More Than a Paycheck: Model Work Standards Re-Visited in the 21st Century

At the height of the national Worthy Wage Campaign for the child care workforce in the mid-1990s, it became clear to activists in the movement that achieving our goal of better wages would require substantial and sustained public investment. The work of caring for and educating young children needed to be re-defined as a public good, and that would take a while. Leaders of the movement at the time, most of whom were child care teachers¹The term “child care teacher” is used in this text to include all those whose primary job is working directly with children, i.e., lead teachers and classroom teachers in a child care center or Head Start/Early Head Start program, family child care providers, teacher and provider assistants, and substitute teachers. The term is used interchangeably with “early educators,” another inclusive term representing the above. themselves, were in the struggle for the long haul, but every struggle needs to see progress and celebrate victories.

Teachers Define a Good Child Care Job

Our slogan—“Worthy Wages for Worthy Work”—articulated the demand for better pay and more respect for work. However, a new question arose: “What else do we need to create better child care jobs?” The Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW)²Originally called the Child Care Employee Project (CCEP), the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW) was the de facto organizational home for the compensation movement of the late 20th century. When the organization gained national prominence and moved its office to Washington, D.C., it was briefly called the National Center for the Early Childhood Workforce (NCECW), but soon adopted the name Center for the Child Care Workforce. In 2002, some of CCW’s efforts were taken over by the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation (AFTEF). began asking teachers, teacher assistants, family child care providers, and school-age care providers: “What else would improve your job?” The answers received were many and varied: paid vacation and sick leave, health care benefits, paid planning time, a role in decision-making, attention to their health and safety on the job, retirement benefits, and more. As the workforce itself began identifying what a supportive working environment looks like, the Model Work Standards were born.

CCW gathered the responses from across the country through conversations within local worthy wage campaigns, focus groups, and ultimately, a national postcard campaign. In addition, the Model Work Standards built on previous work by some local campaigns in the 1980s to create model union contracts and good personnel policies. The first booklet, Model Work Standards: Creating Better Child Care Jobs in Center-Based Child Care was first published in 1998. Standards for Family Child Care and School-Age Care followed soon after.

As child care teachers began to articulate the connection between the well-being of children and their own well-being, a new slogan became popular: “Quality Jobs = Quality Care.” The Model Work Standards became a tool for implementing needed changes in early educators’ work environments. Re-thinking power dynamics between teachers and directors in early childhood education programs was a first step. Staff members needed a process that would enable everyone to have a voice in establishing goals and priorities.

Taken as a whole, the standards could seem unattainable. Child care teachers, however, were encouraged to identify just one or perhaps a few standards they believed would create meaningful change and then develop an action plan to achieve results. Through this process, programs could experience a shift in the balance of power among teachers and between teachers and administrators, and teachers could also experience a sense of agency within the workplace and gain leadership skills.

Standards Take On a New Meaning

And then things changed. After 10 years, the national campaign ended and much of CCW’s work transitioned to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in 2002. It was also around this time that changes in federal child care policy led to the emergence of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in states throughout the country. These two changes greatly impacted the child care work environment.

The word “standards” now had a meaning that was never intended in the development of the Model Work Standards. Today, standards are understood as something to be measured against. When programs are rated for their quality against standards that exclude any mention of working conditions, teachers may feel judged. With this change in the meaning of a single term, rather than fixing a broken early childhood system, teachers were being “fixed.” And fixing teachers meant assigning them more professional development requirements. Child care work became more complex and more demanding of early educators’ time and energy. The effect was that teachers often felt devalued, their traditions and cultural ways of knowing dismissed, their view of themselves as individuals with something of value to offer diminished, and their sense of empowerment taken away—exactly the opposite of what the Model Work Standards had been working to achieve. The Model Work Standards were not designed or intended to rate or rank; they are a set of goals for programs to strive toward, and they articulate what every child care teacher needs and deserves.

Renewed Interest in Model Work Standards

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the Model Work Standards, likely due to the failure of QRIS to dramatically improve quality without also taking steps to improve the work environment. In 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) and others who had worked on the original 1998 Model Work Standards recognized that they needed to be updated. Not only do we talk about standards differently now than we did nearly a quarter of a century ago, but the field of early education has changed in substantial ways. 

Today’s early educators have less time to come together due to new responsibilities and more paperwork. Technology has replaced some of the interpersonal relationships that were fostered during the Worthy Wage Campaign. Programs are larger and more challenging to manage, so directors are less likely to engage in shared decision making with staff or to serve as advisors and supporters. In addition, there are new roles that didn’t exist before, such as coaches, consultants, and curriculum specialists who don’t directly work with children—and maybe they never have. This often means teachers are pushed even lower in the hierarchy of jobs within their programs.

As we revised the standards, it became clear that a tool was still needed—perhaps even more urgently—to enable teachers and providers to come together and improve their work environments. Like the original version, the updated 2019 Model Work Standards value a process of change led by early educators. The standards were intentionally aspirational in their conception, and it is both surprising and discouraging that the original remains so relevant to conditions today. The opening 1998 Preamble, so important in setting the tone, is basically unchanged in the 2019 edition.³To view the 1998 and 2019 editions of the Model Work Standards, including the Preamble, go to https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/report/creating-better-child-care-jobs-model-work-standards/

Unfortunately, we see evidence of the Model Work Standards being used very differently. In some instances, they are being incorporated into QRIS or elsewhere to rank or rate programs. People other than early educators are picking and choosing which of the standards they will include. Too often, teachers and providers are not listened to, so they cannot identify the changes most needed by a particular workforce in a particular program. Some who are interested in the Model Work Standards today are under the erroneous assumption that they were designed by researchers or professional associations rather than teachers themselves. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the need for “teacher power” may go unrecognized in the effort to improve working conditions. Early educators still need power—power to lead a participatory process that will identify and prioritize changes using the tools of today to build relationships and learn new skills and power to develop strategies, collaborate with decision makers, and implement action plans, despite time and energy constraints created by the expanded roles of both teachers and administrators.

Currently there is no national teacher-led movement like the Worthy Wage Campaign, but there is evidence that authentic teacher engagement is being sought in some places. In Minnesota, for example, Technical Assistants are charged with listening to teachers and ensuring that their goals become part of their program’s improvement plans. In Wisconsin, a shared services network promotes the Model Work Standards in their business practice training as a tool to enhance retention of staff; teachers as well as administrators and board members are encouraged to be engaged. Additionally in Wisconsin, the Model Work Standards are among a number of tools that the highest-quality programs can use to provide evidence of involving staff in setting goals to improve retention and documenting progress towards reaching their goals. In Indiana, the statewide Association of Education for Young Children (AEYC) provided training for regionally based Workforce Coordinators on how to use the Model Work Standards; the Coordinators then are prepared to assist administrators and teachers in implementing an assessment of their program based on the standards. 

A current Model Work Standards project in Guilford County, North Carolina, perhaps most clearly demonstrates how our original intent of centering teachers in the change process can be put into practice today. Teachers in this project are coached in leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills so they can set the direction for developing and implementing their action plans. They have ownership over the process and the support of administrators. In addition, they are provided some financial support to encourage success.⁴For more information about the Guilford County North Carolina Model Work Standards Project, read here.

It is our hope that these and similar efforts create a climate for the emergence of new “teacher leaders” who recognize their power to be change agents.

Honoring Model Work Standards’ History and Intent

To those looking to implement the Model Work Standards today, we ask that you honor their history and their intent. We hope that you will recognize the role of shared decision making in creating change; this kind of decision making was hard in the 1990s and is probably harder today. It is a skill to be learned and practiced, and the support of mentor teachers and empowerment facilitators could prove valuable. We also suggest that you assess a program’s readiness to engage in implementing the Model Work Standards and support efforts to enhance readiness with funding, resources, and guidance. Finally, as a nation we need to share our successes and what we learn through these projects by tracking all the various Model Work Standards projects happening around the country.

We have yet to achieve worthy wages or the level of respect demanded more than three decades ago in a nationwide campaign, but we are clearer than ever that change involves more than a paycheck. If you’re wondering “what else,” ask a child care teacher.