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I am concerned that readers not understand this issue too narrowly- building capacity includes wages, emphatically yes! But it is a much larger issue. It also must include investment in the capacity of individuals, organizations, systems and infrastructure that support the continuous growth, development and improvement of early childhood education. What that looks like is unique to our field but we need to sit up and take notice here in the US as we watch the K-12 system struggle as monies and support are withdrawn while expectations, standards and stakes are raised.And they began at a level of public support and infrastructure we have never known.

I was excited when I read this Exchange because it names the critical issue: what does investment in early care and education really look like? I have begun reading the full report and recommend it to others concerned about the future of our field.

Thanks for posting the great news of this research.It is amazing to know that but hopefully things should move as it has planned.And the scenario of ECE in Ontario will be fabulous.

As a child care professional and educator of young children, I am always excited to see different approaches to achieving quality care for young children. In the United States there are national organizations and state level organizations that are doing their best to set standards that will attract funding from legislators who are not experts in the early childhood field. It takes a lot to sway them to allocate this funding. In some cases the funding has come quickly and so have a set of standards that in many cases far surpass the possible. NAEYC and other state run programs are setting educational requirements that are an insult to childcare professionals that have spent many years building their status as a professional only to be told that after 17-20 years of continually improving their status through training that they will not qualify as teaching staff because their degree is not in Early Childhood Education. Having a degree in a related field, 18 years experience that includes successfilly working through the NAEYC accreditation process, a professional development record containing over 400 hours of additional training, an added 6 credits in ECE, I may not qualify as teaching staff in the near future.
I believe that education of staff is essential to quality, but the staff that have been professionally developing through training as opposed to gaining college credit are being done a disservice. Training counts as hours only and does not bolster the qualifications of a staff person in any way. This needs to be changed or the early childhood field may push away many of their best people...degreed people who simply do not have the degree in ECE.
I agree that parterning with parents is so very important. It can be a difficult task, but an essential part of the success of a quality program. This partnering can be a useful tool in the political forum.
Quality childcare is not lost due to poor wages and working conditions, but it makes it an even more difficult achievement. Turn over of well qualified staff is a constant challenge. Retention awards that some states offer are small amounts and often based on lower income client numbers, making many wonderful and deserving staff ineligible for these awards.
In conclusion, the childcare and education indusrty may suffer the loss of many wonderful educated, caring, loving, and professional individuals due to quickly changing and extremely high standards and requirements that are not being proportionately compensated. I do hope that this will be a focus as legislators are looking to allocate funding to early childhood education. What good will the funding do if the service cannot be delivered due to lack of staff.

Hi Roger, Bonnie and others at Everyday Exchange.
Thanks for posting news about this research. That is GREAT.

I have a suggestion for another post on this exchange.

I am curious what states in the U.S. are doing about investing in early childhood here.

Could you / would you be interested in asking people who read Exchange Everyday to say what is going on in their state regarding investment in early education.

I know that some states have started Children's Trust Funds. (NM has a small one focused on preventing child abuse and neglect and providing service for those who have been abused / neglected.) Some states have investments in early chidlhood. (In NM there are people working toward getting a larger and broader investment fund for early childhood.)

I am curious what is going on on this topic through out the US.

Would you be interested in asking people what they are doing??

I look forward to hearing from you.

Baji

While I too think that funding is a major, major difficulty in having quality Early Childhood care and Education, I believe that it is not the only difficulty that we face. We have parents who do not seem to act as partners in the education process, we have ever changing standards and regulations which we must follow, and we finally have an increased awareness from politicians, and the media, of what we do. This increased awareness helps to get us things such as more funding, but as anyone who has worked with politicians knows, increased awareness also leads to an increase in laws and regulations. With those new laws and regulations the one that always gets overlooked, but never seems to fail, is the law of unintended consequences. We have more people who know little about quality childcare making decisions for us.
I am a little disturbed by this article and a post to a previous article. The previous post seems to come from an Early Childhood Educator who stated that she doesn't teach her students ethics as the overriding issue is teacher pay. While I agree that pay is very important in allowing us to recruit and keep good teachers, while it will help to foster a sense of professionalism amongst our staff and with our parents, it is not the only issue that faces us. Every time we as educators simply complain about low pay, we do ourselves and our profession a disservice.