Inequality in the Early Childhood Workforce
In Early Childhood education and care, the health, well-being and safety of each child is the foremost priority. However, EC educators are often faced with the opinion that the task of educating of very young child requires little or no skill. This perception leads to the lack of support for continuing education or specialized training for those who work in the profession. Research suggests that the most important determinant of quality and the factor most related to achieving critical outcomes for children is the quality of the faculty who work directly with young children. Notably, EC teachers who have been educated on a par with K-12 teacher standards are more effective in promoting children’s learning.
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Unfortunately, many economically disadvantaged children are cared for in early childhood education programs that are under-resourced and staffed by caregivers who are themselves economically and socially disadvantaged (i.e., low-education and low-wage workers) and live in the same communities. This lack in constancy in standards, lends to a shift in quality geared more toward higher income communities where teachers receive opportunies for training and earn higher wages. Because of the requirements for Head Start and state funded prekindergarten’s, higher levels of professional education are generally found among teachers in publicly funded and operated programs (Bell et al., 2002). Moreover, publicly funded programs have lower faculty turnover rates and pay higher wages than do privately operated programs (Bell et al., 2002; White book & Richburg,