Pa.'s youngest students need quality teachers, invest in workforce now

I have always known that I wanted to be a teacher. I double majored in Early Childhood and Elementary Education but my ultimate goal was to become a Head Start teacher and influence the foundation of learning in young people. Imagine my enthusiasm and joy when I was named lead teacher in a preschool classroom in a large child care center in my area. I spent hours upon hours writing lesson plans, creating learning centers, and decorating my room to coordinate with the weekly learning themes that the center established. I loved everything about teaching this age.

Unfortunately, my take home pay that year was around $11,000. My husband and I were refused a home loan because our income was insufficient to qualify us for a mortgage. When a maximum-security facility opened in our region advertising for a corrections education teacher, I felt I had no choice but to apply. I left a job that I loved and had always dreamed of so that we could buy a home and start a family.

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It took me 18 years to get back to teaching pre-K and to finally earn a living wage in a field that I love. In my new job, students are taught by teachers trained in social-emotional learning and developmentally appropriate practices for young children. The turnover rate in our pre-K classrooms is almost non-existent because of our competitive wages, quality training, and education requirements, and the professional standards within our educational organization.

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Other educators are not so lucky. Teachers across the nation are leaving early childhood classrooms at unprecedented rates. Even prior to the pandemic, the annual turnover rate in early childhood was 30%, far higher than that for K-12 teachers, with low pay the most common reason for attrition. The median hourly wage of a preschool teacher in Pennsylvania is $13.96. Child care workers in Pennsylvania only earn a median wage of $10.96. Is it any wonder that Spotlight PA reports an 8.5% decrease in child care workers over the last two years? The effect of these losses in the early childhood classroom and their impact on children, families, communities, and the economy are significant. If the pandemic has shown us nothing else, it has shined a spotlight on the need for consistent, reliable, quality child care and early education. 

How do we keep teachers like me from leaving early childhood education (ECE) classrooms? How do we recruit new teachers and high-quality teachers to the early childhood field? First, we establish and fund early childhood salary parity policies with K-12 teachers of similar qualifications. If preschool teachers have the same educational qualifications, they deserve commensurate pay.  To date, 23 states have already begun to establish these salary parity policies. Pennsylvania should establish similar salary parity policies for early childhood educators.

Secondly, Pennsylvania needs to increase investments in career and technical education (CTE) programs that offer Child Development Associate (CDA) programs and incentivize more high schools to offer CDA programs. These CDA programs provide high school students with training in developmentally appropriate practice and hands-on experience with young children before graduating high school. Students graduating with the CDA are then prepared to enter the ECE field right after high school having earned a free credential and can earn an income while pursuing further education toward an associate or bachelor's degree in early childhood education.

Finally, alternate pathways towards an associate and bachelor’s degree in early childhood should be explored, expanded, and properly funded. Apprenticeship programs like the Philadelphia Apprenticeship Project model allow those working within the early childhood field to pursue higher education while continuing to work, reducing barriers to entering and progressing within the profession. Training programs modeled after the newly created Arkansas Teacher Residency Program also create alternate pathways to the same teaching credentials.

As we move into the state budget season with historic surpluses, I challenge Pennsylvania lawmakers to follow this model and invest in a highly qualified and fairly compensated early childhood education workforce and a brighter future for all our children.

Jessica Roberts is a pre-K counts teacher for the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit, assigned to the Warrior Run School District in Watsontown, Pennsylvania. She is a 2021-2022 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.