Increasing Childcare Teacher Compensation Through Teacher Support Grants

• In Event: Compensation for the Workforce: The History, the Policies, Attempts at Increase, and the Teacher's Point of View

Abstract

Historically early childhood educator compensation has been low in the United States, particularly in the child care sector, which is the formal setting that serves the largest number of children from birth to five (Whitebook et al., 2014). In turn, teacher financial and economic wellbeing is often low, and turnover is high (Bassok et al., 2021)—challenges that have been both made abundantly clear and exacerbated in the wake of COVID-19, as many early educators opted to leave their roles for higher-paying jobs (Bassok et al., 2021). These challenges have negative implications for children’s learning and development (Tran & Winsler, 2011).

To stabilize the child care workforce, many states are currently experimenting with strategies to increase compensation for child care teachers. While recent experimental evidence shows that wage supplements can lead to substantial reductions in turnover (Bassok et al., 2021), to date we have little statewide data on teacher compensation, and no evidence on most compensation reform strategies.

This paper targets this gap using data collected during the rollout of one large-scale compensation effort: Louisiana’s Teacher Support Grant (TSG). All publicly-funded child care sites were eligible for the TSG, which provided $3200 per classroom in Summer 2021 and $5200 in Winter 2022. Sites were required to use TSG funds for compensation but could do so flexibly.

Our sample includes the more than 600 child care sites who applied for both waves of TSG funding (covering >75% of publicly-funded child care sites). Data include information about: (1) teacher wages, bonuses, and benefits; (2) staffing (e.g., number of current teachers, vacancies, and teachers exits over the past 6 months, difficulty hiring); and (3) use of TSG funds. In these data, we ask:

1) What did compensation look like in Louisiana in the summer of 2021?
2) How did sites vary in their use of TSG funds (e.g., wage increases vs. one-time payments)?
3) To what extent is fund use associated with improvements in site-level staffing outcomes (e.g., staff retention rates), controlling for baseline characteristics?
4) To what extent did site-reported stress and/or challenges change?
Findings highlight the low wages and limited benefits faced by child care teachers. The average wage in the summer of 2021 was $10 per hour, with 79% of sites reporting that they offer no health insurance benefits to teachers. We found that most Louisiana sites struggled with staffing and hiring in the months preceding the first grant award, and continued to struggle after receiving funding. Wages increased during the grant period from an average of $10.69 to $11.30 per hour for lead teachers. There was substantial variation in how sites used TSG funding, however: about half provided one-time bonuses and two-thirds gave pay raises. Moreover, bonus and raise amounts varied widely across sites. Next steps include estimating associations between increased compensation and retention rates (Q3). We will also explore leaders’ views of the TSG as a strategy for staff retention (Q4). Implications for large-scale policies targeting compensation in ECE and educational equity will be discussed.

Author

• Anna J. Markowitz, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author