Pennsylvania

Sometimes a talent without a degree is the best solution to the problem. Degrees demand a salary that counts. The problem is finding someone whose interest in the world around them hasn't caused them to seek a degree. A degree is often the thing that wakes the sleepy minded up.

At the same time, degrees have a way of closing minds as well.

Share With Four-Year College Degree Drops From 40% to 27%
Pennsylvania Issue Brief Part of Nationwide Release of Research Conducted by Pennsylvania-based Think Tank

HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ --

In the 1980s about 40 percent ofteaching staff in Pennsylvania's center-based preschool programs outside the public schools had a four-year college degree. Today, according to a new studyby the Keystone Research Center, the number is 27 percent.

The study, "Losing Ground in Pennsylvania Early Childhood Education," also reports that the share of staff with a high school degree or less has risen from 34% in the mid-1980s to 43% in the 1998-2004 period. (Teaching staff,also referred to as early childhood educators, include teachers,administrators, assistant teachers, and aides.)

The decline in the educational level of early childhood educators at atime when the overall workforce became more educated is cause for concern according to Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone ResearchCenter and an author of the study.

"There is compelling evidence that high-quality early education has agreat positive benefit to young children later in school and life," says Herzenberg. "Because the quality of early education depends in large part on thequality of the teachers who provide it, the data we report today should serveas a warning about the overall health of early childhood education inPennsylvania."

According to the KRC study, one major reason for the decline is the lowwages of jobs in early childhood education. The median pay in the industry isabout $8 an hour, or about $17,000 a year, for a full-time worker. Few earlyeducation jobs provide health or pension benefits.

"What Pennsylvania needs," says Mark Price, KRC economist and report co-author, "is a comprehensive approach to assuring quality in early childhood education programs. That means phasing in higher standards for staff and raising compensation so that ECE can hold onto more qualified teachers.

The state should also encourage new research that will expand our understanding ofthe impact of teacher qualifications and alternative training approaches."

Price notes that Pennsylvania has taken positive steps with the existing TEACH program that provides scholarships for education and training of earlychildhood educators, and the Keystone STARS program that offers incentives tocenters to improve program quality. These programs, however, are not operated at the scale necessary to reverse the fall in staff qualifications documentedin "Losing Ground."

Among the KRC study's other main findings:

By the year 2000, less than a third of center-based early childhoodeducators had a college degree in seven of eight metropolitan areas. In Reading, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Allentown and York, less than a quarter ofcenter-based early childhood educators had a college degree.

Education levels are even lower in Pennsylvania's home-based ECE. In Pennsylvania home-based ECE, only 14 percent of educators have a college degree and half have a high school degree or less.

The report on the early childhood education workforce in Pennsylvania isone of seven state-level studies released today along with a longer nationalstudy. All of the reports were written by KRC staff and released by KRC, theWashington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, and the Foundation for ChildDevelopment. The Foundation for Child Development provided funds for the national project.

The national and state reports fill a vacuum that had existed in knowledge of the ECE workforce over time. The national study and state-level studies for California, Florida,Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are available from the KRC-sponsored, the EconomicPolicy Institute or the Foundation for ChildDevelopment

The Keystone Research Center's research on the Pennsylvania early childhood education workforce was funded by grants from the Heinz Endowmentsand the William Penn Foundation. The Keystone Research Center is a non-partisan progressive research organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and a leading source of independent analysis of Pennsylvania's economy and public policy. Most KRCreports are online at http://www.keystoneresearch.org/.