Compensation and Comparable Worth: What Lies Ahead for California’s Preschool Teachers?

Throughout the field of early care and education, it has been generally recognized that the quality of services, and their benefits for young children, are closely intertwined with the qualifications, stability and compensation of the teaching and caregiving workforce (Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team, 1995; Kontos, Howes, Shinn & Galinsky, 1995; Phillips, Mekos, Scarr, McCartney & Abbott-Shim, 2000; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Whitebook & Eichberg, 2001; Whitebook & Sakai, 2004). But in the absence of substantial gains in compensation for this profession, the difficulty of attracting and retaining skilled and well-qualified teachers has remained a persistent, often crisis-level problem for decades.

In the growing discussion of a Preschool For All system for California, there is wide agreement that the effort must be sufficiently well financed that pay in this sector of the field not only improves, but becomes comparable to the compensation of elementary school teachers. In fact, many look to Preschool For All as a route for solving, at least partially, the broader compensation problem in early care and education.

The challenges, of course, are daunting. How will we guarantee that the Preschool For All system is funded adequately? How will this new system fit into the already highly complicated delivery system and rate structure that characterize early care and education in the 21st century? It may be easy enough to embrace the idea that we want comparable compensation from preschool through elementary school for comparably qualified teachers, but how will we make this a reality?

This policy brief is intended as a starting point for this discussion - not claiming to have the solutions, but rather laying out the complexities that must be grappled with in order for solutions to emerge. Among other opportunities, preschool planning has the potential to move our field at last from explaining why to improve compensation to resolving how to improve it.