2016 Roundtable - Mobilizing an Exceptional Early Childhood Workforce

MOBILIZING AN EXCEPTIONAL EARLY CHILDHOOD WORKFORCE

Baltimore, MD | June 1-3, 2016

2016 Roundtable Summary now available!

Theme/ObjectivesPresentersPreliminary ReadingsPresentations & MaterialsResources

THEME – Mobilizing an Exceptional Early Childhood Workforce

PURPOSE: Build the capacity of state early childhood administrators to provide informed leadership about research-based practices to support an effective, high performing statewide workforce for children birth through third grade.

DESIRED RESULT – Each state has an effective, comprehensive, incentivized system for early childhood workforce professional development to ensure every child has access to high-quality, developmentally appropriate education and support delivered by exceptional teachers and administrators.

OUTCOMES – As a result of this meeting, state early childhood education administrators and others will:

Increase awareness of policies, best practices, and successful strategies to strengthen the workforce for teaching children birth to through grade three.
Broaden awareness of what research says about the impact of a skilled workforce on children, birth through grade three.
Learn from national experts and colleagues about different state and international models which provide leadership for strengthening the early childhood teacher and administrator workforce.
Identify technical assistance needs and resources to enhance state capacity and support state leadership efforts for preparing, supporting, and retaining an exceptional early childhood workforce.

2016 SPEAKERS

Steve Barnett is Director of NIEER and Principal Investigator at CEELO. Steve is a Board of Governors Professor and Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. His research includes studies of the economics of early care and education including costs and benefits, the long-term effects of preschool programs on children’s learning and development, and the distribution of educational opportunities. Dr. Barnett earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan. He has authored or co-authored over 180 publications. Research interests include the economics of human development and practical policies for translating research findings into effective public investments. His best known works include: reviews of the research on long-term effects; benefit-cost analyses of the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian programs; randomized trials comparing alternative approaches to educating children including length of day, monolingual versus dual-language immersion, the Tools of the Mind curriculum; and, the series of State Preschool Yearbooks providing annual state-by-state analyses of progress in public pre-K.

Steven Hicks serves as Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Education in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE). Steven initially joined the Department through the Department’s Teaching Ambassador Fellowship program, a nonpartisan program designed to improve education for students by involving teachers in the development and implementation of national education policy. His portfolio includes intra-department coordination, early learning strategic planning, communications, education policy development, legislative technical assistance, stakeholder relations, and Secretary and senior staff briefings. Before joining the U.S. Department of Education, Steven was a pre-kindergarten through third grade teacher in Los Angeles, California. At the State level, Steven served for three years as California Reading and Literature Project Pre-K Director for the California State University Los Angeles Region, working with preschool teachers and paraprofessionals from various program models across the county. He also participated as part of the Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP) planning collaborative to establish high-quality preschool throughout the county. Later when the initiative was well established, the early learning center he founded at his charter school became the one-hundredth LAUP site. Steven holds a Masters of Education in Early Childhood and Primary Education, National Board Certification in Early Childhood Generalist, and a Child Development Program Director Permit.

Gail Joseph is an associate professor in the area of Educational Psychology and the Director of the Early Childhood and Family Studies program at the University of Washington. She teaches courses, advises students, provides service and conducts research on topics related to early care and education. Gail has been involved in a number of research projects and training and technical assistance activities at the local, state and national levels related to child care quality, teacher preparation, and promoting children’s social emotional development as well as preventing challenging behavior in early learning settings. She serves as a reviewer and editorial board member for journals in early childhood and early childhood special education. Currently, she is a principal investigator and Director of the Childcare Quality and Early Learning Center for Research and Professional Development (www.cqel.org), and co-principal investigator and co-director of the National Center for Quality Teaching and Learning. She is also working with Kristie Kauerz to co-direct an Executive Leadership in P-3 Certificate at the University of Washington.

Tammy Mann has worked for over 20 years in the nonprofit sector in agencies devoted to improving outcomes for young children and their families. At the outset of her career, she worked on the frontlines as a psychologist, providing home visiting services to low-income pregnant women and families with very young children. Prior to joining The Campagna Center, Dr. Mann held senior executive positions at the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute at UNCF and ZERO TO THREE. Dr. Mann has played an active role in shaping the field of early childhood development through numerous service and professional endeavors. In 2012, she was appointed Commissioner of the Children, Youth, and Families Collaborative Commission in Alexandria where she serves as the first elected chair. She was also elected as an at-large member to serve on the Governing Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and has an Affiliate Associate Professor appointment at George Mason University in the College of Education and Human Development. In addition, she has worked as an adjunct faculty member, teaching courses in human development, at Howard University and been a public policy fellow at the American Psychological Association. Dr. Mann earned her Bachelor’s degree from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and completed her Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Clinical Psychology at Michigan State University.

KimOliver Kimberly Oliver-Burnim’s childhood admiration of a child care teacher and her college summers spent working at a young children’s day camp inspired Kimberly Oliver Burnim to become an educator. Since then, Kim has devoted her life to building on these experiences, especially the one-on-one relationship forged between that special teacher and herself. Kimberly Oliver Burnim has been a teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland for over 15 years. In 2006, she was named the 56th National Teacher of the Year during a ceremony at the White House. Ms. Burnim is currently a Consulting Teacher, providing direct support for new teachers and underperforming teachers in her school system. In 2014 she renewed her early childhood generalist certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In addition to teaching, Kim is senior curriculum advisor for ABCmouse.com, an award winning, comprehensive and engaging online curriculum for children ages 2-7 years old.

Shannon Rudisill is the Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development. Rudisill was previously Director of the Office of Child Care (OCC, formerly the Child Care Bureau [CCB]), where she focused on raising the bar on quality in child care across the country, particularly for low-income children. From 2000 to 2007, Rudisill served as director of the Division of Technical Assistance at the CCB. As TA Director, she initiated new projects in the areas of infant and toddler care, the social and emotional development of young children, and school readiness. In addition, she built bridges between these early childhood programs and programs at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to that, she was Special Assistant to ACF Assistant Secretary Olivia Golden and worked extensively on the Clinton Administration’s child care initiative.

Marcy Whitebook joined IRLE and established the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment in 1999, as a researcher focusing on issues of employment in settings for young children, the relationship between good jobs and the quality of services available to children and families, and appropriate and accessible professional preparation for teachers. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she taught in early childhood programs for many years, and was the founding Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), an organization she began in 1977 as the Child Care Employee Project. Marcy has led several large-scale early childhood research projects, including the landmark National Child Care Staffing Study, which first brought public attention to the low wages and high turnover of child care teachers. She co-developed the Early Childhood Mentor Program in California, now operating in 96 colleges throughout the state, and CARES, a California program to encourage professional development and retention of early care and education practitioners. She worked as an infant toddler and preschool teacher for many years, and received a Ph.D. in Developmental Studies from the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Preschool Yearbook: the State of Preschool 2015: The state of preschool report for the 2014-2015 school year includes objective state-by-state profiles and rankings, and indicates that urgent action is needed from lawmakers at all levels of government to ensure that every child – particularly those from low-income families – have access to high-quality early education. For the first year, NIEER also analyzed states’ early education workforce, revealing that pre-K teachers are much more poorly paid and supported than teachers of older children even when they have equivalent qualifications. See in particular the Workforce Supplement.

Early Childhood Teacher Education Policies: Research Review and State Trends: The paper provides policymakers with a review of published research on early childhood (ECE) workforce education and credentials as well as on the current status of ECE wages, recruitment and retention challenges, and promising practices. It summarizes trends in state requirements regarding ECE teachers with bachelor’s degrees and specialized certification, licensure, or endorsements of pre-K teachers. The paper includes recommended actions and strategies, based on research and state suggestions, regarding approaches that states can use to recruit and retain teachers with bachelor’s degrees and ECE credentials.

Transforming the Workforce for Children, Birth through Age 8 – A Unifying Foundation: Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective – to nurture young children and secure their future success – the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. See in particular Chapter 11, Status and Well-Being of the Workforce.

Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: compiles evidence from multiple sources to provide a portrait of the early childhood teaching workforce today in comparison to 25 years ago. The need to rely on a variety of data sources to obtain this portrait reveals the absence of a comprehensive, regularly updated database on the status and characteristics of the early childhood workforce. In addition to examining trends in center-based teachers’ education, wages and turnover, the report includes new evidence examining economic insecurity and use of public benefits among this predominantly female, ethnically diverse workforce. The report also appraises state and national efforts to improve early childhood teaching jobs, and offers recommendations aimed at reinvigorating a national conversation about the status and working conditions of the more than two million teaching staff who work in our nation’s early care and education settings. See in particular Chapter 5, “The Public Cost of Inadequate Compensation” and Chapter 6, “Policy Efforts to Improve Early Childhood Teaching Jobs”.

Sharpening the Focus: State Policy to Promote Effective Teaching that Improves Learning: The BUILD Initiative and the Center for Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) have been working together with state leaders and national experts to strengthen policy that promotes effective early childhood teaching, birth through 3rd grade. A result of our ongoing collaboration, “Sharpening the Focus: State Policy to Promote Effective Teaching that Improves Learning” encourages state policymakers and their partners to critically review professional development and accountability policies, offers guidance on policy implementation, and makes recommendations for the “powerful and few” core state policies that can improve teaching and learning for all young children.