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

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

Another program that encouraged inservice training is California's CARES Initiative, which occurred from 1997-2000. The goal of this project was to build a skilled and stable child care workforce (Burton, Mihaly, Kagiwada, & Whitebook, 2000). Participants in this study received $500 to $6,000 in benefits a year. The amount of their stipend was determined according to their educational background and the degree to which they were pursuing professional development. Such stipulations are effective in reducing turnover, because applicants have to stay at their current job for a year to begin receiving the benefits.

Increasing training and its accessibility is not an easily resolvable issue. More communities need to commit money to fund such endeavors. While some child care centers pay for their employees' inservice training, many do not. Many states are implementing experimental programs through block grants and initiative funds that seek to increase the quality of child care through increased caregiver training. The fact remains that most caregivers are paying out-of-pocket, despite low wages, to attend inservice training.

Conclusion

The first author and a fellow caregiver were discussing the need for quality child care and our struggles through preservice training. The fellow caregiver said that she had been confiding to her husband about her discouragement regarding her career. "I work so hard to learn at school what is best for the children and then come to work to make low wages," she lamented. "Why don't you change your major and get a real job?" her husband replied.

In a large-scale study conducted to determine caregivers' perceptions of child care, participants frequently maintained that they did not feel recognized by their families or communities (Taylor et al., 1999). The exchange quoted above illustrates the widespread lack of respect and appreciation accorded to the work of child care teachers. The child care workforce needs to look like a profession in order to be respected as a profession, and simultaneously needs to be respected as a profession in order to look like a profession. Higher standards in training and field entry requirements need to be established in order to enhance the knowledge and competence that caregivers must possess in order to provide appropriate care and education for groups of young children. Livable wages and benefits must be in place to retain well-prepared teachers in the workplace. Attention to compensation, training, and support can reduce the stress and job dissatisfaction often experienced by child care teachers. This has the potential to ameliorate the problem of high turnover, which lowers program quality and puts young children at risk.

The child care workforce as a group is characterized by an enormous turnover rate. The silence of this workforce as a whole reveals the notion that society is content to let these teachers, who are mostly women, lead a career of quiet servitude. Advocates and policymakers can support caregivers by continuing their work to provide them with fair compensation, training, and administrative support. The caregiving workforce's cry for help is seemingly silent in that there is a lack of union action and community awareness. However, the statement that child care givers make in dejectedly leaving their jobs and careers is loud and clear. Young children are the ones left behind with that statement ringing in their ears.