Providing the early learning workforce with access to debt-free college education, better compensation and job stability since 1990

T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education And Compensation Helps) Early Childhood® is a comprehensive national strategy helping address the need for a well-qualified, fairly compensated and stable workforce. T.E.A.C.H. is unlike any other scholarship opportunity.

View a quick overview PDF (Haga clic aquí para ver la versión en español) or learn more below.

What Sets T.E.A.C.H. Apart? 

  • Provides a cost-shared model
  • Ensures employer buy-in
  • Demonstrates success and effectiveness
  • Ensures implementation to model fidelity balanced with flexibility
  • Drives system change
  • Increases the demand for higher education
  • Ensures efficiency in program implementation
  • Requires accountability
  • Helps build leadership for the field

T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® Scholarships:

  • Tie education, compensation and retention together
  • Pay for most of the cost of tuition, books and travel
  • Often require and support paid release time
  • Award increased compensation upon attainment of a prescribed number of college credit hours
  • Provide every participant with access to a scholarship counselor who 1) supplies all of the information and materials scholarship recipients and sponsoring centers need to get started and 2) helps the recipient negotiate the higher education system including academic and career advising, financial aid and textbook acquisition

The impact of T.E.A.C.H. goes beyond the individual recipient by:

  • Addressing retention of staff in early childhood programs
  • Creating demand for coursework that builds the capacity of educational institutions in local communities

The 5 Cs of T.E.A.C.H. Scholarship Components

  1. Comprehensive Scholarship
    Most often provides significant support for tuition, fees, books, travel and paid release time
  2. College Education
    Requirement to complete a specified number of credit hours per contract
  3. Compensation
    Provision of a required bonus or raise upon completion of required credit hours
  4. Commitment
    Requirement for the scholarship recipient to remain in their child care setting for a specified period upon receipt of bonus or raise
  5. Counselor
    Individuals who are housed within each T.E.A.C.H. agency and support scholarship recipients to ensure student success

From higher education institution capacity building to individual educational goals, T.E.A.C.H. can be a change agent in every state

Experiences of more than 30 years reveal bringing the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® Program to a state in and of itself helps build the capacity of organizations serving the early childhood workforce, both organizationally and financially. Because the field is considerably under-resourced at every level, bringing a T.E.A.C.H. program into a state often helps strengthen organizations that administer the program and helps build the infrastructure of fledgling organizations that take on the administration of T.E.A.C.H.

T.E.A.C.H. also facilitates long-term systemic change in states by helping create access to higher education that was not available prior to T.E.A.C.H. This enables those organizations to take on new projects to address improvements in the early care and education system.

T.E.A.C.H. is more than a scholarship.

Why T.E.A.C.H.?

T.E.A.C.H. Impact Stories

Whether early educators are working in private for-profit or not-for-profit programs, Head Start, pre-kindergarten classrooms or family child care homes, T.E.A.C.H. has increased the availability of accessible, affordable college education and workforce supports for these women in low wage jobs working with vulnerable children in early education settings.