As Director Emerita, Marcy leads ECHOES, a project connecting early care and education today with its history and activism for a more equitable system. Marcy began her professional life as an infant/toddler and preschool teacher in the 1970s, and by participating in a teacher-led compensation movement that culminated in the nationwide Worthy Wage Campaign of the 1990s. Marcy is internationally known for her groundbreaking workforce research and her unwavering efforts to ensure dignity for educators, children, and families participating in the ECE system. Prior to founding CSCCE in 1999 and leading the organization for two decades, Marcy founded the Washington-based Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), an organization she began in 1977 as the Child Care Employee Project. She earned a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Developmental Studies from the UCLA Graduate School of Education. Marcy loves gardening, hiking, swimming, knitting, baking, reading historical fiction, and most recently, spending time with her granddaughter.
Publications by Marcy Whitebook
More Than a Paycheck: Model Work Standards Re-Visited in the 21st Century
November 18, 2024 • Brief • By Peggy Haack, Rosemarie Vardell and Marcy Whitebook
This brief was supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation. At the height of the national Worthy Wage Campaign for the child care workforce in the mid-1990s, it became clear to activists…
Working for Worthy Wages: A Lived History of the Child Care Compensation Movement, 1970-2002
May 1, 2024 • Report • By Marcy Whitebook, Peggy Haack and Rosemarie Vardell
This research published in 2024 was supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation. The original research published in 2002 was supported by the Foundation for Child Development and the Center for Labor…
The Kindergarten Lessons We Never Learned
September 15, 2022 • Report • By Marcy Whitebook, Claudia Alvarenga and Barbara Zheutlin
Introduction Today, free public kindergarten for five-year-old children is available in every state and community throughout the United States, and public education is routinely referred to as K-12. But…
Working Toward Early Childhood Education Equity
September 15, 2022 • Brief • By Marcy Whitebook and Rachel E. Williams
Early care and education (ECE) in the United States began as reforms to address the needs of young children in the 19th century. Women, in particular, have always been…
Rights, Raises, and Respect: The Early Educator Compensation Movement (1972 to 2000)
September 15, 2022 • Brief • By Peggy Haack, Rosemarie Vardell and Marcy Whitebook
Early educators who engaged in the compensation movement in the 1970s and through the 1990s were not the first to decry the low wages and poor working conditions…
September 15, 2022 • Brief • By Ashley Williams, Peggy Haack and Marcy Whitebook
For more than a century, the U.S. early care and education (ECE) field has ridden waves of teacher activism aimed at creating a more just and equitable…