Promising Practices to Overcome Barriers

The working group identified ways to address the five barriers IHEs face to serving the ECE workforce.

Many students pursuing associate degree programs in community colleges, including early childhood educators, struggle to graduate.¹ The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), launched at the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2007 with funding from the city government, offers a comprehensive program for associate degree seekers at nine campuses throughout the system.² Initial results showed improved graduation rates of a magnitude rarely seen in the evidence-base for higher education reform: the program almost doubled graduation rates for students enrolled in developmental education.³ Most majors are eligible to participate in ASAP, so it is not specific to ECE.⁴

The success of the program is attributed largely to its comprehensive offerings for students. To address financial constraints, students receive a tuition waiver for any amount their financial aid does not already cover; free textbooks; and transportation assistance through MetroCards. Students enroll immediately in developmental education programs. To encourage students to build momentum toward graduation, they are required to enroll full-time—widely linked to a greater likelihood of completing college sooner⁵—and are provided with greater access to tutors, advisers, and career counseling. About half of ASAP students held a job on top of full-time enrollment, on average working 25 to 27 hours per week.⁶

The results speak for themselves. A rigorous evaluation by MDRC found that the program nearly doubled the three-year graduation rate for ASAP students as compared with their peers.⁷ An analysis conducted by CUNY researchers of the program’s first eight cohorts showed a large graduation effect, from about 25 percent to 53 percent.⁸ The program was especially effective for students who needed developmental education and for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.⁹ Given that early educators often share many of the needs of ASAP students, this model may greatly increase their chances of graduating with a degree, and of completing their programs more quickly and at a lower price.

The program is now being replicated at other community colleges, mostly with the support of philanthropic organizations. An evaluation of the ASAP Replication demonstration at three Ohio community colleges, for example, found that the programs nearly doubled graduation rates there after three years.¹⁰ The model has been launched at another New York state community college, at three schools in the San Mateo County Community College District in CA, at a community college in Nashville, TN, and at two West Virginia community colleges.¹¹

While ASAP reforms undoubtedly require a greater up-front investment from IHEs, the increased retention and graduation rates effectively pay for themselves by lowering the total cost per degree to the institution.¹² Virtually no other higher education reforms have shown such substantial shifts in college completion so quickly, making ASAP a prime method for colleges to solve the completion crisis for associate-degree students.

The working group identified multiple other comprehensive programs underway to address student supports. Two designed for ECE educators that stood out were the T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education and Compensation Helps) Early Childhood Scholarships and the Pennsylvania Early Childhood Education (ECE) Apprenticeship.¹³ T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood programs provide scholarships to incumbent early educators to pursue debt-free higher education, covering the cost of tuition, fees, and books. Recipients work with a dedicated counselor. Employers offer paid release time and agree to provide a pay increase to those who complete their program and remain at their job. In 2019, T.E.A.C.H. supported more than 17,495 scholarship recipients across 22 states and Washington, DC. The scholarships are administered by state agencies or nonprofits and are funded largely through federal dollars that flow to the state. Past federal funding sources have included the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) quality and infant-toddler set-aside dollars and Race to the Top–Early Learning Challenge grants.¹⁴ The T.E.A.C.H. National Center is supported by philanthropic dollars and some states also use philanthropy to support the program. The National Center is in the middle of a longevity study to analyze how graduates progress in their careers and earnings over three years.¹⁵

In Pennsylvania, the ECE Apprenticeship program provides working early educators with a higher education pathway that combines online or on-campus coursework with on-the-job coaching and competency assessments so they can earn an associate or bachelor’s degree in ECE.¹⁶ It is a Registered Apprenticeship Program validated by the U.S. Department of Labor, and therefore meets specific program quality standards and has access to federal funding.¹⁷ Tuition is funded through T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood scholarships, and apprentices can take a full course load while working full time with the help of individual on-site coaches, academic support, and study groups. Apprentices receive incremental pay raises as they meet benchmarks in the program and can earn college credit without going into debt.

This apprenticeship program began as a local partnership between District 1199c Training & Upgrading Fund, a Philadelphia-based union, and the Community College of Philadelphia. It has since expanded statewide with support from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning, which plays a critical role in facilitating communication across state agencies.¹⁸ The program depends on four essential partners to provide support to early educators: District 1199c Training & Upgrading Fund as an intermediary organization, participating IHEs, local training agencies that provide worksite coaching and training related to the identified course outcomes, and ECE employers.¹⁹ Program partners collaborate to identify and develop strategies to remove locally relevant barriers to college enrollment and degree completion, such as courses in languages other than English or access to laptops for online courses.²⁰ An impact evaluation of the program is currently underway.

Another promising practice that was not raised in the working group, but that New America has done extensive research on, is Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher programs.²¹ GYO programs, which recruit and prepare teachers from the local community, are designed with the needs of candidates in mind. A variety of wraparound supports are offered to each GYO participant to help remove the financial, academic, familial, and linguistic barriers they may face at each step of the process in earning a degree. For example, the Bilingual Fellows program at Highline School District in Washington State offers tuition assistance, mentoring, paid on-the-job training, university coursework on site, and a cohort model to provide peer support. Program fellows work as paraeducators while they earn their bachelor’s degree and teacher certification. The program is funded through a statewide competitive grant program that was established through legislative appropriation and is designed to facilitate school district and university partnerships to increase diversity in the state’s educator workforce. A total of eight states offer competitive grant programs to support the creation and expansion of GYO programs, including programs for individuals who lack a college credential, either associate or bachelor’s degree.²²

Policy, Practice, and Funding Levers Used by Program

Among the many strengths of the ECE workforce is its linguistic diversity.²³ More than one in four early educators speaks a language other than English, closely mirroring the linguistic demographics²⁴ of the young children they serve. Despite students’ linguistic assets, IHEs have been slow to design accessible classes and resources for teacher candidates with limited English proficiency.²⁵ Acknowledging the need for more bilingual courses, both Miami Dade College in Miami, FL and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA are taking innovative approaches to supporting their multilingual students in becoming early educators.²⁶

Miami Dade College offers a certificate program for pre-K teachers and another for infant and toddler teachers which have been translated into Spanish and Haitian Creole. Each program includes four content courses focused on child development alongside English as a second language (ESL) courses that are contextualized to ECE to strengthen teacher candidates’ English skills. Students who complete the program are eligible for the Florida Child Care Professional Certificate or the national Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential. Students may also take advantage of the stackable pathway the college has created and transfer the 15 credits earned through the certificate program towards an associate or bachelor’s degree.

This program launched in 2013 with the encouragement of the Children’s Trust, a dedicated source of revenue to support children and families established by voter referendum in Miami Dade County in 2002, and the local Early Learning Coalition, a nonprofit organization promoting school readiness in Miami Dade and Monroe counties. Through the Children’s Trust Career Center, practitioners who work at an early childhood center can obtain a scholarship for coursework.

Since the certificate program began, 90 students have successfully completed the program, representing 65 percent of those who enrolled. A high proportion of these students have received support through T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood scholarships. Student surveys have shown that the ESL course is the main obstacle to completion, so faculty have continuously modified the program to make the English vocabulary and content more applicable to students’ early childhood work. With a large Spanish-speaking population in Miami, students are often more concerned with developing their expertise as ECE teachers than they are with learning English, as most of the children and families they work with also speak Spanish.²⁷

With philanthropic support from the Early Educator Collaborative Initiative, and a partnership between the Children’s Trust, the University of North Florida, and Miami Dade College, the infant and toddler certificate program will be offered online in Spanish and Haitian Creole within the coming year, allowing greater access to the program throughout the state and country.

Southwestern College, located in the southernmost part of California just a few miles from the Mexico border, has a large population of students who speak exclusively Spanish. In 2002, community members approached faculty at the community college to inquire about pathways to earn the California Child Development Associate Teacher Permit. The Family Studies Department and English as a Second Language Department collaborated to design a Spanish-to-English Associate Teacher Certificate that balances content in Spanish with scaffolded ESL instruction.

Launched in 2003, the program uses a cohort model and consists of four core child development courses, each of which is taught alongside a corresponding ESL class. The initial courses begin in Spanish and the final classes are taught in English. Students complete the program with 12 credits and are eligible to earn the state’s Child Development Associate Teacher Permit.²⁸ This program is meant to be the first rung of the career ladder for Spanish-speaking students, as it gives them the foundation to succeed in English courses. They may continue on to the college’s Child Development Associate of Arts degree (the next level permit in California), where classes are offered exclusively in English. The program, which typically takes about two years to complete, has a waitlist each year.²⁹ Community college tuition in California is relatively affordable, and many students enrolling in the certificate program are eligible to access state grants that waive fees for first-time, full-time students for two years.³⁰

Both colleges have structured programs to ensure that students acquire a deeper understanding of child development while improving their English proficiency. By embracing students’ linguistic abilities, these colleges produce certified early educators ready to serve the multilingual students in their communities.

Policy, Practice, and Funding Levers Used by Program

Placing into remediation and passing college-level math can be challenging for students interested in a career in ECE. Many of these students, particularly those who have been out of school and in the workforce for years, find passing math a challenging barrier to achieving their academic goals.³¹ Fortunately, there are initiatives underway to reform developmental math and support students. Two of these major reforms are the math pathways and the co-requisite model and many states, like Massachusetts, are implementing both strategies.

Math pathways reform aligns a student’s college-level math with his or her course of study. College algebra was meant to prepare students for calculus but, over time, it became the default college-level math class for all students. Now, fewer than 20 percent of students enrolled in college algebra are pursuing programs that require calculus.³² These students need math that better matches their academic and career goals. The evidence shows that when students engage with math relevant to their programs of study—for example, an elementary education math course for early educators as recommended in Massachusetts—they are more motivated and more likely to succeed.³³ For instance, in one randomized, controlled trial, 56 percent of City University of New York (CUNY) students passed a college-level statistics course compared with 45 percent who were randomly assigned to a developmental algebra course. The only difference was the mathematics content and how relevant it was to the students’ course of study.³⁴

Moving to co-requisite remediation means allowing students who tested into remediation to enroll directly into a credit-bearing math class while receiving additional academic support. Massachusetts, along with 20 other states, is currently supporting its public colleges to implement this reform. Evidence shows that co-requisite remediation is very effective in helping students pass their gateway courses and increases credit completion among students who require developmental education. In 2015, Tennessee implemented co-requisite remediation. Pass rates in introductory college-level math subsequently increased from 12 percent under the prerequisite model to 51 percent.³⁵ While these reforms were introduced alongside other systematic changes, early findings from one study suggest that co-requisite remediation helped reduce the cost of getting a student through his or her first college-level math course by half, from $7,720 to $3,840.

To support these and other remedial education reforms, philanthropic foundations and the Education Commission of the States created a network of like-minded organizations called Strong Start to Finish, which focuses on promoting research-based reforms that improve first-year student success. It works with many colleges and non-profits.³⁶ The network can provide helpful resources for colleges looking to improve remediation.

These curricular reforms can make a big difference in students passing their college-level math course and earning their degree. States, particularly state higher education agencies, can help support these reforms by helping convene colleges for discussion, giving grants, and providing technical assistance around remediation reform. IHEs themselves can help their faculty and deans to change the way they are providing instruction, provide additional resources for academic support in redesigned co-requisite courses, and rethink required college-level math to better align with the course of study.

Policy, Practice, and Funding Levers Used by Program

Effective clinical experiences expose students to learning environments where they can observe strong teaching and implement new knowledge and skills learned in their coursework.³⁷ It is important for students to have access to clinical experiences across multiple age groups and early learning settings throughout their preparation program.³⁸ In 2016, Central New Mexico Community College set out to improve the quality of field placements by establishing the Early Childhood Mentor Network.³⁹ Through this program, practicing early educators can apply to become mentors for practicum students. During their first year in the program, these teachers take two online mentorship courses at no cost and earn a state-level mentor certificate from the New Mexico Early Childhood Education & Care Department upon completion.

Mentors meet with college faculty each month to design high-quality clinical experiences that connect students’ coursework with classroom practice. For hosting practicum students and attending meetings, mentors receive a small stipend from the state and three credits that may be applied to any of the college’s courses. Since mentor teachers are required to hold at least an associate degree and Central New Mexico Community College does not offer a bachelor’s degree in ECE, many mentors use this benefit for their spouses or children.⁴⁰

The Early Childhood Mentor Network provides a comprehensive clinical experience for each teacher candidate while strengthening the skills of educators already practicing. With this systems-wide approach, the college aims to improve the quality of early learning and care for children across the region. The program was initially funded through a grant from the Thornburg Foundation, a local philanthropic organization. As the largest early childhood program in the state, Central New Mexico Community College was the ideal site for its investment because the program needed to create more high-quality field placements to serve all of its students. This year, the college received a contract from New Mexico’s Children, Youth, and Families Department to support this work. Building on the successes of the mentor network and making use of new funding streams, the college recently launched a network for directors, acknowledging the important role that leadership plays in early education program quality.⁴¹

In the 2018 program evaluation, students paired with mentors gave positive feedback about their clinical experiences and reported feeling prepared to enter the field with stronger classroom management and instructional techniques.⁴² Mentors reported feeling greater confidence and improved skill. Mentors were far less likely than their non-mentor peers to report plans to exit the early childhood field in the next six months. The program evaluation found that the professional network acts as a buffer to counter the many challenges early educators may encounter.

Another challenge when it comes to fulfilling clinical requirements is not quality, but access. Policies regarding where and how students fulfill these requirements varies between programs, and IHEs have significant leverage to improve accessibility. For example, IHEs can allow clinical hours to be completed over a longer period of time, such as two semesters instead of one, to better accommodate working students. Alternatively, the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Scholarship program and Pennsylvania ECE Apprenticeship model discussed earlier enable learning to happen on the job by embedding practicum requirements in teachers’ current worksites and ensuring that they have access to mentors. Another option to accommodate students with time constraints is to allow them to conduct classroom observations via video instead of in person.

In the wake of COVID-19, both IHEs and early education settings are grappling with how to serve students safely. Faculty members are wrestling with how students will meet clinical requirements when in-person learning is not possible. In a spring survey of IHEs by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), “41% of respondents [said] that none of their students were able to participate in field experiences” due to COVID-19.⁴³ However, IHEs adapted quickly and found numerous ways to ensure that candidates observe teaching and learning and practice skills learned in their coursework. The most common method was “using videos and reflections to replace field experiences.” Some students were able to meet with children and families virtually, and others “videotape[d] themselves implementing curriculum (with or without actual children).” And about one-third of survey respondents gave students more time to complete the requirements. Lessons learned from the COVID-19 response in the way of flexibility and the use of technology may be useful after the pandemic is over.

Policy, Practice, and Funding Levers Used by Program

Tenured and adjunct faculty members play an important role in preparing early educators, both in the content and experiences they deliver.

The reliance on and limited support of part-time and adjunct faculty in degree programs can contribute to the inconsistent quality of those programs. These non-tenure-track faculty members can be an asset, however, especially in ECE degree programs because they may be working in the field themselves. IHEs can and should do more to support these faculty members and recognize their important role in preparing early educators. One example of how to do this comes from Santa Monica College in California.⁴⁴ While the strategies employed are not specific to ECE faculty, the college has a significant percentage of part-time instructors. In the fall of 2018, they taught more than 50 percent of the courses offered. According to a report from the Pullias Center for Higher Education, the college instituted several approaches including an orientation specifically for adjunct faculty with the goal of building community; department-specific mentoring; and professional development opportunities, including compensation for non-teaching work.

Opportunities for faculty to collaborate and support one another are important for their development. For example, as part of President Obama’s Invest in Us campaign, the Foundation for Child Development funded the NYC Early Childhood Research Network, where faculty from public and private IHEs, community colleges, four-year schools, and graduate programs throughout New York City propose research studies in response to policymaker needs.⁴⁵ In three years, the Research Network has not only launched 11 studies that cover a range of topics in early education, but also has played a role in developing faculty, since it facilitates cross-program learning and offers professional development. For instance, the network brought in a communications firm to teach researchers how to write recommendations succinctly to reach the right people.

Another important aspect of the network is connecting people who have earned their PhD but are new to the field with more seasoned faculty. Sherry Cleary, university dean of Early Childhood Initiatives at the City University of New York, sees the Early Career Scholars program as “inviting the next generation of researchers to the table.” These scholars receive a stipend and are mentored for the year. Academia can be a competitive, hierarchical environment and is not always friendly to new faces, but the Early Career Scholars are treated as full colleagues, attending all meetings, and being introduced to city policymakers and funders. The Research Network also tries to address the lack of diversity in the field. Early education faculty tend to be predominantly white women, which does not reflect the diversity of New York City. The Research Network expects research teams to model the diversity found in the city.

Policy, Practice, and Funding Levers Used by Program