When the Model Work Standards were first crafted more than two decades ago, they were built on the premise of Good Child Care Jobs = Good Care for Children. Today, we revise these standards to reflect a 21st-century context in which “quality improvement” efforts have consistently missed the mark when it comes to addressing the needs of the adults providing early care and education.
We have yet to fully embrace the fact that the needs of the children and the needs of the adults are interconnected. As documented in the Early Childhood Workforce Index 2018 (Whitebook, McLean, Austin, & Edwards, 2018), little has changed to improve wages and working conditions for early childhood educators since the 1990s.
It is with renewed focus and commitment that the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) has updated the Model Work Standards, in collaboration with some of the original authors and with the permission of the Center for the Child Care Workforce, now a project of the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation (CCW/AFTEF).
