History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
– Maya Angelou

Envisioning how to transform the ECE system requires considering the ways in which the field’s history has shaped how the current system is organized.

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment has acquired a vast collection of historical early care and education documents spanning the 20^th century. Over the next year, we will be culling our archives and converting a range of records into online resources to share the field’s rich history with readers. It is our hope that sharing these records, along with our ECE Policy Quiz, will stimulate your desire to engage in more intentional learning about the ECE system and the advocacy and organizing efforts over the last century.

If you have records that have been converted to an electronic format and would like them to be considered for our site, contact us at cscceinfo@berkeley.edu.

Check back periodically for new additions to this page.

Who Cares for the Children?

A slide show produced in 1980 by Parents and Workers United for Child Care, a group comprised of local child care teachers and parents in the San Francisco Bay Area advocating for more services to meet the unmet demand for child care among working parents and better wages for child care teachers. It provides a brief history of the struggle for adequate child care services in the United States beginning in the early 20th century. Many of the problems identified in 1980 remain unaddressed today, underscoring the ongoing need for change agents willing to challenge the status quo and transform the current system to one that better meets the needs of all children, families and practitioners. Explore how practitioners and parents were discussing these issues with the community.

A new study was released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that describes steps being taken toward improving early care and education workforce data and enhancing workforce quality. Using a variety of state and federal interviews and data sets, the GAO examined:  (1) current information about the composition, education, and income of the ECE workforce and how these characteristics relate to quality of services, and (2) what activities and initiatives are underway by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Education, and in the states that finance the improvement of worker quality?

In March 2011, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine hosted, and the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service sponsored, a workshop with more than 70 participants focused on the early childhood care and education (ECCE) workforce. A detailed report on the workshop was released that explores issues in defining and describing the workforce, the marketplace of ECCE, the effects of the workforce on children, and the contextual factors that shape the workforce. Presenters examined the challenges and the opportunities that exist in building ECCE as profession. CSCCE Director Dr. Marcy Whitebook was a member of the 12 person Committee on the Early Childhood Care and Education Workforce which provided expertise to the National Academy of Sciences and also presented at the event.

The Year 4 interviews of the Learning Together study reveal that two to three years post degree, nearly 95 percent of graduates remain in the early care and education (ECE) field, and that graduates overwhelmingly report personal, professional and educational benefits as a result of their B.A. degree cohort program. Specifically, graduates report that structural aspects of their B.A. program, such as financial aid and flexible class schedules, were important to their educational success, that the cohort experience continues to provide them with professional support, and that as a result of their degree attainment they now earn more, have advanced in their careers, and continue to explore educational opportunities. Graduates also identified several important areas for programmatic improvement, such as expanding coursework to include ECE public policy and classes on working with adults.  They also discuss workplace characteristics that support or impede their abilities to engage in good practice and to continue to develop their skills.

Executive Summary (pdf)

Full Report (pdf)

Read more information about the Learning Together project, or read the Year 1 report, Year 2 report, or Year 3 report.

Understanding how higher education contributes to teacher performance is a complex undertaking. It requires identifying which variations in program content and delivery are most relevant to student learning and teacher practice with young children. This necessitates appropriate research methodologies that can illuminate key program variations, which are re essential for generating solid evidence to inform policy and practice.

By Default or By Design? Variations in Higher Education Programs for Early Care and Education Teachers and Their Implications for Research Methodology, Policy, and Practice draws upon a case study of two early childhood B.A. completion cohort programs in order to illuminate the limitations of current ways of conceptualizing and studying early childhood teacher education. Focusing on four dimensions— program content, clinical experiences, faculty characteristics, and institutional context—we examine challenges encountered and lessons learned in seeking to understand differences in educational experiences among students attending these two programs. We then offer a series of recommendations for more nuanced ways of describing and evaluating the quality of higher education programs for early care and education practitioners.

Executive summary (pdf)

Full report (pdf)

The Center for Labor Research and Education has released a new study which finds that the $5.6 billion early care and education (ECE) industry supports $11.1 billion in economic output in California. The authors estimate that spending on ECE supports nearly 200,000 jobs, and state ECE spending results in more than half a billion dollars in state and local tax revenue. The study finds that every dollar spent on ECE yields $2 in economic output for the California economy.

This article, published in the Spring 2011 volume of Early Childhood Research & Practice reports on an interview study with directors of Head Start and child care programs who are collaborating with local education authorities to provide publicly funded preschool.

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As quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) increasingly become the key strategy for improving the quality of early care and education, it is critical to understand and examine how such systems define quality, the benchmarks used to indicate quality, and the opportunities in place to support improvement. This report examines the extent to which QRISs support the professional development of practitioners and include in their rating rubrics key ingredients — staff qualifications, direct compensation, and the factors related to work settings –  that have been linked to quality.

Download the Report (pdf)

Download the Executive Summary (pdf)

Policy Brief (pdf)