Losing Ground in Pennsylvania Early Childhood Education:
Declining Workforce Qualifications in an Expanding Industry, 1980-2004
Stephen Herzenberg, Mark Price, and David Bradley
Introduction
“Parents can’t afford to pay, teachers can’t afford to stay, there’s got to be a better way.” This is a common sentiment of professionals in the field of early childhood education (ECE). This report shows that the Pennsylvania industry has indeed struggled to attract and hold onto a qualified workforce since the 1980s.
The qualifications of early childhood educators matter because, first, high-quality ECE improves long-term academic outcomes for children and delivers benefits to the community that far outweigh the costs;(1) and, second, high-quality ECE programs require educated and experienced teachers (Bowman, Donovan, and Burns 2000).
The briefing paper relies on new data sets that track center-based ECE outside public schools for 25 years (see Box). For home-based ECE, consistent data are available for 2000-04.
Main findings
A lower share of center-based early childhood educators has a four-year college degree than in the early 1980s. In center-based ECE programs, the share of Pennsylvania early childhood educators (teachers, directors, assistant teachers, and teacher aides) with a four-year college degree fell from around 40% in the early 1980s to about 27% today.
A higher share has a high school degree or less. The share of Pennsylvania center-based educators with a high school education or less climbed from a low of 34% in the 1983-87 period to 43% in the 1998-2004 period.
By the year 2000,less than a third of center-based early childhood educators had a college degree in seven of eight metropolitan areas. In Reading, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Allentown and York less than a quarter of center-based early childhood educators had a college degree.
Education levels are even lower in home-based ECE. In Pennsylvania home-based ECE, only 14% of educators have a college degree and half have a high school degree or less.
Low wages and benefits help explain ECE education levels. The fall in the education levels of center-based early childhood educators is related to median pay that remains about $8 per hour—some $17,000 per year for a full-time worker—and a lack of health care and pension benefits.
The story that emerges from the data is that, while Pennsylvania retains a more educated ECE workforce than most states, the position of center-based ECE in the labor market has nonetheless changed for the worse since the 1980s. As this industry has expanded from 10,000 in 1980 to over 35,000 in recent years, female college graduates have enjoyed expanding career opportunities in other fields and, in some families, greater economic need (over 95% of the ECE workforce is female). As a result, center directors often find that they must hire individuals with low education levels and no specialized training in early childhood development.
Pennsylvania and the nation need a new approach to preparing early childhood educators who can help children succeed. The new approach must establish high standards for all teaching staff and increase compensation to attract and retain teachers who can meet high standards.
(1) These benefits include lower costs for subsequent education, increased taxes paid once children mature and enter the workforce, and reduced social costs (Lynch 2004).
Download the complete report
You can download the complete report Losing Ground in Pennsylvania Early Childhood Education in PDF format. The complete report includes important information about the data examined, additional figures, and complete references.