Concluding Thoughts, Lessons, and Policy Considerations

Louisiana policymakers have enacted multiple reforms to strengthen the state’s ECE workforce, with a strong focus on infant and toddler teachers. Their goals have been ambitious while remaining realistic about available resources and the starting place of the workforce. Their efforts are coordinated toward creating more consistent high-quality ECE experiences for all children from birth to age five. The policies discussed in this paper are just a fraction of the changes the Bayou State has made to its early education system in recent years. Other promising policies that are not specifically related to the ECE workforce are also underway, such as creating accessible performance profiles for each program to help parents choose the best center for their children.¹ This paper has focused on the workforce and how state policies have played out in one specific community, Lake Charles. Systems reform is difficult. Only time will tell whether Louisiana’s efforts lead to better quality and more equitable ECE.

While several states are already ahead of Louisiana in terms of early childhood educator qualifications and wages, many are not. Louisiana offers several lessons that other states can draw on when taking steps to strengthen their own ECE workforce.

1. Ensure that further education and training is accessible. Higher education and professional learning are key methods for building a knowledgeable and skilled workforce. But before a state requires or incentivizes educators to earn higher qualifications, it must put supports in place so that this workforce can better access programs or opportunities. There is a large body of research detailing the barriers to higher education that early educators, and nontraditional and low-income students more broadly, commonly face.² Limited time and money, low education level, and lack of reliable technology, are just some. When Louisiana added the Ancillary Certificate requirement, it not only gave the workforce multiple years to earn it, but also provided start-up funds to local preparation programs so that classes were offered throughout the state, and it offered full scholarships to attendees. It also automatically enrolled graduates in the state workforce registry, making it easy for them to receive the tax credit to supplement their wages, when eligible.
2. Prioritize collecting, using, and sharing data. A key advantage of having a unified ECE system is the ability to collect data on all centers participating in the QRIS. Louisiana now has multiple years of CLASS data measuring teacher-child interactions for every classroom in every center receiving public funding. All teachers, including child care teachers, receive feedback. These data have allowed the state to analyze its early education system in new ways. As Daphna Bassok at University of Virginia said, “the state’s data is unprecedented both in its scope and in its richness. For the first time a state can really look carefully at quality improvements over time, across all sectors, at the program and even at the classroom level.” The data are used to inform professional development. And Louisiana plans to use data to hold Ancillary Certificate programs accountable.

   Interviews with LDE officials attest that they are committed to continuous improvement, and having data to measure what is working and what is not is key to making that a reality. CLASS might not be the right tool for every state but having a way to measure teacher-child interactions, a cornerstone of high-quality, especially when it can be linked to child outcomes, is important.

3. Consider using new CCDBG funding to improve quality. Louisiana has devoted federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) dollars to quality improvements, including scholarships for Ancillary Certificate program attendees and start-up grants for preparation programs. Less than half of states use CCDBG dollars for early educator scholarships.³ To be sure, Louisiana has made a trade-off: it has implemented a policy to ensure that children who receive public subsidies are in quality care in lieu of any type of care. At the same time, the waitlist for child care assistance is very long and Louisiana has invested little of its own money to improve access. Finding the right balance of where to invest in quality versus access is something that other states should think strategically about.
4. Be strategic about implementation. Passing legislation or creating new regulations is often the first step to policy change, but the key to success lies in implementation. While Louisiana has made numerous changes over the last five years, Jenna Conway says the state “piloted all of [its] big moves to learn from the field and [has] tried to course correct when things didn't go as planned.” State policy changes have largely been implemented at the local level, with community networks leading the work. And the state has provided local support, financial assistance, and time to make changes. To meet the Ancillary Certificate requirement, officials “gave us the plan ahead of time. They spent hours around the table figuring out how to roll it out. Two to three years ago they said to accomplish it by 2019; this was the expectation. In the process they gave us resources and scholarships,” Sheryl Piper, retired early childhood director and senior board member for Children First in Lake Charles, said.

   A recent analysis by RAND Corporation of Louisiana’s education reforms identified “close involvement with educators to gather feedback and promote buy-in” as a theme of the state’s reform efforts.⁴ RAND wrote that “state leaders have developed a variety of communication approaches, both formal and informal, and many of them focus on seeking feedback from teachers and other educators.”⁵ Interviews with state policymakers demonstrate a cohesive vision for reform, and interviews with local leaders in Lake Charles suggest that this vision has been clearly communicated and understood.

State policy changes have largely been implemented at the local level, with community networks leading the work.

Louisiana should consider the following recommendations to enhance its ECE work:

1. Increase state investment in child care. According to Melanie Bronfin, CCAP has gone from serving approximately 40,000 children in 2012 to only 15,000 children today. While federal funding for child care subsidies has grown, the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children finds that the state “has substantially decreased its spending on early care and education in the last eight years—to the point that we now appropriate less than ½ of 1% of our state general funds on early care and education.”⁶ State funding for pre-K has also been reduced in recent years, but not as dramatically. Per child funding levels in child care and state pre-K are significantly lower than those for Head Start and grades K-12 .⁷ The low funding levels per child are especially worrisome in child care programs, which usually operate year-round with extended hours to accommodate parent work schedules. While the recent federal increase in Child Care and Development Block Grant dollars will help get thousands of children off the waiting list for subsidies in Louisiana, federal funds should not supplant state investment, given the small percentage of children birth through age three in Louisiana who can access any publicly funded program, even with the federal increase in funds.⁸
2. Start thinking more comprehensively about K–3. While the challenges facing the child care workforce, particularly those working with infants and toddlers, are most acute, the state should also take steps to ensure that kindergarten, first, second, and third grade teachers and administrators are prepared to serve young children. All teaching licenses that certify educators to work with children from birth to age eight should have a strong foundation in child development and early learning. State and local districts should also create programs to ease the transition from early education programs into kindergarten; these are key to ensuring that children sustain the gains made in child care and pre-K. Louisiana is piloting aligned tools, including CLASS, in the K–3 space.
3. Continue to think beyond the Ancillary Certificate. According to LDE, there is no official plan to raise qualification requirements past the Ancillary Certificate for child care teachers. The National Academy of Medicine recommends all lead teachers working with children birth through age eight have a bachelor’s degree with specialized training in early childhood education.⁹ Louisiana is wisely taking this work one step at a time. LDE’s Erin Carroll says that the “next move is to focus on the Birth to Kindergarten pathway. We’ve established the Birth to Kindergarten AA and BA. The Ancillary Certificate is the first three courses of that degree pathway.” It is logical to prioritize the Ancillary Certificate now based on where the workforce is now, but in the future the state should also provide scholarships for teachers to pursue the associate degree and then the bachelor’s degree. It must also ensure that the Ancillary Certificate is truly stackable. For instance, many of the existing Ancillary Certificate programs do not actually lead to college credit.
4. Strengthen investments in early education leaders. Research shows that school leader quality greatly impacts child outcomes, as leaders are often responsible for hiring, supporting, and evaluating teachers. Thus, setting low expectations for both center directors and elementary school principals can jeopardize the quality of children’s learning experiences. Louisiana center directors with work experience in child care are only required to have minimal coursework or professional learning in child development or early childhood education, and management/administration education.¹⁰ The National Academy of Medicine recommends that center directors have at least a bachelor’s degree with specialized knowledge in early education.¹¹ Louisiana does encourage directors to earn higher education by offering them a School Readiness Tax Credit, similar to what teachers can receive.¹² However, the state should take a further step and increase center director qualification requirements to reflect child development research and implement a bachelor’s degree requirement over time. Any mandate to pursue higher education should be coupled with funding for scholarships.

   While Louisiana elementary school principals need to have a bachelor’s degree and teaching experience, they do not need to have taught elementary school. Principal preparation programs in Louisiana are required to offer coursework on child development but not early learning.¹³ It is common for elementary school principals to lack a clear understanding of how young children learn best. Louisiana should require elementary school principals to have teaching experience or clinical experience specifically in elementary schools, and ideally in early childhood education.

   Both principals and center directors could benefit from additional professional learning opportunities, or joint opportunities. Requiring all early learning programs to participate in the state’s QRIS, and thus requiring all leaders to be familiar with the CLASS tool, is an important step. According to a presentation for the Early Childhood Care and Education Advisory Council in February 2018, LDE has been researching and planning how to better support center directors.¹⁴ LDE is also developing an Early Childhood Leadership Academy for child care directors with funding from Harvard University’s Zaentz Early Ed Innovation Challenge that is expected to be piloted in 2019.¹⁵