In 2015, a landmark report by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council opened a new lane on the road towards providing all of our children with high-quality early learning experiences. The report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation, tied together the science showing that the early years are most critical for brain development with new evidence of the importance of attending to the adults who teach and care for young children.
As the report detailed, when it comes to quality in early learning, the knowledge, skills, and experience of early educators are among the strongest drivers of children’s outcomes. Transforming the Workforce, and a subsequent report on financing by the National Academies, provided a clarion call for funders, advocates, and policymakers to focus on the workforce.
Ten years later, how are we doing? What has the last decade made possible? What challenges lie ahead?
These are the questions that we at the Early Educator Investment Collaborative set out to explore this past fall. We are a coalition of national funders committed to transforming the early childhood education profession. Our efforts are driven by a clear goal: to help all early childhood educators achieve their full potential as professionals in order to ensure that each child is prepared for success in school and life.
In recognition of this important 10-year anniversary, we invited several key organizations in the early learning ecosystem to examine the progress that’s been made, lessons learned, and hurdles still to come. This effort included a series of reflection papers and webinars that brought forward diverse perspectives from across the field.
A few points struck me most during this process of reflection:
Collectively, as a field, we have done a lot. I was excited to see so many state and local level examples of progress highlighted in the reflection papers. It can be hard sometimes in the day to day to remember we have made significant progress during a 10-year period that presented deep and unique challenges.
While federal progress is stalled for now, state- and local-level changemakers have accomplished so much in a variety of places, including advancing pay equity and improving benefits; strengthening teacher preparation and licensure; aligning career ladders and professional development; integrating Family Child Care providers into public Pre-K systems; growing higher education degree programs; and streamlining financing. There is much more to do, but we have many lessons to lean on.
Something that also struck me was the many ways that early educators and their champions have made progress on a key lever that was not included in the landmark reports: a focus on centering educator voice. One of the strengths of the early educator workforce is that it is so very diverse. Its diversity—both demographically and in terms of educational settings and approaches—generates a wealth of opportunities for children and families, ensuring that more children can get the culturally relevant experience that helps them learn. How can we transform our systems such that early educators are valued and compensated fully while retaining the workforce’s many forms of diversity? By transforming systems through the contributions, voice, and leadership of educators themselves.
Inclusion of educator voice is critical at all levels of the system, whether the topic is financing, licensing, research or policymaking. It’s important for funders too.
So, as we enter the next ten years, one of our top priorities as a funder collaborative will be to more fully integrate educator voice and input into our strategies. This may sound straightforward, but ensuring that we are getting meaningful input and insights from educators while respecting their limited time outside of the learning environment is something we need to be thoughtful about. We are considering various approaches, while also realizing we shouldn’t wait for perfection.
Because the time is always now to do the next right thing for our next generation.
Dr. Ola J. Friday is Executive Director of the Early Educator Investment Collaborative.