The Importance of Investing in Professional Development for Early Educators

As we face an ongoing child care crisis across our country, the impact on the early childhood workforce is devastating. Our early education and care system isn’t just failing our children and families – it’s also failing our early educators. This workforce, which is disproportionately women of color, is paid little more than minimum wage, resulting in many who are struggling to make ends meet. 

More than one in three child care providers is experiencing at least one area of economic hardship, including difficulty paying for basic needs such as food, housing, and utilities. Many are incurring significant debt along the way. This is according to new data from RAPID — an early childhood and family well-being survey that launched in April 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a report on the results of the survey, the organization notes: “Addressing these issues will rely on prioritizing policies that significantly increase workforce compensation including standard benefits like health insurance and retirement benefits, coupled with alleviating debt, including student loans, and free, appropriate training and credentialing to meet quality goals.”

At Neighborhood Villages, we've been tirelessly advocating at the state and federal level for significant and permanent wage increases for educators — increases that are commensurate with the invaluable service they provide in our society. 

But that’s not enough. In addition to livable wages and better benefits, we also must ensure that early educators have access to the academic and professional development programs that enable them to advance their careers in early education. 

That’s why Neighborhood Villages has partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) on the Professional Pathways program, a resource designed to help early educators enroll in higher education courses towards a credential or degree and advance their careers. 

Through Professional Pathways, educators can work with Neighborhood Villages Student Support Associates (SSA) to help identify professional and educational goals and enroll in courses and degree programs offered by Massachusetts community colleges, and higher ed institutions with Associates, Bachelors and Masters degrees. SSAs help students enroll in courses that fit their needs and schedule, including options for online, hybrid, and/or in-person courses in various languages. 

This program is designed to meet the unique needs of this workforce and set them up for success. Each student is connected to a dedicated SSA who provides one-on-one assistance to help them navigate the system and enroll in courses that work with their goals and their schedules.

One student, who used Professional Pathways to find and complete an early childhood development course at Bunker Hill Community College, said: “Finding Professional Pathways and having a real contact person was like a GPS to help me navigate exactly what I needed to do.”

She described feeling supported through the whole process and said she would encourage other early educators or those who want to get into the field to enroll. “Don’t shy away from it because it seems overwhelming at first. Everybody wants you to succeed and there is help. It’s a community designed to help you succeed,” she said.

In addition to the one-on-one direct guidance that SSAs provide to individual students through Professional Pathways, child care programs licensed by EEC can also establish groups of educators, connect them to a coursework cohort, and request a specific course or pathway to meet their needs. 

This was a great resource for Kate Latham, principal of Primrose School in Burlington, who set up a cohort for a group of early educators at her school through Professional Pathways. 

“The field of early childhood education in Massachusetts has incredibly high turnover rates, and a lot of that turnover is people leaving the field,” said Latham. “It’s so important to do what we can as leaders in the field to help people commit to staying. Continuing their education and making that opportunity very low-cost to them is a great way to do that.”

The Professional Pathways program helps build a career ladder for early educators and expand a workforce that we rely on to keep our children healthy, safe and thriving. A steady, stable workforce pipeline of highly trained educators is critical to ensuring that all children have access to high quality early education. We need this kind of investment to support providers and teachers and to meaningfully reform the early education and care system so that it works better for everyone. 

To learn more about this program, visit our dedicated Professional Pathways webpage.