’ve been planting for decades to be harvested. I think of them as the optimists Luis Hernandez describes in his piece, when he shares his cautions about unrealistic expectations for academic uniformity. Still, since their leadership has contributed to the field’s considerable progress over the past decades, there’s reason to believe their vision, however lofty, is attainable.

• Advancing the profession means naming inequities and using an equity lens for driving decisions about ECE’s future as a profession.

Organizing as a profession can lead to becoming insular and exclusive. In my review of organized professions, I’ve seen that reliance on social structures like higher education and state licensure can unintentionally and intentionally produce cultural, linguistic, and racial inequities. Consequently, advancing as a profession can be treacherous territory. The risks of decreasing ECE’s diversity are real. As advocates, we must be prepared to name and disrupt structural inequities and ensure that targeted supports are in place to recruit and retain a diversity of people in the profession.

• Advancing ECE as a profession means we have to confront biases.

We are products of the same racist, sexist, and elitist systems we are seeking to disrupt. This means we need to interrupt structural inequities external to ECE, as well as confront our own implicit and explicit biases. When, for example, I visit rural communities and observe that universities or practicum teaching sites aren’t a few train stops away, I have to confront my city bias. Disparaging comments about Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential holders and associate degree graduates and their faculty expose a more global example of our field’s elitist sentiments.

• Advancing ECE as a profession means being more intentional about policy and financing decisions within our control.

“Can somebody just teach me how to work the system?” is what a frustrated practicing educator asked towards the end of a three-hour conversation about ECE’s movement toward becoming a profession. Because we have some agency over systems that influence our work, we can—and should—be more strategic and intentional about ECE policies and funding decisions. For example, are we funding “industry recognized” degrees and credentials that are high-quality, portable, and stackable, or are we funding state credentials that may be more accessible but have minimal value in the wider market? Do the QRIS and pre-K systems we design and finance support the coaching and quality assessment industry while only minimally supporting educator compensation and working conditions?

• Advancing ECE as a profession means we respect and leverage the profession and profession-led standards and systems.

In the research, policy, and practice triad, we must ensure that ECE’s expertise is not marginalized. As Sherri Killins Stewart pointed out in her piece, policymakers need to challenge their assumptions about “frontline providers.” While research and policy should inform practice, they, in turn, should be informed by our practices.

State and federal agencies intentionally leverage the standards and systems developed by professions. They don’t spend limited public dollars duplicating (or worse, disregarding) profession-led accreditation systems or ignoring industry credentials. We can’t denigrate profession-led systems or organizations and then expect ECE to be an influential player.

If ECE is to realize its aspirations to become a recognized profession, these five non-negotiables must undergird our decision-making. They highlight the complexities involved with moving forward as a profession and also identify the mental shifts we collectively need to make. To move beyond false choices, we must be willing to practice what we preach. If we want the public to adopt new mental models about financing ECE, we too must be willing to shift our mental models.

Marica Cox Mitchell previously served as the deputy executive director, Early Learning Systems at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and is now director, Early Learning at Bainum Family Foundation

By Michele Miller-Cox
Originally published in Education Week

Parents know that children's early experiences greatly influence their success later in school and in life. While parents are young children's first and best teachers, they rely on early educators as partners in preparing their children for success. And when that partnership is strong, we have the building blocks for prosperous communities, states, and nations. As a result, states and communities across our country have started to raise the qualifications and credentials for early educators. That is a great thing—as long as the resources are in place to assist early educators with the real costs of preparation and professional development while the bar is being raised.

It takes more than love of teaching for a person to be an effective early educator. I started my career in child care after entering a secretarial degree program and landing a summer internship at a nonprofit that supported early childhood and Head Start programs. I became interested in going into early education but I didn't know the extent of the knowledge, skills, and expertise it took to be a top-notch teacher until I accepted a job at one of the highest-quality child-care facilities in North Carolina. There, teachers were expected to maintain high levels of skills and continuous professional development.

Working at such a high-quality facility required that I spend evenings and weekends attending trainings and sometimes taking college courses necessary to complete my company's required 66 in-service training hours per year. It wasn't easy. However, it became very rewarding when I became more intentional in the teaching strategies I used and saw the difference it made in the development of my pupils. Those experiences also made me realize that I needed to learn more, and that meant going back to school to earn degrees.

Developing foundational skills in young children is a complex job that requires competency and skill. That's why it is critically important to have standards for the lead early educators who are primarily responsible for fostering social-emotional and academic growth while overseeing the work of assistant teachers and paraprofessionals. Those who work with the youngest children must know how to build trust with children and families.

Teachers—whether they run a family child-care home or work in a child-care center—need to understand and abide by local rules and state regulations, develop and implement lesson plans, assess children's development, design curricula that's appropriate, and have a true understanding of the National Association for the Education of Young Children's Code of Ethical Conduct, which provides a common basis for resolving the primary ethical dilemmas that early educators face. These skills and knowledge are not innate, any more than the skills and knowledge to design and build buildings are innate. Strong instructional programs must exist to help student-teachers develop the knowledge, skills, and expertise to become effective.

Many fear that raising qualifications for early educators will make the profession less diverse and no longer reflective of the children it serves. That is simply not true. In North Carolina, 44 percent of center directors and 47 percent of center early educators are people of color, according to a 2015 survey from the Child Care Services Association.⁵ Nationally, a significant percentage of our profession consists of low-income women of color who are hungry for professional advancement and will seek out opportunities if we provide the pipeline and assistance to make higher education possible. If the resources are there, we can have diversity, a well-qualified workforce, and better outcomes for children and communities.

My experience running a child-care business in North Carolina shows that this is not impossible, as some suggest. I worked 12 hours a day and went to school at night. My family sacrificed, and my advancement was made possible by a system that made higher education possible. For example, the Child Care Services Association's T.E.A.C.H. early-childhood scholarship program—which offers a three-way partnership between the nonprofit, the scholarship recipient, and a sponsoring child-care center—paid for 80 percent of what it cost to earn my associate’s and bachelor degrees while still running my business. It also reimbursed me for books, provided a travel stipend, supported release time for me to study and go to class, and provided a counselor to support my journey.

I also received support from a statewide initiative (WAGE$), which provides education-based salary supplements to low-paid teachers, directors, and family child-care educators working with children from birth to age five. The program is designed to increase retention, education, and compensation.

We need to expand these kinds of supports to provide the same resources and opportunities to all early-childhood professionals.

But it is not just funding support that early-childhood educators need to complete their education. Many also need people who can help them navigate the path to obtaining higher education, especially those for whom college and technology can be intimidating. Early educators will meet the call as long as there's a path and a system in place that helps them achieve their aspirations to be the best possible teacher for the children placed in their trust.

By raising the qualifications and increasing professional development and compensation opportunities for early educators, our communities, states, and nation have much to gain. Children who come to elementary school with foundational skills that foster reading at grade level are on the pathway to be high school and college graduates and productive citizens.

Investing in early educators has a real return. And parents need early educators who know their children, see their potential, and know how to employ all the ways to bring it out. Children and families deserve nothing less—and we need to work together to make that happen.

Michele Miller-Cox is the executive director at First Presbyterian Day School in North Carolina.

by Anne Douglass

Can you imagine trying to improve quality in healthcare settings without the input of doctors and nurses? Or strengthening cybersecurity without the participation of internet technologists? Yet this is what we typically do when discussing how to advance early care and education (ECE). We move forward without input or guidance from those most experienced in ECE: educators, center directors, and family child care owners who care for and educate children from birth to age five. What if, instead, we looked to early educators at all career levels for leadership and innovation?

It’s no mystery why early educators are overlooked so often. Women comprise 93.4 percent of the ECE workforce, nearly half of whom are women of color. According to a report released last May⁶ by the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin, 44 percent earn less than $10.09 per hour. Generally speaking, it does not matter whether women at this end of the socio-economic spectrum lean in, out, or sideways, they too often are not taken seriously.

I direct ECE degree programs at an urban public university. I also run a research institute that trains early educators and ECE business owners in entrepreneurial leadership. This work is exciting and challenging. But it is no less meaningful or engaging than my prior 20 years caring for and educating very young children as the owner of a home-based child care center, an early childhood educator, center director, and quality improvement coach. Nevertheless, my opinions on ECE are sought out much more frequently today than they ever were in my former roles.

I’m not the first author to highlight how early educators’ competence and leadership is being disregarded. Other authors have described the dynamic by which caregivers of our future—early educators responsible for children from birth to age five—are casually and routinely underestimated. Anna Mercer-McLean, who directs a child care center, writes about hearing a family member describe her work as “babysitting.” Home-based child care owner Tracy Ehlert, who hung her diploma for a master of science in early childhood studies next to her students’ coat rack to ensure parents would see it, writes, “I routinely overhear myself being called ‘the sitter’ or ‘the daycare lady.’” When respect is given, as Stacie Goffin has noted, it is often extended to the profession rather than the practitioner.

Valora Washington convincingly writes that solutions to the challenges now facing ECE must be guided by “respect for the workforce and intentional focus on equity issues.” Nilsa Ramirez correctly observes that you can’t have a conversation about reform without “the authentic voices of those who most are impacted—early childhood educators and the families they serve.” And Washington further notes the irony that ECE’s “approach to promoting a strengths-based paradigm about children and families often is not extended to educators.”

In his aptly titled piece, “Let’s Be Honest: It’s About Sexism, Classism, and Racism,” Maurice Sykes laments our near-universal failure to see the ECE workforce for what it is: creative, experienced, and resilient. Sykes attributes his success running a program for early educators seeking associate’s degrees to seeing “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 many of the other authors, I work daily with early educators and child care business owners who reflect the rich diversity of the children and communities they serve and are eager to advance their knowledge, become more effective educators and administrators, and implement new practices to better support children and families. The Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation⁷ (Leadership Institute) at UMass Boston, where I do this work, trains frontline workers in entrepreneurial leadership. ECE educators and business owners who are at the beginning, middle, and advanced levels of their careers learn the skills to develop solutions to challenges ranging from poverty-level wages and workforce turnover to the best ways to bring pedagogical research and innovation into the classroom. These are issues about which they have deep insight, and they are best positioned to offer ideas that should be tested. Importantly, family child care owners and providers, who are among the most marginalized of early educators, are full participants in this work. Indeed, a federally commissioned research project I conducted with three family child care provider leadership Institute graduates found that they want to use their expertise and voices to strengthen practice within the field.⁸

As evidence of my thesis, instead of leaving the field⁹ as so many early educators do, our graduates stay and mobilize leadership to drive change in the profession. They’re opening new preschools,¹⁰ influencing education policy,¹¹ testing innovations¹² to improve children’s classroom learning, and achieving efficiencies in business operations¹³ that enable them to invest in quality enhancements. The ripple effects have been immense. Graduates have influenced the teaching methods and mindsets of their colleagues and strengthened the care and learning of an estimated 5,000 young children in Massachusetts so far.

On the road to early education reform, one size does not fit all. But recognizing and cultivating practitioners’ leadership capacity to build programs, design innovations, and advocate for change—and in general advance ECE as a field of practice— is essential to successful reform.

Anne Douglass, PhD, is associate professor of early childhood education and founding executive director at the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

By Lauren Hogan

As most any couple will tell you, you’re never actually fighting about the dishes. You’re fighting about what doing the dishes says about how you’re valued and respected. In Congress, likewise, and in our early childhood education (ECE) community, we’re often not fighting about the thing we appear to be fighting about. Instead we are grappling with questions about motives and compromises. We’re wrestling with questions about whose voices get to lead, get sidelined, and get dismissed. And we’re confronting questions of control, fear, privilege, power, and trust. Let’s call this the “work beneath the work.”

As Congress struggles to find a way forward, and ECE attempts to detangle its “thorny knot,” policymakers, advocates, and influencers are engaging with (or avoiding) that deeper work. But as early childhood advocates who must engage, it is imperative that we assume responsibility for the systems and sequences we design, especially those of us (and I count myself among them) who have, in some way and because of some unearned attributes, benefitted from one or many of these systems. We cannot allow our privilege to get in the way, as Killins Stewart posits that we do, nor blind ourselves, as Valora Washington references, to the ways in which our lack of respect for educators is made visible.

We must connect the dots between things such as Maurice Sykes’ (accurate) assessment of a system rife with racism, elitism, sexism, and classism and Washington’s concern that our “numbers adequately reflect the demographics of the children and families served among 'new' roles such as coaches, [etc.]” We must then take that connection to the next step by adding new details to questions such as one posed by Cox Mitchell so that we ask, “do the QRIS and pre-K systems being designed and financed support the coaching and quality assessment industry (which tends to be more highly-paid, more highly-educated, and less diverse) while simultaneously only minimally supporting educator compensation and working conditions (among a profession that is less well-paid, less well-educated, and made up of a greater percentage of women of color)?”

The answer to that question, added parentheses and all, is yes; and the point is that those of us who create and influence policy could do it differently. We could, for example, create quality rating and improvement systems that reverse the focus—that is, they create incentives that lean more towards increasing the compensation and working conditions of the frontline professional, and less towards the growth of the coaching industry. But typically we don’t. Instead we call consequences of policies we create “unintended,” even when they are predictable, or we bemoan results of the problems we’ve created for ourselves.

Why do we do this? What do we believe about educators doing this work that causes us, as advocates, funders, and policymakers, to design and promote systems that invest in systems and structures around the profession rather than in the profession itself? What is behind the “countless rule changes” that Tammy Mann references in ”Preparing Competent Early Childhood Educators: Is Higher Education Up to the Task?” with their “unintended consequences too often generated for those on the frontlines of this work?” As early childhood advocates, our “work beneath the work” should be to ask questions such as:

Are these consequences actually unintended? Why don’t we create QRIS systems that invest first and foremost in frontline educators? Why is it so hard to achieve articulation between associate’s and bachelor degrees? And further: Who is benefiting from the way things work? Who is helped by a kind of controlled chaos?

The truth is that somebody always benefits. Most things don’t just happen, no harm intended.

Michelle Alexander, in her seminal book, The New Jim Crow,¹⁴ writes of efforts by “white elites to decimate a multiracial alliance of poor people”—in other words, to make sure that the people who should be banding together to fight a shared challenge instead are fighting each other. Sowing division is one of numerous strategies to halting change, and, as for our country at large, these strategies represent a threat faced by the ECE field.

If there’s to be any hope of addressing them, these threats have to be understood. Here’s just one example of how sowing division plays out: those who are demanding increased affordability of early learning programs get pitted against those demanding their increased quality. Those in the ECE field get sucked into making it seem this is the field’s defining division and engage in internecine fights with each other instead of turning towards policymakers and holding them accountable for developing financing solutions that transcend the false schism.

It doesn’t have to be this way. False choices can be avoided. But to stop fighting the wrong fights, we must seek out and welcome new voices, questions, experiences, ideas, and perspectives, especially from early childhood educators on the frontlines. Significant and sustained public investments can’t be won without them. As Representative Ilhan Omar tweeted a few months ago, “We get what we organize for.” So let’s get clear on who we are fighting, what we’re fighting about, and who we are fighting for. In other words, let’s get to the work beneath the work.

Lauren Hogan is the senior director of public policy and advocacy at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

By Sara Mead

What does it mean to be a profession? That question runs as a through line for this blog series. Contributors have engaged one another in thoughtful dialogue about long-standing inequities along the lines of race, class, and gender that shape the current demographics, compensation, and working conditions of early educators; the importance of considering family and home-based child care providers in efforts to elevate the field; the need to increase compensation; and the need to seriously reassess current practices and quality in postsecondary and pre-service preparation programs for early educators. Embedded within these important issues, however, is another set of questions: What would it mean for early childhood education (ECE) to be viewed as a professional field? Should we want that (and at what cost)? And who in the ECE field should be viewed as a professional?

Public and policy dialogues about the ECE “profession” often focus on the “professionals”—the people who work in ECE settings, and the credentials, knowledge, and skills they hold. That makes sense: Research shows¹⁵ that the individuals in ECE classrooms and the relationships they form with children and families are the most crucial component of program quality. And several posts in this series highlight the grave folly of making prescriptions for the ECE workforce without engaging the experiences and perspectives of early educators themselves.

But it’s also a mistake to focus exclusively on the professionals. Indeed, as this series powerfully demonstrates, values, beliefs, assumptions, and institutions are at least as central to defining a profession as the credentials of those within it. Thus, professionalizing the ECE workforce also requires articulating and grappling with the beliefs and values that should characterize professional ECE practice, and questioning whether existing institutions and delivery structures are consistent with the profession we would like to see.

A fundamental requirement for any profession is that the people working within it view themselves as professionals and share a professional identity that includes commonly held values and ways of thinking about their work and the world. As Tracy Ehlert notes in her piece “In-Home Childcare Providers Need to Step Up to the Importance of Formal Education,” ECE cannot be viewed as a profession if early educators do not view themselves as professionals. Yet to date, the field has lacked a clear articulation of the values and mindsets that differentiate early educators from others who view themselves as professionals (and non-professionals). One crucial test for NAEYC’s Power to the Profession¹⁶ (P2P) efforts, therefore, will be whether it generates meaningful stakeholder buy-in around a common understanding of the skills, values, and mindsets that will define ECE’s future as a recognized profession.

Professions, which I’m defining more broadly than P2P, must also have institutions that cultivate, sustain, and reflect their beliefs. For example, as several contributors to this series, including Marica Cox Mitchell, Tammy Mann, and Sally Holloway, have noted (and as Lisa Guernsey, Emily Workman, and I wrote¹⁷ earlier this year) viewing early childhood educators as credible professionals will require significant changes to the institutions that prepare them. But postsecondary institutions aren’t the only ones that need to change.

Elevating ECE’s professional status also will require major changes in the organizations where early educators work. Organizational cultures affect how early educators view their roles, and working conditions¹⁸ influence their ability to teach children effectively. Yet conversations about elevating the ECE workforce—including this compendium—rarely address the organization of ECE delivery or the culture and capacity of organizations that provide ECE programs. Many “mom and pop” small businesses and nonprofits that operate ECE programs unfortunately lack the capacity, resources, and internal infrastructure to support, develop, and retain a professional workforce. It’s unreasonable to expect early childhood educators to practice as professionals if the organizations where they work are not organized as professional working environments.

Finally, Jason Sachs argued in “The Solution for the Workforce Dilemma is the Public Schools,” that professionalizing the ECE workforce would be best accomplished by bringing ECE under the umbrella of the public education system. As someone who believes in the value of diverse delivery and recognizes the shortcomings of our public-school system, I can’t agree. But if the ECE field values a diverse ecosystem that encompasses a variety of private, non-profit, home-, faith-, and community-based programs as well as public schools, it must be willing to confront the weaknesses of existing delivery structures and rethink how to organize and support ECE’s delivery. Strategies such as shared services alliances¹⁹ and family child care networks, which strengthen the capacity and professionalism of ECE organizations and the individuals who lead them, must be part of any effort to professionalize ECE, but the field likely needs additional strategies that have yet to be developed.

Like many authors in this compendium, I believe that elevating the skills, prestige, and compensation of early educators is essential both as a matter of social justice and to enable our nation’s children to realize their full potential. But credential requirements alone cannot accomplish this goal. The “thorny knot” that confronts ECE’s workforce efforts is the product of values and beliefs in the field and broader society and is baked into the institutions and delivery structures at all levels. Untangling that knot, then, requires a willingness to interrogate our assumptions and beliefs and rethink existing institutional and systemic arrangements. This is neither easy nor comfortable. But if we value early educators and children, it is surely work worth doing.

Sara Mead is a partner with Bellwether Education Partners.

By Patricia Snyder

Early intervention and early childhood special education (EI/ECSE) refers to two programs of supports and services for young children from birth through age five with or at risk for disabilities or delays and for their families. Since 1986, these two programs have been codified in federal statute under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act²⁰ (IDEA). They are now known as Part C, the early intervention program for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, and the Part B preschool grants program for children three through five years of age with or at risk for disabilities. Despite a federal policy statement on the importance of inclusive early learning settings, this compendium has yet to address this group of educators and has overlooked their thorny knot and its intersection with early childhood educators’ knot.

What might be surprising to many given EI/ECSE’s²¹ history is how interconnected its thorny knot is with Early Childhood Education’s ECE’s thread related to education and preparation. Although EI/ECSE programs existed before 1986, state-level personnel qualifications or personnel development systems were not specified or mandated until 1991. When these two programs were established in 1986, practitioners from other disciplines serving young children with or at risk for disabilities were already affiliated with professional fields of practice (e.g., speech-language pathology, physical therapy, occupational therapy—even though they might not have had specialized competencies relevant for EI/ECSE). Yet, when it came to educator positions in EI/ECSE, one could work (and in many cases still can work) as a special instructor or preschool special education teacher without being fully credentialed or licensed when entering the workforce.

Consequently, tensions have existed about EI/ECSE practitioner competencies since 1986, whether teachers are serving as special instructors under the Part C program or as preschool teachers under the Part B preschool grants program. Thorny questions abound: Should these individuals be required to have a strong foundation in ECE, special education, or both? Is EI/ECSE a part of the ECE field, an auxiliary field of practice, an ECE subspecialty, or a special education subspecialty? Who should establish and oversee the credentialing of the individuals in each of the two programs? Should credentialing be different for those working in Part C versus Part B? How should preservice programs be designed to prepare individuals to meet the developmental and learning needs of the children being served?

I am a former practitioner who entered the EI/ECSE field in 1978 as a speech language therapist and subsequently obtained master and doctoral degrees in special education with EI/ECSE emphases. In addition to working as a speech therapist, I also worked as a home visitor in early intervention, a preschool special education teacher, and inclusive early childhood program administrator. Given these experiences, as well as my current involvement with personnel preparation, I maintain that the time has come to position EI/ECSE as a specialization within ECE as part of the latter’s evolution toward becoming a professional field of practice. My assertion is based on years of experiencing the “separateness” that too often exists between ECE and EI/ECSE—a separation that is detrimental not only to both fields, but also to the formation of ECE as an inclusive field of practice capable of serving all young children and their families.

If we aspire to inclusion and the inclusive practices described in the 2015 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and U.S. Department of Education Policy Statement on Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Programs,²² those of us in these two, now relatively distinct, fields will need to come together to address complicated questions associated with which competencies are important for all early childhood educators to possess and which ones should be associated with an EI/ECSE specialization. In other words, what would distinguish a general ECE professional from an ECE professional with specialization(s) focused on supporting young children with or at risk for disabilities, young children who are dual language learners, or young children who have experienced chronic adverse early childhood experiences?

I recently reviewed Power to the Profession’s (P2P) Discussion Draft 2, Decision Cycles 3 4 5 + 6²³ and the draft EI/ECSE personnel preparation standards²⁴ developed by the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children (DEC/CEC). The significant and sustained efforts devoted to developing a stand-alone set of standards for EI/ECSE need to be acknowledged. These standards, as I understand it, will replace DEC/CEC’s existing initial and advanced knowledge and skills specialty sets. What is not clear to me is if these updated performance-based competencies will be situated within a larger ECE professional field of practice (i.e., as if EI/ECSE were a specialization) or remain separate. It is unclear from the draft standards of P2P, as well as those of DEC/CEC, whether an independent pathway is being forged when it comes to EI/ECSE’s preparation and education, even though the P2P draft document included promising statements about a unified framework for the ECE profession, including professional preparation, responsibilities, scope of practice, specialization, and compensation.

Incremental progress is being made to define ECE as a professional field of practice and to identify the need for specializations such as EI/ECSE. But, unless we move forward now to accelerate and further align ECE’s and EI/ECSE’s future trajectories, achieving aspirational statements about a unified ECE profession is unlikely to become a reality for this and future generations of early childhood educators.

Patricia Snyder, PhD, is professor of special education and early childhood studies, David Lawrence Jr. endowed chair in Early Childhood Studies, and director, Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Florida.