Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education (2018) / Chapter Skim
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3 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Financing a Highly Qualified Workforce (Principle 1)
3 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Financing a Highly Qualified Workforce (Principle 1)
Pages 83-114
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From page 83... ...
For example, financing that is designed to offset the cost of service delivery may be distributed directly to a provider, or financing that is designed to support pursuing credentials and other professional qualifications may be paid directly to ECE professionals. Provider-oriented financing mechanisms, family-oriented financing mechanisms, workforce-oriented financing mechanisms, and system-oriented financing mechanisms are described in Box 3-1.
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From page 84... ...
. Family-Oriented Financing Mechansims Family-oriented financing mechanisms provide financial support for early care and education directly to or on behalf of individual families and enable fami lies to pay in part or in whole the cost of purchasing early care and education.
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From page 85... ...
For example, system-oriented financing mechanisms may support statewide quality rating and assurance systems, quality improvements in higher education, or professional development systems. In addition, state and municipal funding of colleges and universities, which sustains programs and relieves students of tuition costs, is a major system-level financing mechanism.
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From page 86... ...
• Are the total funds available, combining private and public support, adequate to cover the full costs of high-quality early care and educa tion, including the costs of recruiting and retaining a highly qualified workforce? • Do the financing mechanisms promote the maintenance or creation of a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse workforce across job roles?
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From page 87... ...
• Do financing mechanisms sufficiently consider the various times dur ing which ECE services are needed by families; e.g., daytime, eve ning, weekend, or summer hours? • Are incentives designed to meet the constraints of different types of ECE providers, such as center-based or home-based providers?
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From page 88... ...
It examines three workforce-specific aspects of early care and education: compensation; onsite staff supports and professional development; and system-level workforce development supports, including higher education and ongoing professional learning. Financing mechanisms to support the workforce can be directed either at providers or at individuals entering or already in the ECE workforce, or they may be directed at other entities such as institutions of higher education or nonprofit organizations that provide workforce development activities.
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From page 89... ...
. Reprinted with permission from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley.
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From page 90... ...
According to Whitebook, Phillips, and Howes (2014) , nearly onethird of ECE practitioners who have left Head Start jobs have done so because of inadequate compensation.4 In 2012, the mean turnover rate for ECE educators in centers was 13 percent (which varied by type of center from a 27 percent turnover rate for educators working in for-profit centers to an 8 percent turnover rate for educators working in religious organization–sponsored not-for-profit centers)
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From page 91... ...
. Three main mechanisms for raising compensation are available: provider-oriented and family-oriented financing mechanisms aimed at increasing base pay, and workforceoriented financing mechanisms in the form of wage supplements and tax credits.
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From page 92... ...
Workforce-oriented mechanisms that attempt to periodically improve the compensation of the ECE workforce include wage supplements and tax credits (neither of which lead to lasting and stable increases in compensation)
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From page 93... ...
. Moreover, current wage supplements are not at levels high enough to give ECE professionals economic security, which adversely affects their well-being and their ability to deliver quality services to the children in their care (Whitebook, McLean, and Austin, 2016)
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From page 94... ...
Since the establishment of the tax credits in 2008, the number of ECE professionals in Louisiana engaged in professional development activities has increased from 1,247 to 5,853, and the number of ECE professionals that strengthened their credentials increased from 284 to 2,156 (Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, 2016)
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From page 95... ...
Financing mechanisms such as wage supplements and tax credits, while useful for temporarily providing some financial relief to some ECE professionals, do not markedly change the underlying base salary that the ECE workforce receives. In addition, most of the existing programs are small relative to the size of the workforce and limited to a specific subset of ECE professionals.
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From page 96... ...
Instead, payment for direct service delivery covers basic, day-to-day early care and education, with often inadequate funds carved out for workforce supports. In the sections below, the committee reviews the financing mechanisms currently available to support the professional development of the ECE workforce -- through higher education and ongoing professional learning -- and examines whether these mechanisms facilitate the development and support of a highly qualified workforce by increasing affordability and access to high-quality training and education and whether they promote the maintenance or creation of a diverse workforce across job roles.
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From page 97... ...
Box 3-4 describes examples of innovative supports for strengthening the qualifications of the ECE workforce and building pathways toward a BA-level degree, and Box 3-5 describes ways in which the workforce development system can be used to support the development of the ECE workforce. BOX 3-4 Initiatives to Build ECE Workforce Qualifications Apprenticeship programs are one way to build ECE workforce qualifications.
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From page 98... ...
Furthermore, WIOA aims to link workforce and economic development; because early care and education is not perceived as an engine of economic growth, it is unlikely to get high priority from local leaders. At the same time, as efforts are made to create career pathways within the ECE sector, the WIOA system may come to consider the entry-level ECE work Workforce-Oriented Financing Mechanisms Although the committee recognizes that a number of financing mechanisms are available to the general public to pursue higher education -- and thus a number of prospective or incumbent ECE professionals are likely to qualify for these mechanisms -- the committee has focused on the current financing mechanisms specifically targeted to support the ECE workforce, and we discuss them first below.
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From page 99... ...
Currently, funding to support higher education for the ECE workforce comes from a variety of sources, including federal, state, and institutional aid programs. Funds are distributed specifically to the ECE workforce through financing mechanisms such as student loans, grants and scholarships, and tax preferences.
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From page 100... ...
This change could result in a net increase in the total debt load for ECE professionals, unless additional scholarships and other financial supports are made available. Available ECE-workforce-oriented financing mechanisms are inadequate to systematically transform this workforce.
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From page 101... ...
. Programs with such features as financial aid, flexible class schedules, and paid release time to attend classes, among others, may be more likely to help reduce stratification of the ECE workforce by ensuring success for those ECE professionals who undertake improving their educational qualifications (see Box 3-6)
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From page 102... ...
. Graduates in the program identified the program's structural supports, such as financial aid and flexible class schedules, as important to their educational success.
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From page 103... ...
In addition, for ECE professionals with Perkins loans, a portion of the loans may be forgiven for each year of teaching service, which includes many ECE positions. However, new Perkins loans are no longer authorized by Congress, so future students will not have this option.12 Many current ECE professionals may also be eligible for need-based grants and scholarships, including federal Pell grants and other state and institutional aid programs.
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From page 104... ...
The federal tax code also supports higher-education students through a variety of tuition tax credits and deductions, tax advantaged Coverdell and 529 college savings accounts, and the student loan interest deduction. Many of these tax provisions have been criticized because they do not lessen costs at the time tuition bills are due and are primarily used by upper-income and middle-class families (Delisle and Dancy, 2015)
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From page 105... ...
System-Oriented Financing Mechanisms While the current financing structure provides some support to the ECE workforce to address the front-end costs of higher education, the available provider-oriented and workforce-oriented financing mechanisms, as currently structured, have largely remained agnostic on questions about quality and value of the higher education students receive. In general, quality in higher education as a whole is highly variable for students, with minimal quality assurance standards in place and little transparency about student outcomes across fields of study (see e.g., Brown, Kurzweil, and Pritchett, 2017)
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From page 106... ...
Unlike school-wide accreditation, program-level accreditation is not required to receive access to federal financial aid, nor is it necessarily incentivized or required by all states. This means that while program-level accreditation serves as a valuable marker of rigor for students interested in honing their ECE craft in a high-quality program, it is not sufficient unless there is also a state commitment to link teacher certification to program accreditation, in order to deter low-quality programs from offering ECE degrees.
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From page 107... ...
While there are a variety of resources for students or ECE practitioners seeking higher education, most of the current financing mechanisms do not meet the needs of all ECE practitioners and are insufficient to overcome the barriers -- including affordability, access, and availability -- that face ECE educators pursuing education and training (see, e.g., Glazer et al., 2017)
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From page 108... ...
These approaches, described below, may provide useful models for ECE programs in higher education. Providing Flexibility and Other Student Supports to Help Students Succeed • Competency-based education allows students to move through material at their own pace, spending more time on challenging topics and moving more quickly through material with which they have more experience.
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From page 109... ...
Aligning Curriculum with Workforce Needs • Developing knowledge of industry needs. Higher-education institutions may use labor market data to understand industry needs and identify what jobs are available now and will be in the future, as well as to engage local employ ers in order to align their curricula with ECE workforce needs.
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From page 110... ...
Ongoing Professional Learning One of the more important, yet least emphasized, components needed for a high-quality ECE system is ongoing professional learning, or professional development. Professional development for both educators and administrators during ongoing practice, as well as business training for
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From page 111... ...
Given the importance of management, organization, and pedagogical leader ship training, the training and technical assistance funds described above, if used to support ongoing professional leadership development for the ECE workforce, have the potential to strengthen professional practice and subsequently improve outcomes for children. Additional focus is also needed to ensure these skills are included in higher-education curricula for ECE professionals.
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From page 112... ...
For example, Head Start requires that programs use evidence-based teaching practices in order to support the growth of bilingualism and biliteracy. Some state prekindergarten programs include supports for professional development built into the cost of service delivery, similar to supports 16 According to the National Survey for Early Care and Education, 53 percent of center based educators who reported participating in a professional development workshop reported that it was "one-shot" (National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2015a)
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From page 113... ...
Most states do not have a comprehensive system for professional development for the ECE workforce, and training requirements and access to professional development vary considerably by program and setting. Generally, state prekindergarten programs, Head Start, and CCDF provide funds for professional development, and in this way these programs support the development of a highly qualified workforce.
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From page 114... ...
CONCLUSION This section has considered whether current financing mechanisms facilitate the development and support of a highly qualified ECE workforce, whether they ensure the well-being and adequate compensation of that workforce, and whether they support the strengthening and development of that workforce, particularly promoting the maintenance or creation of a diverse workforce across job roles. Adequate compensation of the ECE workforce is generally not accounted for in the cost of service delivery; instead, there are various programs and financing mechanisms to supplement ECE professionals' wages.
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