Expand Excellent Early Childhood Education in California

We are a group of California-based early childhood educators that are FED UP with the system in place. Educators are paid poverty wages in most centers, families are unable to pay for excellent care, programs can barely pay for centers to stay open, and children are placed in programs with high turnover and developmentally inappropriate practices.

It is time for California to put a HIGHER PRIORITY on the cost and availability of excellent early childhood education. Major changes need to take place to ensure that California creates access to childcare which is affordable, available, and developmentally appropriate.

Families, Educators, Schools, and Children all request the following:

· Increased pay for early childhood educators! The pre-pandemic poverty rate for early childhood educators was nearly double the state average, and nearly 7x that of K-8 teachers. These low wages are a key factor in teacher turnover, a key component in the quality of a program. Moreover, women of color are disproportionately affected by low wages in the childcare field.

· More free educational opportunities for early childhood educators! Educators need more opportunities for free or low-cost professional growth. Many educators make too little to continue their education, which ultimately does a disservice to the children in their care. Offering low-cost child development programs that focus on creating highly-qualified educators would strengthen the workforce and fill the dire need for care in underserved communities.

· Increase in funding for equitable child-care! Better funding for low-cost childcare programs, especially those serving children ages 0-3, who are not included in the UTK expansion. Parents in California pay on average $17,000 per child per year for childcare, several times over the Health and Human Services cap of 7% of household income considered affordable childcare. The average for “high-quality” care is even higher, totaling $37,000 per year. This prohibitive cost keeps workers, primarily mothers, out of the workforce and hurts California economically.

· A focus on child-led, constructivist education! Studies show that a strict focus on academics in early childhood correlates with lower test scores by 3rd grade. Constructivist education is statistically more advantageous for our young children. The National Association for the Education of Young Children, UNICEF, and even the California Department of Education itself advocate for a divergence from the traditional education that many centers, especially those working with lower-income families, still typically focus on.

Young children throughout the state of California deserve access to fair, equitable, and high-quality education from their earliest days. Parents deserve to have options for care that don’t leave them wondering whether they can even afford to work. This is the time for change!

For MORE information and stories from early childhood educators, follow @ece_voices on Instagram.

PC: Liv Bruce @livvie_bruce