New Jersey

Morris Child-care Centers Rely on Benefits to Lure Quality Recruits
BY LAURA BRUNO DAILY RECORD
Morris County, New Jersey

The state's youngest students are being taught by teachers who are less educated today than they were in the 1980s, according to study released by a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit economic research center.

While New Jersey is considered at the forefront in the U.S. in efforts to improve preschool programs in low-income communities, the Economic Policy Institute found that persistently low wages and benefits have resulted in a smaller percentage of college graduates today working as early childhood teachers and administrators than 20 years ago.

The share of New Jersey childcare center teachers and administrators with a four-year college degree slipped from 54 percent in 1980 to 45 percent in 2000, according to the institute's study of Census data. New Jersey's figures, however, are still well above the national level of 30 percent with a college degree.

"Overall, the picture in New Jersey is strong, because as the situation in New Jersey has gotten worse, the same thing has happened throughout the United States," said Stephen Herzenberg, one of the report's authors, and the executive director of the Pennsylvania-based Keystone Research Center.

New Jersey has been on the right track in the Abbott communities, the state's poorest school districts, Herzenberg said. The state required that, by September 2004, all Abbott preschool teachers have a bachelor's degree. The progress from this policy is not yet reflected in available data, he said.

Meanwhile, the Abbott programs only serve about one-quarter of the state's 3- and 4-year-olds.

"New Jersey's work is not done yet," Herzenberg said. "It's off to a good start."

The picture in the rest of the country is far more bleak. Only two states -- Pennsylvania and Hawaii -- had higher percentages of college graduates in their early childhood workforce -- 53 percent and 46 percent respectively.

The percentage of U.S. center-based teachers and administrators with at least a four-year college degree averaged 43 percent from 1983 to 1985, but only 30 percent from 2002 to 2004.
"It's a battle because the ones who come with the degrees come for the experience and then leave for the public schools because of the higher pay," said Eileen Jankunis, executive director of Morris County's Head Start.

Of the 11 teachers Jankunis employs, only four have been with Head Start for 10 years. And of the 11, six have a bachelor's degree.

"The hardest thing is recruiting a new teacher," Jankunis said. "When they hear the salary, I lose a lot of them right there."

Jankunis pays a starting salary of $16.67 an hour, or about $28,700 a year for a new teacher with a bachelor's degree. Many Morris County school districts pay starting teachers an annual salary closer to $40,000.

In New Jersey, the median hourly earning for a childcare worker is $11.50, according to the institute's study.

The early childhood education industry has been living off college-educated teachers and directors who entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s and stayed with it. However, as the demand for childcare exploded, the industry could not attract similarly educated workers with the low wages and lack of benefits, Herzenberg said.

Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, said the data show the effect of the national welfare-to-work policies.

Barnett said the federal government was more interested in getting people into work and didn't worry about the development of their children. The federal government has only subsidized custodial care of these children, rather than investing in people who could teach, Barnett said.

"They poured a lot of money in childcare without concern about quality," Barnett said.

While there has been marked improvement in New Jersey's Abbott districts, Barnett agreed that, outside those communities, more progress is needed. The state's current requirements call only for a center's head teacher to have a bachelor's degree and assistant teachers to have a high school diploma.

Some Morris County childcare centers try to keep highly qualified teachers by offering extra benefits to offset the lower pay.

At Kiddie Academy in Morristown, teachers are offered an 80 percent discount of their child's tuition, said Jill Head, the center's director. That's attractive to a parent looking for a flexible work schedule, she said, considering that tuition costs $258 a week for a toddler.

Kiddie Academy also offers medical and dental benefits, tuition reimbursement for teachers who pursue higher education and on-site training. Of her center's 26 staff members, eight have a bachelor's degree, she said.

"We try to make it so that they can build a career here,"Head said. "It is a struggle though because the pay is not always there."

Likewise, at Children on the Green in Morristown, the center offers free health and dental benefits and a company match for a retirement plan. Rochelle Kelman, the nonprofit center's executive director, said these benefits have helped to retain good teachers.

Of her four teachers, two have a bachelor's degree, she said.

Kelman said many centers find that with a good number of public school teachers retiring, those with degrees don't have a hard time getting jobs in the public schools.

In order to get quality early childhood programs to flourish, there must be a greater investment in salaries and benefits.

"Quality early childhood education is an infrastructure investment for a knowledge-based economy," Herzenberg said. "We're shooting ourselves in the foot if we're not making that investment."