Building the Talent Base/Lessons Learned

The barrier of professional status
How can a field become a destination for talent if its status is suspect? All too often, early childhood teachers are treated as “babysitters,” custodians of children’s basic safety and physical needs. This stereotype of the profession is hardly an attractive one for the nation’s best talent. Policymakers and leading child development organizations have tried to raise the status of the early childhood teaching profession by raising qualifications for teachers. But doing so can be controversial. The current early childhood workforce might not qualify, causing displacement, and efforts to elevate the profession—by the profession itself—have moved at a glacial pace. The accreditation standards of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), for example, demand that 75% of lead classroom early childhood teachers have a B.A. by 2020.

What can be done in the meantime? CityBridge’s strategy depends in part on leveraging the “brand identities” of its grantees to raise the status of the field as a whole. Thus far, in the case of Teach for America, this strategy has shown some promise. TFA was skeptical that its corps members would ever accept early childhood postings. Yet, on an initial questionnaire in the spring of 2006, 28% of TFA’s recruits indicated their willingness to become pre-k teachers. TFA now predicts that it will have no trouble finding 500 pre-k corps members per year by 2010.

Teacher licensure requirements hamstring reform 
A consensus is beginning to emerge that the nation’s system of training teachers is fundamentally flawed. Though there are some notable exceptions (e.g., Columbia Teachers College, Erikson Institute), education schools generally attract the least academically prepared undergraduates. The combination of licensing requirements and local teacher shortages virtually guarantee that licensed teachers will receive jobs. Seldom, however, are new teachers trained to handle challenging urban school districts. Nor are education schools required to demonstrate that their graduates are actually effective teachers. Teacher licensing regulations as they are written thus help to perpetuate mediocrity in the classroom.

As political leaders are increasingly held accountable for school performance—in D.C., the mayor won approval in 2007 to take over the school system—they may begin to consider alternatives to traditional licensing. Alternative programs could offer new and more accountable routes to teacher training, allowing policymakers to determine what program or recruiting elements actually produce effective teachers.