At the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE), we are committed to advancing a public system of early care and education that recognizes and promotes educators’ rights:

• The right for early educators to be respected for their skilled and foundational work;
• The right to just and fair compensation; and
• The right to working conditions that support their overall health and well-being.

A truly transformed early care and education system will require reform and sustainable funding at the federal level. In the meantime, states have tremendous latitude in how their ECE system is organized and implemented. Our review of state policies has shown that state leaders can prioritize early care and education, even with limited federal resources. Key recommendations to improve early childhood educator jobs in U.S. states, territories, and Tribes are provided below. 

Recommendation #1: Ensure early educators have a seat at the table in decision making that affects them.

• Include early educator representatives on all ECE advisory councils, boards, committees, and task forces. 
• Support collective bargaining by early educators.

Recommendation #2: Offer all members of the current and future ECE workforce opportunities and support to acquire education and training at no personal financial cost.

Recommendation #3: Adopt system-level workplace standards,¹ Center for the Study of Child Care Employment & American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation. (2019). Model Work Standards for Teaching Staff in Center-Based Child Care. https://cscce.berkeley.edu/creating-better-child-care-jobs-model-work-standards/; Center for the Study of Child Care Employment & American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation. (2019). Model Work Standards for Early Educators in Family Child Care. https://cscce.berkeley.edu/creating-better-child-care-jobs-model-work-standards/. such as guidance on appropriate levels of paid time off for vacation and sick leave, paid planning and professional development time, and mental health and teaching supports. 

Recommendation #4: Articulate compensation standards for early educators across all settings.

• Establish a wage floor so that, at a minimum, no one working in early care and education earns less than a regionally assessed living wage.
• Create a wage/salary scale that sets minimum standards for pay, accounting for job role, experience, and education levels.

Recommendation #5: Dedicate ongoing funding to producing, analyzing, and reporting high-quality data on workforce characteristics and conditions that can be used to inform and assess policies.

Recommendation #6: Increase public investment in the early childhood workforce. 

• Include target standards for salaries, benefits, and professional work supports like paid planning time in cost models to identify the true cost of providing high-quality care.
• Dedicate state and local revenue to early care and education, like New Mexico’s Early Childhood Education and Care Fund,² New Mexico State Investment Council. (n.d.). Early Childhood Education and Care Fund. https://www.sic.state.nm.us/investments/permanent-funds/early-childhood-education-and-care-fund/. and consider dedicating funding to workforce needs, like the District of Columbia’s Pay Equity Fund.³ Office of the State Superintendent of Education. (n.d.). Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund: Information for Facility Leaders and Staff. https://osse.dc.gov/fy24ecepayequity.
• Use grants and contracts to provide stable funding to all ECE programs to cover core personnel costs like salaries, benefits, and other supports for professional working conditions.

For more detailed policy recommendations for each of the Five Policy Areas and the theory of change that undergirds them, see our Policy Toolkit.