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Higher Pay for Preschool Teachers

Kirsten Haugen recently sent us a USA TODAY (July 28, 2004) article which reported, "Preschool teachers should have at least a bachelor's degree and get salaries that match those of public elementary, middle and high school teachers, an influential education group says."

So we followed this lead to a recent report of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, "The Early Childhood Challenge:  Preparing High-Quality Teachers for a Changing Society."  Here are a few of the recommendations for policy development from this report:

"The public sector has traditionally been less invested in ECE than in any other level of education.  Public policy makers must become more aware of the importance of ECE and of the need to improve access and quality in ECE.  Policies are needed to...

*  Create more programs within schools, colleges, and departments of education to prepare licensed teachers;

*  Provide alternative training/credentialling options that maintain high-quality standards;

*  Promote increased preschool teacher pay to equal K-12 teachers' salary conditions;

*  Establish greater portability of teaching credentials across institutions and states;

*  Foster programs that prepare more racially/ethnically and linguistically diverse teachers to better reflect the demographic changes in American society;

*  Encourage teacher preparation programs to adequately prepare all teachers to teach diverse children;

*  Recognize ECE as a specialized discipline, distinct from elementary education;

*  Increase research on ECE teacher quality, both on correlates of teacher quality and on impacts of teacher quality;

*  Facilitate access to quality preschool for all children.

To read this full report, go to:  http://www.aacte.org/

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