Early childhood workforce supports

Before making investments in this strategy, city and county leaders should ensure it addresses local needs.

The Urban Institute and Mathematica have developed indicator frameworks to help local leaders assess conditions related to upward mobility, identify barriers, and guide investments to address these challenges. These indicator frameworks can serve as a starting point for self-assessment, not as a comprehensive evaluation, and should be complemented by other forms of local knowledge.

The Urban Institute's Upward Mobility Framework identifies a set of key local conditions that shape communities’ ability to advance upward mobility and racial equity. Local leaders can use the Upward Mobility Framework to better understand the factors that improve upward mobility and prioritize areas of focus. Data reports for cities and counties can be created here.

Several indicators in the Upward Mobility Framework may be improved with investments in high-quality programs. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in this strategy could help, examine the following:

• Effectiveness of public education: Average per-grade change in English Language Arts achievement between the third and eighth grades. These data are available from Stanford University’s Education Data Archive.

• Access to preschool: Share of children enrolled in nursery school or preschool. These data are available through the Census Bureau’s Public Use Microdata Sample.

Mathematica's Education-to-Workforce (E-W) Indicator Framework helps local leaders identify the data that matter most in helping students and young adults succeed. Local leaders can use the E-W framework to better understand education and workforce conditions in their communities and to identify strategies that can improve outcomes in these areas.

Several indicators in the E-W Framework may be improved with investments in high-quality programs. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in this strategy could help, examine the following:

• Teacher credentials: Percentage of courses taught by teachers certified to teach the given subject or grade level.
  
• Teacher experience: Percentage of teachers with less than one year, one to five years, and more than five years of experience.
• Educator retention: Percentage of teachers who return to teaching in the same school from year to year or percentage of school leaders who have served in their current positions for less than two years, two to three years, and four or more years.
• Representational racial and ethnic diversity of educators: Educational staff composition by race and ethnicity (%) compared to student composition by race and ethnicity (%).
• Classroom observations of instructional practice: Scores on measures of teacher–child interactions, such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) Interactions subscale, or the Assessing Classroom Sociocultural Equity Scale (ACSES) (which assesses equitable classroom interactions).

• Pay competitive wages: The most significant barrier to hiring and retaining a strong early childhood workforce is inadequate compensation. Local leaders should therefore prioritize funding for directly compensating early childhood workers, such as preschool teachers and child care center staff members. This should also include a robust effort to secure supplemental wages that may be available through state programs, alongside other benefits, like health insurance and paid sick leave.
• Build recruiting pipelines: To address the early childhood educator workforce shortage, launch formal recruiting pipelines in addition to expanding traditional recruiting efforts. This may include partnering with community groups or high schools to identify candidates; working with community colleges to provide training; and child care centers and/or preschools to provide in-classroom experience and as potential employers.
• Invest in continuous improvement: To recruit and retain early career educators, embed significant growth and leadership opportunities into the hiring and training process. Onsite mentoring and coaching are particularly promising, cost-effective practices in developing high-quality early education professionals; providing incentives or subsidies to pursue specialized degrees or credentials can similarly improve early childhood workforce quality.
• Consider promising, innovative strategies: The early childhood workforce space is rapidly evolving as jurisdictions seek new solutions to addressing staff shortages. When evaluating options, strongly consider piloting new approaches in addition to traditional methods. These can include scaling up apprenticeship, fellowship, and residency programs; accepting alternative credentials (such as an associate’s degree paired with professional early childhood experience); offering various one-time incentives, like signing or retention bonuses; and increasing staff wellness supports, like mental health consultations and daily breaks.