solution to the problem of early childhood education

6 Challenges for Early Educators as Preschool Growth Halts

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School enrollment for the nation’s youngest learners nosedived during the pandemic—and has yet to fully recover.

Instability in early childhood education could cause long-term problems, not only for public school enrollment more generally, but for schools’ ability to recover academically from the years of pandemic disruption.

The number of students attending preschool and early childhood education had risen steadily in the decade before the pandemic. But according to U.S. Census data, during the pandemic, enrollment for 3- and 4-year-olds crashed to its lowest point in 25 years.

The National Institute for Early Education Research reports that only 17 percent of 3-year-olds and 41 percent of 4-year-olds participated in any early education in 2022. That figure includes all major public preschool programs—state-funded, early special education, and Head Start.

While a majority of states did increase enrollment in state-funded preschool 6 percent of 3-year-olds and 32 percent of 4-year-olds attended state-funded preschool in the 2021-22 school year in the 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam that provided public programs. That’s up 13 percent from 2020-21, but still 8 percent below pre-pandemic enrollment.

Policymakers at both the federal and state levels have been trying to reestablish momentum for early childhood education, with growing support from both states and the Biden administration for universal preschool for children ages 3 and up.

But staffing problems could hamstring efforts to boost early childhood enrollment. NIEER’s State of Preschool 2022 report found the majority of 62 state-funded preschool programs it studied in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam in 2022 did not have enough qualified lead teachers.

“We found unprecedented teacher shortages as well as waivers to education and specialized training requirements resulting in fewer qualified teachers in preschool classrooms,” NIEER researchers concluded.

Although teacher shortages have risen across K-12, experts say preschool and early childhood programs face particular challenges.

Nearly half of all preschool teachers admitted to experiencing high levels of stress and burnout over the past few years, according to a nationwide poll of 2,500 teachers in 2022 by Teaching Strategies, an early childhood training group.

Research suggests early childhood educators need more support, via mentoring, training, and professional learning groups, to build their confidence in teaching and handle the psychological and emotional burdens of stress in early childhood classrooms, particularly with children who may arrive with fewer social and coping skills.

2. Mental health

Teaching was already a high-stress job before COVID-19, but since the start of the pandemic, depression among preschool teachers has risen. Research finds the COVID-19 pandemic has led to higher physical, emotional, and financial stress for early childhood educators.

Teachers with poor mental health are associated with more social-emotional and behavior challenges among students, creating a cycle of worsening class climate .

“Factors—particularly a secure attachment between child and caregiver and the emotional and mental well-being of the caregiver—[are] important components of beneficial care,” a National Research Council report finds.

3. Lack of resources

Per-pupil spending on early education has barely budged in the past two decades, after adjusting for inflation. States spent about $6,500 on average for each preschool student in 2022, according to the most recent U.S. Census data. That’s roughly the same per-pupil spending for early childhood education as 20 years ago, and less than half the $14,400 spent per public school student in K-12 overall, Census data show. Spending for preschool has increased about $400 per student since 2019-20, but NIEER found most of this increase comes from pandemic recovery funds, which are scheduled to expire.

4. Low compensation

The demand for early childhood educators is growing three times as fast as the average growth for all U.S. occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 15 percent more teachers predicted for these grades through 2031.

But the BLS also finds early childhood educators earn an average annual wage of $30,210 in the United States—less than half that for all K-12 public teachers.

Seventeen of the 62 state-funded early childhood programs NIEER studied in its State of Preschool report have begun offering recruiting and retention incentive pay.

5. Professional development

Professional development can be a key way to retain early childhood teachers, but studies find they are less likely than teachers of higher grades to get that support.

Only five states—Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi, and Rhode Island—meet all 10 national benchmarks for program quality, including implementing standards for child development and providing teacher professional development, the NIEER report finds.

Of 62 state-funded preschool programs NIEER studied in 44 states and the District of Columbia, 50 require their lead teachers to have specialized training in early childhood education and only 18 provide individual professional development plans with at least 15 hours per year of training and coaching for teachers and assistants.

That’s a problem, because the Teaching Strategies survey found 7 out of 10 early childhood educators reported more job satisfaction when they had access to high-quality, ongoing training, and 65 percent of preschool educators who plan to leave teaching said they didn’t have access to such professional development.

6. Technology

Educators of early learning have had to keep up with ever-changing technologies from year to year and decide how to best integrate technology into the classroom.

A 2019 research analysis found early childhood teachers are more likely to believe technology can be damaging for young children and less likely to know how to integrate it effectively in the classroom.

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Challenges Facing Early Childhood Education: Key Issues and Solutions

By GGI Insights | April 26, 2024

Table of contents

However, despite its significance, early childhood education faces numerous challenges that hinder its effectiveness and accessibility. This article explores these challenges and potential solutions to ensure all children have access to quality early childhood education.

Understanding Early Childhood Education

To better comprehend the challenges faced by early childhood education, it is essential first to understand its importance. Early childhood education refers to the educational programs and activities designed for children from birth to eight. During this critical stage of development, children acquire vital skills and knowledge that form the foundation for their future learning and development.

Research,  guided by various theories of early childhood education ,  has consistently shown that children who receive quality early childhood education demonstrate enhanced cognitive, social, and emotional skills throughout their lives. They are better prepared for formal schooling and have higher academic achievement rates. Moreover, early childhood education fosters essential skills such as problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking that are vital in the modern world. Additionally, early childhood education research plays a critical role in continually enhancing these educational strategies.

Regarding early childhood education, several key components work together to provide a holistic learning experience for young children. These components include:

• Play-based Learning: Play , a focus of many early childhood associations , is integral to early childhood education, promoting exploration, problem-solving, and creativity. Children engage with their environment, develop their imagination, and learn to interact with others through play.
• Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum: Activities and materials are tailored to suit each age group's developmental needs and abilities. This ensures that children are challenged appropriately and can progress at their own pace.
• Qualified and Dedicated Educators: Trained teachers who understand child development and effective teaching strategies play a crucial role in early childhood education. They create a nurturing and stimulating environment where children can thrive and reach their full potential.
• Safe and Nurturing Environment: Physical and emotionally safe learning environments are essential for young children. When children feel secure and supported, they are more likely to engage in learning, take risks, and develop a positive attitude toward education.

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Early childhood education nurtures children's intellectual growth and social and emotional well-being. Children learn to communicate effectively, develop positive relationships, and regulate emotions by engaging in age-appropriate activities. These skills are vital for their overall development and future success.

It also builds a strong foundation for later learning. It helps children develop essential literacy and numeracy skills, curiosity, and a love for learning. By cultivating a positive attitude towards education from an early age, children are more likely to succeed academically and pursue lifelong learning.

Early childhood education plays a crucial role in shaping the lives of young children. It provides them with the necessary stimulation and support to promote their overall development and prepares them for academic success. By embracing the key components of early childhood education and recognizing its importance, we can ensure that every child has the opportunity to thrive and reach their full potential.

Identifying the Challenges in Early Childhood Education

Despite the immense benefits of early childhood education, several challenges hinder its progress:

Lack of Adequate Funding

One significant challenge is insufficient funding for early childhood education programs. Many programs struggle to secure the necessary resources to provide high-quality education and support services to all children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Insufficient funding leads to limited access to early childhood education and compromised program quality.

Investing in early childhood education is essential as it yields long-term benefits for individuals and society,  especially when enhanced with adequate early childhood education resources .  Governments and communities must prioritize funding early childhood education to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to thrive.

For example, allocating more funds towards early childhood education can result in smaller class sizes, which allows for more individualized attention and better learning outcomes. Additionally, increased funding can provide resources such as books, educational materials, and technology, enriching the learning environment for young children.

Teacher Shortages and High Turnover Rates

The shortage of qualified early childhood educators is another significant challenge in early childhood education. Many countries struggle to attract and retain skilled teachers in this field. The demanding nature of the job, inadequate compensation, and low professional status contribute to high turnover rates.

Efforts should be made to recruit and retain talented educators by offering competitive salaries, comprehensive professional development opportunities, and recognition for their invaluable work. Additionally, enhancing the public perception of the early childhood education profession will attract more individuals passionate about nurturing young minds.

Establishing mentorship programs and support networks for early childhood educators can help alleviate their challenges. Educators can receive guidance, share experiences, and feel more valued by providing a supportive community.

Inadequate Training and Professional Development

Providing ongoing training and professional development opportunities for early childhood educators, often assisted by early childhood organizations , is crucial for ensuring quality education. However, many educators lack access to comprehensive training programs that equip them with the knowledge and skills to teach young children effectively.

Investing in professional development for early childhood educators is essential to keep them abreast of the latest research, teaching methodologies, and best practices. Continuous learning opportunities will empower educators to provide high-quality and developmentally appropriate instruction.

Collaboration between educational institutions and early childhood education programs can facilitate the exchange of knowledge and expertise. This partnership can create opportunities for educators to receive specialized training and gain insights from experienced professionals in the field.

Incorporating technology into professional development programs can enhance accessibility and provide educators with innovative teaching strategies. Online courses, webinars, and virtual conferences can offer flexibility and convenience, allowing educators to grow professionally at their own pace.

While early childhood education faces various challenges, addressing these issues is crucial for providing every child with a solid foundation for lifelong learning. By investing in adequate funding, attracting and retaining skilled educators, and providing comprehensive training and professional development opportunities, we can overcome these obstacles and ensure high-quality early childhood education.

The Impact of These Challenges on Children

The challenges facing early childhood education have significant implications for children's development. Let's explore the effects of these challenges on children:

Effects on Cognitive Development

Inadequate access to quality early childhood education can hinder children's cognitive development. Discussions on what is the Head Start program highlight this, illustrating how without early exposure to enriching learning experiences, children may enter school unprepared, lagging behind their peers in essential skills such as language acquisition, problem-solving, and logical thinking.

For example, imagine a child who grows up in a low-income neighborhood with limited access to quality early childhood education programs. They may be unable to engage in activities stimulating their cognitive abilities, such as hands-on experiments, interactive storytelling, or educational games. As a result, their cognitive development may be stunted, making it challenging for them to grasp complex concepts and keep up with their classmates.

On the other hand, high-quality early childhood education programs offer a stimulating environment that supports children in developing cognitive skills necessary for success in school and later in life. These programs often incorporate engaging activities that promote critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. Additionally, they provide a structured curriculum that introduces children to foundational concepts in math, science, and language arts.

By participating in such programs, children can explore and discover their interests, develop a love for learning, and build a solid foundation for their future academic pursuits. It is crucial to address early childhood education challenges to ensure that all children have access to these programs and foster their cognitive development from an early age.

Social and Emotional Consequences

Early childhood education is vital in shaping children's social and emotional well-being. It helps children develop crucial social skills such as communication, empathy, and cooperation. Without access to quality early childhood education, children may struggle with social interactions, and experience increased social and emotional challenges.

Consider a child who does not have the opportunity to attend a high-quality early childhood education program. They may miss out on valuable social experiences, such as working collaboratively on projects, engaging in group discussions, and learning how to navigate conflicts constructively. As a result, they may struggle to form meaningful relationships, communicate effectively, and regulate their emotions.

On the other hand, providing inclusive early childhood education programs that promote positive relationships, emotional regulation, and social competence is essential in addressing the challenges and supporting children's social and emotional development. These programs often incorporate activities that encourage children to express their emotions, practice active listening, and develop empathy toward others.

By participating in such programs, children learn how to navigate social situations, build healthy relationships, and develop a strong sense of self-awareness. These skills contribute to their overall well-being and lay the foundation for their future success in various aspects of life, including personal relationships, academic achievements, and professional endeavors.

Case Studies: Real-world Examples of Challenges in Early Childhood Education

Real-world examples can shed light on the challenges faced by early childhood education and the efforts made to overcome them. Let's examine two case studies:

Rural Early Childhood Education

Rural communities often face unique challenges in providing early childhood education due to geographic isolation, limited resources, and economic constraints. Access to quality programs may be limited, resulting in educational disparities between rural and urban areas.

Rural early childhood education faces a specific challenge: infrastructure and facilities. In many remote areas, there may not be enough schools or classrooms to accommodate all the children in the community. This can lead to overcrowded classrooms and a shortage of qualified teachers.

Innovative solutions like mobile early childhood education units have been introduced to address this issue. These units are equipped with educational materials and staffed by trained educators who travel to different rural communities, bringing early childhood education directly to the children. This approach ensures access to education and fosters a sense of community and belonging among the children.

In addition to mobile units, virtual learning platforms have been implemented in some rural areas. These platforms provide online educational resources and interactive activities that children can access from their homes. This helps overcome geographic barriers and allows children to learn at their own pace and explore topics of interest.

Furthermore, community partnerships are crucial in improving rural early childhood education. Local businesses, organizations, and volunteers collaborate with schools to provide additional resources and support. For example, a local farm may partner with a rural school to organize field trips, exposing children to nature and hands-on learning experiences.

Urban Early Childhood Education

Urban areas often encounter challenges such as overcrowded classrooms, high poverty rates, and cultural diversity. These challenges can hinder quality early childhood education and impact children's learning experience.

One of the major challenges in urban early childhood education is the high student-to-teacher ratio. Overcrowded classrooms make it difficult for teachers to provide individualized attention to each child, resulting in a less effective learning environment. High poverty rates in urban areas can also lead to limited access to resources and support systems crucial for a child's development.

Community-based organizations have emerged as a vital component of urban early childhood education to address these challenges. These organizations work closely with schools and community resources to provide comprehensive support to children and their families. They offer after-school programs, tutoring services, and mentorship opportunities to ensure children receive the necessary academic and emotional support.

Collaborations between schools and community resources have also proven effective in improving urban early childhood education. For example, partnerships with local health clinics can ensure that children can access regular health check-ups and necessary vaccinations. This holistic approach recognizes the importance of addressing educational and non-educational factors impacting a child's learning experience.

Targeted intervention programs have been implemented to address the needs of urban children specifically. These programs focus on early literacy, social-emotional development, and parental involvement. By providing resources and training to parents, these programs aim to create a strong support system for children at home and in school.

Potential Solutions to Overcome These Challenges

While the challenges in early childhood education are significant, there are potential solutions that can help overcome them:

Increasing Investment in Early Childhood Education

Governments, communities, and philanthropic organizations must allocate adequate funding to enhance access to early childhood education. Investing in high-quality programs, improving infrastructure, and increasing teacher salaries will ensure that every child can benefit from quality early education.

Increasing investment in early childhood education is crucial for children's overall development and well-being. Adequate funding allows for implementing evidence-based practices, such as play-based learning, which fosters cognitive, social, and emotional development. With proper investment, early childhood education programs can provide enriching experiences that support children's growth and prepare them for future success.

Improving infrastructure is essential to create safe and stimulating learning environments. Upgrading facilities, providing age-appropriate materials, and ensuring proper sanitation are all crucial aspects of enhancing the quality of early childhood education. By investing in infrastructure, children can access well-equipped classrooms and outdoor spaces that promote exploration, creativity, and physical development.

In addition to investing in programs and infrastructure, increasing teacher salaries is vital for attracting and retaining highly qualified educators. Higher salaries recognize the value of their work and encourage talented individuals to pursue a career in early childhood education. Well-compensated teachers are more likely to be motivated, dedicated, and committed to providing young children with the best learning experiences.

Enhancing Teacher Training and Retention Strategies

It is crucial to prioritize teacher training and professional development opportunities to address the shortage of qualified teachers. By offering competitive salaries, mentorship programs, and career advancement opportunities, the early childhood education field will attract and retain talented educators passionate about nurturing and educating young minds.

Effective teacher training programs equip educators with the knowledge and skills to support children's development. These programs should focus on evidence-based practices, child development theories, and strategies for creating inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments. Ongoing professional development opportunities should also be provided to ensure that teachers stay updated with the latest research and best practices in early childhood education.

Mentorship programs can be crucial in supporting new teachers and helping them navigate the profession's challenges. Experienced educators can provide guidance, share their expertise, and support early career teachers emotionally. By establishing strong mentorship programs, the field of early childhood education can create a supportive network that promotes professional growth and development.

Career advancement opportunities, such as leadership and specialized roles, can also increase teacher retention. Recognizing and rewarding excellence in teaching can motivate educators to continue their professional growth and stay committed to the field. By providing clear pathways for career advancement, early childhood education can attract and retain talented individuals dedicated to positively impacting children's lives.

Advocacy for Policy Changes

Advocacy efforts are vital in influencing policy changes that support early childhood education. Advocacy organizations, educators, parents, and concerned citizens can work together to advocate for increased funding, improved standards, and equitable access to early childhood education.

Advocacy efforts can focus on raising awareness about the importance of early childhood education and its long-term benefits. By educating policymakers and the general public about the positive impact of quality early education, advocates can build support for increased funding and resources. They can also highlight the disparities in access to early childhood education and advocate for policies that ensure equitable opportunities for all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Advocacy organizations can also be crucial in shaping policies and standards that promote quality early childhood education. By conducting research, providing expert insights, and collaborating with policymakers, these organizations can influence the development and implementation of effective policies. They can advocate for evidence-based practices, appropriate teacher-child ratios, and comprehensive support services that address the diverse needs of children and families.

Advocacy efforts can focus on fostering partnerships between early childhood education programs, schools, and community organizations. By building strong collaborations, advocates can create a unified voice for early childhood education and work towards systemic changes that benefit all children.

The Future of Early Childhood Education

Emerging trends and innovations characterize the future of early childhood education:

Emerging Trends and Innovations

Incorporating research-based approaches, such as brain development and individualized instruction, is becoming prevalent in early childhood education. Additionally, including diverse perspectives and cultural responsiveness is gaining recognition as essential components of effective early childhood education.

The Role of Technology in Early Childhood Education

Technology has the potential to revolutionize early childhood education by enhancing student engagement and providing personalized learning experiences. Interactive learning platforms, educational apps, and virtual reality tools can complement traditional teaching methods and make early childhood education more accessible and engaging.

The Importance of Continued Research and Discussion

Continued research and open discussion are vital for shaping the future of early childhood education. Ongoing research will provide insights into effective instructional practices, program evaluation, and the impact of early childhood education on long-term outcomes. Open discussions among educators, policymakers, and stakeholders will foster collaboration and innovation in the field.

Early childhood education is critical in shaping children's cognitive, social, and emotional development. However, it faces various challenges, including inadequate funding, teacher shortages, and training limitations. These challenges can significantly affect children's overall well-being and future success. Investing in early childhood education, enhancing teacher training and retention strategies, and advocating for policy changes can overcome these challenges and ensure all children have access to quality early childhood education. The future of early childhood education lies in embracing emerging trends, leveraging technology, and fostering continued research and discussion. Only through collective efforts can we provide every child with the strong foundation they deserve for a lifetime of learning and success.

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5 Current Issues in the Field of Early Childhood Education

Learning Objectives

Objective 1: Identify current issues that impact stakeholders in early childhood care and education.

Objective 2: Describe strategies for understanding current issues as a professional in early childhood care and education.

Objective 3: Create an informed response to a current issue as a professional in early childhood care and education.

Current Issues in the Field—Part 1

There’s one thing you can be sure of in the field of early childhood: the fact that the field is always changing. We make plans for our classrooms based on the reality we and the children in our care are living in, and then, something happens in that external world, the place where “life happens,” and our reality changes. Or sometimes it’s a slow shift: you go to a training and hear about new research, you think it over, read a few articles, and over time you realize the activities you carefully planned are no longer truly relevant to the lives children are living today, or that you know new things that make you rethink whether your practice is really meeting the needs of every child.

This is guaranteed to happen at some point. Natural events might occur that affect your community, like forest fires or tornadoes, or like COVID-19, which closed far too many child care programs and left many other early educators struggling to figure out how to work with children online. Cultural and political changes happen, which affect your children’s lives, or perhaps your understanding of their lives, like the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that brought to light how much disparity and tension exist and persist in the United States. New information may come to light through research that allows us to understand human development very differently, like the advancements in neuroscience that help us understand how trauma affects children’s brains, and how we as early educators can counteract those affects and build resilience.

And guess what—all this change is a good thing! Read this paragraph slowly—it’s important!  Change is good because we as providers of early childhood care and education are working with much more than a set of academic skills that need to be imparted to children; we are working with the whole child, and preparing the child to live successfully in the world. So when history sticks its foot into our nice calm stream of practice, the waters get muddied. But the good news is that mud acts as a fertilizer so that we as educators and leaders in the field have the chance to learn and grow, to bloom into better educators for every child, and, let’s face it, to become better human beings!

The work of early childhood care and education is so full, so complex, so packed with details to track and respond to, from where Caiden left his socks, to whether Amelia’s parents are going to be receptive to considering evaluation for speech supports, and how to adapt the curriculum for the child who has never yet come to circle time. It might make you feel a little uneasy—or, let’s face it, even overwhelmed—to also consider how the course of history may cause you to deeply rethink what you do over time.

That’s normal. Thinking about the complexity of human history while pushing Keisha on the swings makes you completely normal! As leaders in the field, we must learn to expect that we will be called upon to change, maybe even dramatically, over time. 

Let me share a personal story with you: I had just become director of an established small center, and was working to sort out all the details that directing encompassed: scheduling, billing policies, and most of all, staffing frustrations about who got planning time, etc. But I was also called upon to substitute teach on an almost daily basis, so there was a lot of disruption to my carefully made daily plans to address the business end, or to work with teachers to seek collaborative solutions to long-standing conflict. I was frustrated by not having time to do the work I felt I needed to do, and felt there were new small crises each day. I couldn’t get comfortable with my new position, nor with the way my days were constantly shifting away from my plans. It was then that a co-worker shared a quote with me from Thomas F. Crum, who writes about how to thrive in difficult working conditions: “Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet”.

Wow! That gave me a new vision, one where I wasn’t failing and flailing, but could become graceful in learning to be responsive to change big and small. I felt relieved to have a different way of looking at my progress through my days: I wasn’t flailing at all—I was dancing! Okay, it might be a clumsy dance, and I might bruise my knees, but that idea helped me respond to each day’s needs with courage and hope.

I especially like this image for those of us who work with young children. I imagine a child hopping around in the middle of a parachute, while the other children joyfully whip their corners up and down. The child in the center feels disoriented, exhilarated, surrounded by shifting color, sensation, and laughter. When I feel like there’s too much change happening, I try to see the world through that child’s eyes. It’s possible to find joy and possibility in the disorientation, and the swirl of thoughts and feelings, and new ways of seeing and being that come from change.

Key Takeaways

Our practices in the classroom and as leaders must constantly adapt to changes in our communities and our understanding of the world around us, which gives us the opportunity to continue to grow and develop.

You are a leader, and change is happening, and you are making decisions about how to move forward, and how to adapt thoughtfully. The good news is that when this change happens, our field has really amazing tools for adapting. We can develop a toolkit of trusted sources that we can turn to to provide us with information and strategies for ethical decision making.

If You’re Afraid of Falling…

One of the most important of these is the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct, which expresses a commitment to core values for the field, and a set of principles for determining ethical behavior and decision-making. As we commit to the code, we commit to:

• Appreciate childhood as a unique and valuable stage of the human life cycle
• Base our work on knowledge of how children develop and learn
• Appreciate and support the bond between the child and family
• Recognize that children are best understood and supported in the context of family, culture,* community, and society
• Respect the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of each individual (child, family member, and colleague)
• Respect diversity in children, families, and colleagues
• Recognize that children and adults achieve their full potential in the context of relationships that are based on trust and respect.

If someone asked us to make a list of beliefs we have about children and families, we might not have been able to come up with a list that looked just like this, but, most of us in the field are here because we share these values and show up every day with them in our hearts.

The Code of Ethical Conduct can help bring what’s in your heart into your head. It’s a complete tool to help you think carefully about a dilemma, a decision, or a plan, based on these values. Sometimes we don’t make the “right” decision and need to change our minds, but as long as we make a decision based on values about the importance of the well-being of all children and families, we won’t be making a decision that we will regret.

An Awfully Big Current Issue—Let’s Not Dance Around It

In the field of early childhood, issues of prejudice have long been important to research, and in this country, Head Start was developed more than 50 years ago with an eye toward dismantling disparity based on ethnicity or skin color (among other things). However, research shows that this gap has not closed. Particularly striking, in recent years, is research addressing perceptions of the behavior of children of color and the numbers of children who are asked to leave programs.

In fact, studies of expulsion from preschool showed that black children were twice as likely to be expelled as white preschoolers, and 3.6 times as likely to receive one or more suspensions. This is deeply concerning in and of itself, but the fact that preschool expulsion is predictive of later difficulties is even more so:

Starting as young as infancy and toddlerhood, children of color are at highest risk for being expelled from early childhood care and education programs. Early expulsions and suspensions lead to greater gaps in access to resources for young children and thus create increasing gaps in later achievement and well-being… Research indicates that early expulsions and suspensions predict later expulsions and suspensions, academic failure, school dropout, and an increased likelihood of later incarceration.

Why does this happen? It’s complicated. Studies on the K-12 system show that some of the reasons include:

• uneven or biased implementation of disciplinary policies
• discriminatory discipline practices
• school racial climate
• under resourced programs
• inadequate education and training for teachers on bias

In other words, educators need more support and help in reflecting on their own practices, but there are also policies and systems in place that contribute to unfair treatment of some groups of children.

Key Takeaway

So…we have a lot of research that continues to be eye opening and cause us to rethink our practices over time, plus a cultural event—in the form of the Black Lives Matter movement—that push the issue of disparity based on skin color directly in front of us. We are called to respond. You are called to respond.

How Will I Ever Learn the Steps?

Woah—how do I respond to something so big and so complex and so sensitive to so many different groups of people?

As someone drawn to early childhood care and education, you probably bring certain gifts and abilities to this work.

• You probably already feel compassion for every child and want every child to have opportunities to grow into happy, responsible adults who achieve their goals. Remember the statement above about respecting the dignity and worth of every individual? That in itself is a huge start to becoming a leader working as an advocate for social justice.
• You may have been to trainings that focus on anti-bias and being culturally responsive.
• You may have some great activities to promote respect for diversity, and be actively looking for more.
• You may be very intentional about including materials that reflect people with different racial identities, genders, family structures.
• You may make sure that each family is supported in their home language and that multilingualism is valued in your program.
• You may even have spent some time diving into your own internalized biases.

This list could become very long! These are extremely important aspects of addressing injustice in early education which you can do to alter your individual practice with children.

As a leader in the field, you are called to think beyond your own practice.  As a leader you have the opportunity—the responsibility!—to look beyond your own practices and become an advocate for change. Two important recommendations (of many) from the NAEYC Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education Position Statement, another important tool:

Speak out against unfair policies or practices and challenge biased perspectives.  Work to embed fair and equitable approaches in all aspects of early childhood program delivery, including standards, assessments, curriculum, and personnel practices.

Look for ways to work collectively with others who are committed to equity.  Consider it a professional responsibility to help challenge and change policies, laws, systems, and institutional practices that keep social inequities in place.

One take away I want you to grab from those last sentences: You are not alone. This work can be, and must be, collective.

As a leader, your sphere of influence is bigger than just you. You can influence the practices of others in your program and outside of it. You can influence policies, rules, choices about the tools you use, and ultimately, you can even challenge laws that are not fair to every child.

Who’s on your team? I want you to think for a moment about the people who help you in times where you are facing change. These are the people you can turn to for an honest conversation, where you can show your confusion and fear, and they will be supportive and think alongside you. This might include your friends, your partner, some or all of your coworkers, a former teacher of your own, a counselor, a pastor. Make a quick list of people you can turn to when you need to do some deep digging and ground yourself in your values.

And now, your workplace team: who are your fellow advocates in your workplace? Who can you reach out to when you realize something might need to change within your program? 

Wonderful. You’ve got other people to lean on in times of change. More can be accomplished together than alone. Let’s consider what you can do:

What is your sphere of influence? What are some small ways you can create room for growth within your sphere of influence? What about that workplace team? Do their spheres of influence add to your own?

Try drawing your sphere of influence: Draw yourself in the middle of the page, and put another circle around yourself, another circle around that, and another around that. Fill your circles in:

• Consider the first circle your personal sphere. Brainstorm family and friends who you can talk to about issues that are part of your professional life. You can put down their names, draw them, or otherwise indicate who they might be!
• Next, those you influence in your daily work, such as the children in your care, their families, maybe your co-workers land here.
• Next, those who make decisions about the system you are in—maybe this is your director or board, or even a PTA. 
• Next, think about the early childhood care and education community you work within. What kind of influence could you have on this community? Do you have friends who work at other programs you can have important conversations with to spread ideas? Are you part of a local Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC)? Could you speak to the organizers of a local conference about including certain topics for sessions?
• And finally, how about state (and even national) policies? Check out The Children’s Institute to learn about state bills that impact childcare. Do you know your local representatives? Could you write a letter to your senator? Maybe you have been frustrated with the slow reimbursement and low rates for Employment Related Day Care subsidies and can find a place to share your story. You can call your local Child Care Resource and Referral, your local or state AEYC chapter, or visit childinst.org to find out how you can increase your reach! It’s probably a lot farther than you think!

Break It Down: Systemic Racism

When you think about injustice and the kind of change you want to make, there’s an important distinction to understand in the ways injustice happens in education (or anywhere else). First, there’s personal bias and racism, and of course it’s crucial as an educator to examine ourselves and our practices and responses. We all have bias and addressing it is an act of courage that you can model for your colleagues.

In addition, there’s another kind of bias and racism, and it doesn’t live inside of individual people, but inside of the systems we have built. Systemic racism exists in the structures and processes that have come into place over time, which allow one group of people a greater chance of succeeding than other specific groups of people.

Key Takeaways (Sidebar)

Systemic racism is also called institutional racism, because it exists – sometimes unquestioned – within institutions themselves.

In early childhood care and education, there are many elements that were built with middle class white children in mind. Many of our standardized tests were made with middle class white children in mind. The curriculum we use, the assessments we use, the standards of behavior we have been taught; they may have all been developed with middle class white children in mind.

Therefore it is important to consider whether they adequately and fairly work for all of the children in your program community. Do they have relevance to all children’s lived experience, development, and abilities? Who is being left out?

Imagine a vocabulary assessment in which children are shown common household items including a lawn mower…common if you live in a house; they might well be unfamiliar to a three-year-old who lives in an apartment building, however. The child may end up receiving a lower score, though their vocabulary could be rich, full of words that do reflect the objects in their lived experience.

The test is at fault, not the child’s experience. Yet the results of that test can impact the way educators, parents, and the child see their ability and likelihood to succeed.

You Don’t Have to Invent the Steps: Using an Equity Lens

In addition to the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct and Equity Statement, another tool for addressing decision-making is an equity lens. To explain what an equity lens is, we first need to talk about equity. It’s a term you may have heard before, but sometimes people confuse it with equality. It’s a little different – equity is having the resources needed to be successful.

There’s a wonderful graphic of children looking over a fence at a baseball game. In one frame, each child stands at the fence; one is tall enough to see over the top; another stands tip-toe, straining to see; and another is simply too short. This is equality—everyone has the same chance, but not everyone is equally prepared. In the frame titled equity, each child stands on a stool just high enough so that they may all see over the fence. The stools are the supports they need to have an equitable outcome—being able to experience the same thing as their friend.

Seeking equity means considering who might not be able to see over the fence and figuring out how to build them a stool so that they have the same opportunity.

An equity lens, then, is a tool to help you look at decisions through a framework of equity. It’s a series of questions to ask yourself when making decisions. An equity lens is a process of asking a series of questions to better help you understand if something (a project, a curriculum, a parent meeting, a set of behavioral guidelines) is unfair to specific individuals or groups whose needs have been overlooked in the past. This lens might help you to identify the impact of your decisions on students of color, and you can also use the lens to consider the impact on students experiencing poverty, students in nontraditional families, students with differing abilities, students who are geographically isolated, students whose home language is other than English, etc.) The lens then helps you determine how to move past this unfairness by overcoming barriers and providing equitable opportunities to all children.

Some states have adopted a version of the equity lens for use in their early learning systems. Questions that are part of an equity lens might include:

• What decision is being made, and what kind of values or assumptions are affecting how we make the decision?
• Who is helping make the decision? Are there representatives of the affected group who get to have a voice in the process?
• Does the new activity, rule, etc. have the potential to make disparities worse? For instance, could it mean that families who don’t have a car miss out on a family night? Or will it make those disparities better?
• Who might be left out? How can we make sure they are included?
• Are there any potential unforeseen consequences of the decision that will impact specific groups? How can we try to make sure the impact will be positive?

You can use this lens for all kinds of decisions, in formal settings, like staff meetings, and you can also work to make them part of your everyday thinking. I have a sticky note on my desk that asks “Who am I leaving out”? This is an especially important question if the answer points to children who are people of color, or another group that is historically disadvantaged. If that’s the answer, you don’t have to scrap your idea entirely. Celebrate your awareness, and brainstorm about how you can do better for everyone—and then do it!

Embracing our Bruised Knees: Accepting Discomfort as We Grow

Inspirational author Brene Brown, who writes books, among other things, about being an ethical leader, said something that really walloped me: if we avoid the hard work of addressing unfairness (like talking about skin color at a time when our country is divided over it) we are prioritizing our discomfort over the pain of others. 

Imagine a parent who doesn’t think it’s appropriate to talk about skin color with young children, who tells you so with some anger in their voice. That’s uncomfortable, maybe even a little scary. But as you prioritize upholding the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every individual, you can see that this is more important than trying to avoid discomfort. Changing your practice to avoid conflict with this parent means prioritizing your own momentary discomfort over the pain children of color in your program may experience over time.

We might feel vulnerable when we think about skin color, and we don’t want to have to have the difficult conversation. But if keeping ourselves safe from discomfort means that we might not be keeping children safe from very real and life-impacting racial disparity, we’re not making a choice that is based in our values.

Change is uncomfortable. It leaves us feeling vulnerable as we reexamine the ideas, strategies, even the deeply held beliefs that have served us so far. But as a leader, and with the call to support every child as they deserve, we can develop a sort of super power vision, where we can look unflinchingly around us and understand the hidden impacts of the structures we work within.

A Few Recent Dance Steps of My Own

You’re definitely not alone—researchers and thinkers in the field are doing this work alongside you, examining even our most cherished and important ideas about childhood and early education. For instance, a key phrase that we often use to underpin our decisions is developmentally appropriate practice, which NAEYC defines as “methods that promote each child’s optimal development and learning through a strengths-based, play-based approach to joyful, engaged learning.” The phrase is sometimes used to contrast against practices that might not be developmentally appropriate, like expecting three-year-olds to write their names or sit quietly in a 30 minute story time.

Let me tell you a story about how professional development is still causing me to stare change in the face! At the NAEYC conference in 2020, during a session in which Dr. Jie-Qi Chen presented on different perspectives on developmentally appropriate practice among early educators in China and the United States. She showed a video from a classroom in China to educators in both the US and in China. The video was of a circle time in which a child was retelling a story that the class knew well, and then the children were encouraged to offer feedback and rate how well the child had done. The children listened attentively, and then told the storytelling child how they had felt about his retelling, including identifying parts that had been left out, inaccuracies in the telling, and advice for speaking more clearly and loudly.

The educators were asked what the impact of the activity would be on the children and whether it was developmentally appropriate. The educators in the United States had deep concerns that the activity would be damaging to a child’s self esteem, and was therefore not developmentally appropriate. They also expressed concerns about the children being asked to sit for this amount of time. The educators in the classroom in China felt that it was developmentally appropriate and the children were learning not only storytelling skills but how to give and receive constructive criticism.

As I watched the video, I had the same thoughts as the educators from the US—I’m not used to children being encouraged to offer criticism rather than praise. But I also saw that the child in question had self-confidence and received the feedback positively. The children were very engaged and seemed to feel their feedback mattered.

What was most interesting to me here was the idea of self-esteem, and how important it is to us here in the United States, or rather, how much protecting we feel it needs. I realized that what educators were responding to weren’t questions of whether retelling a story was developmentally appropriate, or whether the critical thinking skills the children were being asked to display were developmentally appropriate, but rather whether the social scenario in which one child receives potentially negative feedback in front of their peers was developmentally appropriate, and that the responses were based in the different cultural ideas of self-esteem and individual vision versus collective success.

My point here is that even our big ideas, like developmentally appropriate practice, have an element of vulnerability to them. As courageous leaders, we need to turn our eyes even there to make sure that our cultural assumptions and biases aren’t affecting our ability to see clearly, that the reality of every child is honored within them, and that no one is being left out.  And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we should scrap them. It’s not wrong to advocate for and use developmentally appropriate practice as a framework for our work—not at all! It just means we need to remember that it’s built from values that may be specific to our culture—and not everyone may have equal access to that culture. It means we should return to our big ideas with respect and bravery and sit with them and make sure they are still the ones that serve us best in the world we are living in right now, with the best knowledge we have right now.

You, Dancing With Courage

So…As a leader is early childhood, you will be called upon to be nimble, to make new decisions and reframe your practice when current events or new understanding disrupt your plans. When this happens, professional tools are available to you to help you make choices based on your ethical commitment to children.

Change makes us feel uncomfortable but we can embrace it to do the best by the children and families we work with. We can learn to develop our critical thinking skills so that we can examine our own beliefs and assumptions, both as individuals and as a leader.

Remember that person dancing on the shifting carpet? That child in the middle of the parachute? They might be a little dizzy, but with possibility. They might lose their footing, but in that uncertainty, in the middle of the billowing parachute, there is the sensation that the very instability provides the possibility of rising up like the fabric. And besides—there are hands to hold if they lose their balance—or if you do! And so can you rise when you allow yourself to accept change and adapt to all the new possibility of growth that it opens up!

Current Issues in the Field Part 2—Dance Lessons

Okay, sure—things are gonna change, and this change is going to affect the lives of the children and families you work with, and affect you, professionally and personally. So—you’re sold, in theory, that to do the best by each one of those children, you’re just going to have to do some fancy footwork, embrace the change, and think through how to best adapt to it.

But…how? Before we talk about the kind of change that’s about rethinking your program on a broad level, let’s talk about those times we face when change happens in the spur of the moment, and impacts the lives of the children in your program—those times when your job becomes helping children process their feelings and adapt to change. Sometimes this is a really big deal, like a natural disaster. Sometimes it’s something smaller like the personal story I share below…something small, cuddly, and very important to the children.

Learning the Steps: How do I help children respond to change?

I have a sad story to share. For many years, I was the lead teacher in a classroom in which we had a pet rabbit named Flopsy. Flopsy was litter-trained and so our licensing specialist allowed us to let him hop freely around the classroom. Flopsy was very social, and liked to interact with children. He liked to be held and petted and was also playful, suddenly zooming around the classroom, hopping over toys and nudging children. Flopsy was a big part of our community and of children’s experience in our classroom.

One day, I arrived at school to be told by my distraught director that Flopsy had died in the night and she had removed his body. I had about 15 minutes before children would be arriving, and I had to figure out how to address Flopsy’s loss.

I took a few minutes to collect myself, and considered the following questions:

Yes, absolutely. The children would notice immediately that Flopsy was missing and would comment on it. It was important that I not evade their questions.

Flopsy had died. His body had stopped working. His brain had stopped working. He would not ever come back to life. We would never see Flopsy again. I wrote these sentences on a sticky note. They were short but utterly important.

I would give children the opportunity to share their feelings, and talk about my own feelings. I would read children’s books that would express feelings they might not have words for yet. I would pay extra attention to children reaching out to me and offer opportunities to affirm children’s responses by writing them down.

Human beings encounter death. Children lose pets, grandparents, and sometimes parents or siblings. I wanted these children to experience death in a way that would give them a template when they experienced more intense loss. I wanted them to know it’s okay to be sad, and that the sadness grows less acute over time. That it’s okay to feel angry or scared, and that these feelings, too, though they might be really big, will become less immediate. And that it’s okay to feel happy as you remember the one you lost.

I knew it was important not to give children mistaken impressions about death. I was careful not to compare it to sleep, because I didn’t want them to think that maybe Flopsy would wake up again. I also didn’t want them to fear that when mama fell asleep it was the same thing as death. I also wanted to be factual but leave room for families to share their religious beliefs with their children.

I didn’t have time to do research. But I mentally gathered up some wisdom from a training I’d been to, where the trainer talked about how important it is that we don’t shy away from addressing death with children. Her words gave me courage. I also gathered up some children’s books about pet death from our library.

The first thing I did was text my husband. I was really sad. I had cared for this bunny for years and I loved him too. I didn’t have time for a phone call, but that text was an important way for me to acknowledge my own feelings of grief.

Then I talked to the other teachers. I asked for their quick advice, and shared my plan, since the news would travel to other classrooms as well.

During my prep time that day, I wrote a letter to families, letting them know Flopsy had died and some basic information about how we had spoken to children about it, some resources about talking to children about death, and some titles of books about the death of pets. I knew that news of Flopsy’s death would be carried home to many families, and that parents might want to share their own belief systems about death. I also knew many parents were uncomfortable discussing death with young children and that it might be helpful to see the way we had done so.

I had curriculum planned for that day which I partially scrapped. At our first gathering time I shared the news with the whole group: I shared my sticky note of information about death. I told the children I was sad. I asked if they had questions and I answered them honestly. I listened when they shared their own feelings. I also told them I had happy memories of FLopsy and we talked about our memories.

During the course of the day, and the next few days, I gave the children invitations (but not assignments) to reflect on Flopsy and their feelings. I sat on the floor with a notebook and the invitation for children to write a “story” about Flopsy. Almost every child wanted their words recorded. Responses ranged from “Goodbye bunny” to imagined stories about Flopsy’s adventures, to a description of feelings of sadness and loss. Writing down these words helped acknowledge the children’s feelings. Some of them hung their stories on the wall, and some asked them to be read aloud, or shared them themselves, at circle time.

I also made sure there were plenty of other opportunities in the classroom for children who didn’t want to engage in these ways, or who didn’t need to.

We read “Saying Goodbye to Lulu” and “The Tenth Good Thing About Barney” in small groups; and while these books were a little bit above the developmental level of some children in the class, many children wanted to hear and discuss the books. When I became teary reading them, I didn’t try to hide it, but just said “I’m feeling sad, and it makes me cry a little bit. Everyone cries sometimes.”

This would be a good set of steps to address an event like a hurricane, wildfires, or an earthquake as well. First and foremost of course, make sure your children are safe and have their physical needs met! Remember your role as educator and caretaker; address their emotional needs, consider what you hope they will learn, gather the resources and your team, and make decisions that affirm the dignity of each child in your care.

• Does the issue affect children’s lived experiences? 
• How much and what kind of information is appropriate for their age?
• How can I best affirm their emotions?
• What do I hope they will learn?
• Could I accidentally be doing harm through my response?
• Which resources do I need and can I gather in a timely manner?
• How do I gather my team?
• How can I involve families?
• Now, I create and enact my plan…

Did your plan look any different for having used these questions? And did the process of making decisions as a leader look or feel different? How so?

You might not always walk yourself through a set of questions–but using an intentional tool is like counting out dance steps—there’s a lot of thinking it through at first, and maybe forgetting a step, and stumbling, and so forth. And then…somehow, you just know how to dance. And then you can learn to improvise. In other words, it is through practice that you will become adept at and confident in responding to change, and learn to move with grace on the shifting carpet of life.

Feeling the Rhythm: How do I help myself respond to change

—and grow through it.

Now, let’s address what it might look like to respond to a different kind of change, the kind in which you learn something new and realize you need to make some changes in who you are as an educator. This is hard, but there are steps you can take to make sure you keep moving forward:

• Work to understand your own feelings. Write about them. Talk them through with your teams—personal and/or professional.
• Take a look in the mirror, strive to see where you are at, and then be kind to yourself!
• Gather your tools! Get out that dog eared copy of the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct, and look for other tools that are relevant to your situation. Root yourself in the values of early childhood care and education.
• Examine your own practices in light of this change.
• Examine the policies, structures, or systems that affect your program in light of this change.
• Ask yourself, where could change happen? Remember your spheres of influence.
• Who can you collaborate with? Who is on your team?
• How can you make sure the people being affected by this change help inform your response? Sometimes people use the phrase “Nothing for us without us” to help remember that we don’t want to make decisions that affect a group of people (even if we think we’re helping) without learning more from individuals in that group about what real support looks like).
• Make a plan, including a big vision and small steps, and start taking those small steps. Remember that when you are ready to bring others in, they will need to go through some of this process too, and you may need to be on their team as they look for a safe sounding board to explore their discomfort or fear.
• Realize that you are a courageous advocate for children. Give yourself a hug!

• Work to understand your own feelings. Write about them. Talk them through with your teams—personal and/or professional. 

This might be a good time to freewrite about your feelings—just put your pencil to paper and start writing. Maybe you feel guilty because you’re afraid that too many children of color have been asked to leave your program. Maybe you feel angry about the injustice. Maybe you feel scared that this topic is politicized and people aren’t going to want to hear about it. Maybe you feel scared to even face the idea that bias could have affected children while in your care. All these feelings are okay! Maybe you talk to your partner or your friends about your fears before you’re ready to get started even thinking about taking action.

• Take a look in the mirror, strive to see where you are at, and then be kind to yourself! Tell that person looking back at you: “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

Yep. You love children and you did what you believed was best for the children in your program. Maybe now you can do even better by them! You are being really really brave by investigating!

• Gather your tools! Get out that dog-eared copy of the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct, and look for other tools that are relevant to your situation.

Okay! This would be an excellent time to bring out the equity lens and your other tools. Read them over. Use them.

Do your practices affirm the dignity of every child and family? Ask yourself these hard questions while focusing on, in this case, how you look at behavior of children of color. Do the choices you make affirm the dignity of each unique child? Use your tools—you can pull out the equity lens here! Are you acknowledging the home realities of each child when you are having conversations that are meant to build social-emotional skills? Are you considering the needs of each child during difficult transitions? Do you provide alternative ways for children to engage if they have difficulty sitting in circle times?

And…Do your policies and structures affirm the dignity of every child and family? Use those tools! Look at your behavioral guidance policies—are you expecting children to come into your program with certain skills that may not be valued by certain cultures? What about your policies on sending children home or asking a family to leave your program? Could these policies be unfair to certain groups? In fact—given that you now know how extremely impactful expulsion is for preschoolers, could you take it off the table entirely?

Let’s say you’re a teacher, and you can look back and see that over the years you’ve been at your center, a disproportionately high number of children of color have been excluded from the program. Your director makes policy decisions—can you bring this information to him or her? Could you talk to your coworkers about how to bring it up? Maybe your sphere of influence could get even wider—could you share this information with other early educators in your community? Maybe even write a letter to your local representatives!

• Who can you collaborate with? Who is on your team? 

Maybe other educators? Maybe parents? Maybe your director? Maybe an old teacher of your own? Can you bring this up at a staff meeting? Or in informal conversations?

• How can you make sure the people being affected by this change help inform your response?

Let’s say your director is convinced that your policies need to change in light of this new information. You want to make sure that parent voice—and especially that of parents of color—is heard! You could suggest a parent meeting on the topic; or maybe do “listening sessions” with parents of color, where you ask them open-ended questions and listen and record their responses—without adding much of your own response; maybe you could invite parents to be part of a group who looks over and works on the policies. This can feel a little scary to people in charge (see decentered leadership?)

Maybe this plan is made along with your director and includes those parent meetings, and a timeline for having revised policies, and some training for the staff. Or—let’s back it up—maybe you’re not quite to that point yet, and your plan is how you are going to approach your director, especially since they might feel criticized. Then your plan might be sharing information, communicating enthusiasm about moving forward and making positive change, and clearly stating your thoughts on where change is needed! (Also some chocolate to reward yourself for being a courageous advocate for every child.)

And, as I may have mentioned, some chocolate. You are a leader and an advocate, and a person whose action mirrors their values. You are worth admiring!

Maybe you haven’t had your mind blown with new information lately, but I’ll bet there’s something you’ve thought about that you haven’t quite acted on yet…maybe it’s about individualizing lesson plans for children with differing abilities. Maybe it’s about addressing diversity of gender in the classroom. Maybe it’s about celebrating linguistic diversity, inviting children and parents to share their home languages in the classroom, and finding authentic ways to include print in these languages.

Whatever it is—we all have room to grow.

Make a Plan!

Dancing Your Dance: Rocking Leadership in Times of Change

There will never be a time when we as educators are not having to examine and respond to “Current Issues in the Field.” Working with children means working with children in a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape of community, knowledge, and personal experience. It’s really cool that we get to do this, walk beside small human beings as they learn to traverse the big wacky world with all its potholes…and it means we get to keep getting better and better at circling around, leaping over, and, yep, dancing around or even through those very potholes.

In conclusion, all dancers feel unsteady sometimes. All dancers bruise their knees along the way. All educators make mistakes and experience discomfort.  All dancers wonder if this dance just isn’t for them.  All dancers think that maybe this one is just too hard and want to quit sometimes. All educators second guess their career choices. But all dancers also discover their own innate grace and their inborn ability to both learn and to change; our very muscles are made to stretch, our cells replace themselves, and we quite simply cannot stand still. All educators have the capacity to grow into compassionate, courageous leaders!

Your heart, your brain, and your antsy feet have led you to become a professional in early childhood care and education, and they will all demand that you jump into the uncertainty of leadership in times of change, and learn to dance for the sake of the children in your care. This, truly, is your call to action, and your pressing invitation to join the dance!

Brown, B. (2018).  Dare to lead . Vermilion.

Broughton, A., Castro, D. and Chen, J.  (2020).  Three International Perspectives on Culturally Embraced Pedagogical Approaches to Early Teaching and Learning.  [Conference presentation].  NAEYC Annual Conference.

Crum, T.  (1987).  The Magic of Conflict: Turning a Life of Work into a Work of Art.  Touchstone.

Meek, S. and Gilliam, W. (2016).  Expulsion and Suspension in Early Education as Matters of Social Justice and Health Equity.  Perspectives: Expert Voices in Health & Health Care.

Scott, K., Looby, A., Hipp, J. and Frost, N. (2017).  “Applying an Equity Lens to the Child Care Setting.”  The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 45 (S1), 77-81.

Online Resources for Current Issues in the Field

Resources for opening yourself to personal growth, change, and courageous leadership:

• Brown, Brenee. Daring Classrooms. https://brenebrown.com/daringclassrooms
• Chang, R. (March 25, 2019).  What Growth Mindset Means for Kids [Video] .  TED Conferences.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yaYmUNOx4

Resources for Thinking About Responding to Current Issues in Education

• Flanagan, N. (July 31, 2020).  How School Should Respond to Covid-19 [Video] .  TED Conferences.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSkUHHH4nb8
• Harris, N.B.. (February 217, 015). How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime [Video] .  TED Conferences.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk
• Simmons, D. (August 28, 2020). 6 Ways to be an Anti Racist Educator [Video] . Edutopia.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM3Lfk751cg&t=3s

Leadership in Early Care and Education Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Tammy Marino; Dr. Maidie Rosengarden; Dr. Sally Gunyon; and Taya Noland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How can we improve early childhood education? Use public dollars to pay teachers more.

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, daphna bassok and daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @daphnabassok justin b. doromal justin b. doromal postdoctoral research associate, annenberg institute - brown university @justinbdoromal.

January 5, 2022

High rates of teacher turnover are among the greatest barriers to building high-quality early childhood education (ECE) systems. In the United States, teachers working with the youngest learners turn over at much higher rates than those in the K-12 education system . For instance, our recent work shows that nearly half of child-care teachers in Louisiana leave their jobs from one year to the next. The pandemic made these already severe staffing challenges even worse . Center directors say they are struggling to keep and hire teachers and are therefore turning many families away .

Public investments in ECE programs are supposed to yield dual benefits: learning opportunities for children at a particularly formative life stage, and critical work supports for families and the economy. Teachers leaving at such high rates severely undermines both. Children learn less when they cannot form stable, attached relationships with their caregivers. Professional development initiatives are wasted when so many teachers leave before they can apply what they’ve learned. Centers cannot operate classrooms , or must shut down altogether, when they cannot recruit and retain enough teachers. And when child care isn’t available, parents cannot return to work and the economy cannot recover.

It is not surprising that turnover rates are so high in a sector where the work is hard but the pay is insufficient to cover even basic needs. Nationwide, child-care teachers are paid an average of $12 per hour and nearly one-quarter report not having enough money to pay for food . Many early educators can find higher-paying, lower-stress jobs outside of child care.

To address these high rates of churn, many states are now using federal COVID-19 relief funds to roll out  bonuses and financial incentives for child-care teachers in the hope of stabilizing this workforce. It is not yet clear how much these short-term funds are helping. And more generally, there is surprisingly little evidence on the link between compensation increases and teacher stability among early educators. That’s why—in partnership with the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, and our colleagues Molly Michie and Vivian C. Wong— we conducted a recent experiment to examine this issue.

Virginia’s Teacher Recognition Program

In 2019, Virginia received federal funding from a Preschool Development Birth through Five grant (PDG) , and allocated a considerable portion of their funds for direct financial incentives to early educators. The goal of this program, the Teacher Recognition Program (TRP) , was to recognize teachers’ hard work, lower their financial stress, reduce turnover, and create more stable early learning opportunities for children. Teachers were eligible so long as they worked for at least 30 hours per week with children aged 0-5 at any site participating in the PDG (including both child-care centers and school-based pre-K programs). If they maintained these requirements over an eight-month period, teachers could receive $1,500.

For 25 of the 26 Virginia cities and counties participating in the PDG that year, all teachers who worked at PDG sites and met these requirements were eligible. However, in Fairfax, the most populated county in Virginia, there was insufficient funding to serve all eligible teachers, so the state allocated the limited resources through a lottery. Specifically, 50% of participating sites were randomly assigned to participate in the TRP, and all eligible teachers at those sites could participate in the program. The other 50% of sites were ineligible; their teachers did not receive any outreach about the TRP and could not receive any funds through the program. This lottery, which was viewed as the most fair approach to allocating limited resources, allowed us to conduct the first-ever experiment of whether financial incentives reduce teacher turnover in ECE.

The answer was a resounding yes.

The Effects of Financial Incentives for Teachers

Teachers at sites that were randomly assigned to the TRP were far less likely to turn over. About one-quarter of all teachers at sites without access to incentives left their site within eight months (see Figure 1 below). Only 14% of teachers eligible for the incentive did.

The results were even more striking among child-care teachers: The financial incentive cut turnover rates in half, from 30% to 15%. The financial incentive had no impact on turnover for teachers working in school settings. This may reflect differences in financial well-being across sectors; in our sample lead teachers in schools received double the annual earnings of lead teachers at centers, despite working for fewer months during the year relative to teachers at centers who work year-round.

When we surveyed teachers who received the financial incentive after the end of the TRP, nearly all (89%) reported the extra funds helped them offset personal and family-related expenses, including food and rent. One wrote, “It meant I could continue to go to work and not worry about food, car bills, or my child’s care.”

What can these pre-pandemic findings tell us about the current context?

Our results provide strong evidence that, at least in the pre-pandemic context, a $1,500 incentive had a large impact on teacher retention among child-care teachers. For our partners in Virginia, this finding led state lawmakers to supplement federal dollars for the TRP with an additional $8 million over two years. With this state investment, Virginia was able to expand the TRP to more child-care teachers and provide more funds per teacher. Now in its third year, Virginia has committed to serving over 6,000 eligible teachers in child-care centers statewide and giving teachers up to $2,000.

Although we do not have experimental evidence on the impacts of Virginia’s incentive program on turnover during the pandemic, survey findings from summer 2021 indicate that nearly all teachers who received the funds used them to offset basic expenses (e.g., food and housing) and manage COVID-19-related challenges. Overall, two in five eligible teachers reported the funds led them to stay in their positions longer than they otherwise would have. One explained, “It has never seemed fair to me that the children who are from poorer families have to suffer through a revolving door of less qualified teachers. This grant helped to stabilize our center and encourage young teachers to stick with teaching.” Together, the findings from our multiyear evaluation of the TRP provide encouraging news for states attempting to use COVID-19 relief funds to support teachers and stabilize the child-care sector through financial incentives.

At the same time, reliance on one-off grants or temporary pandemic relief funds—even ones as effective as Virginia’s TRP was in the short term—is not a sustainable solution to this sector’s long-standing staffing challenges. While we do not yet know the impact of the recognition program beyond the eight-month program period, we do know that educators who care for and teach young children cannot do their jobs well, or at all, when compensated at levels that fail to cover their basic living needs. Their employers lack the funds to raise wages , and raising already high prices for families is not a feasible solution either . In this context, a relatively small amount of money helped teachers stabilize and stay at their jobs.

But there is quite a distance between providing this type of short-term support and the larger, more sustainable investments needed to foster high-quality early learning opportunities. Reliable, long-term funding streams to cover the true cost of early education—including higher wages for child-care teachers—are needed if states wish to see the kinds of returns on investments that effective ECE programs can provide.

President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would provide this type of transformative funding, giving states the financial resources and supports needed to meaningfully improve child-care quality in part through  compensation reforms. However, getting the bill through the Senate has proved difficult, with growing calls to cut key pieces . Finding a way to pass this legislation, including the investments in the teachers who care for and teach our youngest children, is essential –not only for the struggling child-care sector, but for the economy as a whole. Public investments in early educators are long overdue, and they are imperative for meeting the needs of children, parents, and society.

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5 Solutions to 5 Key Challenges in Early Learning in North America

Dec 14, 2021 | Holistic Learning

Sprig Learning is committed to providing every child a fair shot at success. Part of that commitment lies in identifying and addressing the main challenges in early learning—those systemic challenges from which all other challenges arise. 

This is a follow up to our last post 5 key challenges faced by schools and programs in early learning where we identified the challenges. In this post, we review  one solution for each of those challenges. 

The research and real-world results unequivocally say that high-quality early learning is an exceptional investment that leads to improved learning and life outcomes. 

Despite how deep-rooted each challenge is, it’s not an insurmountable task to uproot them. What we do know is that the payoffs are worth it.

Challenge: Lack of Time for Educators

Educators often have to wear many hats. Especially in early learning, they often have to serve the role of both the teacher and caretaker. When non-classroom management administrative duties are mandated for health and safety reasons, the core teaching activities often get pushed to the periphery.

A Solution: Prioritize Planning Time Over All Else

There is only so much time in a given day, and ECE educators want to teach students more than anything else. Afterall, it is why they chose the profession in the first place.

Eileen Merritt , assistant professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and former elementary school teacher says “the time that I had each day for planning in my elementary classroom had a direct effect on the quality of my teaching”.

When teachers are asked what would have the greatest positive impact on their ability to help their students, more planning time during the school day is the top choice. Lack of planning time reduces educators’ ability to implement evidence-based practices, which all districts intend on using to ensure the success of every student.

In a study of large school districts in the US, over half of elementary school teachers stated they received 45 minutes per day for planning, 16 percent of the districts gave their teachers an hour, whereas 4 percent of them only gave their teachers 15 minutes. 

The fact that such discrepancy exists is troubling. When setting blocks in an educator’s daily schedule, it’s best to ensure that there is sufficient time reserved for planning. Using intuitive technology to monitor each student can save time from keeping handwritten notes or paper files. 

Planning includes both individual planning and collaborative planning with other teachers. In our Unrivaled Guide to Introducing Differentiated Instruction in Early Learning , we discuss at length on the importance of collaborative planning.

Challenge: Lack of Pay in Early Childhood Education

The lack of pay in ECE stalls career progression, where educators can lack motivation to continue in the midst of facing all other challenges. There is also a scarcity of institutions which offer affordable high quality programs for professionalization. But things are slowly changing.

A Solution: Use Quality as a Driver For Pay

Thankfully, wage increases for early childhood educators are on the radar of policy makers. The Government of Saskatchewan in Canada recently announced a $3 per hour wage increase for early childhood educators. In British Columbia, front-line ECEs working in licensed child care facilities will receive a wage increase of $4 per hour.

In the US, the Build Back Better framework proposes increasing wages and creating a salary ladder for early educators across the board. 

Trying to address something like a lack of pay is challenging. Devoting more funds in one area often means cutting costs in another, which can reduce the overall quality of the early learning program. 

It could also mean passing the cost down to the end beneficiary, which is the child’s parents in this case. But affordability of early education is an important issue in its own right.

Thus, the only way to ensure staff are compensated adequately is to increase the size of the overall budget. From the examples cited before, it’s good to see that more funding is being earmarked for developing a high-earning and happy ECE workforce.

But one thing that’s true for both public and private schools is that the quality of early learning cannot be sacrificed, which would make it even more difficult to justify any sort of rise in budget, and thus a pay rise. We’ve covered what a high-quality early learning program looks like in a previous post.

There are new early learning centers, and community colleges who offer specialized programs for those who want to have a career in ECE. This has the potential to increase the qualification for those joining the workforce, and also upskill incumbents who are in the workforce. But schools can join the effort too.

Superintendent Jerry Weast of Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, formed an early-learning-focused collaborative involving the district, county agencies, nonprofits, and businesses. It’s purpose was to reinforce the district’s comprehensive professional development system. 

It’s important to brainstorm with all institutions in the community as to how quality can be ensured and maintained in a certain district.

Challenge: Lack of Professional Development and Training

This is potentially the most pressing issue in early learning. Professional development (PD) needs to be ongoing and educators feel they could be better supported in their time at schools. Even if they had more time, and were paid better, educators would ultimately need the right support to deliver the best learning experience to young students.

Solution: Have An Alignment Plan Between Early and Primary Learning

Having a plan for the youngest learners, how their learning transfers over to elementary school, and from there to secondary school, is of the utmost importance. 

Grier Park Elementary School in Lansing, MI used several strategies to ensure integration between their preK classroom and the rest of the primary school to create a preK-3 structure that was optimized for early learning.

They used professional learning communities to create opportunities for educators across grade levels, provided strong PD for preK teachers to match that of K-3 teachers, and planned for the preK to kindergarten transition during staff meetings. 

SchoolFirst, an initiative of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, favors a consolidated curricular approach for students in preK-3. The approach is said to provide a seamless brand of education and best supports early learners as they gain foundational knowledge in literacy, math and other areas. The consolidation of preK-3 into one school building is not necessary, but the integration between the two grade configurations is vital. 

A frequent challenge to preK–3 alignment is the disconnection of preK from primary grades due to its curricular materials and processes. But when you have a uniform plan in place that connects the two, there is better PD due to the increased degree of collaboration between teachers in planning and reviewing different instructional strategies.

In Nooksack Valley School District, Superintendent Mark Johnson brought together preK and elementary school teachers to collaborate on the district’s instructional core. They focused on the key interactions between the teacher, student, and content that form daily instructional routines.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that coordinating preK–3 standards , curricula, instructional practices, assessments, and teacher PD is more likely to set young students on a positive development path. 

Certain technologies can ensure that the students’ learning profiles are carried over from preK to kindergarten, so their learning gaps can be identified and addressed at the right time.

Challenge: Battling the Early Learning Slide

In the early formative years, particularly from birth to age 8, learning is gained through achieving certain age appropriate milestones. There are many theories on the best way to achieve this, but if such milestones are not met, then progress in future years is impeded.

Solution: Have Achievement Indicators at Each Grade Level

As literacy is the building block of so many crucial academic milestones, it’s important to use measurements of key literacy skills when setting the district’s preK-3 goals. 

In Bremerton School District, the short-term goals included raising the percentage of entering kindergarteners who could identify all the letters of the alphabet. Superintendent Bette Hyde oversaw an increase of 62 percentage points in eight years, of kindergartners who knew their letters upon admission. 

In Montgomery Public Schools, a combination of a state kindergarten-readiness assessment and its own standards-based literacy assessment was used. With over 141,000 students, Montgomery County Public Schools boosted 90 percent of existing kindergartners ready to learn and 89 percent of third graders reading proficiently.

Montgomery County’s key objective was that 80 percent of its students leave high school college-ready. The district connected this end outcome to evidence-based indicators at each grade level all the way back to preK!

Whenever there are measurable outcomes in place, the superintendent can show community partners the value of preK-3 efforts in preventing any learning slides. Be it the summer learning slide, a pandemic induced learning slide, or any other form of learning slide.

Challenge: Lack of Resources

As the population grows, and inflation rises, funding for public early learning schools and programs can be difficult to acquire, unless there is some strategic bottom-down planning. 

There are always grants available which makes it possible to acquire the necessary resources. But it’s not just about adequate funds. It’s also about spending it in a way that ensures a sustainable long-term advantage and reduces dependency on funding policies that could change in the future.

A Solution: Attract Residents to Your Community

When early learning is not well integrated into the overall educational framework of the district, it provides an additional headache for parents. Whether the districts are funded on a per-pupil formula or through different taxes in that community such as property taxes, both are dependent on people wanting to move into the neighborhood. It requires a certain upkeep of reputation. 

A study in California showed that 17 of 25 school districts are involved in some type of preK-3 alignment work. But this work was on a single dimension of alignment such as curriculum, standards, assessment or PD. Clearly, there is much room for improvement when it comes to incorporating early learning into the primary school system. 

There is a strong case to be made about having the right vision and commitment to that vision. Districts that engaged in alignment work gave interviews that suggested a stronger belief in the value of PreK compared to districts who did not. The latter interviews suggest that they saw PreK as something totally different from the elementary level.

The PreK director, or other relevant early learning role placed in the district’s administrative structure, is indicative of the seriousness of commitment. 

Only 3 of 25 preK directors in districts studied were part of the superintendent’s cabinet. The remainder attended district leadership meetings but were not involved in the district’s central decision-making structure. 

The needs of the youngest learners in the community will receive its fair share of attention, when the right people are involved. It will strengthen the community’s desirability in the mind of potential residents.

Overcoming Early Learning Challenges with Solutions

The solutions presented in this article are not exhaustive. But they are specific and have proven to deliver results. It’s possible that taking a systematic approach to implementing some of these solutions could have surplus benefits addressing any unmentioned challenges. Thus, each solution’s importance cannot be overstated. 

Sprig Learning works with educators, school leaders and parents to design holistic early learning programs that consider a wide range of factors. If you need help on any particular challenge, we are here to help .

Why early childhood care and education matters

The right to education begins at birth.

But new UNESCO data shows that 1 out of 4 children aged 5 have never had any form of pre-primary education. This represents 35 million out of 137 million 5-year-old children worldwide. Despite research that proves the benefits of early childhood care and education (ECCE), only half of all countries guarantee free pre-primary education around the world.

UNESCO’s World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education taking place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on 14-16 November 2022 will reaffirm every young child’s right to quality care and education, and call for increased investment in children during the period from birth to eight years.  

Here’s what you need to know what early childhood care and education.

Why is early childhood care and education important?

The period from birth to eight years old is one of remarkable brain development for children and represents a crucial window of opportunity for education. When children are healthy, safe and learning well in their early years, they are better able to reach their full developmental potential as adults and participate effectively in economic, social, and civic life. Providing ECCE is regarded as a means of promoting equity and social justice, inclusive economic growth and advancing sustainable development.

A range of research and evidence has converged to support this claim. First, neuroscience has shown that the environment affects the nature of brain architecture – the child’s early experiences can provide either a strong or a fragile foundation for later learning, development and behaviours. Second, the larger economic returns on investment in prior-to-school programmes than in programmes for adolescents and adults has been demonstrated. Third, educational sciences have revealed that participation in early childhood care and education programmes boosts children’s school readiness and reduces the gap between socially advantaged and disadvantaged children at the starting gate of school.

From a human rights perspective, expanding quality early learning is an important means for realizing the right to education within a lifelong learning perspective. ECCE provides a significant preparation to basic education and a lifelong learning journey. In 2021, only 22% of United Nations Member States have made pre-primary education compulsory, and only 45% provide at least one year of free pre-primary education. Only 46 countries have adopted free and compulsory pre-primary education in their laws.

How has access to ECCE evolved?

Overall, there has been significant global progress in achieving inclusive and high-quality ECCE. Globally, the ratio for pre-primary education has increased from 46% in 2010 to 61% in 2020. The global ratio for participation in organized learning one year before the official primary school entry age also increased to reach 75% in 2020. However, in low- and lower-middle-income countries, fewer than two in three children attend organized learning one year before the official primary entry age.  Furthermore, the proportion of children receiving a positive and stimulating home environment remains significantly low with only 64% of children having positive and nurturing home environments. Great regional disparities remain the biggest challenges. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 40% of children have experienced a positive and stimulating home learning environment compared to 90% of children in Europe and Northern America.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted ECCE?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effect on ECCE and amplified its crisis. Young children have been deemed the greatest victims of the pandemic, experiencing the impact of on their immediate families, and because of stay-at-home orders of lockdowns, having been deprived of essential services to promote their health, learning and psychosocial well-being. Some children will start basic education without organized learning experiences to the detriment of their readiness for school. It was estimated that the closure of ECCE services has resulted in 19 billion person-days of ECCE instruction lost with 10.75 million children not being able to reach their developmental potential in the first 11 months of the pandemic.

What are the consequences on foundational learning?

ECCE is a pre-requisite for meeting the right to learn and to develop. In particular, access to pre-primary education is a basis for acquiring foundational learning including literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional learning. Yet, according to the recent estimate, about 64% of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple story at age 10. The roots of this learning poverty start in ECCE and its lack of capacity to make children ready for school.

What is the situation regarding ECCE teachers and care staff?

As the calls grow for higher quality ECCE provision, teacher shortages and quality has received increasing attention. The number of teachers who received at least the minimum pedagogical teacher training, both pre-service and in-service, increased from 68% to 80% between 2010 and 2020. It is estimated that ECCE services need another 9.3 million full-time teachers to achieve the SDG target . Most Member States have established qualification requirements for ECCE teachers, while far less attention has been focused on ECCE teachers’ working conditions and career progression. The low social status, poor salaries and job insecurity of ECCE teachers and care staff tend to have an adverse impact on attracting and retaining suitably qualified early childhood educators.

What are the policies, governance and financing implications?

It is time for societies and governments to implement relevant policies to recover and transform their ECCE systems. ECCE is seen by many countries as a key part of the solution to a myriad of challenges including social inclusion and cohesion, economic growth and to tackle other sustainable development challenges. According to the 2022 Global Education Monitoring Report, 150 out of 209 countries have set targets for pre-primary education participation by 2025 or 2030. The proportion of countries that monitor participation rates in pre-primary education is expected to increase from 75% in 2015 to 92% in 2025 and 95% in 2030. It is expected that the pre-primary participation rate for all regions will exceed 90% by 2030. In Central and South Asia, East and South-East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, participation rates are expected to be nearly 100%. At the same time, it is projected that participation rates in Northern Africa and Western Asia will be about 77% by 2030.

What are the obstacles to ensuring access to quality ECCE?

• Policy fragmentation: In many countries, ECCE policies and services are fragmented and do not leverage whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to addressing the holistic needs and rights of families and their young children. This is particularly challenging for national governments with limited resources, low institutional capacities and weak governance.
• Lack of public provision : Non-state provision of ECCE continues to grow in many contexts, and the role of non-state actors in influencing policy development and implementation is evident. Non-state actors provide a large proportion of places in pre-primary education. In 2000, 28.5% of pre-primary aged children were enrolled in private institutions, and this rose to 37% in 2019, a figure higher than for primary (19%) or secondary (27%) education.
• Insufficient regulation of the sector : Specific regulations and standards for ECCE are not in place in most countries. Regulations usually do not establish quality assurance mechanisms and those that do, tend not to focus on outcomes.
• Chronic underfunding : An average of 6.6% of education budgets at national and subnational levels were allocated to pre-primary education. Low-income countries, on average, invest 2% of education budgets in pre-primary education, which is far below the target of 10% by 2030 suggested by UNICEF. In terms of international aid, pre-primary education remains the least funded sector.

What are the solutions?

Political will and ownership are key to transforming ECCE. UNESCO’s review highlights progress in some countries, giving an indication of what is required to successfully strengthen the capacity of ECCE systems:

• Expanding and diversifying access : Increasing investment and establishing a legal framework to expand ECCE services are essential steps. Innovative ECCE delivery mechanisms such as mobile kindergartens with teachers, equipment for learning and play, have been deployed in some countries to reach remote areas and provide children with pre-primary education.  
• Enhancing quality and relevance : ECCE curriculum frameworks should cover different aspects of early learning and prepare children with essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions to transit smoothly to formal education.
• Making ECCE educators and caregivers a transforming force : For the transformation of ECCE to take place, ECCE educators need to be adequately supported and empowered to play their part.
• Improving governance and stakeholder participation : Countries have adopted different modes of governance. There are generally two systems that are followed, an integrated system and a split system.
• Using funding to steer ECCE development : Strengthening domestic public financing is important for providing affordable ECCE. Since ECCE services are offered by different ministries, there must be a clear demarcation of funding and financing rules for different sectors and different ministries. Innovative financing may include earmarking resources from economic activities and other sources.
• Establishing systems for monitoring and assessing whole-of-child development . System-level action in strengthening the availability and reliability of data obtained from assessments enables efficient and timely monitoring of programmes and child developmental milestones.
• Galvanize international cooperation and solidarity . The World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education is an opportunity to mobilize existing global, regional, and national networks to increase focus on identifying and sharing innovations, policies and practices.

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Common challenges and tailored solutions: How policymakers are strengthening early learning systems across the world

Melissa kelly, alisa currimjee, martin galevski.

As access to early childhood education (ECE) services expands at an exponential rate globally, policymakers face challenges to ensure they are equitable, affordable, and of quality. These challenges, such as fragmented and underfinanced systems, insufficient workforce capacity, inadequate monitoring, and inappropriate teaching and learning strategies, persist universally across countries and regions. There is immense opportunity for countries to learn from one another to develop customized solutions aligned with their respective contexts.

Helping policymakers and practitioners deepen their skills

The World Bank’s Early Childhood Education Policy Academy offers open and free self-paced courses for policymakers and practitioners seeking to deepen their ECE skills, as well as a cohort modality that engages policymakers from select countries in identifying policy goals and constraints, learning from expert insights on relevant ECE themes, and problem solving with peers facing similar challenges.

This cohort modality is designed progressively through consultations and feedback loops and leverages a global network of experts to share best practice and theory via courses, workshops, and bespoke technical assistance. Policymakers also participate in learning exchanges within and across multisectoral country delegations to build working relationships and co-create solutions.

Five solutions to address common policy goals

The first cohort of 100 policymakers and World Bank staff from 12 countries graduated in late 2022. Policymakers told us that the program was timely and equipped them with skills to strengthen their early learning systems. Below, we delve into how the policy academy helped delegations craft tailored solutions addressing five common policy goals.

1.       Build effective ECE systems and coordination – A course on Building Effective Early Learning Systems, learning exchanges, and individualized technical assistance with a few countries helped delegations address a systems-level challenge to towards coordinated policy programming and investments in ECE. As a result, Liberia reestablished a national ECD coordination body, Central African Republic drafted a national integrated ECD policy, and Paraguay revised their national regulation guidelines to align with international best practices, ensuring their successful implementation in the Paraguayan context through a shorter, user-friendly format.

2.       Strengthen the ECE workforce – Through a series of workshops and learning exchanges inspired by the World Bank’s work on Quality Early Learning: Nurturing Children’s Potential , delegations discussed the importance of attracting, preparing, supporting, and retaining their ECE workforce. Cambodia subsequently strengthened national capacity building activities to address the persistent shortage of ECE teachers, modernize teacher training facilities, and improve teacher trainers’ capacity. Morocco finalized a new national training program for preschool educators and developed a roadmap for its operationalization. In the transition of early childhood to the National Department of Basic Education, South Africa reviewed strategies from other countries and made priorities on national training, qualifications, and career progression systems for ECE teachers to inform a human resource development plan.

3.       Measure ECD outcomes and ECE quality – Delegations reflected on the why, what, who, and how of measurement through two courses and documentation through blogs . Because effective monitoring is key to informed policymaking, many delegations opted to focus the policy academy’s bespoke technical assistance on designing national measurement strategies and tools. For instance, Liberia developed a school readiness assessment system, Senegal conducted a study to inform a national information system for ECE , Türkiye piloted a user-friendly tool to understand school needs, and Uganda is adapting Teach ECE , a classroom quality measurement tool, to the local context.

4.       Improve curricula, materials, and learning environments and promote play – Policymakers engaged in several workshops on learning through play, play-based classrooms, transforming learning through curriculum and pedagogy, and physical spaces to facilitate quality learning, as well as attended the LEGO Idea Conference held in June 2022. As a result, Türkiye updated their ECE curriculum and accompanying teacher training to have greater focus on early literacy, numeracy, and play-based methodologies, El Salvador revised their ECE curriculum to support the application of their ECD learning standards, and Paraguay incorporated provisions in their 2024 education budget to promote age-appropriate learning environments.

5.       Strengthen parent and community engagement – Through workshops and learning exchanges, delegations discussed the key role families and communities play in ECE systems and elements of quality parenting programs. North Macedonia used the program technical assistance to design and pilot an inclusive parent engagement program, and Senegal developed parent-child intervention guides and materials, as well as strengthened capacity to implement the National Parental Education Program.

Taking an adaptive approach

The adaptive approach of this inaugural cohort has proven to be a key ingredient to ensuring that the demand-driven content support policymakers to build confidence and impact early childhood policy and practice. We are applying these lessons learned as we launch a second cohort, this time focusing on investing in quality affordable childcare .

The case studies below provide more detail on specific ways that the Policy Academy supported policymakers to strengthen their early childhood systems.

• Cambodia: English  |   Español  |   Français  |   العربية
• Central African Republic: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• El Salvador: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• Liberia: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• Morocco: English   |  Español  |  Français   |  العربية
• North Macedonia : English   |  Español   |  Français  |  العربية
• Paraguay: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• Senegal: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• South Africa: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
• Türkiye: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية
•   Uganda: English   |  Español   |  Français   |  العربية

The Early Childhood Education Policy Academy is managed by the World Bank’s Early Learning Partnership (ELP), a multi-donor trust fund associated under the Foundational Learning Compact (FLC) umbrella trust fund, that provides resources and technical assistance to support early childhood development and early learning around the world. 

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EdSurge Podcast

Breaking down the early childhood crisis — and what might be done about it, by jeffrey r. young     nov 2, 2021.

Aaron Burden / Unsplash

This article is part of the guide: The EdSurge Podcast.

Early childhood education in America is on the cusp of an historic overhaul. A law pending in Congress would help support free, universal pre-K for every three- and four-year old in the nation and make child care more affordable for millions of families. It would be the biggest policy change—and investment—in early childhood in decades.

The measure addresses what many experts see as a crisis in early childhood care and education pushed to a breaking point by the pandemic. You’re probably hearing a lot about this crisis these days, but on today’s podcast, we want to step back and look at how we got here—at what the situation means to educators at all levels and for parents, and at what the Biden Administration’s proposals could mean.

EdSurge Podcast Newsletter: Now you can get new episodes of the podcast straight to your inbox. Sign up to receive the EdSurge Podcast newsletter every time new episodes appear, plus you’ll get links to related resources and EdSurge stories.

To help break this down, I connected with Elliot Haspel, author of the 2019 book, “ Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It .” He also has an article out in The Atlantic this week about the latest developments in Washington.

Haspel got into the issue a few years ago when he was working in education policy and kept hearing about how much of education equity comes back to inequities at the earliest ages—even before some kids get to a formal school setting. And he really started to understand that issue when he became a parent himself, and saw the challenges that even well-off parents face.

Listen on Apple Podcasts , Overcast , Spotify , Stitcher , Google Play Music , or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page.

EdSurge: What is it about the situation in early childhood that makes it such a crisis?

Elliot Haspel: The first is just how far and broad the pain point reaches nowadays. This is not a poor people's problem. This is something where middle-class and upper-middle-class families are deeply impacted by the inability to find affordable, high-quality childcare.

And it seems like it's been exacerbated by the pandemic and the economic fallout from that in a big way.

Yes, that's absolutely right. It's really blown up the sort of precarious equilibrium that existed in the field. The median wage for childcare workers is about $12 an hour. And so that was what McDonald's was offering. So at least you could compete. I don't know if we want the people working with our youngest children to be competing with McDonald's, but you could.

Now that the McDonalds’ of the world are up at $15 or $16 an hour and unlikely to go back anytime soon, is this going to continue to get worse and worse and worse? We're seeing programs that have classrooms sitting empty, not because they don't have spaces and not because there aren't parents that want the spots, but because they literally can't find the staff to put in those rooms and to make the ratios that they have to have to meet regulatory requirements.

In your book you talk about the history of how we got here. It seems like there have been other times when there have been political discussions about reforming the system, but it just hasn't hasn't happened.

So there were two main times in American history when we've had sort of these opportunities to build a more robust child care system.

One was after World War II, when all the men went off to the front lines, women had to enter the workforce. And the Congress passed what was known as the Lanham Act, that basically created publicly funded child care programs. They were actually quite high-quality. And when all the men came back after the war, there was this sort of moment of, well, what are we going to do now? It's kind of shocking if you go and look up the historical pictures of women and children holding up signs, like, ‘daycare is a right,’ or ‘let women have the choice to work.’ But in the end, the funding was pulled because of this societal idea that mothers of young children should be home with them. As a footnote, [that attitude] did not win the day in places like Europe because the devastation was so great there from the war they actually still needed the women working. So this is where you see a divergence even in the Western world between the American market and European systems.

And then the next chance came in 1971. It was called the Comprehensive Child Development Act and it was passed on a bipartisan basis, And this would have done a lot if what the Biden Administration is now proposing to do. ... It was very forward-thinking for its day.

And then it gets the desk of President Nixon. Everyone originally thought he would be fine with it. But he ends up vetoing it. The story goes that it was many of his more religiously conservative advisors, including Pat Buchanan, who really saw this as government intrusion into the family prerogative. This is happening at the same time that the logic of this very free-market, almost libertarian capitalism is coming in. So Nixon vetoed it in very strong language. He talks about how this would cause the federal government's long shadow into the family.

And it hasn't literally been until the past two years that we've gotten back to talking about the level of investment that would be needed to create a system that's affordable and accessible for everyone.

The Biden Administration is championing legislation that is moving forward to make big changes to early care. What are some key pieces of that?

So when it comes to early childhood, there are two main aspects. One is universal pre-K. Basically within three years, every state that chooses to opt in will be offering free spots in a pre-K for every four- and three-year-old child. And those slots will be delivered through a combination of school-based programs, Head Start expansions and also the private child care market. Basically think about it as extending the public school model back kind of age three, but delivered in different settings.

Then for the child care pieces of things. So this would be your infants and your toddlers, your private child care programs that don't do pre-K … states would start to reimburse those programs for the true cost of care ... and what that instantly lets them do is raise wages. This will make the field much more competitive and attractive to potential employees.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle to the reforms that are being debated right now?

Things look pretty good for the actual bill getting passed. So the next challenge is implementation.

It's a pretty quick implementation timeline. Three years is actually not that much time. And some of the benefits are coming online much quicker than that. And we're going to have a lot more kids, presumably, coming into the system who previously couldn't afford to, so we're going to need to build up a workforce. We're going to build up our facilities. We're going to need to do a lot of work to make this actual rollout as smooth as possible

I have no doubt there’s going to be some kinks. We're building a system where no system existed. It's going to be a little messy.

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Early Childhood Education

Interventions Addressing the Social Determinants of Health

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Early childhood is an important time to promote healthy development, [ 1,2 ] and early childhood education (ECE) programs are community-level interventions that are proven and effective. [ 3 ] Learn more about how implementing evidence-based ECE programs can benefit children, families, and communities.

What is early childhood education?

• U.S. Department of Education: Early Learning
• HHS: Administration for Children & Families: Head Start
• Training and Technical Assistance Centers | ECLKC (hhs.gov) – Head Start technical assistance centers

This page focuses on the subset of early childhood education (ECE) intervention programs that aim to improve learning, behavior, and social development of children, most commonly focusing on children ages 3 or 4 years. [ 3,4 ]   ECE interventions can improve child development and act as a protective factor against the future onset of adult disease and disability. [ 2 ] ECE programs often aim to increase enrollment among children who are educationally underserved and experience health disparities.  Therefore, ECE programs may help increase health equity. [ 3 ]   Healthy People 2030 says that increasing the percent of children who are enrolled in ECE is a high-priority issue, [ 5 ] because ECE programs can help support child development and children’s health outcomes. [ 6 ]

This evidence review included ECE programs that addressed one or more of the following: reading and math skills, development of thinking and learning, social and emotional development, and motor skills. [ 3 ]  Some programs “may offer additional components, including recreation, meals, health care, parental supports, and social services.” [ 3 ]  ECE programs may be delivered in a variety of ways and settings. ECE programs that are funded by states or district programs may be universal, which means they are available to all children regardless of income. [ 7,8 ]   Other programs, including federally funded Head Start and evidence-based model programs, such as the Abecedarian and Perry Preschool programs, are provided specifically for children in families with low income. [ 3,9,10 ]  The Child-Parent Center program is another example of a widely implemented model program; it expanded into 33 sites in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois through a University of Minnesota project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. [ 11 ]

What is the public health issue?

Childhood development is an important determinant of health over a person’s lifetime. [ 2 ]  Early developmental opportunities can provide a foundation for children’s academic success, health, and general well-being. [ 12 ]  Preschool-aged children’s brains grow very quickly  and are about 90 percent of the size of an adult’s brain by age 6. [ 13 ]  This growth allows children to develop functional skills related to moving their bodies, understanding the world, problem solving, communicating with others, and regulating their emotions and behavior. [ 13,14 ]   Experiences during early childhood affect connections within the brain that determine a child’s functional development. [ 15 ]

Positive experiences support children’s healthy development, and conversely, adverse experiences can hinder it. [ 15,16 ]  Additionally, adverse early childhood experiences can have biological effects that are strongly associated with numerous adult diseases, including coronary artery disease, chronic pulmonary disease, and cancer. [ 15,16 ]

Children in low-income families often are exposed to more adverse early childhood experiences and environmental factors that delay or negatively affect their development and place them at a disadvantage for healthy growth and school readiness. [ 1,2,17,18 ] In the United States, 11.6 million children (16.1%) lived in poverty in 2020. [ 19 ]   ECE programs may not be reaching the children who might benefit most. [ 3 ]   In 2019, over half (54%) of low-income preschoolers in the United States did not attend any program that provided early childhood education. [ 20 ]   Eighty-five percent of low-income children who are eligible for childcare subsidies according to federal rules did not receive childcare subsidies in 2018. [ 21 ]

What is the evidence of health impact?

Early childhood education interventions can improve children’s development and act as a protective factor against the future onset of adult disease and disability. [ 2 ]  ECE can counteract the disadvantage some children experience, improve their social and cognitive development, and provide them with an opportunity to achieve school readiness, and lifelong employment, income, and health. [ 2,3 ]   Systematic reviews of studies examining the effects of ECE programs, found that they were associated with improved:

• Academic achievement. [ 3,22 ]
• Cognitive development. [ 3,22-24 ]
• Self-regulation skills. [ 3,22 ]
• Social-emotional development. [ 3,22 ]

ECE benefit estimates, both short- and long-term, included some or all of the following major components [ 3,22 ] :

• Increases in maternal employment and income.
• Reductions in crime, welfare dependency, and child abuse and neglect.
• Improvement in health outcomes associated with education.
• Increases in high school graduation rates.
• Better jobs and higher earnings throughout employment years for children participating in these programs. [ 3,22 ]

Additional studies have found that ECE is associated with other positive health effects, including healthier weight (such as fewer underweight, overweight, and obese children). [ 25 ]

What is the evidence of cost effectiveness?

A systematic review found that the economic benefits exceed costs for different types of ECE programs. [ 22 ]  Based on earnings gains alone, the benefit-to-cost ratios ranged from

• 3.06:1 to 5.90:1 for State and District programs
• 1.58:1 to 2.51:1 for Federal Head Start programs
• 1.76:1 to 4.39:1 for model programs

The rate of return on investment was much higher when all benefit components including earnings gains were considered. For model programs, based on total benefits, the return on every dollar invested was [ 22 ] :

• $2.49 for the Abecedarian program
• $8.60 for the Perry Preschool
• $10.83 for Chicago Child-Parent Center

ECE benefit estimates, both short- and long-term, included some or all of the following major components. [ 3,22 ]

• Savings from reduced grade retention.
• Savings in healthcare costs.
• Savings in remedial education and childcare costs. [ 3,22 ]

What indicators lead to better quality and better outcomes for ECE?

ECE programs that receive federal or state funding generally need to be licensed. [ 26 ] Minimum health and safety standards are set forth through national and state licensing requirements. [ 27 ] The Administration on Children and Families sets the performance standards for Head Start early childhood programs for families with low income. [ 28 ]

Assessing and strengthening the quality of ECEs may be valuable for two reasons: First, a large percentage of young children are enrolled in ECE, [ 29 ] and thus have the potential to be impacted by the quality of the program. [ 30 ] Second, policies to support ECE may be used as policy levers to increase equity. [ 3,31 ] Specifically, there may be a need for indicators to help assess whether attempts to strengthen ECE meaningfully improve children’s outcomes. [ 30 ]

As discussed in a review article by Soliday Hong et al., there are two types of factors associated with better quality of care and better child outcomes: structural factors and process factors. [ 30 ]   Structural factors include factors such as lower adult-to-child ratios and use of a curriculum (for example, using a defined curriculum where teachers are trained in using the curriculum).  Studies show that fewer children per adult in the classroom is linked to stronger child social skills. [ 30 ]   Studies also show that better curriculum quality is associated with stronger child social skills. [ 30 ]   Process factors include factors such as additional training for teachers on curriculum and instruction and better emotional support for children.  Studies show that additional training for teachers on curriculum and instruction was positively associated with better language and reading outcomes for children. [ 30 ]   Studies also show that the more emotionally responsive [ 32 ] the teacher was, the better the children’s outcomes related to learning to read. [ 30 ]

To help measure and track the quality of ECEs, most states and some localities [ 33 ] have developed or are developing local standards known as Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). [ 34 ]   As of 2021, 42 states have implemented QRIS systems. [ 33 ]

This overview may help inform state, local, and tribal communities about ECE programs and how they can be implemented to improve children’s health outcomes in their communities.  This information about the specific interventions that are proven, effective, and make a difference in communities may be helpful in conversation with interested partners when making decisions (e.g., which intervention to include in master planning efforts).

• Duncan GJ, Magnuson K. Investing in preschool programs. The Journal of Economic Perspectives . 2013;27(2):109-132.
• Halfon N, Hochstein M. Life course health development: an integrated framework for developing health, policy, and research. Milbank Quarterly . 2002;80(3):433-479.
• Hahn RA, Barnett WS, Knopf JA, et al. Early Childhood Education to Promote Health Equity: A Community Guide Systematic Review. Journal of public health management and practice Sep-Oct 2016;22(5):E1-E8. doi:10.1097/PHH.0000000000000378
• Blackman JA. Early intervention: A global perspective. Infants & Young Children . 2002;15(2):11-19.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Increase the proportion of children who participate in high-quality early childhood education programs — EMC‑D03. Accessed September 23, 2022. https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/browse-objectives/children/increase-proportion-children-who-participate-high-quality-early-childhood-education-programs-emc-d03
• Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2030: Children. Accessed October 24, 2022. https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/browse-objectives/children
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. County health rankings & roadmaps: Publicly-funded pre-kindergarten programs. Updated February 24, 2022. Accessed May 31, 2022. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/take-action-to-improve-health/what-works-for-health/strategies/publicly-funded-pre-kindergarten-programs
• National Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Universal Pre-K: What does it mean and who provides it? January 6, 2016. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://nieer.org/2016/01/06/universal-pre-k-what-does-it-mean-and-who-provides-it .
• Campbell FA, Ramey CT, Pungello E, Sparling J, Miller-Johnson S. Early childhood education: Young adult outcomes from the Abecedarian Project. Applied Developmental Science . 2002;6(1):42-57.
• Schweinhart LJ, Montie J, Xiang Z, Barnett WS, Belfield CR, Nores M. Lifetime effects: the High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40 . High/Scope Educational Research Foundation; 2005.
• McCormick W. Federal $15M grant supports one of the most comprehensive childhood education programs in the nation. College of Education and Human Development News . December 21, 2011. Accessed September 26 , 2022. http://news.cehd.umn.edu/federal_15m_grant_supports_one_of_the_most_comprehensive_childhood_education_programs_in_the_nation/
• VanLandeghem K, Curtis D, Abrams M, Fund C. Reasons and strategies for strengthening childhood development services in the healthcare system . National Academy for State Health Policy Portland (ME); 2002.
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• Purves D. Neural activity and the growth of the brain . Cambridge University Press; 1994.
• Shonkoff JP, Boyce WT, McEwen BS. Neuroscience, molecular biology, and the childhood roots of health disparities: building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. Journal of the American Medical Association . 2009;301(21):2252-2259.
• Boyce WT, Ellis BJ. Biological sensitivity to context: I. An evolutionary–developmental theory of the origins and functions of stress reactivity. Development and psychopathology . 2005;17(02):271-301.
• Hahn RA, Rammohan V, Truman BI, et al. Effects of full-day kindergarten on the long-term health prospects of children in low-income and racial/ethnic-minority populations: A community guide systematic review. American journal of preventive medicine . 2014;46(3):312-323.
• Duncan GJ, Ziol‐Guest KM, Kalil A. Early‐childhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior, and health. Child development . 2010;81(1):306-325.
• Shrider EA, Kollar M, Chen F, Semega J. Income and poverty in the United States: 2020. Current Population Reports US Census Bureau . 2021;
• Friedman-Krauss A, Barnett W, Garver K, et al. The state of preschool 2021: State preschool yearbook . 2022. https://nieer.org/state-preschool-yearbooks
• Chien N. Factsheet: Estimates of child care eligibility & receipt for fiscal year 2018. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation . 2019;
• Ramon I, Chattopadhyay SK, Barnett WS, Hahn RA. Early Childhood Education to Promote Health Equity: A Community Guide Economic Review. J Public Health Manag Pract . Jan/Feb 2018;24(1):e8-e15. doi:10.1097/phh.0000000000000557
• Burger K. How does early childhood care and education affect cognitive development? An international review of the effects of early interventions for children from different social backgrounds. Early childhood research quarterly . 2010;25(2):140-165.
• Camilli G, Vargas S, Ryan S, Barnett WS. Meta-analysis of the effects of early education interventions on cognitive and social development. Teachers College Record . 2010;112(3):579-620.
• Lumeng JC, Kaciroti N, Sturza J, et al. Changes in body mass index associated with Head Start participation. Pediatrics . 2015;135(2):e449-e456.
• Final Rule of September 30, 2016, Making regulatory changes to the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) based on the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014, 81 FR 67438. https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2016-22986
• Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care (Main Site), Office of Child Care (Technical Assistance Network), US Department of Health and Human Services. Child Care Technical Assistance Network: National Database of Child Care Licensing Regulations. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://licensingregulations.acf.hhs.gov/
• US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. Head Start Policy and Regulations, Head Start Program Performance Standards. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/policy/45-cfr-chap-xiii
• Cui J, Natzke L. Early Childhood Program Participation: 2019 (NCES 2020-075REV). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education 2021;
• Hong SLS, Sabol TJ, Burchinal MR, Tarullo L, Zaslow M, Peisner-Feinberg ES. ECE quality indicators and child outcomes: Analyses of six large child care studies. Early Childhood Research Quarterly . 2019;49:202-217.
• Borowsky J, Brown JH, Davis E, et al. An Equilibrium Model of the Impact of Increased Public Investment in Early Childhood Education . 2022. https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30140
• Teachstone, Inc. Reference Manual, Classroom Assessment Scoring System, 2nd ed. Pre-K-3rd Grade. https://info.teachstone.com/class-2nd-edition-pre-k-3rd-reference-manual
• The Build Initiative & Child Trends (2021). A Catalog and Comparison of Quality Improvement Systems (Data System). Accessed September 26, 2022. https://qualitycompendium.org/
• Early Childhood National Centers, National Center on Early Childhood Obesity Quality Assurance. Continuous Quality Improvement in QRISs. Quality Compendium 2017 QRIS Fact Sheet . 2018.

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• School-Based Violence Prevention
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• Multi-Component Worksite Obesity Prevention
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Toward Solutions for Problems of Early Childhood Education

Cite this chapter.

• J. McVicker Hunt 5  

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The same basic goal has animated the recently instituted efforts of both Israel and the United States of America in early childhood education. For different historical reasons, both nations have faced the incontrovertible fact that a substantial portion of children enter school without the knowledge and skills required to cope effectively with school. In consequence, many children drop out without having acquired the knowledge and skills and values required for productive employment in industrialized economies or for responsible citizenship. A major share of such children come from families where the parents are both uneducated and poor. The goal of early childhood education has been to provide these children with the knowledge and skills required to cope effectively with the tasks of school learning and ultimately to prepare them for a role both productive and responsible in the mainstream of our societies.

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Hunt, J.M. (1982). Toward Solutions for Problems of Early Childhood Education. In: Nir-Janiv, N., Spodek, B., Steg, D., Spencer, M., Wagemaker, P. (eds) Early Childhood Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3479-8_2

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How Can We Fix Early Childhood Education in America?

Giving compass' take:.

• The authors explore the imperative of addressing low wages, high stress, and turnover rates among staff working in early childhood education programs devastated by the pandemic.
• Why are turnover rates in pre-school programs significantly higher than among school-age educators? How can funders contribute to and advocate for equitable and affordable pre-kindergarten programming?
• Read about why early childhood education matters .

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For many child-care providers, COVID-19 has led to large enrollment drops, heightened costs, and staffing challenges. For some, it has meant closure.

In a recent statement, President Joe Biden called out the “acute, immediate child care crisis in America.” His American Rescue Plan includes $25 billion earmarked as an emergency stabilization fund for child-care providers. Emergency stabilization funds to mitigate the pandemic’s immediate damage are an important first step. But returning to a pre-coronavirus baseline would not be enough to create a stable child-care sector that adequately supports kids and families.

Prior to the pandemic, there was growing recognition that child-care teachers—many of whom are women of color—face wages and working conditions that undermine the provision of reliable care and education. Recent national data suggest that child-care workers make, on average, about $10 an hour, and that about half are in families receiving means-tested public support (e.g., EITC, SNAP, TANF, or Medicaid/CHIP). It is impossible to create stable, high-quality systems for families when educators are facing such pronounced financial challenges. These conditions contribute to high levels of stress and depression among early educators and to high rates of teacher turnover, which have negative implications for young children who benefit from stable, engaging relationships with caregivers.

Emergency funding to ensure that centers can keep their doors open and deal with current staffing challenges is an important first step, but meaningfully stabilizing ECE will take larger, long-term public investments. There are many innovative strategies that states and communities are trying to professionalize and stabilize the early childhood workforce, but truly addressing this issue will require substantial and long-term public investments explicitly tied to increasing wages and benefits for the ECE educators who are the foundation of this system.

Read the full article about stabilizing early childhood education by Daphna Bassok, Anna Markowitz, and Laura Bellows at Brookings. Read the full article

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Increase compensation to improve early childhood care and education, dec 1, 2021, paying teachers more improves early childhood education, jan 24, 2022.

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Issues in Early Childhood Education in 2022

• December 20, 2022

Since the beginning of organized childcare, providers have faced a number of issues in early childhood education. Not to mention the onslaught of additional challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At ChildCare Education Institute, we’ve spent the last 15+ years helping teachers navigate life in and out of the classroom. As a result, we’ve seen first-hand the problems facing early childhood education — and we’ve learned that the first step to addressing these problems is a better awareness of them.

That’s why we’re breaking down the most prominent issues in early childhood education and how you can best tackle them.

Workplace burnout.

One of the leading problems facing early childhood education is an escalating rate of teacher burnout. According to a 2022 poll, nearly half of all preschool teachers admitted to experiencing high levels of stress and burnout over the past few years.

While some of that stress is inherent to the job, most of the additional burnout has come from a severe staffing shortage affecting centers and programs across the country. Since early 2020, 8.4% of the childcare workforce has left for other professions — which is especially worrying considering many centers were experiencing staffing problems before the pandemic.

As a result, the teachers that stayed are dealing with longer hours, larger classrooms, and in some cases, new, mixed-age teaching environments.

For those educators lucky enough to find themselves at fully staffed centers, there are still a number of new stressors brought about by COVID-19, including new safety measures, check-in protocols, and more.

What can you do?: If you’re an educator experiencing workplace burnout, our course Stress Management for Child Care Providers is a great first step toward learning how to cope with your professional stress. We also recommend scheduling a regular time to reflect on the positives of each day and remember what drew you to early childhood education in the first place.

Mental health concerns.

  Though mental health has always been one of the prominent issues in early childhood education, COVID-19 has truly brought it to the forefront. In Virginia alone, depression among preschool teachers has risen by 15% since the start of the pandemic. While this would be troubling for any profession, it’s especially hard for teachers as their mood can directly impact their student’s ability to learn and comprehend the material. Funding issues in early childhood education can also lead to a lack of resources for teachers who want to seek help.

What can you do?: If you’re experiencing any symptoms of declining mental health, the most important thing to do is seek help. We recommend starting with this list of 50 resources from Teach.com.

Lack of resources.

Funding issues in early childhood education are another hurdle many teachers face. According to a recent study conducted by The Century Fund, the United States is underfunding public schools by nearly $150 billion annually. As a result, many childcare providers have to dip into their own pockets to make up for the small classroom budgets they’re given — something that’s especially challenging given most teachers are already underpaid.

What can you do?: While there’s nothing you can do to solve funding issues in early childhood education overnight, there are a number of scholarship and grant programs available to help teachers with classroom and professional development expenses. For more information on the latter, click here.

Low levels of compensation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, early childhood educators earn an average annual wage of $30,210 in the United States (with the lowest 10% making just $21,900 per year). When compared to the average public school teacher’s salary of $65,090, it’s no surprise that compensation is among the top problems facing early childhood education.

Because the average salary for the profession is so low, most educators are forced to take on a second job or rely on public income support programs to make ends meet. These can significantly add to a teacher’s burnout and can cause stress that spills over into their personal life.

What can you do?: If you’re looking to advocate for higher wages and other funding issues in early childhood education, there are a number of groups you can join, including NAEYC. You can also help set yourself apart — and potentially raise your earning potential — by earning a well-respected certification, such as your Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential.

Heightened safety concerns.

Another one of the top issues in early childhood education is safety. Since the start of 2022, there have been more than 300 mass shootings — equating to roughly four per week. While not all of these shootings have taken place at schools, enough have left teachers worried about their workplace safety.

In addition to worrying about their own safety while at work, early childhood educators also often have to worry about the safety of their students. Because children attending childcare programs can range anywhere from just a few months to six years of age, there are a number of physical and environmental dangers present at any given time. Therefore, teachers have to constantly be on guard, something that can lead to increased levels of stress and fatigue.

What can you do?: One of the best ways to address safety concerns in the workplace is to feel confident in your abilities to avoid and — in the worst case — deal with any issues that may arise. Some of our top-rated safety courses include:

• Emergency Preparedness and Response Planning for Natural and Man-Made Events
• Fire Safety in the Early Care and Education Environment
• Indoor Safety in the Early Childhood Setting
• Outdoor Safety in the Early Childhood Setting

Ever-evolving technologies.

When COVID-19 hit, schools across the country raced to adopt virtual learning environments that allowed their students to connect and engage without having to attend in-person sessions. While it proved to be an effective way to limit the spread of coronavirus, it didn’t come without its own share of challenges.

For some families, a lack of access to technology meant they were no longer able to receive the instruction they needed. For others, not being able to have one-on-one time with educators led to a decline in learning. Finally, despite the best attempts from schools and video conferencing providers, teachers and students still fell victim to technology issues, including lack of connectivity, dropped calls, and more.

As the pandemic waned and in-person learning resumed, many schools opted to keep hybrid learning as an option for their students. Despite the added convenience this affords some families, it has also greatly contributed to one of the top issues in early childhood education: technology.

As technology changes in the classroom, teachers must race to keep up with it.

The same goes for the technology students interact with.

Teachers today have to decide how to incorporate technology into their classrooms, what screen time limits to set for their students and how to navigate a digital landscape that’s different every year.

What can you do?: The best way to combat the ever-changing technology landscape in early childhood education is to make sure you’re staying up-to-date on industry recommendations and research. Our The Child’s Digital Universe: Technology and Digital Media in Early Childhood course is the perfect place to start.

Lack of parent engagement and communication.

As any teacher can attest to, trying to build an engaged and communicative parent base is another one of the prominent issues in early childhood education. Unlike other professions, teachers have to deal with the 20+ personalities in their classroom, as well as the 40+ personalities of those students’ guardians. Not to mention the frustration that can result from parents who are never present — or those who are overly present.

Plus, funding issues in early childhood education can often hamper parent-teacher communication. For example, some programs might not have the funds available to provide teachers with software that allows them to quickly send email blasts to all families. As a result, educators may find themselves having to send important updates via email one family at a time.

What can you do?: While parent-teacher communication will likely always be one of the problems facing early childhood education, there are things you can do as a teacher to lessen the effect it has on you and your classroom. One of those resources is our course Parent Communication: Building Partners in the Educational Process.

Want to learn more about the top issues in early childhood education and how to combat them? Our online courses can help!

Click here to explore our 150+ topics covering everything from child development to classroom management to addressing the problems facing early childhood education.

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Challenges in Early Childhood Development

• 1 Beijing Pediatric Research Institute, Beijing Children’s Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Center for Children’s Health, Beijing, China

Early childhood development (ECD) emphasizes the holistic development of children younger than 3 to 5 years. Early childhood development encompasses multiple dimensions of children’s well-being: nutrition; physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development; safety and protection; stimulation and care; and early education. Phases of ECD vary by age, with some phases extending to 8 years or even to adolescence because of the windows of psychosocial and reproductive development during this period. 1 , 2 With ECD as a global and national priority, the United Nations have pledged to achieve the ECD targets in the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Qi K. Challenges in Early Childhood Development. JAMA Pediatr. 2019;173(4):307–308. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5381

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How to Overcome the Challenges of Teaching Preschoolers

Posted On Mar 25, 2021

Being a preschool teacher might sound simple enough, but the truth is, it’s not as easy as it looks. Children are full of energy and spirit, and sometimes you might feel more like a zookeeper than an educator. However, for every challenge, there are a million reasons why being a preschool teacher is rewarding and wonderful.

Maintaining the Attention of Young Kids

One of the biggest challenges of teaching preschoolers is retaining the attention of your students. Every child you teach is unique and has their own behavior and interests. It’s not realistic to assume that all of your students will pay an equal amount of attention to everything you’re teaching. Some kids may find certain activities engaging, while others may prefer to engage in something else. In a large-sized classroom, it can be very difficult to capture and maintain the attention of so many children for long.

The best way to overcome the first challenge is to create a series of shorter, engaging activities, rather than long, drawn out lessons. Look to your students for signs that it’s time to move on to another subject.

Managing Misbehavior in the Classroom

If you’ve ever been around young children before, then you know their behavior can be described as unpredictable at best and their moods can shift on a dime.

When it comes to overcoming this common preschool teacher challenge, know that discipling a preschooler requires a combination of art and agility. What worked last week, may not be effective this week. Patience and consistency are key to addressing behavioral issues. Preschoolers do best when they have plenty of structure.

Communicating with Family Members

A big part of being a preschool teacher is dealing with parents, some of which can be very demanding and difficult.

One way to overcome this challenge is to provide parents with an easy and effective way to communicate with you outside of class, so they can feel involved and informed, such as offering an interactive app. An app can be an excellent tool in keeping parents and teachers connected and on the same page.

Surviving the Physical Demands of the Job

If you were hoping for a desk job, then a career as a preschool teacher might not be the best fit for you. Preschool teachers deal with a room full of young, excitable children that don’t need coffee to be energetic. It’s rare that you’ll find yourself sitting for long periods of time. Preschool teachers spend the majority of the day on their feet, whether it’s bending, lifting, dancing, or playing with their students. While being a preschool teacher is tons of fun, it can also be downright exhausting.

The best way to survive a physically demanding job is to take proper care of yourself, including treating yourself to a pair of comfortable, supportive shoes! Your job as preschool teacher is extremely important, as these kids need you, and they need you to be at your best. You can’t help others if you’re mentally and physically exhausted. Make sure to get enough sleep, eat nutritious food to provide you with plenty of energy, and spend your downtime doing activities you enjoy. Teaching can be tough, so taking mental breaks is an absolute necessity.

We offer an accredited program with flexible class schedules. For more information on how to become a preschool teacher, contact Athena Career Academy .

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Problem Solving with Others

Problem solving with others.

The skills needed to solve problems are learned just like academic skills – they don’t develop on their own or overnight

At a Glance

Preschool children are still learning how to effectively resolve disagreements. To do so, they need to take the perspective of another person and understand how their actions impact others. For example, a child is not likely to think about how taking a toy from another child would make that child mad or sad, which stands in the way of finding a safe, fair solution. You can empower children to learn to solve their own problems by helping them to identify the problem, take another child’s perspective, and implement a solution when issues arise.

• Get to Know This Skill

What It Looks Like

A quick glance at how you can help preschoolers develop their problem-solving skills, practice solving problems.

Encouraging children to think about and practice problem solving can prepare them to come up with solutions in the moment.

Problem Solving During Center Time

Promote children’s problem solving skills by having them think and talk about the issue. Then work with them as they explore and agree on a resolution.

Use Solutions Cards

Using solution cards prompts children to find and accept solutions. Supports like this work to build children’s ability to problem solve.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Teach, Model, Support

Young children are still learning how to socialize, collaborate, and negotiate with others. With our support, children can learn these valuable skills and work together to find solutions as challenges arise. Learn key strategies you can use to teach social problem solving in advance and support it in the moment.

TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE

The Power of Play

A brief video from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child explores how play in early childhood can reduce stress (including trauma-related stress) and scaffold problem solving.

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FAMILY CONNECTION

Families as a Resource

In this article from the Center for Responsive Schools, Carol Davis shares how educators can have conversations with families about problems that occur in the classroom.

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CONSIDERING EQUITY

Considering Culture

In this NAEYC webinar, Dr. Isik-Ercan offers transformative yet practical tips educators can use to understand children’s cultural backgrounds and to support children as they encounter and solve social problems.

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Share and Take Turns

Written by Cheri J. Meiners, this book provides many opportunities to talk and think about social situations that young children may encounter in the classroom, such as sharing toys or taking turns.

Activity Cards for Preschool Classrooms

Part of the streamin 3 curriculum, these activity cards provide simple and fun ways you can prompt children to collaborate and solve problems together.

Solve A Problem

Create typical social scenarios that children can use to brainstorm solutions.

Partner Talk

Invite children to turn to a peer and ask them something about their life.

Dance Party

You and children will work together to create a new dance.

People Sort!

Challenge children to sort themselves by patterns or colors on their clothing.

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Problem-solving and Relationship Skills in Preschool

Woman: Places, everyone. Are the lights ready? Three, two, one.

Saameh Solaimani: Hi, everyone. I'm Saameh Solaimani. Welcome to "Teacher Time.” Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Gail Joseph: Hi, everyone. I'm Gail Joseph, and I'm so excited to be joining you on "Teacher Time" today. Now, Saameh, I always think it's better when we start with a song, so shall we?

All: [Singing] "Teacher Time.” "Teacher Time.” "Teacher Time.” "Teacher Time.” "Teacher Time.” "Teacher Time."

Gail: Here we are. I love your puppet moves. You've got some really good moves.

Saameh: Thank you. I worked hard on this.

Gail: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome to our third preschool episode of "Teacher Time" this program year. I'm Gail Joseph.

Saameh: I'm Saameh Solaimani, and we're from the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning.

Gail: We are so excited to have you here with us today. We have been focusing on positive behavior supports this season of "Teacher Time.” Hopefully, you've joined us for some of the previous episodes. So far, we've talked about the importance of relationships and how to support emotional literacy. And today, we're going to be focusing on problem-solving and relationships, and friendship skills in preschool.

I want to draw your attention to the viewer's guide. I've printed mine out here. It's beautiful. You can find it in the resource widget. If you haven't looked at our viewer's guide for a while, I strongly encourage you to. This season, our viewer's guide is a viewer's guide for birth to five, including specific age group information for infants and toddlers and preschool children. It is packed with information about development, about teaching practices. There are quick tips in here. There are reminders. There are things you can cut out and post and put up in your learning space. There are spaces for notetaking.

On the last page is just an extensive resource list that you are going to love. You can download the guide and use it throughout our time together for taking notes, for reflecting, planning how you might use some of the "Teacher Time" practices we're going to talk about in your own settings. And please share your viewer's guide with colleagues. Also, we want your ideas in the next issue of "Teacher Time.” You can see on the back that we ask you to submit some of your own strategies and tips, and then you'll be published in the "Teacher Time" viewer's guide.

Saameh: That would be awesome. We always love to hear from you. Thank you so much, Gail. During our time together, we're going to be discussing teaching practices that support positive behavior. We're going to take some time to promote your wellness with our It's All About You segment. We're going to connect effective practice to brain development in our new segment, which some of you may have seen in our last episode's Neuroscience Nook.

We're going to discuss small change, big impact, and in our focus on equity segments, individualized strategies that build a sense of belonging and promote social and emotional skills with all children, including children who have a variety of learning characteristics. And we're going to wrap up our time together, as we always do, with our BookCASE, where we connect our topic to books that you can share with children and families.

Gail: We love the BookCASE and our "Teacher Time" librarian. Like we do at the beginning of most "Teacher Times," we want to check in with how you're feeling, such an important thing to do periodically throughout the day. Look at our "Teacher Time" feeling tree, find a feeling creature. They all have little numbers on them.

And post in the Q&A which number creature you most relate to at the moment and why. We want to hear from you. We have our amazing Q&A team there, ready to see your input. I'm going to go ahead and start. Now, every time I look at — what I love about our little "Teacher Time" tree here is that I always think a little bit differently about how these creatures are feeling, which is fun. It helps children do that, too.

Saameh: Right.

Gail: I think the little guy that is swinging from the tree there. I'm just pretty excited to be here. I've been on some travel. I'm excited to be back with you and back with our "Teacher Time" viewership. How are you feeling, Saameh?

Saameh: I actually was thinking about this. And I think number 12, sitting on the leaf, surrounded by friends, by community, by all of you. Yeah, I'm feeling very part of this learning community.

Gail: I love it. And our viewers are checking in. Five, a rough week. Some weeks are like that. I hope it gets better for you, Amy. We've got a 12. Somebody is feeling like you. One, five. Our viewers are all over the tree, checking in. I feel like number five, pretty rough afternoon. My goodness. We hope that spending some time today thinking about your own professional development might feel a little bit uplifting for you. But we definitely know how it feels when you're not having a great week, too. Just hanging in there. Thank you so much for sharing.

Saameh: Yes, yes.

Gail: Thank you. Keep it going. Keep it going.

Saameh: We're very excited to be focusing on positive behavior supports this season, as you know. And social and emotional development. As you may know, is one of the domains in the Head Start ELOF, which stands for Early Learning Outcomes Framework. The practical strategies we're going to be discussing today are going to be focusing on the relationships with other children subdomain of social and emotional development. And you can see that highlighted here.

Gail: I love that. Now, like we said last month, this season of "Teacher Time" is focused on working our way through the Pyramid Model. Some of you might be really familiar with the Pyramid Model. Maybe your program is participating in a pyramid training. But if you're not familiar with it, the Pyramid Model is really a model or a framework of positive behavioral support for proactively addressing the social and emotional development. And for preventing and addressing challenging behaviors of young children. The framework offers a continuum of evidence-based teaching practices that are organized into four levels of support. And you can see those there.

At the foundation, it's all about nurturing and responsive relationships. Not only between the teacher, the educator, and the children but between children and between educators. It's all about these relationships. And we want them to be nurturing and responsive no matter what relationship they're in. That's the foundation. The next are high-quality supportive environments. How can we create both the physical and temporal structure of the environment to support positive behavior?

Then we level up and go to social and emotional teaching strategies. That's where we're at right now, is going to dig into some of those social and emotional teaching strategies. Then at the very top, when all of the bottom three pieces are in place, there might still be some children that have some behaviors that could require a little bit more intensive intervention. And we're going to talk about that in May. Be sure to come back.

But if you want to learn more about the Pyramid Model, you can check out the resource list in the back of your viewer's guide for a lot more information about it. Now, we would love to hear what strategies and practices you have in place to support young children's problem-solving and their friendship skills with children that you're working with.

Go ahead and start entering those in the Q&A. And our Q&A team, we've got, like, the star Q&A team today. They're going to start sending those out, too. We're going to be tracking them, but they're also going to be sent out so other people can see them as well when you share what strategies you're using. We always learn so much from our viewers. And there's always something that we're, like, a gem out there in how you're supporting young children's problem-solving.

Saameh: Such a wealth of resources out there.

Gail: Absolutely. Now, as a reminder, positive behavioral support, or sometimes called PBS, sometimes you might hear it called PBIS. Sometimes you might even hear it called a multi-tiered system of support. But positive behavioral support is a positive and proactive approach to preventing and addressing challenging behavior. It focuses on using very intentional teaching strategies to proactively, that's such a big part of it, proactively build all social and emotional skills. And today we're specifically thinking about building problem-solving skills and relationship skills for young children. Now, positive behavioral support recognizes that all behavior communicates a message or a need. And some behaviors, as they're trying to get their needs across, we might find challenging.

Once an educator understands the meaning, what is the message that the child is trying to send with their behavior? What's the meaning? They want something. They want to get away from something. They're not sure how to play with their friends, but they're trying in the way that they can. Once you know what the meaning of that challenging behavior is, then we can figure out how to teach the child a more effective way to communicate their needs and problem-solve with support.

Saameh: So important to keep in mind. Now what we're going to do is we're going to turn our attention to you in our All About You segment. We know that we do our best caregiving and teaching when we feel well ourselves. Engaging in self-care practices can help educators build greater social and emotional capacity to work through problem-solving together. And our ability to support children with problem-solving and relationship skills starts with our ability to center ourselves by noticing and observing what's happening with as little judgment as possible.

We can help young children work through challenges with peers from a more grounded, soft, and objective place, naming what we see happening calmly without so many of the other things going on when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed. What we're going to do is a little body scan. Before we can support the children in our care with problem-solving and relationship skills, it's important to find ways to regulate our own feelings throughout the day.

Taking a minute to do something like a body scan like we have here to notice what's happening in our own bodies is softening in the moment. We can slow down and center ourselves throughout the day. This practice supports our own well-being first, enabling us to hold a non-judgmental space, as we were saying, respond intentionally to children's cues, behaviors, and communications as we support them in building healthy relationships with each other.

Here we go. Start with a deep breath. Okay, I noticed as I was saying that I was holding my breath. Breathe. Okay, so we're going to start in a seated position or laying down, whatever is comfortable for you. And now you can bring your attention to your body, and you can close your eyes if that's comfortable for you. And you can notice your body wherever you are.

As you exhale, you have a sense of relaxing, and you can notice your feet or body on the floor. You can notice your back against the chair or maybe on the floor. Bring your attention into your stomach area. If it feels tight, let it soften. Notice your hands, arms, shoulders, and let them be soft. Let your jaw and facial muscles be soft. Notice your whole body present, and take one more deep breath. Okay.

Okay, we would love to hear how you were feeling during that or feel now or after the body scan. What do you notice? And let's see. And I noticed like I was saying, that I was holding my breath.

Gail: I feel like we should do that right before "Teacher Time.” It would be really helpful.

Saameh: That's right.

Gail: I felt so calm and centered.

Saameh: We'd love to hear from you how that experience was. Thank you so much for taking the time to take time for yourself. Calm. Self-aware. Conscious. More relaxed.

Gail: It doesn't take very long too, and I know that when I was teaching on a regular basis, just having those moments where I could just feel that tension in my body, and it just takes a moment to take a breath before I interact.

Saameh: It is amazing how much one minute of breathing can do. Yes. It’s not something that requires a lot of time, which I know we don't necessarily have as teachers sometimes.

Social competencies like self-regulation, empathy, perspective-taking, and problem-solving skills are key to foundational healthy social-emotional development. And these include positive interactions and friendships and relationships between peers, as we know. Educators can help children learn the skills necessary to develop healthy peer relationships and find ways to work through social conflicts with adult support.

And that's where we come in. And teaching and modeling problem-solving skills early on with preschool children builds a foundation of problem-solving and relationship skills that most children can access with adult support and start to use independently as they continue to develop. The more we can support young children in developing problem-solving skills in their learning environments, the less we'll see some of those challenging behaviors that oftentimes arise from not having the resources, the tools to work through the problem as they come up, which they will because that's life.

It's important to note that there might be some children in your care who don't readily learn these skills through foundational teaching strategies. This might include children with disabilities or suspected delays. It's important to be aware of the progress for all children and use more individualized practices to work on these skills with children who need a little more support. That’s what we'll be doing today, sharing some strategies to do just that.

Gail: Some key ideas and practices for supporting problem-solving and peer relationship skills with preschool children are the first little slide that you see there or picture that you see there is about promoting healthy relationships. Preschoolers are increasingly interested, as our viewers know, in developing friendships with one or two preferred peers, like we see in the photo on the left. They're able to engage in group play and independently initiate interactions with peers, which is so fun to see develop.

Preschoolers might suggest something to do, like let's play a restaurant or let's build a swimming pool for our animals together or join in an existing activity. Hey, can I play too? Educators can support preschoolers in promoting healthy friendships in quite a few ways that I'm sure our viewers are already doing. But just to name a few, one is that you can help children plan what and how they will play together.

One thing that I always like to, I'm going to go off for a moment, is that one thing that I think about a lot as a preschool teacher is thinking about materials and resources and activities that require two children to play together so that you set the stage for children to interact with each other. Things like those teeter-totters or rowboats in classrooms is just one obvious idea that takes two children.

Another thing is providing suggestions for initiating interactions with other children. And a quick tip there too is right before children go to play, if there's a child that you think could use a little bit more support, is to do a little priming and say, “hey, point to two or three things that you could play with a friend,” and you'll see that they can increase their initiations with other children.

Then, encouraging children to consider other ideas. I don't know if anybody out there is a big puppet user, but I used a lot of puppets when I was teaching at Head Start, and this was a great way to model like at a circle time, model with a puppet and other children role-play how I could consider somebody else's idea. Lots of ways to do that.

Saameh: This is a great time for us to pause and think about what value do I place on peer relationships, and how do I expect peers to act with each other? Sort of that, taking a moment to think about our own ideas because we're subjective beings, and we have our own experiences. It's really important to just take a moment. And awareness of our responses to these questions is supportive of our equitable practice. I do have to say I love what you said about puppets, and we're going to be seeing a little bit of puppet work later on in our episode today. I am also a fan of puppets.

As you see, the second photo you see is representing teaching problem-solving steps, which is so important. Preschoolers are willing to try different strategies to solve problems and show flexibility in their actions and behavior, and they can plan ways to solve a problem and evaluate solutions with our support. In a minute, we're going to hear from Dr. Angel Fettig, Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Washington, who will share strategies to support problem-solving in preschool classrooms. She's going to talk about the steps.

Gail: That's great. Of course, another way that we can support children, which you probably feel like you're doing all the time, is teaching problem-solving in the moment. One is to proactively teach, which we're going to hear about strategies for doing that. But the other thing is then supporting that problem-solving as it occurs in the moment. There are a few steps that educators can do to work through that. One is anticipating that social conflicts are going to happen, and you try and anticipate it before they happen.

You might notice a child that's coming into the classroom or into the learning setting feeling a little bit tired, maybe something upsetting happened before, maybe you have some communication with the family and understand that something troubling has just happened at home, and the child is coming into the space. Maybe they're not usually having a difficult time with problem-solving, but today they might be.

But another thing that you can do is anticipate, did you introduce a new toy into your learning space? Maybe you introduced some new props in the dramatic play area, and you know that a lot of children are going to want to use them. You're anticipating that probably in that space, there's going to be a little bit more need to support problem-solving in the moment. You want to anticipate social conflicts before they happen.

Another thing that's so important is being close and helping children manage their feelings. If I'm anticipating that there might be some problem, maybe an individual child might need some more support, or there's an area in the classroom that I think, oh, I'm probably going to want to be close there, is to get close because children will, as they get excited or upset, that fight or flight comes in. You want to be there to support them to help remember some of the problem-solving steps that you've provided.

Now, providing support and reminders of problem-solving steps would be next. I'm going to be close with them, and then I'm going to provide support, and that support could be verbal like I could remind them of the problem-solving steps. It can also be visual, and we're going to talk about some of the visual supports you can have in your classrooms.

Some people in our Q&A have already talked about ways that they've used visuals with problem-solving solution kits, et cetera. We can encourage children to generate and evaluate multiple solutions. I'm going to say that this is really where it's at for preschool children, is to encourage them to generate as many different solutions to a problem as they can. When children have a restricted number of solutions they can try, they're bound to run out of things that are working for them. We want to encourage them to keep being really creative and generating so many different solutions.

Last but not least, when children do problem-solving, find some way to celebrate that. It might be a thumbs-up. It might be a high-five. It might be with a super friend cape or with some other type of big celebration because this is hard work, and it's really hard work when you're a young child just figuring it out. We want to make sure that we're celebrating that. We're going to remember that we always want to individualize the strategies that we're going to use to provide support based on the skills of the children that you're supporting.

Some children might need some additional amount of language that needs to be modified. Some children might need visual cues or gestures paired with verbal language. Some children might need some specific feedback on the consequences to help them learn the effect of their behavior on the environment. Stay tuned for BASICS where we're going to share about some more strategies for providing feedback.

Saameh: I love that. I love what you said about anticipation. I think it goes such a long way. Also, what you were saying about problem-solving and the children coming up with the solutions, generating the solutions, and I keep thinking about how problem-solving is also play in a way.

Gail: Yeah.

Saameh: It's exploration. It's play. In a way, it's fun. It's not necessarily a negative thing. Sometimes we think problem as negative, and it doesn't have to be.

Gail: It can be like a fun challenge. I would support children, and I'd say, “are they making it tough on you?”

Saameh: Exactly.

Gail: And they'd be like, yeah. But then they'd be encouraged to keep going. Sometimes I'd say, let me look. Let me look. I think you've got more solutions in there. I'd peer into their ear, and they'd think that was really fun. You can just really be fun and encourage them to be creative and think of more solutions.

Saameh: I love that one. We’re going to hear from Dr. Angel Fettig, who we were talking about earlier, as she discusses strategies to teach problem-solving skills.

[Video begins]

Angel Fettig: I think in early childhood settings, I think the best thing is to think about simple steps to teach kids. So simple, concrete strategies they can use in the setting. My favorite is to really think about the four-step problem-solving technique. Step one is, what's my problem? Really being able to know that there's a problem here, and this is the problem. Being able to identify it.

Angel: And then step two is helping them brainstorm. What are some things I can do to solve this problem? Guiding them in understanding, How do you brainstorm for solutions?

Gail: Okay.

Angel: And then the next step, step three, is to think about evaluating the solutions you came up with. Do I think using this step is going to be fair for my friends? Is it a safe solution?

Gail: Right.

Angel: Am I going to feel good? Is my friend going to feel good?

Angel: And then step four is guiding them to try it out.

Angel: You try it, see if it works.

Angel: If it doesn't work, then encourage them to try a different strategy, try a different skill. Those are the four steps. And it's really important that we teach those steps systematically and with visuals, just like how we will typically teach any content in early childhood classrooms.

Angel: I think as early childhood educators, we need to plan these into our curriculum in teaching problem-solving skills.

Gail: Great.

[Video ends]

Saameh: So wonderful. As we saw, Dr. Fettig outlines four important steps to go through with preschool children to help teach problem-solving skills. First of all, helping children identify what the problem is in the first place. Next, inviting children to generate and evaluate multiple solutions through brainstorming, as you were sharing, Gail, and then evaluate the solutions. How are these solutions working out? Lastly, we can help children select a solution and try it out and see how it works. We'd love to hear from you in the chat. What are some ways that you support problem-solving with children in your care? Please share in the chat.

As you're doing that, I wanted to share something I remember being surprised to learn early on in my career as an early childhood educator. It was just, like, what a big part of our job supporting children and problem-solving is. It's a huge part. I mean, it was most of the day. It was really doing that, and I was in for a surprise. But, getting down on the children's level, taking the time to be present and understand what's happening, how we can support children to work through the problem in that moment, which I'm sure you all experience many times a day. And the solution kit. We will be talking about that.

Gail: That's right. Owl's Pals, that's a great social and emotional curriculum. I see that one coming up. Tucker the Turtle, we know about that. That's a great one. Trying to hang in there. Sarah, yes, that is so important. It's just that trying to hang in there, taking those deep breaths, getting centered, and getting back into it and knowing that this is part of the job.

Saameh: It truly is.

Gail: What a great job it is to help build this, like, social and emotional foundation for young children so that when they're entering into even larger group settings, they're going to be really successful. Yes, trying to hang in there but knowing you've got a great purpose.

Saameh: Absolutely. What we're going to do now is we're going to take another moment to pause and reflect, a reflective moment, on questions that will support equitable teaching practices. We're going to invite you to reflect on the following questions. How do I expect peers to act with each other? How do I feel about conflict? Do I listen openly to all children when there is a problem? To just take a moment and think about those things. We're going to revisit these questions in our Focus on Equity segment. We thought it would be nice this time to weave throughout.

Gail: I love it. Those are such good questions. I'm just thinking about it myself, like, what was I expecting?

Saameh: Right. Now for our Neuroscience Nook segment. Research tells us that the early years are foundational for brain development. And adults play an important role in supporting healthy brain development connections and architecture.

In this segment, our Neuroscience Nook, we are excited to connect this research to everyday teaching practices. I'm going to just take a moment for this side note. As questions are coming up for you, we want to hear them. Please put them in the Q&A or post them in the "Teacher Time" Community in MyPeers. Just wanted to say that.

What we're going to do is we're going to shift our focus. We're going to talk a little bit about executive functioning, which is a very important brain function. The prefrontal cortex begins to develop very early in life. This area of the brain is responsible for what are called executive functioning skills, which some of you may have heard of. They're essential for development of strong and healthy relationships.

This is a really great graphic here, as you can see. It includes what are some of the main functions of executive functioning and executive functioning skills. What are they? Attention, that would be being able to stay focused on a task. Working memory, which is being able to remember rules and procedures. Self-regulation and the ability to control impulses.

Right there, you can see how important that would be for developing strong and healthy relationships. Organization, things like switching between tasks, that would be called flexible thinking. Problem-solving, planning, behavior, decision-making, and motivation. As you can see, hopefully, you're convinced that executive functioning skills are very important indeed. You can see how all these skills are important.

Gail: Absolutely.

Saameh: Also are interrelated in a lot of ways. What we can do is help young children start to develop these critical relationship building and problem-solving skills. I know what all of you are doing every day, through responsive caregiving and effective teaching practices that are responsive to an individual child's needs. In our most recent episodes of "Teacher Time," those were building relationships and emotional literacy in preschool, we've talked about ways that you can support executive functioning through things like serve and return, and the flipping your lid, the hand model.

Gail: Yes, I remember.

Saameh: Yes. From Dr. Dan Siegel. I practiced that a lot before, by the way.

Gail: Yeah, it was good.

Saameh: We also encourage you to look back at the last two viewers guides, that would be building relationships with children, birth through five, and emotional literacy with children, birth through five, to see more about the importance of nurturing and responsive relationships on the developing brain. What we're going to do is we're going to hear — now we're going to hear from Dr. Juliet Taylor, as she describes the development of executive function.

Juliet Taylor: I'm going to show you a graphic of how executive function develops over time. Here's sort of a graphic representation. And one thing to point out is that we are not born with executive function skills in place. We're born with the potential to develop them, or not, depending on our experiences, our neurophysiology, and the interactions between those things.

This graph shows that on the horizontal axis you can see this is ages birth to 80, and notice that there's not an even distribution between the ages. And that is because there are particular peaks in executive function development. You can see skill proficiency on the vertical axis. And I'm going to highlight a couple of areas where you see tremendous growth in executive function skills, and that is really in the preschool ages, between three to five, and then in early adolescence to early adulthood, there's another spike in development.

The foundations of executive function are laid down in the earliest months and years of life, and that really happens through basic sort of serve and return, it's sometimes called, or those basic interactions between child and adult that happen over and over and over again. And that spike really does happen in the preschool years after children have verbal language.

Saameh: As you can see, that graphic, it's just so helpful to see the development pattern. And we see that we aren't born with executive function. We are, however, born with the potential to develop them, and why our support as educators is so important. We know that the foundation of executive function skills are laid down in the first months and years of life. And what we heard and saw, the yellow highlight, is a spike in executive function development between three and five years old after many children have developed verbal language.

Gail: I love that, and I saw the other spike was like that, like, early or later teen years.

Saameh: I noticed that.

Gail: I've got two of those at home. I feel like I see that on a regular basis. Yeah, very true.

Saameh: It resonates.

Gail: It really resonates, both as a preschool teacher and as a mom of adolescents. That's so great. And, like, looked like some declines as we get older. It's not fun.

Saameh: A little less fun.

Gail: We're going to get to the "Teacher Time" BASICS, and we're going to talk about how we can use BASICS to support problem-solving and relationship skills. If you haven't joined us before, let's just go through really quickly what BASICS is. It's an acronym that helps us remember some really powerful teacher-child or adult-child interaction moves that we can make that can support children's growth and development in any area.

The "Teacher Time" BASICS are B is for behavioral expectations in advance. It is always helpful to tell a young child what you're expecting from them before you start a new activity. A is for attending to and encouraging positive behavior, which is so relevant to the topics that we're talking about now. S is for scaffolding with cues and prompts.

Those can be verbal cues, visual cues. You're going to see some of that today. Increasing engagement is the I. C is for creating and adding challenge. Young children grow when we add some challenge to, whether it's intellectual challenge or social and emotional challenge, that creates some growth for young children. And S is for that specific feedback.

If you've joined us for other webinars, you know that we only take two of these letters to focus on. It's too much to do all of them in one episode. We've focused on different letters at different episodes. You'll see that if you want to go back and look at some prior episodes. You'll see some of the other letters.

But today we're going to focus on the C and the S, create or add challenge, and the second S, which is about providing specific feedback to support problem-solving and relationship skills. We're going to jump to it. We're going to start with creating or adding challenge. This is one of my favorite things.

One fun way that we can create or add challenge to problem-solving and relationship skills is to create a friendship kit and invite children to use it when they notice that another child is upset. You can see on the screen that the friendship kit can have lots of little things in it. Really it could be like a shoebox. It could be a file folder. It could be any way that you can contain it. It could be a lovely basket.

But the idea is that in this friendship kit, there are things like maybe a pack of tissue if somebody is crying. Maybe there's a soft toy for someone to cuddle with if they're feeling like they're missing somebody. Maybe there's a pack of bandages to not only help with a small cut, but maybe if your feelings are hurt. We've had children also apply bandage. Very sweet. A sheet of stickers. Maybe a sticker would help someone.

There can be visual support cards of simple problem-solving solutions and things that you can do when a friend is in duress. Things like giving a gentle hug. Maybe saying, I'm sorry. That is certainly a challenge that we offer to young children is to provide a genuine apology, which is a great repair strategy for them to learn. That's one thing. I'd be curious to see if people are using friendship kits. You can enter that into the Q&A.

I've had lots of lovely experiences in my classroom with these friendship kits where children go to them when another child is upset. I had one experience. Well, I'll tell that story in a little bit. But they're just such great, lovely stories about how young children will use it. It's just like a physical reminder of what it takes to develop those special friendships. Now, there's another way that we can create or add challenges. Thank you for advancing that. That was a nice thing to do from our friendship kit.

Gail: Thanks for advancing the slide.

Saameh: Of course.

Gail: Is to actually create a problem-solving solution kit or problem-solving basket. We have already had viewers tell us that they're using these out and about. You'll see lots of resources for supporting those in your viewer's guide. But this is to add a bunch of visuals about supporting problem-solving. Remember we said that one of the more difficult things for young children to do is to generate multiple solutions that are different from each other.

I do always remember when I started doing a lot of social and emotional development, problem-solving in a classroom, in my preschool classroom, I had a student in there, a child in my classroom named Freddy. I loved that. It was the only Freddy I've ever had. Freddy ran up to me on the playground and he said, "Teacher Gail, I've got a problem.” I was like, "Perfect, so excited about this problem.” I said, "What is it?” "Jordan took the ball and won't give it back.”

Now, that is a real problem that happens on a regular basis in preschool classrooms. I said, "Well, what solutions did you try?” Because we were working on solutions. He said, "I tried five.” I was so excited because that's a lot. I said, "What were they?” He said, "I said, 'Please, please, please.'"

One of the things that this problem-solving basket or solution kit can provide for young children are different solutions. You want children to understand that it's not just trying the same solution over and over again or louder. But it is actually trying different solutions, like wait and take turns, hardest solution. I think to try, make another choice, play together. We could ask an adult if it becomes a big problem.

Gail: Just take a break. Lots of things that can be in there. And check your viewer's guide out because there's lots of visuals that you could cut out and use in your own classrooms and learning settings. We're on to the next. We are going to watch one of our favorite teachers ever. Teacher Heather is going to introduce the problem-solving solution basket to preschoolers in her care. And just pay attention. What do you notice? Share those in chat as you take a look.

Heather: We've been working really hard with the problem-solving basket. I think I'm ready. I'm still mad, but I'm ready. I'm going to use that problem-solving basket you guys told me about. Is that a good idea?

Child: Yeah.

Heather: No, no, no. We got it right here. Remember, guys, we planned it this time. Oh, Eddie, hey, I just happen to have it right here. OK, wait. Here's my mad card because I need to breathe some more. I feel better now. I'm going to get one of those books you guys told me about. Teacher, will you help me? I will. It's hard for Eddie to hold the book, huh? I'm going to find an idea because that's what you guys told me last time. Find an idea in my book. And I don't have to read it, right? We have to look at it, right, Marilyn, because there's pictures, right? Pictures for Eddie. Oh, yeah, I remember. We've been practicing a long time, ever since we started school. Okay, here we go. Sharon, can I trade a block with you? Say no.

Heather: Uh-oh, she said no. I'm so disappointed. I don't know how to fix this. What should we help Eddie say? Hey, Eddie, you know what? Our class does something funny when we feel disappointed. You guys want to help him again? Ready? We say, oh, pickle. And then we try another idea. I'm going to try another idea from a different book because that book didn't have the idea I wanted. Let me see. I'm going to share. Jocelyn, can I have one of your blocks? Great, great, great. Sharon, say yes this time. Can I give you this block and you give me back my three blocks?

Saameh: Love it.

Gail: So great. Oh, pickles.

Saameh: I told you about the puppets.

Gail: Yes, exactly.

Saameh: The puppets showed up.

Gail: Exactly. Puppets are so great for supporting and role-playing social and emotional problems because you can control their —

Saameh: Totally.

Gail: I mean, in a helpful way. You can control what they're saying and experiencing, and the children can help the puppet out. It's really great.

Saameh: I love that.

Gail: She does a great job of that, and our viewers agree. They are commenting that they're loving that, and hopefully we'll share that video with others.

Saameh: I just love that. It's sort of just a way of children stepping outside of the scene and being able to see what's happening.

Gail: It’s like a little fishbowl in a way.

Saameh: When you're in it, you're feeling so many feelings, so many things happening, it's hard to use those executive functioning skills around it. You're actually developing those executive functioning skills when you're like, okay, I wonder how I can support these puppets and planning and working it out and da-da-da. It's really wonderful. It's a great way. Very powerful.

Gail: Yes. Huge puppet family.

Saameh: Yes, we can do so much.

Gail: We're going to have to have a whole episode on puppets.

Saameh: Puppet Time. Yeah, both you and I. Great. We have our S now from our BASICS, and that is specific feedback. Providing specific feedback is another way educators can support problem-solving and relationship skills, and that's naming and acknowledging when we see a child engaging and building relationships. It's really important to be specific about what you see, and we have some examples here.

Like, you're helping me put Natalie's coat on, or I saw you get a tissue for Kai, which was so kind. And I can see that you were both feeling frustrated, and let's get the solution kit and get some ideas of how we might solve the problem. Noticing and acknowledging goes a long way. It's I see you, I hear you, and right there you have buy-in. It's like, OK, let's work together. I think all of us, children, and adults alike.

Educators can provide specific feedback to a child when they see them taking turns, sharing, trying to solve problems, or helping a friend. I can see you being a helpful friend and working with Isaiah to get his mat set up for nap time. That's probably a typical one. Nap time is a big one. Setting up for nap time is a big one. That itself is a whole thing. A lot of ripe opportunities for problem-solving.

Saameh: Providing specific feedback is also a helpful teaching tool. And we might provide feedback on how to be a friend or how to solve a problem, like another one that resonates with me. I hear that you would all like a turn on the tire swing.

Gail: Oh, yes.

Saameh: Many opportunities for problem-solving with a tire swing. Very popular tire swing. Let's try using the sand timer to make sure everyone gets a turn. Or I can see that you're both feeling frustrated. Okay, we talked about this one. Let's get the solution kit. Get some ideas how we might solve the problem. Offer specific ideas of what the child might do next. Remember that how feedback is given, including what you say, how you say it, it should really be individualized to meet the learning characteristics and temperament of each child. It's not just like one size fits all model.

Gail: Absolutely. I think like the key word is the specific here in specific feedback. Because I noticed all the examples that you gave, it wasn't like, a good job. It was really specific and it didn't even have to have a praise statement. It really could just be like saying what you noticed. You got a tissue for Kai. That was so kind.

It's just labeling the behavior that they're doing can be enough to provide them specific feedback that like, wow, that was important enough for my teacher to say or my educational support person to say. Then that specific feedback about like, let's try something new. Let's try something a little bit different. Also, very helpful. It's so great.

Saameh: Yeah.

Gail: I just think it's like the S in there is really important, that specific part. I really love that. Specific. It's almost more important than the praise is the specific sort of I see you.

Saameh: Because empty praise is not necessarily the most helpful.

Gail: Yeah. That's another whole thing that we're going to talk about.

Saameh: At some point.

Gail: But we are so excited that we're going to check back into Teacher Heather's classroom and see how she provides specific feedback while helping two children solve problems. See if maybe a few know this, some of that specific feedback that she's providing.

Heather: Uh-oh. Amy and Jami, what's the problem? You're getting it to make the fort. And it looks like Amy's holding it, too. Thanks, Elina, for moving so I could get up. What are we going to do about it? You both want the same block? What are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix the problem? I'm going to hold the block for a minute while you guys help figure it out. What's your idea? You want to play with it over there. Should we find out what Jami's idea was? What was your idea, Jami? Oh, and she thinks she needs it for that building. You both need this block for two different buildings.

Do you want to look for an idea in the basket? Grab the book. See what you can come up with. There's another one over there, right? I think Amy's got the book. What are we going to do? She's looking. Let's play together. That would be building the same building together. Take a break. You just take a break from building. Wait until she's done. One more minute. She would have it for a minute and then you would have it for a minute.

You build with something else. Maybe next time. Talk to me. Elina dropped it in there. Playing together. You would build it together. Do you want to build together, Jami? Look, Amy's talking to you. Sorry, I just said it and Amy was saying it. Sorry about that, Amy. Here. Amy, you're going to help Jami build her tower. Excellent. You guys are expert problem solvers.

Gail: So great.

Saameh: Live in action.

Gail: And people are providing some feedback on that as well. I mean, she does such a great job of providing that specific feedback along the way.

Saameh: Absolutely.

Gail: Along the way, absolutely.

Saameh: We are ready to move on to our Small Change, Big Impact segment. Small Change, Big Impact, where we share how small adjustments to the way we set up our learning environment, modify our curriculum, or engage with children can make a big difference for a child's learning.

We know that children vary in their learning characteristics and how they engage with the people and materials in their learning environments. These small changes, also known as curriculum modifications, are made based on the individual needs of the child to help promote their engagement and participation. We know that when children are more engaged, they have more opportunities to learn.

Some children might need more highly individualized teaching to help them learn problem-solving, such as embedded teaching or intensive individualized teaching, making curriculum modifications based on a child's individual learning needs. This can be a great place to start to support engagement.

Gail: Absolutely. And today we are focusing on using social stories. I would be so excited to hear how our viewers are using social stories. I imagine that some people are already using these. But for those of you who might not be familiar with social stories, they are a great little curriculum modification, or not little, because they actually take a little bit of time to put in place. But they are there to support a child who might have some more specific or individualized needs to navigate a social situation or just providing them with a little bit more information as to how to navigate a social situation or a change.

These are written from a child's perspective. And this is very individualized. They have the child's picture in them often. The child's name is used in them. The social story highlights and clearly describes to a child what the most important aspects of the social situation are, like what the appropriate behavior expectations are in that situation, how people, including the child, might be feeling or what they might be thinking about in that social situation.

Social stories, hard to say, sometimes social stories can help increase a child's understanding of a social situation. It can help prepare them to use that new focus skill or focus behavior that's going to help them navigate the situation as successfully as possible. They are very effective in introducing many types of new skills and behaviors to children that might need that, again, more focused and turning the volume up, as I like to think about it, on some of the social atmosphere that might be going on for a child to help them learn.

There is a great video, if you haven't seen it yet, because we've actually shown it before. But if you haven't seen it yet, there's a great video on "Teacher Time" Community in MyPeers about how to make and how to use social stories for teaching purposes. We are going to show a video of one preschool educator using a social story to support a child in the learning environment. As we watch, share what you notice about what the teacher is using, how they're using the social story, or anything else that you notice in the Q&A.

Teacher: Andy. Andy, not a big deal, okay?

[Children shouting indistinctly]

All right, Andy, check it out. You need to keep your hands and legs to yourself.

Andy: [Inaudible]

Teacher: And a calm voice.

Andy: It's too hard.

Teacher: Can you show me a calm voice like this? Hmm? Let's do one more.

Andy: I need some help.

Teacher: Look, Andy.

Teacher: If my friends do something I don't like, I can say, "Please.”

Andy: Please.

Teacher: "Stop.”

Andy: Stop.

Teacher: And get a teacher to help me.

Teacher: Well, what do you need help with, Andy?

Andy: That.

Teacher: You can use a calm voice and say, "Please stop.”

Andy: Please stop!

Teacher: This is what we're good at, right, David?

Gail: Well, I love that. That is a real situation. There's a busy, bustling classroom going on, and that teacher still has enough organizational support going on in that classroom to be able to go over and individualize the support for that young child. They are going through a social story, which the child is referencing with the teacher support, but eventually I think the child's able to use it independently on their own.

Again, if you want to know how to create social stories, or if you want some links to social stories, check out your viewer's guide. We've got lots of links to some social stories that you can use, such as using one for Tucker Turtle. There's also that video in MyPeers about how to get those set up.

Saameh: I see somebody in the chat who speaks so much to the relationship that the child has with the teacher, which, yes, as we can see how important that is to starting out, really building that relationship so the child is trusting the teacher to support.

Gail: Absolutely. And Roxanne's comment about being very calm and listening to the child, right, it just takes me back to what you had us do at the beginning. It takes a moment.

Gail: You have to be mindful as an educator to be like, OK, there's a lot going on in the classroom. This child is really needing my support. Taking a deep breath and then walking them through it.

Gail: It's great so that you can stay calm and support them. I love it

Saameh: Very important. Throughout this webinar, as you've noticed, we have been discussing ways to foster social emotional skills for all children. Today in our Focus on Equity segment, we're going to be using our equity lens to take a closer look at implicit bias and how it impacts how we interact with children and support them in building problem-solving and relationship skills.

The value that we place on peer relationships and the way we go about building and maintaining them are influenced by our families, our culture, our community, and our experiences. And sometimes subtle biases can interfere with our ability to support and partner with children and their families with an open mind. Uncovering these biases takes time and reflection.

What you may have noticed is that we paused and we took those reflective moments throughout this webinar today for reflective practice and starting to think about the following questions. These are ones that we've gone through today here at the webinar. What value do I place on peer relationships? How do I expect peers to act with each other? How do I feel about conflict? Do I listen openly to all children when there is a problem? Is there a child that I am more likely to make negative assumptions about when a problem involves that child?

It's really to take a moment to reflect on these things throughout our day or week or in certain situations. It can be really helpful to ask a friend, colleague, or coach to video record you during a time of day where there tends to be more conflict between children and then to watch that video and notice how you respond and interact with each child involved in a conflict. This is interesting because it reminds me of a puppet thing again. It's like taking a step outside and looking at yourself from the outside.

Saameh: It's kind of hard to see your own back is what somebody told me before.

Saameh: This is a way of doing that.

Saameh: And does every child receive the support and instruction they need?

Gail: That's right.

Saameh: We're going to wrap up with our BookCASE. This month, Dr. Gail Joseph had the chance to meet with our "Teacher Time" Librarian, Emily Small.

Saameh: I'm so excited to hear about the books this month.

Gail: I got to go to the library. It's pretty fun.

Saameh: Oh, nice. Let's watch them make the CASE.

Gail: Hi, everyone. It's time for one of our favorite segments, The BookCASE. And how lucky are we to have our very own "Teacher Time" Librarian, Emily Small.

Emily Small: Thanks for having me back.

Gail: We're so excited. This is just such a treat. Emily has brought a collection of fabulous books for us to talk about. And she’s going to make the CASE for one of them. If you're new to "Teacher Time," let me just remind you what the CASE is.

The CASE really stands for an acronym for four strategies that are really helpful to help you maximize the learning you can get from children's books. C is for connect. We want to think about how we can connect the content or the characters or the story of the book to one of the ELOF outcomes. And the A is for advanced vocabulary.

We know that children love big words and finding big words in books is a great strategy to help support their growing vocabulary. S is to support their active engagement with the book reading. And E is to extend the learning beyond the book. Finding ways that you can keep that magic of the book alive. With that, tell us about the books you have.

Emily: The first one we have is "Luli and the Language of Tea.” This book just came out in 2022. It is probably one of my favorites. It features some children that don't know each other because their families are going to an English language learning class. I also feel like we don't see that very often in picture books.

Gail: I've never seen it.

Emily: Luli is trying to connect with the other children in the space. And she discovers that tea is all a part of their culture. They have a tea party. It's just a great way for kids to learn that you are connected to others. And you just have to find that connection piece.

Gail: Love that. And the illustrations look amazing.

Emily: Yes.

Gail: So engaging.

Emily: We have "Amy Wu and the Warm Welcome.” This is the third one in the "Amy Wu" series. Highly recommend them all. There's a new child in Amy's class who doesn't speak English. And Amy really wants him to feel welcome. You see the steps she takes to help the child feel welcome in class. It's a really great story.

Gail: Again, illustrations are beautiful. I don't even know this book and I want to read it.

Emily: Yes, I love how bright the colors are. Just like, yes, it draws you in immediately. We have "I Forgive Alex: A Simple Story About Understanding.” This is a wordless picture book. Wordless books are fantastic to use for all families, but especially ones where English may not be their home language because anyone can tell a story in any language with a wordless book.

Gail: That is such a great strategy to bring in.

Emily: Yeah. I'll show you some of the photos. But basically it's a story of a child that accidentally ruins another child's artwork. It's just an accident and then the steps that are taken to rekindle that friendship.

Gail: It's such a beautiful story and I love it. Without words, but you can still tell the story.

Emily: And for the CASE, we have "The Little Book of Friendship.” This book is tiny but has so much great stuff in it.

Emily: For the connection, it has really good concrete examples of how to be a good friend, how to make a friend, and then it even addresses when you're not getting along with your friends and those challenges that come up.

Gail: Which happens. A lot.

Emily: Yes, yes.

Gail: Great. Emily, for our A, our advanced vocabulary, we see words like bloom, grumpy, amazing, complimenting. We've got a lot of good emotion words.

Emily: For our supporting engagement, this book asks a lot of questions. It would be great for people to pause while they're reading, maybe write them down so kids can reference them later.

Gail: Great strategy.

Emily: Then for our extend the learning, at the beginning it talks about making a friendship garden. And you could make a friendship garden in your classroom where they all work together to build a garden. Also taking photos of your own children in the classroom so that kids can reference back to them, maybe in a photo album or posting when they're having a hard time with friends.

Gail: Such a great way to make the CASE for this book, "The Little Book of Friendship.” We hope you will find all these books at your local library.

Gail: And bring them into your classroom.

Emily: Yeah.

Gail: Thanks for being with us.

Emily: Thanks for having me.

Saameh: Awesome. That was wonderful.

Gail: It was so fun to be in our "Teacher Time" Library.

Saameh: Thank you. That's about all we have time for today.

Gail: That's it.

Saameh: And thank you so much for joining us. Join us again next month for Responding to Challenging Behavior with Infants and Toddlers. And again in May for with Preschoolers. And bye for now. Thank you so much for being here with us.

Gail: See you on MyPeers. Take care.

Children are born ready to solve problems, and they rely on supportive relationships to learn how to recognize problems and find solutions. Problem-solving involves patience, persistence, and creativity from both the child and the adults in their lives. As preschool children explore their world and engage in play with peers, challenges and conflicts provide opportunities to learn and grow. Discuss practical strategies to foster problem-solving and relationship-building skills in preschoolers.

Note: The evaluation, certificate, and engagement tools mentioned in the video were for the participants of the live webinar and are no longer available. For information about webinars that will be broadcast live soon, visit the Upcoming Events section.

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National Centers: Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning

Age Group: Preschoolers

Audience: Teachers and Caregivers

Series: Teacher Time

Last Updated: September 26, 2023

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7 Key Challenges Facing Early Childhood Education Teachers

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Many teachers of young children will tell you they love going to work every day. Early education professionals have a real passion for what they do. They are 100% committed to their students and their families. They don’t tell you there are many challenges facing early childhood education. The most dedicated teachers can’t avoid difficulties when dealing with young children. There are some issues that even the most dedicated teachers can’t avoid. This article addresses some of the opportunities and challenges in early childhood education.

Current Issues in Early Childhood Education

Many of the current issues teachers of early childhood education face are not new. Some of them have been around for a long time. Some new issues come from things like classroom-related changes. We’ll start with the most obvious problem in the field of ECE: the pandemic.

The Pandemic Plunge

For years, teachers of all grades and subject areas have complained about the “summer slide” —that is the decline in school performance that happens when their students return to school after a three-month break. Some studies have reported this loss of learning to be as much as a quarter of all material learned during the prior school year. Teachers’ concerns over the summer slide could be greater this year since the pandemic’s distance learning made learning and retention even more challenging for students.

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While the pandemic slide may be of concern for all types of teachers, it could add a major burden to an already long list of preschool issues and problems. That’s because the learning milestones that must be met during these early years of a student’s academic journey are the key to their long-term success in school. Early reading goals that are not met, for example, can impact a child’s reading and writing abilities for years to come. The same is true for basic skills like spatial and number sense as well as basic adding and subtracting. Thus, one of the main problems kindergarten and pre-K teachers face will be making sure that kids leave their classrooms with the skills they need to tackle their remaining years in elementary school and beyond.

Long Hours and No Sick Days

Just like a parents’ work is never done, the same is true for the teachers of early childhood-age children. When you consider the amount of paperwork early childhood educators are responsible for on top of managing a classroom full of little ones all day, you can see why long work hours may be among the many challenges preschool teachers face today.

While this is not a new problem and isn’t isolated to early childhood learning, it may be one of the bigger preschool issues, and problems teachers are currently facing due to federally mandated student-teacher ratios . Since a certain number of early education trained professionals must be present depending on the size of the classroom, serious staffing problems can arise if a teacher takes a day off or calls in sick. This circumstance in a preschool class can create a stressful situation where teachers feel compelled to come to school no matter how bad they feel to keep the peace.

Of course, the clear answer to this staffing problem is to hire more trained early childhood professionals, but the solution isn’t problem-free. We will address some of these issues later in the article. For now, consider how difficult it might be for schools and childcare facilities to attract and keep new teachers in the ECE field when they’re not able to pay for the most basic tools that young children need to be successful. To top it off, there are constant professional development requirements. Most teachers need a masters degree in education. Even if you earn one fast with programs like these 1-year masters in education programs you can earn online , it’s still really hard.

Declining Mental Health

An early childhood educator needs to be their best self in the classroom. This is not only for their own sake but for the well-being of the kids in their care. The problem of declining mental health in the ECE field affects little ones, so it’s an issue everyone should care about. Specifically, when teachers feel stressed or overwhelmed in their classrooms, their teaching skills suffer, and so does their ability to manage the classroom. They may have a shorter fuse with their students or not feel up to providing as much positive encouragement as children at this age need. A large amount of evidence has proven that children exposed to too much stress in the early years of life can have tremendous difficulty down the line. This includes stress disorders and even mental impairment. It’s clear that a young child’s healthy brain development is dependent upon relationships with caring, stable adults who can model positive stress responses.

While the mental health of early childhood teachers has been a concern for a long time, the rise of Covid has only made the problem worse. In Virginia, for example, 33% of preschool teachers working in public schools reported feeling depressed in 2020 . This is up from just 15% pre-pandemic. And for reasons we’ve already talked about, taking a mental health day was simply not possible for many of these teachers who suffered in silence for the most part.  

Online Teaching

When schools across the country turned to distance learning as a way to stay afloat during the pandemic, preschools took it especially hard. That’s because so much of what we know about early learning goes against the idea that young children can learn effectively online. That is to say, research-backed teaching methods like project-based learning and free play are hard to replicate via Zoom.

While distance for preschoolers in and of itself tops the list of challenges teachers face today, this problem was made worse when partway through the pandemic, parents across the United States were given the choice of whether to keep their kids at home for virtual learning or send them back to school for face-to-face learning. That meant the school curriculum for preschool and kindergarten classrooms was divided into two groups. Teachers would be responsible for providing equal instruction to both. In many cases, this meant two separate sets of lesson plans, two sets of grade reports, and not enough time in the day to tackle either one. Parents may have felt empowered by choice between virtual and regular instruction. For teachers, divided curriculum planning only added to the list of preschool issues and problems brought on by Covid-19.

If you’ve read this far, you may think that early childhood teachers should be some of the highest-paid professionals in the world. And you’d be right. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case at all. On the contrary, early childhood educators are notoriously underpaid. This is especially true for young teachers just entering the profession and those without an advanced degree. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), preschool teachers earned an average annual wage of just $31,930 in 2020, and the lowest 10% of teachers in the field made just $21,900 yearly. Ironically, that puts many preschool teachers who are married with children of their own under the U.S. poverty line . In California , early childhood educators are twice as likely as other employed residents to live in poverty. Despite receiving praise from parents, administrators, and even the community at large, it’s easy to feel underappreciated when you’re working long hours and still can’t make ends meet.. That feeling can take hold, making teachers feel as if their work is meaningless, which can lead to burnout, another of the key challenges teachers face today.

Lack of Resources

A recent study entitled Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps found that public schools in the United States are underfunded to $150 billion per year. Moreover, researchers found that this funding gap disproportionally impacted school districts comprised mostly of black and Latinx students. What does this mean for early childhood educators? It means that among the many challenges teachers face today, lack of resources remains one of the most important. To make up for the extremely small budgets set for classroom materials, many kindergarten and preschool teachers resort to desperate measures to make sure their kids don’t fall behind. This can mean even reaching into their own pockets (which are often close to empty due to their poor salaries) to make up the difference. If you were to ask a group of early childhood educators the question: “what are the challenges of a preschool teacher?” a lack of resources would almost assuredly be discussed.

Burnout in the teaching profession is real, and it has been for a long time. If you add up all the kindergarten/preschool issues and problems, it comes down to the sad reality that finding and keeping qualified early childhood educators is becoming increasingly difficult. According to a 2020 study, a whopping 44% of new teachers leave the field of education within the first five years of entering it. To find the many reasons why one only has to ask: what are the challenges of a kindergarten or preschool teacher today? Unfortunately, there are too many to name, but it seems one of the key obstacles that lead to burnout is micromanagement in the profession.

Young teachers enter the field bright-eyed and ready to change the world with their creativity and inspiration, only to find out that teaching has become strictly laid out, thanks to looming accountability protocols . This includes the presence of a national curriculum and a growing number of standardized tests they must prepare their young learners to take. Many new teachers feel that the job they were tasked with is simply impossible, and the pressure is two-fold. They feel pressured by parents and administrators to perform miracles in the classroom (with few resources). They also put a lot of pressure on themselves to deliver for the kids in their classrooms. Then there are the common kindergarten/preschool issues and problems that these children bring. Sadly, it often comes from issues at home like food insecurity, absent parents, emotional and behavioral problems, and even abuse. This can make the mountain becomes too steep for a lot of new teachers to climb, especially when they feel unsupported.

Burnout isn’t just a problem for teachers; it affects our nation’s children too. It’s common knowledge that preschool-aged children need stable relationships with adults to thrive. When a kid’s teacher leaves their job because of the growing challenges facing early childhood education today, it can disrupt a child’s social and emotional development and lead to missed milestones and gaps in learning later on.

Rewards of Working in Early Childhood Education

At the start of our discussion, we promised to discuss both the challenges and opportunities in early childhood education. While it’s easy to focus on the many problems faced by a preschool or kindergarten teacher today, it’s just as important to remember the positive things. Many of these dedicated educators return to their jobs school year after the school year. The reason they do it? The kids.

Perhaps more than any other professional, early childhood educators see the value and promise in children. Deep inside, they know what these kids can accomplish. They make supporting these children’s learning and development their primary purpose in life. This is why working in early childhood education is often referred to as a calling. For those who answer it, the rewards are many. Seeing a child grasp a new concept, for instance, or forming a bond with a child labeled a “behavior problem,” is often enough to keep these preschool and kindergarten teachers going strong for months at a time. Of all the potential benefits of teaching at this level, the knowledge that you’re truly making a difference in the world (albeit one child and one lesson at a time) is arguably the greatest reward.

Kindergarten and Pre-K teachers who are making the decision to enter the field should be aware that they will face both challenges and opportunities in early childhood education. If the last year or so has taught us anything, it’s that the challenges teachers face today may not be the same ones they’ll face the following year. Thus, early childhood education teachers must be resilient enough to weather the storms while keeping their passion for guiding little ones burning bright. It isn’t an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. We would argue that not only does it call for a special type of person but also the support of individual communities and the nation at large. Many of the problems faced by kindergarten teachers and preschool teachers alike are financial in nature (like low pay and a lack of resources). As a society, we must be willing to invest in our future This means opening our wallets to support early childhood educators and the children they’re responsible for teaching.

• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): Occupational Outlook Handbook
• The Century Foundation: U.S. Schools Underfunded by Nearly $150 Billion Annually
• Childcare.gov: Ratios and Group Sizes
• Economic Policy Institute (EPI): Breaking the Silence on Early Child Care and Education Costs
• EdSurge: The Pandemic Was Disastrous for Early Childhood Education
• Fordham Institute: A New Era of Accountability in Education
• Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child: Toxic Stress
• Rewire: Why New Teachers are Burning Out Early
• Scholastic: Summer Slide Statistics & Prevention                                                                             
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: 2021 Poverty Guidelines

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Growing in STEM. The Design Process: Engineering Practices in Preschool

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Three-year-olds Jessie and Michaela spend the morning exploring the effects of last night’s rainfall on the playground sandbox. After the sun dries the sand, they ask their teacher, Ms. Stefanie, for water to make the sand wet again. Ms. Stefanie frames this as a problem, asking them, “How can we transport water from the porch to the sandbox?” Ms. Stefanie helps a small group of interested preschoolers imagine solutions by providing photographs and nonfiction texts of water transportation systems—like pipes, aqueducts, and pulleys—to introduce them to ways others have addressed similar problems.

For several days, the children investigate potential solutions, realizing that conservation of water should be one of their primary concerns. As they consider why preserving and reclaiming water matter, they sketch plans and discuss the merits and constraints of various models. Eventually, they agree to design a pipe system to move water. Ms. Stefanie provides copies of a blueprint of the playground, which the children use to draw their pipe plans. She asks them to think about the materials they need to create a prototype. The children list pipes, water, sand, buckets, tape, clay, twine, and sticks. Their enthusiasm for the project remains high, and Ms. Stefanie looks forward to guiding the children through a few cycles of the design process so they can improve their prototype and build a pipe system.

The problem-solving experiences Ms. Stefanie (the second author) facilitated for the children demonstrate how engineering practices can be integrated into preschool classrooms. With just enough support from Ms. Stefanie, the children identified a problem, imagined possible solutions, and selected a design to model and test. In this article, we explain why engineering practices are an important part of early STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning and share recent explorations of engineering practices from Ms. Stefanie’s classroom.

STEM is an essential component of early childhood education as it combines the intentional integration of content with in-depth inquiries meaningfully embedded into children’s real world contexts (Linder et al. 2016). While engineering practices—one aspect of STEM learning—are similar to inquiry processes, there are some significant differences. “Scientific inquiry involves the formulation of a question that can be answered through investigation, while engineering design involves the formulation of a problem that can be solved through design” (NGSS Lead States 2013). We set out to better understand what solving problems through design looks like in preschool. We thought critically about the potential of engineering practices to engage children’s intellect in authentic ways and to address “the life of the mind in its fullest sense” (Katz 2010).

The design process

Adding engineering practices to the preschool classroom formally introduces young children to the design process.  Design  is the “study of aesthetics and the utility of items in our daily lives” (Bequette & Bequette 2012, 40). While professional designers typically have an elaborate multistep process for creating and improving their plans to solve problems, we needed a streamlined approach for novice designers. Engineering is Elementary has developed a five-step engineering design process for elementary students (Museum of Science, Boston 2018), which we’ve paraphrased here:

• Ask —to identify the problem and others’ solutions
• Imagine —to brainstorm and select a solution to test
• Plan —to specify the design and materials
• Create —to make and test a model
• Improve —to ask how the design can be even better and start the cycle again

Based on the museum’s process, we developed the following slightly modified four-step design process for preschoolers:

• Finding a problem : Identify a problem or need. Ask, Why is it important? How have others approached the problem?
• Imagining and planning : Brainstorm solutions. Sketch possible plans. Choose one to build. List and gather needed materials.
• Creating : Refer to the plan and build a model or prototype. Share the model for feedback or test the prototype.
• Improving : Analyze the model or prototype with others. How could it be improved? Redesign based on feedback.

Finding a problem

Teacher-guided play that includes identifying problems encourages children to become critical observers of their surroundings. The aim is strengthening children’s disposition to seek and embrace complex challenges. In preschool, children may need help finding problems. Questioning, as Ms. Stefanie did in the opening vignette, can lead children to recognize challenges they can take on.

To help the children see themselves as problem solvers, Ms. Stefanie often looked for opportunities to engage the children in authentic design challenges. One such occasion arose when we colleagues were talking about renovating the playground. Ms. Stefanie saw this as a good potential design problem for the children to solve because of its relevancy to their lives and because the children could present their designs to an authentic audience.

After introducing the idea to her class, Ms. Stefanie showed images of various playground designs. A particularly interesting geometric climbing dome, unlike anything on our preschool playground, generated a flurry of responses. Ms. Stefanie asked, “What kinds of climbers do you think we should have on our playground?” Based on the children’s eagerness to design a solution, she knew that they had found their next engineering problem.

To deepen the children’s understanding of the problem, Ms. Stefanie helped them explore how others have addressed similar problems. For example, Ms. Stefanie and the children shared their own playground experiences, studied images of playgrounds in other places, examined playground architects’ blueprints, gathered data about their own school’s playground, and talked to some of the people serving on the preschool’s playground renovation committee (teachers, parents, and other volunteers affiliated with the university) about playgrounds in their community.

Imagining and planning

Four-year-old Andrew begins sketching some design ideas. He suggests that the structure for the Magnolia classroom (3- and 4-year-olds) include “steppers for jumping,” but thinks the structure for the Willow classroom (2-year-olds) should be different. As he incorporates an arch into his Willow design, he explains, “This is so they can climb over, because their legs are not as long.” Andrew points out, “I made them a stool to get up. You put your feet here and swing jump over.” Pausing to consider his sketch, he shifts his idea. “This is actually for the Holly room (4- and 5-year-olds), because it might be a little too scary for the Magnolias and Willows. I can build a medium one for the Magnolias and a small one for the Willows. So everyone can have a climber to climb on. I will add a stool to get up and a slide to go down.”

Ideas are slippery. Representations—such as Andrew’s drawings—stabilize ideas so they can be examined (Eisner 2002). Envisioning possibilities and giving form to them challenges children to perceive subtle differences and portray the essence of their designs (Katz, Chard, & Kogan 2014).

Teachers can foster creative engineering practices by explicitly teaching concepts and techniques children can use to symbolically represent their thinking. Examples include demonstrating types of lines (e.g., straight lines, curved lines, zigzag lines, and spirals), inviting children to try them, and discussing making long lines, short lines, fast lines, and other kinds of lines. Similar demonstrations can be done for composition (i.e., use of space on the page) to help children plan their designs.

Empathizing is another skill embedded in imagining and planning. It involves “learning to perceive the world through someone else’s mind and body” (Costantino et al. 2015, 17). An authentic design problem, contextualized in children’s day-to-day experiences, can’t help but invite consideration of who will be impacted by the different potential solutions. There are real people and constraints involved—something Andrew considered as he modified his climber design to suit a range of age groups. Whether or not to design different play spaces based on perceived age-related competencies had been a contentious issue among Ms. Stefanie’s colleagues. Though she did not raise the issue with the children, they empathized with the younger children’s possible needs (and potential fears) on their own.

After imagining and sketching multiple possibilities, the next step is to select one of the plans to build a model from. This requires analysis of the designs’ strengths and weaknesses. Ms. Stefanie worked with a small group of children who chose to brainstorm and sketch design plans. She invited each of them to explain what was important about their design by commenting on specific aspects of each drawing and asking questions like, “What do you think makes this a good design?” or “Why do you think this will work better?” Each child selected one of his or her own designs to then create a model from.

Jelani refers to his drawing as he constructs a 3-D model using small wooden blocks. Realizing the blocks do not allow him to create the rounded shape his plan requires, he says, “I can’t make the circle, there’s no round.” Unable to locate curved blocks for his oblong climber, Jelani is still for a moment, appearing perplexed. Then he revisits his design, editing it to represent his new block model.

Translating plans into models requires  dimensional thinking , in which designers move back and forth between 2-D and 3-D (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein 1999). Consider drawing versus building with blocks: drawing on paper provides freedom to visualize impossible structures, while building with blocks restricts structural possibilities because many designs will collapse. Other construction materials, like clay and wire, offer more flexibility but still have far more limitations than sketches. “The constraints of a medium make it difficult to symbolize certain meanings. The paper used to symbolize elephant has no easy way to capture heaviness or the lumbering walk or the trumpeting roar” (Forman 1994, 44).

Teachers can foster dimensional thinking by giving children opportunities to explore multiple mediums for modeling—such as sculpting materials, twine, felt, and found items—and then using them to create models that they present to others. Ms. Stefanie encouraged children to manipulate clay, smooth it out with water, flatten it, roll it, and coil it. In this way, she invited them to play with the clay’s endless capacity to be shaped and reshaped. She also provided rolling pins and basic wooden modeling sticks that the children could use to add shape or texture. By narrating her observations as children explored the properties of the clay and tools, Ms. Stefanie made the features and qualities explicit.

Once children had experience with the materials, Ms. Stefanie increased the activity’s complexity by helping the children build models of their climbers. This was quite a representational challenge for the preschoolers. Using clay and other materials, they had to solve the problem of vertical stability: how could they make their climbers stand?

Learning to evaluate and improve one’s own work is a challenging task that requires a great deal of practice (Isbell & Yoshizawa 2016). “When children are able to return to and continue with their work the details and expressions are significantly extended” (86). Creating a model naturally leads to identifying opportunities for revising and enhancing the design. Throughout this stage, it is important for teachers to support and extend children’s thinking. After validating children’s efforts by observing and describing what the children have done (Swartz & Copeland 2010), teachers can

• Ask questions for greater clarity  (e.g., “What are you going to do with ___?”)
• Find out about the next set of actions  (e.g., “Are you planning to add more ___?”)
• Share information or resources  (e.g., “There are different kinds of bridges ___”)
• Make suggestions  (e.g., “You might want to try ___” or “I wonder what would happen if ___”)

Ms. Stefanie cultivated the children’s dispositions to improve their work by providing time and space for them to revisit their designs each day during choice time. In the design space the children could reference the images of playgrounds Ms. Stefanie has shown them, photos of their existing playground, their initial design sketches, and their 3-D models. Ms. Stefanie also provided multiple kinds of materials (e.g., paper, pencils, clay, wire, blocks, and found objects) the children could use to construct and reconstruct their designs in 2-D and 3-D.

Ms. Stefanie engaged with the children in the design space, encouraging them to rethink and rework their ideas. This codesigning enabled her to point out specific qualities or strategies evident in children’s work that would be useful for others. For example, Ms. Stefanie commented, “Andrew’s jumper idea works, but he also wants a way to go up without jumping. How else do you think he could do this?” She also asked, “How did Patience show the ways the steps connected to the base of the climber?” Ms. Stefanie’s remarks helped children learn to observe closely and notice particular qualities in their own or their peers’ representations. This encouraged them to view their peers as resources for collaborative design strategies.

Ms. Stefanie made the value she placed upon revising work over time explicit by providing an authentic audience. She invited the children to share their designs with the school’s director and to make recommendations to the playground renovation committee. In preparation, Ms. Stefanie held a class meeting where she retold the story of the design processes she observed. She showed photographs that documented the children’s design processes and read some notes she had written as she observed the children, acknowledging and appreciating the children’s efforts to revisit and improve their designs. Then Ms. Stefanie asked the children which design or designs they thought they should bring to the preschool director to recommend for their playground. Rather than selecting only one design to be built, the children suggested that multiple kinds of climbing equipment be included so that children could engage in different ways. Their recommendation was heeded, and the initial phase of the playground renovation included climbers of various sizes.

Supporting children in completing the design process—including several cycles of improving their plans and models—is a great gift to them. As one scholar explained:

Letting children grow up thinking they  must  get things right the first time is cruel and deceptive. Even teaching them that they  can  get things right the first time is unfair. If getting things right were easily done, we would hand the children a world in beautiful, highly functional condition. Given the work that lies ahead of them, we must give the children our support and the freedom to do it  wrong  at first. (Clemens 1999, 7)

The engineering design process—finding a problem, imagining and planning, creating, and improving—enables educators to engage young children’s minds in solving real problems, demonstrate that learning includes testing and revising, and help children explore a wide range of STEM topics.

Ms. Stefanie’s preschool class has embraced engineering practices. When a design does not work well or could be made even better, they enjoy revising and improving on their ideas and plans. They see themselves as problem solvers—identities that will serve them well throughout their education and lives.

Bequette, J.W., & M.B. Bequette. 2012. “A Place for Art and Design Education in the Stem Conversation.”  Art Education  65 (2): 40–47.

Clemens, S.G. 1999. “Editing: Permission to Start Wrong.”  Early Childhood Research & Practice  1 (1). http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v1n1/clemens.html .

Eisner, E.W. 2002.  The Arts and the Creation of Mind . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Forman, G. 1994. “Different Media, Different Languages.” In  Reflections on the Reggio Emilia Approach , eds. L.G. Katz & B. Cesarone, 41–53. Urbana, IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

Isbell, R. & S.A. Yoshizawa. 2016.  Nurturing Creativity: An Essential Mindset for Young Children’s Learning . Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Katz, L.G. 2010. “STEM in the Early Years.” Collected Papers from the SEED (STEM in Early Education and Development) Conference.  Early Childhood Research & Practice . http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/beyond/seed/katz.html .

Katz, L.G., S.C. Chard, & Y. Kogan. 2014.  Engaging Children’s Minds: The Project Approach . 3rd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Linder, S.M., A.M. Emerson, B. Heffron, E. Shevlin, A. Vest, & A. Eckhoff. 2016. “STEM Use in Early Childhood Education: Viewpoints from the Field.”  Young Children  71 (3): 87–91.

Museum of Science, Boston. 2018. “The Engineering Design Process.” Engineering is Elementary. www.eie.org/overview/engineering-design-process .

NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) Lead States. 2013. “Three-Dimensional Learning.”  Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States . Washington, DC: National Academies Press. www.nextgenscience.org/three-dimensions .

P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Learning). 2011. “Framework for 21st Century Learning.” www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework .

Root-Bernstein, R.S., & M.M. Root-Bernstein. 1999.  Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People . New York: Mariner Books.

Schwartz, S.L., & S.M. Copeland. 2010.  Connecting Emergent Curriculum and Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom: Strengthening Content and Teaching Practice . Early Childhood Education series. New York: Teachers College Press.

About the editors

Sandra M. Linder , PhD, is an associate professor of early childhood mathematics education at Clemson University. Her research centers on supporting teacher practices and student understandings related to early childhood mathematics. 

Angela Eckhoff , PhD, is an associate professor of teaching and learning in the early childhood education program and codirector of the Virginia Early Childhood Policy Center at Old Dominion University. Her areas of specialization include creativity and inquiry-based pedagogical practices in early childhood.

Photograph: © Getty Images

Jolyn Blank , PhD, is an associate professor at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on professional development and the role of the arts in early learning. She is a former preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teacher. 

Stefanie Lynch , MEd, is a doctoral candidate in early childhood education and a preschool teacher at the University of South Florida’s Preschool for Creative Learning. She is interested in the ways teachers enhance the complexity of young children’s scientific thinking. [email protected]

Vol. 73, No. 4

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Illinois’ children and toddlers are experiencing more delays in getting early intervention services

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About a year after Desi Evans’ son Christopher was born, she noticed he wasn’t making sounds or babbling like other young children.

After the mother from Barrington, Illinois – a town west of Chicago — raised her concerns to her pediatrician at Christopher’s one-year check-up, the doctor recommended having him evaluated for a state program designed to help students with disabilities or developmental delays.

The program, known as Early Intervention, serves over 20,000 children and toddlers under the age of 3 throughout Illinois.

But, even though Christopher was found to have a speech delay and approved by the state to receive speech, developmental, and occupational therapies, he was not able to receive service until three months before he turned 3, when children are no longer eligible for Early Intervention.

Christopher, now 3, isn’t alone. Since the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, it has become harder for children to get evaluated or start services that are vital to ensuring they are prepared socially, emotionally, and academically for school. Early childhood education advocates say staffing shortages are creating barriers to early intervention services and they are urging state lawmakers to invest another $40 million into next year’s budget for the program.

More than 4,000 children are waiting to be evaluated for services, according to a report by the Illinois Department of Human Services in February. Another 23,000 children have been approved for early intervention services.

The report also found that 7.6% of children who were approved for the Early Intervention program are experiencing service delays — when the state cannot find a therapist to provide services. That’s nearly double what it was in 2019, when 4.7% of children approved for services were seeing delays.

When Christopher was able to receive some services for a couple of months, Evans said he started to talk more and his vocabulary grew.

“He was more attentive and his focus expanded,” said Evans. “Before, he would only focus for maybe like 5-10 minutes at a time when we’re doing an activity.”

Staffing shortages across early intervention

Early Intervention: A state program run by the Illinois Department of Human Services that provides services to families who have children under 3 with developmental delays.

Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP): After a child is evaluated for disabilities and eligible for services, they will receive a plan for their child.

Service delays: After a family has an IFSP but the state cannot find a service provider for at least one service, there is less service available than what is recommended in the child’s IFSP, or a delay in service due to a family reason.

Service coordinators: Employed by the state to work directly with families to coordinate evaluations for children, set families up with service providers to receive therapy, and help families transition out of the program when the child turns 3.

Service providers: Independent contractors with the state who provide services such as speech, developmental, occupational, and physical therapy.

Illinois early education advocates say families face hurdles when accessing early intervention services because the state has a low number of service coordinators, who are responsible for evaluating children and connecting them to therapists, and service providers, independent contractors that provide services such as speech, developmental, occupational, and physical therapies.

In 2023, the state reported about 3,964 providers, a decrease of 6.6% from 2019 when there were over 4,246 providers.

A survey by Afton Partners commissioned by the Illinois Department of Human Services found a high turnover rate of service coordinators due to low wages, lack of benefits, high caseloads, and burnout. That makes it difficult for families to get an evaluation done within a timely matter; often, they are waitlisted.

Even when a child has received an evaluation, services could be delayed if the service coordinator cannot find a therapist to work for a family as was the case for Desi Evans’ son.

According to state law, once parents agree to receive therapeutic services under the Individualized Family Service Plan — a legal document that includes the child’s diagnosis, evaluation notes, and services they will need in early intervention — children should receive services within 30 days. Some families often do not receive services within that time frame.

Alison Liddle, a physical therapist contracted with the state to provide early intervention services, says her practice takes on private clients to keep afloat. Liddle mentioned that one of her staff members was thinking about leaving the practice because they are overwhelmed from trying to pay for student loans and child care.

Illinois is not the only state dealing with shortages. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infant and Toddler Coordinators Association, a nonprofit organization that advocates for early intervention nationally, released a report in 2023 that found 44 states and jurisdictions said they were experiencing provider shortages, especially for speech and language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, special educators/ developmental specialists, and service coordinators.

Early childhood advocates lobby for more funding

On April 16, early childhood education advocacy organizations from across the state bused hundreds of parents and community organizations to Springfield to ask lawmakers for more money for early childhood education — including a $40 million increase for early intervention.

They say the funding boost could be used to increase compensation for providers, bring in new providers, and increase the speed in which families receive services.

In Springfield, small groups of people in purple and yellow shirts that said “For Brighter Futures” walked around the Capitol building searching for state lawmakers. In some cases, advocates weren’t able to chat directly with legislators, as many were voting on bills on the House floor. Some advocates opted to write letters instead.

Zareen Kamal, policy specialist at Start Early, one of the organizations that bused advocates to Springfield, told Chalkbeat that an increase would “allow for a much-needed rate increase for the workforce and prevent providers from leaving [Early Intervention] due to years of inadequate compensation.”

Unlike service coordinators, service providers are independent contractors. The state reimburses them for providing services to families after billing private insurance. However, providers aren’t paid for transportation, missed or canceled appointments, or receive health care or other benefits. Some providers decide to work in hospitals or the private sector to make more money.

Advocacy organizations such as Start Early, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago, is asking the state to allocate an additional $40 million for early intervention. Over the past four years, the program’s budget has largely remained flat or been cut, shifting between a total of $108 million and $115 million since the pandemic hit in 2020.

Last year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced his Smart Start Initiative and allocated more funding to early childhood education. In the first year of the plan, statewide programs received an increase of $250 million. The Early Intervention program received a bump of $40 million last year.

This year, the governor proposed an increase of $6 million for Early Intervention— less than advocates had hoped for.

In a statement to Chalkbeat Chicago, a spokesperson for Pritzker said last year’s increase was meant to cover the 2025 fiscal year.

“The program is funded to cover the more than 25,000 families enrolled in EI services, and this year’s additional $6 million investment – representing a proposed $46 million total increased investment in EI since the beginning of the Smart Start Illinois initiative — will cover projected enrollment growth over the next fiscal year,” the spokesperson wrote.

Desi Evans, the Barrington mother, says Christopher is currently receiving private therapy after he aged out of the Early Intervention program earlier this year.

She still feels guilty that she didn’t push harder to get Christopher services sooner.

“I feel like I failed him, like I should have done more,” said Evans. “I wish I knew what I know now, but I didn’t.”

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at [email protected] .

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said the district’s new budget formula is an “important milestone.” But at some schools, parent and educator concerns are starting to percolate.

After hearing from parents, the board passed a resolution to create a special task force to review each school’s health and culture.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee said.

The Colorado Education Association says it’s concerned about whether there’s enough sustainable funding for the new formula, but indicated that it’s open to further talks.

Illinois early childhood education advocates and parents say staff shortages in early intervention are delaying services for children under 3.

Lawmakers send bill to the governor, who signaled that he'll sign it

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Ohio Near Bottom in Preschool Spending Compared to Other States

The report called inadequate funding “a near universal problem.”

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine used his recent State of the State speech to proclaim the importance of child care and education, but a national report released last week ranks Ohio near the bottom of the country in preschool spending.

The National Institute for Early Education Research’s annual “state of preschool” report showed nationwide disparities in access, quality and funding for preschool, with Ohio sitting at 43rd in total reported spending on the early education.

“Most states have not committed to serving all children, and even those states that have often fall short,” W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director and founder of NIEER at Rutgers University, said in a statement. “Most states need to increase funding per child substantially to enable providers to meet minimal standards for a high-quality, effective program.”

Barnett did praise a 2023 increase in state-level funding of $122 million over two years as part of the most recent state budget, as well as a $250 increase in per-pupil funding, the first in the state since 2009. Ohio ranked 36th in state-specific spending on preschool in the new report, which specifically studied the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s publicly funded Early Childhood Education program for the 2022-2023 school year.

That boost followed a reduction in the 2022-2023 school year, when state spending dropped $268 per child from the 2021-2022 year.

“We encourage Ohio to keep up the progress, as much work remains to provide access to full-day, adequately funded early learning opportunities that will help children develop and parents earn a living,” Barnett wrote in a release on the new data.

Ohio has a total of 18,000 children enrolled in pre-K education, with 35% of the school districts offering a state-funded program. The federally funded Head Start program for ages 3 and 4 has a state enrollment of 24,649. No state contributions go to the Head Start program for 3 or 4 year olds, according to the study.

Nationally, preschool enrollment rose to 35% of 4-year-olds and 7% of 3-year-olds, with overall state expenditures increasing by 11% compared to 2021-2022 data.

“However, despite this notable progress, most states still fell short of their pre-pandemic preschool enrollment,” NIEER stated.

In terms of access, Ohio ranked 36th for 4-year-olds and 26th for 3-year-olds.

Last year’s report saw Ohio in 36th for 4-year-old enrollment, but slightly lower at 27th for three-year-old enrollment.

In the 2024 research, Ohio only met half of the 10 benchmarks noted in the report.

Benchmarks met by the state in the most recent NIEER report included early learning and development standards; curriculum supports; specialized training for teachers; screening and referral; and its continuous quality improvement system.

Researchers found the state hadn’t met benchmarks in teacher degrees, assistant teacher degrees, staff professional development, maximum class size and staff-to-child ratios. This data was identical to last year’s met and unmet benchmarks for Ohio.

An associate degree is required in the state for pre-K teachers, but the NIEER benchmark is a bachelor’s degree. For assistant preschool teachers, the Ohio requirement is a high school diploma, though the NIEER sets a benchmark of a child development associate credential or equivalent credential.

Maximum class size set in Ohio is 24 for 3-year-olds and 28 for 4-year-olds, though NIEER recommends 20 or lower.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: [email protected] . Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter .

Articles by Susan Tebben

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