In January 2017, the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center (Center), with grant funding from the Alliance for Early Success and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, announced grants to eight state teams (Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin) to raise the awareness of early childhood workforce compensation issues and create new or significantly expand policy, strategy development and implementation, and funding to improve the compensation of the early childhood education teaching workforce in participating states.

Since that time, new cohorts of states have been invited to participate in the Moving the Needle projects.

  • 2018-2019: Following on the heels of these states, three new states (Minnesota, Ohio and Rhode Island) were invited to participate in a second cohort, with Texas and Michigan invited back from the first cohort, to address, once again, improving compensation of the early education teaching workforce through a state team approach.
  • 2019-2020: As Texas and Michigan finished two years on the project, New Jersey and Alabama joined continuing states Minnesota, Ohio and Rhode Island in the project. 
  • 2020-2021: This current year New Jersey signed up for a second year and six new states—Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina—joined in the cohort.

In September 2021, four states will form a new cohort to move the needle on early childhood education workforce compensation.

You can find reports on the first four cohorts of state teams, including their accomplishments, challenges, lessons learned and next steps, on this page.

Moving the Needle on ECE  Workforce Compensation State Accomplishment Briefs

Moving the Needle on ECE  Workforce Compensation

To move the needle on compensation in their states, teams are required to:

  • Assemble teams comprised of stakeholders who are committed to addressing the education, compensation and retention issues facing the early education workforce in their states;
  • Create strategic action plans including goals, measures of achievement, strategies and action steps; and
  • Work toward implementing their goals.

To support states in this initiative, the Center provides technical support and resources to assist teams including webinars, newsletters, links to up to date research, team leader meetings and national Summits that bring all state teams together for two days of learning, sharing information and moving forward with their action plans.

Compensation Presentations