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
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Compensation. Lauren Hogan, National Association for the Education of Young Children (Symposium, April 2018)
- Reconceptualizing Leadership and Advocacy in ECE: Placing Teacher’s Voices at the Center of Workforce Reforms. Lauren Hogan, National Association for the Education of Young Children (Summit, April 2018)
- Policy and Funding Leavers in Support of Compensation: What Policies Do We Need and Where Will The Funding Come From? Tool. Anne Mitchell, Early Childhood Policy Research & Alliance for Early Childhood Finance and Adele Robinson, University of Maryland (Summit, April 2018)
- Compensation Strategies in the States: Evidence from the Early Childhood Workforce Index. Caitlin McLean, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, UC Berkeley (Summit, April 2017)
- Looking at the Early Childhood Workforce: What Do We Know? Elaine Weiss, Broader Bolder Approach to Education, Economic Policy Institute (Summit, April 2017)
- Compensation…Making the Case to Funders. Albert Wat, Alliance for Early Success (Summit, April 2017)
- Financing Early Childhood Workforce Strategies-Finding the Money. Anne Mitchell, Early Childhood Policy Research & Alliance for Early Childhood Finance (Summit, April 2017)
- Building a Public Awareness Campaign on ECE Workforce Compensation. Amy O’Leary, Strategies for Children (Summit, April 2017)