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About this paper symposium
| Panel information |
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| Panel 18. School Readiness/Childcare |
| Paper #1 | |
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| Benefits Packages offered to ECE Educators: Findings from the 2019 NSECE | |
| Author information | Role |
| Sara Amadon, Ph.D., Child Trends, United States | Presenting author |
| Meghan McDoniel, Child Trends, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Shreya Mukhopadhyay, Child Trends, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Laura Lessard, University of Delaware, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Katherine Paschall, Child Trends, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Federal early care and education (ECE) funding encourages states to use funds to increase salary and benefits of the ECE workforce. Yet, the workforce suffers from low wages and little access to benefits like retirement and insurance (McLean et al., 2021), especially minoritized educators (Austin et al., 2019). Knowledge of existing benefits packages and disparities by educator background is limited and an important extension of the literature. We aimed to identify benefits packages offered to center-based educators and how these link to ECE workforce composition. We investigated: 1. different combinations of benefits packages for center-based educators. 2. how educators’ personal and professional characteristics relate to benefits packages. We used data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) Center-based (CB) Provider and Workforce (WF) Surveys to answer our research questions. The CB survey includes responses from 6,917 center-based directors and administrators. They addressed questions about center operations and funding, staffing, characteristics of children, and director characteristics. The NSECE also asked center administrators to indicate whether the following six benefits were offered to their staff: reduced tuition at the center (for a child), retirement program, health insurance, professional development (PD) funding to take a college course/off-site training, PD time off to take a college course/off-site training, staff provided with PD mentors/coaches/consultants (see Table 1 for frequencies). Educators also indicated their race and ethnicity, educational background, and career experiences in the WF Survey. Finally, center level weights were also available, to increase the representativeness of the data. We used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify groupings of benefits packages offered by centers. LCA is an iterative process of dimension reduction to identify patterns within groups of categorical variables and can also be used to identify subgroups in a heterogenous sample. Five distinct classes of benefits packages were revealed (Figure 1): (1) Low health insurance and retirement, moderate reduced tuition, and low PD benefits (31%); (2) High health insurance and retirement, moderate reduced tuition, and high PD benefits (27%); (3) High health insurance and retirement, low reduced tuition and PD funds, moderate PD mentorship and PD time (25%); (4) No health insurance or retirement, high reduced tuition, high PD funds and time, and moderate PD time (11%); and (5) No health insurance or retirement, low reduced tuition and PD funds, high PD mentorship, and moderate PD time (6%). Findings revealed the benefits packages offered to center-based educators, with health insurance, retirement, and PD benefits largely varying across the different classes. No class emerged with all the benefits offered to staff. These findings were notable given the importance of health, financial, and career development related benefits for overall workforce well-being. Additional analyses provide deeper insights on associations between benefits packages and educator- and program-level factors such as racial and ethnic identities and centers’ funding sources, suggesting inequities by center-level funding. The findings will inform policies to help alleviate current workforce conditions. |
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| Paper #2 | |
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| How do Early Head Start Programs Set Wages and Offer Benefits to Educators? | |
| Author information | Role |
| Dr. Rebecca Berger, Urban Institute, United States | Presenting author |
| Diane Schilder, Urban Institute, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Laura Betancur, Urban Institute, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Isaac Bledsoe, Urban Institute, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Jonah Norwitt, Urban Institute, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Tim Triplett, Urban Institute, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Early care and education programs have faced substantial challenges in recent years hiring and retaining qualified staff. Offering higher wages and benefits may be an effective tool to support retention (Morrissey & Bowman, 2024; Amadon, Lin, & Padilla, 2023). Yet, staff working with infants and toddlers have historically received lower wages and benefits than staff that work with pre-school aged children. In August 2024, the Office of Head Start (OHS) published a final rule updating the Head Start Program Performance Standards to require Head Start programs to provide competitive staff wages. The rule also requires programs to provide all full-time staff with, or facilitate access to, high-quality health care, paid personal leave, and behavioral health services. These changes are intended to support and stabilize the Head Start workforce and ultimately improve the quality of services provided to children and families. The final rule includes different, more flexible requirements for small Head Start programs (i.e., those with 200 or fewer funded slots; Health and Human Services Department, 2024). We analyzed a subset of data from a nationally representative survey of EHS programs to answer questions about how programs’ set wages and offered benefits to educators in 2024, before implementation of the final rule. Survey respondents were mostly directors (74%) from 455 EHS programs across the continental United States that hired a teacher or home visitor in 2023 or later. Respondents reported on their program’s practices for setting and improving the wages and benefits offered to applicants. We used weighted frequencies to minimize response bias. We performed descriptive analyses including frequencies, means, standard deviations and chi-squares to assess differences by program size. Compensation packages. Most programs reported that they often consider applicant’s credentials, certifications, or licenses (90%), compensation of their program’s existing teachers or home visitors (79%), applicant’s years of experience (75%), available funds (66%), and findings from a wage comparability survey (65%) when putting together a teaching or home visiting applicant’s compensation package. Increasing wages. Some programs reported restructuring management of their organizations (40%), reducing the overall number of funded enrollment slots (34%), and using non-EHS funding (29%) to improve teacher and home visitor wages. Figure 1 depicts that large programs reduced their overall number of enrollment slots and consolidated grants to increase teacher or home visitor wages more than small programs. Benefits. Most programs reported offering paid time off (94%), medical insurance (92%), dental insurance (89%), retirement plans (87%), group life insurance (85%), competitive compensation (83%), and tuition reimbursement (78%). Figure 2 shows these are the same benefits that programs perceived as helping them successfully hire teaching and home visiting applicants. Finally, Figure 1 shows that large programs were more likely to offer competitive compensation and find it to be a successful hiring strategy than small programs. Preliminary results highlight the extent to which some EHS programs were already engaging in strategies to support the benefits and wages of their staff, thus may already be meeting some of the new requirements. |
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| Paper #3 | |
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| Beyond the Paycheck: Impact of Teacher Salary Increases on Teacher Retention and Well-being in ECE | |
| Author information | Role |
| Michelle F. Maier, Ph.D., MDRC, United States | Presenting author |
| Alexandra Bernardi, MDRC, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Michele Abbott, MEF Associates, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Rebecca Davis, MDRC, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Cynthia Miller, MDRC, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Child care and early education (CCEE) teachers are one of the lowest paid occupations nationwide, often having higher poverty rates than workers from other industries and relying on public assistance or second jobs to help make ends meet (McLean, Austin, Whitebook, & Olson, 2021). Low pay makes it challenging for providers to recruit qualified professionals and encourage them to stay in CCEE jobs, resulting in high teacher turnover rates. In turn, high turnover rates affect the quality and continuity of care provided to children (Vogtman, 2017). Although there is support for increased compensation for this workforce, evidence on the implementation and causal effects of workforce development strategies designed to increase compensation is limited (Maier & Roach, 2024). To better support the CCEE workforce and address the issue of low pay, the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) conducted the Colorado Child Care Assistance Plan (CCCAP) Teacher Salary Increase Pilot. The pilot was designed to bring pay for teachers, serving children birth through age five, equal or close to a livable wage in their county, as determined by the MIT Living Wage Calculator (Glasmeier, 2023). This presentation will describe an evaluation study examining the implementation and impact of the pilot. It will focus on two overarching research questions: 1. How was the pilot implemented, and what were the system, infrastructure, and contextual features that shaped implementation and viability of the pilot? 2. What was the effect of the pilot on teacher retention, economic well-being, and other outcomes? Study Population. Child care centers were eligible to participate in CDEC’s pilot only if they served children receiving child care subsidies, among other criteria. Eligible centers that applied to participate in pilot were randomly assigned to a program group that received additional funding to pay higher salaries to eligible teachers or to a control group that received their usual funding. Lead and assistant teachers in program group centers were eligible for the salary increase if they were in infant, toddler, and/or preschool classrooms and worked at least 16 hours per week. See Table 1 for sample descriptives. Methods. The evaluation uses a randomized controlled trial to examine the pilot’s effects on teacher retention, economic well-being, and other teacher-level outcomes. Data sources include baseline and follow-up survey data, administrative records, and qualitative interviews. Results. The presentation will describe the lessons learned from implementing the pilot in center-based settings and the impacts of the pilot on a range of teacher outcomes. Primary (confirmatory) outcomes of the intervention included teacher retention at participating centers and in field, household income, holding multiple jobs, and receipt of public assistance. The study also examined effects of the pilot on secondary (exploratory) outcomes including other indicators of economic well-being, such as food security and ability to pay bills, and job satisfaction and intention to stay at their current CCEE employer. Table 2 shows the planned confirmatory and exploratory outcomes. Findings will be available in time for the conference and can inform efforts to design and bring workforce development strategies to scale. |
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National Estimates of Early Childhood Educators' Compensation and Promising Strategies for Improvement
Submission Type
Paper Symposium
Description
| Session Title | National Estimates of Early Childhood Educators' Compensation and Promising Strategies for Improvement |