Tackling Teacher Turnover in Child Care: Understanding Causes and Consequences, Identifying Solutions

Childhood Education, Summer 2006 by Hale-Jinks, Claudia, Knopf, Herman, Kemple, Kristen

Turnover contributes to poor-quality services for children and families, and can have serious deleterious effects on children's development and adjustment.

"Teacher turnover," the number of teachers who leave a program during a year (Granger & Whitebook, 1989), has numerous detrimental effects that can lower the quality of care received by children and families. High rates of teacher turnover, high child-to-adult ratios, and poorly trained staff characterize poor-quality child care in the United States (De Vita, Twombly, & Montilla, 2002). In fact, high rates of teacher turnover may be a consequence of low program quality.

When a teacher leaves, the remaining caregivers may feel the effects of losing a team member in their classroom or program (Hamrick, 2000), and these effects can trickle down to the children. The loss of a particular caregiver with whom a child has established a trusting relationship can affect the child's feelings of security in the child care setting, and also may affect the development of cognitive and social skills (Howes, Hamilton, & Philipsen, 1998; Howes & Smith, 1995). Center directors may be left scrambling to find a competent and knowledgeable person to fill the vacant position; very often, they have a difficult time doing so (Neugebauer, 1997).

Muenchow, Baker, Eldridge, and Benham (1998) observed child care classrooms in Florida in 1992 and again in 19% to record the number of teachers who remained in the same classroom setting during that period. Upon their return, Muenchow et al. found that only two percent of the original sample, 3 out of 150 classrooms, had the same teacher. In a study of 149 child care center teachers, more than half of those interviewed in 19% had left their centers by 2000 (Whitebook & Sakai, 2003). On a national scale, yearly rates of turnover consistently have been found to be quite high in the United States; one figure, from the National Child Care Staffing Study, conducted from 1988-1997, shows it to be 31 percent (Whitebook, Howes, & Phillips, 1998). This is almost four times greater than the 8.6 percent annual turnover rate among elementary school teachers (Ingersoll & Rossi, 1995). While high turnover often characterizes low-wage jobs, and is to some degree expected and accepted, this set of circumstances is extremely problematic in the field of child care. Turnover contributes to poor-quality services for children and families, and can have serious deleterious effects on children's development and adjustment.

What Contributes to High Rates of Teacher Turnover?

Several factors have been linked to high levels of teacher turnover. Among these are high job stress (Curbow, Spratt, Unagaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2001) and inadequate compensation (Kagan, Brandon, Ripple, Maher, & Joesch, 2002). Inadequate compensation (in the form of wages and benefits) often leads caregivers to lose motivation and turn to other sources of income to support themselves (Kontos & File, 1992). High job stress can contribute to lowered motivation and likely makes the decision to leave a low-paying job that much easier. Teacher training and administrative support are key to retaining caregivers (Catapono, 2001; Young, 2000). Without supportive administrative practices, teachers may feel isolated and devalued (Carter, 2000; Sciarra & Dorsey, 2003). Without adequate training, caregivers may find that meeting the daily challenges of child care work is too difficult and frustrating. In the United States, unfortunately, child care teachers in general are not well supported, trained, or compensated. At the same time, there is a high demand for child care teachers. Eighty percent of the CEOs of America's top 50 forprofit child care organizations identified the shortage of quality teachers as a major threat to their organization (Neugebauer, 1997).

Inadequate Compensation. Inadequate compensation has been identified over and over again as the strongest predictor of turnover among child care teachers (Phillips, Mekos, Scarr, McCartney, & Abbott-Shim, 2000; Whitebook & Bellm, 1999). The Center for the Child Care Workforce (2002) collected data determining the mean hourly wage for child care workers to be $7.86 per hour, or $15,092 a year, while preschool teachers average $9.66 per hour. These wages are comparable to wages earned in jobs that require little or no education. For instance, parking lot attendants made an average of $7.69 per hour and bus drivers made an average of $13.10 per hour, according to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2000 (as cited in Laverty, Siepak, Burton, Whitebook, & Bellm, 2002).

Although some caregivers begin their careers with high rates of job satisfaction, this contentment begins to wane as they begin to view their pay as unfair (Kontos & File, 1992). Of course, pay scales and salary are not the only factors that affect job satisfaction and, in turn, teacher turnover. Benefits and other job reinforcers, such as reimbursement for professional development, performance bonuses, health insurance, sick leave, and paid vacations, are not common for child caregivers. As of 2002, only five states offered initiatives to improve job benefits to child care workers as a strategy for improving quality in child care (De Vita et al., 2002).