California Early Educator Experience and Interest in Teaching Birth to Three

California will soon offer transitional kindergarten (TK) to all four-year-olds, a school-based option for early care and education (ECE). According to the state Master Plan for Early Learning and Care, universal TK for four-year-olds should enable more children age three and younger to be served in other settings like child care centers and family child care homes. To investigate how this transition is impacting the ECE workforce, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) conducted an early educator survey in the spring of 2024. The survey asked how early educators were faring during this transition, because California’s TK expansion strategy asks current teachers
of four-year-olds to make a grand pivot. It’s not just a matter of getting the right curricula, books, and furniture for the classroom—many educators who have built a career on teaching four-year-olds will have to adapt their teaching practice for a younger age group.

In this snapshot, we share data from the 2024 California ECE Workforce Study on early educators’ readiness to teach children under four years old. We also look at whether early educators are thinking about changing jobs or leaving the field, and we explore how they might react if they could no longer teach four-year-olds in their current classroom.