The Growing Demand for Early Childhood Educators with BAs
Early childhood educators have a unique opportunity to foster the development of cognitive, behavioral, and social skills. But the work is not easy. Effective educators need both a deep understanding of child development and mastery of a complex set of skills to meet the learning needs of young children. Accordingly, there is a growing demand across the country for early childhood educators with a bachelor’s degree education. For example, 35 state pre-K programs now require lead teachers to possess a bachelor’s degree, up from 26 programs with such a degree requirement 10 years ago.1And the 2007 reauthorization of Head Start required half of all lead teachers to hold bachelor’s degrees with training in early education. Currently, about 74 percent of Head Start teachers hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree in early childhood or a related field.2
The momentum towards a demand for early educators with at least a bachelor’s degree has only grown in the last several years. In 2015, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8, a report that explores the science of child development and its implications for professionals who work with young children. The most significant recommendation in the report was the call for a transition to a minimum bachelor’s degree qualification requirement for all lead teachers working with children from birth through age eight.3
In order to unpack the complexities of this recommendation and its implications for teachers of three- and four-year-olds, New America and Bellwether Education Partners engaged the nation’s leading experts on early childhood teacher preparation in a discussion of what preparation for current and future early educators should look like and the potential of new, more accessible, and higher-quality models for degree programs. New America and Bellwether convened a day-long meeting in Washington, DC on September 26, 2017 and conducted follow-up interviews throughout the fall with selected attendees and other experts. In February 2018, we released a paper synthesizing our findings and elevating issues that need to be addressed to ensure that all pre-K teachers have the core knowledge and competencies needed to effectively teach three- and four-year-olds.4 This brief on financing strategies is the second in a series that will explore strategies to help address some of those issues. We describe several strategies currently in use to assist early educators working to obtain a degree and end with a list of important things to consider when designing programs to help educators successfully navigate the journey towards successful completion of a degree program.
The Need for Increased Public Investment
When it comes to financing degrees for early educators, the goal should be sustained, robust public investment with specific funding dedicated to assisting educators in achieving college degrees that equip them with the knowledge and competencies necessary to be effective. The 2018 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education, notes that “the incumbent ECE workforce should bear no cost for increasing practitioners’ knowledge base, competencies, and qualifications, and the entering workforce should be assisted to limit costs to a reasonable proportion of postgraduate earnings.”5 We agree with this recommendation. However, until that goal becomes a reality, the strategies detailed below can serve as supports to help early educators complete degrees with limited out-of-pocket costs.
Citations
- W. Steven Barnett, Allison H. Friedman-Krauss, G. G. Weisenfeld, Michelle Horowitz, Richard Kasmin, and James H. Squires, The State of Preschool 2016: State Preschool Yearbook (New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research, 2017), source.
- Marnie Kaplan and Sara Mead, The Best Teachers for Our Littlest Learners? Lessons from Head Start’s Last Decade (Washington DC: Bellwether Education Partners, February 2017), source.
- LaRue Allen and Bridget B. Kelly, eds., Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), source.
- Emily Workman, Lisa Guernsey, and Sara Mead, Pre-K Teachers and Bachelor’s Degrees: Envisioning Equitable Access to High-Quality Preparation Programs (Washington, DC: New America, February 2018), source.
- LaRue Allen and Emily P. Backes, eds., Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018), source.