The Early Childhood Care and Education Workforce Challenges and Opportunities: A Workshop Report (2012) / Chapter Skim
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2 Defining and Describing the Workforce
2 Defining and Describing the Workforce
Pages 5-26
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From page 5... ...
Brandon presented both the conceptual definition and descriptive data on the ECCE workforce at the workshop. Additional presentations focused on the nature of federal workforce data systems, an innovative state model for improving ECCE workforce data systems, and lessons learned from K–12 federal data systems.
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From page 6... ...
Those who provide child care, particularly through informal friend, family, or neighbor relationships, may not see themselves as having any particular job title as either caregivers or teachers. This makes selecting an appropriate term for the full range of members of the ECCE workforce challenging.
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From page 7... ...
These distinctions are important, he explained, because consistent definitions will allow researchers to build on the considerable investment that has already been made in federal data systems, rather than developing new, separate definitions for the early childhood sector. Consistency will also support comparisons of the ECCE workforce to workers in other economic sectors, as well as analyses of their key features.
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From page 8... ...
These criteria were designed to distinguish early childhood workers from others who work with children, such as social workers, family counselors, or nurses and pediatricians. Teachers and child care workers would be included, as would proprietors or directors of child care centers, specialists, and family support workers or home visitors, as long as they work directly with children, rather than only with adults.
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The enterprise does not have a defined counterpart within the federal classi fication systems, but Brandon and his colleagues considered it important to represent the contributions of this broader group. This category would also include family support workers or home visitors who work primarily with parents and not with children because their work may influence children or child care workers, Brandon noted.
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From page 10... ...
Participants' comments indicated that the conceptual definition of the ECCE workforce has practical implications for data collecting and reporting, as well as policy implications for how the field itself and others view it. Several participants noted that a desire for consistency with federal data systems could be difficult to reconcile with the need to capture unique aspects of ECCE, including the diverse work settings, team-based approaches, and progressive roles.
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Sommers noted a few problems with the existing federal definitions in comparison with the conceptual definition of the ECCE workforce pre TABLE 2-1 Definitions Used in the North American Industry Classification System Code and Title Definition 611110 Elementary and Establishments primarily engaged in furnishing academic Secondary Schools courses and associated course work that comprise a basic preparatory education. A basic preparatory education ordinarily constitutes kindergarten through 12th grade.
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From page 12... ...
She pointed out different methods of collecting information, each of which has strengths and weaknesses, in terms of the type of information collected, the level of detail possible, and other factors. For example, household surveys such as the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey provide a broad look at the entire paid labor force, including those who are self-employed and those who are "unpaid family workers," but they may not provide the desired level of detail about particular occupations or industries.
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Bureau of Labor Statistics, Administrative Data Quarterly Census Full NAICS detail No No State, county No of Employment and Wages (QCEW) NOTE: MSA: Metropolitan Statistical Area; NAICS: North American Industry Classification System.
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profiles relevant BLS and Census data sources, including key meta-data and the advantages and limitations of each source for understanding the ECCE workforce. DESCRIBING THE WORKFORCE In planning the workshop, the planning committee noted both that the federal data sources do not correspond completely to the reality of the jobs early childhood workers do, and that these data systems are not designed to capture all of the types of information that would be useful to have about this workforce.
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He noted that the Census Bureau provides the most current nationally representative data on the workforce, but does not distinguish among those who work in different types of settings (child care, preschool, or elementary school settings; licensed versus unlicensed) , or between preschool from kindergarten teachers.
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From page 16... ...
and about $68,000 for prekindergarten teachers (National Prekindergarten Study; Gilliam and Marchesseault, 2005) , as compared with the current approximate $60,000 median for all households.5 Brandon described the qualifications of this workforce, noting that, "we see across the different categories of workers a very great range of educational background." He reported that among child care workers, 7 to 12 percent have an associate's degree (A.A.)
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informed the development of a list of ECCE workforce data elements. The model includes both distal and proximal influences on the quality of early childhood care and education, and their complex interrelationships.
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A broad range of data sources is needed to be able to answer important policy questions about the ECCE workforce and the ways that it affects child outcomes, Brandon observed. Some information can be found in existing data or planned data collection, such as the NSECE.
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, which collects information about all K–12 public schools in the United States, is perhaps the best known of these. The Private School Universe Survey (PSS)
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West noted that while all NCES data collection efforts provide some national-level data, only the CCD and its private school counterpart provide school-level data. However, even those studies provide only limited information about teachers, such as the number in each school.
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From page 21... ...
are teaching or caring for 3-year-olds or the percentage of first-time teachers who are engaged in professional development activities -- those types of characteristics are not really well collected through the universe surveys which typically report aggregated data." Answers to these more complex questions often require individuallevel data. The universe surveys are also not very useful for studying emerging issues, so NCES has used the Fast Response Survey System to collect information about issues that cannot be incorporated quickly into ongoing data collection efforts.
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From page 22... ...
22 TABLE 2-4 A Potential Approach to Data Collection Data System Workforce Workforce Public Program Private Program Survey -- Center- Survey -- Home- One-Time Surveys -- New Universe Universe Based Programs Based Care or Emerging Topics NCES model Common Core of Private School Schools and NHES, CPS Fast Response Survey Data Universe Survey Staffing Survey System Data source Administrative Survey Survey Survey Survey records Sampling unit All programs All programs Program and Household sample Varies by topic/issue teacher samples Level of data Aggregate Aggregate Individual and Individual and Varies by topic/issue aggregate aggregate NOTE: CPS: Current Population Survey; NCES: National Center for Education Statistics.
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From page 23... ...
However, he suggested a household survey approach, such as that used in the Current Population Survey, to reach home-based programs. He acknowledged that family child care centers are challenging to categorize in that they could potentially fit either center- or home-based approaches.
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ELN, a comprehensive data system designed to integrate data about finances, programs, teachers, families, and children, brought standardization across all OCDEL programs. Specifically, the information includes child outcomes, child and family demographics, teacher qualifications and experience, program quality (environmental rating scores)
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At the same time, the coordination of federal education and state data at the K–12 level provides a useful model for the ECCE field to examine. Data collection efforts in education have demonstrated the importance of cooperation among federal and state agencies as well as public and private enterprises.
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From page 26... ...
26 THE EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION WORKFORCE efforts are the main sources of workforce data for program developers and policy makers. As participants also noted, although capitalizing on existing systems is important, so is capturing the reality of ECCE as it is practiced.
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