Article Link: http://stage.exchangepress.com/article/assessing-quality/5018432/
As you follow emerging early education policies in state governments across the United States, as well as track the direction our ECE professional organizations are moving, one gets the impression that quality improvement is assured by an ever-expanding set of requirements and expectations placed on teachers. For all their good intentions, I get the sense that most of the folks who are developing these new standards haven’t recently been responsible for a large group of young children all day, every day, in an under-resourced program. Do policymakers, funders, and regulators know who our workforce is or understand the typical work environment and paycheck teachers struggle with? Would those same gatekeepers be financially able, let alone willing, to accept these inadequate wages, even at the higher end of a teacher’s salary scale? I think not. As a field I’d like us to take up the issue of how to significantly support teachers to improve quality.Annual salary of child care workers in the U.S.
According to a recent briefing the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) did on Capitol Hill (2008), the mean annual salary of child care workers in the U.S. in 2006 was $18,820. They calculate that since 1973 the hourly wage of ...