Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/early-childhood-workforce-trends-1997-2012/5022208/
Over the past 25 years the landscape of early childhood has changed dramatically in the United States. However, for typical early childhood teachers these changes have brought little improvement in their remuneration.The recently released report of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study (Worthy Work), makes this observation about changes in our field over the last 25 years:
“Over the same period, private and public resources devoted to early care and education have expanded steadily; the landscape of early care and education programs and how they are funded has become even more complex; public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs are now a prominent player in this field; and rising expectations of greatly improved child outcomes in ECE have led to wide-spread efforts to upgrade the qualifications and skills of the teaching workforce. Children in ECE settings are substantially more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, language, and special needs, all of which call for new knowledge and skills among their teachers. And as scientific understanding of the profound influence of children’s early years on brain development, behavior, and learning has grown exponentially, it ...