The Wages of Child Care

09/04/2007

Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.
Loris Malaguzzi

As we all know, the pay that early childhood professionals receive is the major challenge of our profession. Early childhood professionals work as hard as anyone and their labors make a huge contribution not only to our economy, but also to the well being and social awareness of future generations. Yet their paychecks reflect little of this value to society. In recent years we have been tracking fees that centers charge to parents and wages they pay to staff members. Alarmingly, our fees have not risen as fast as the cost of living, and accordingly, our wages remain low and may actually be heading in the wrong direction.

To see if any progress has been made in the past two years, we are once again conducting an Exchange Insta-Poll on child care wages in North America. We encourage you to help make this poll as accurate as possible by providing your center’s wage information (anonymously, of course). Then, over the course of the coming days, go to our home page and see how your wages stack up. To participate, go to http://secure.ccie.com/survey/index.php?survey_id=113

Buy 4 Out of the Box Kits — Get 1 Free

Now is the time to look ahead in your staff development planning. Take a few minutes to look through our extended list of Out of the Box Training Kits on Curriculum Development, Positive Discipline, Assessment, Family Partnerships, Environments, Early Care and Education, Professionalism, Infants and Toddlers, and Health and Safety. Then pick out 5 Kits that meet your needs and get 1 of them for free.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BRACELET YOU’LL EVER GIVE A CHILD!

Safety, Security and Identification are at your fingertips with our Duplicate Tuff-Band® Wristbands. Two wristbands with identical 4-digit numbers. Custom print on all of our wristbands. Save an Extra 20% when you order online. USE PROMO CODE: CCE507

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.