New York

Here's another study that backs up the failure.


Study Faults Early Education
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle News

Cara Matthews
Albany Bureau

(September 15, 2005)

Low wages in an ever-expanding and increasingly expensive early-childhood education industry means that less-qualified workers are teaching young children, according to a new study by three nationally known research groups.

Research has documented that early education is important in kids' development and has valuable long-term benefits, said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, which produced the report along with the Economic Policy Institute and the Foundation for Child Development.

Although the percentage of early-childhood teachers and administrators with college degrees has fallen in New York, it is still markedly higher than the national average.

In 1980, 60 percent of New Yorkers in these categories had graduated from four-year institutions, compared with 50 percent in 2000. The national average in 2000 was 30 percent, the report said.

The share of all of New York's educators — teachers, directors, assistant teachers and aides — with four-year degrees fell from 42 percent in 1980 to about 23 percent in the 2000-04 period.

Females comprise more than 95 percent of the more than 60,000-member early-childhood education work force in New York. The total is up from fewer than 20,000 in 1980. The median pay is less than $10 an hour, compared with $14.50 for all workers.

Kathy Russell, director of the Graduate Inclusive Early Childhood Program at Nazareth College, said many people love working in early-childhood education but move onto other things for economic reasons.

"Because of the relatively lower pay, oftentimes they find as they get older that they're really not able to make a career of it, not able to live on it," she said.