Apprenticeship: a key to solving our child care crisis – Commonwealth Magazine
By David A. Jordan
Within every challenge lies vast opportunity, and perhaps nowhere is that more true than our child care system, which is struggling with a capacity shortage. Solving the capacity problem will not only make child care availability more abundant, it will create new career mobility opportunities for some of the lowest-paid workers in our Commonwealth.
Teacher assistants are the entry level of the child care workforce and these are lower-paying but not low-skilled jobs. Compliance with state regulations and pandemic health and safety guidance requires staff to apply skills, motivation, and commitment while also caring for children and helping them to learn.
The child care workforce has been decimated by a number of factors, including: the loss of many professionals due to COVID-19; the need for some employees to be home with their own children during the pandemic; increasing competition from large national retail companies that can pay a higher wage for far less demanding work; and the “silver tsunami” and “great resignation” that are sending a record number of workers to retirement and to discover new careers.
The path to becoming a credentialed Child Development Associate, which enables one to become a preschool teacher and, with additional training, a lead teacher, is difficult and costly. There are, however, steps that can be taken to support workers on their journey and retain them by making higher-skilled and better-paying jobs more attainable. By holding on to these employees, some 30 to 40 percent of whom are people of color, we are creating a workforce that is culturally and linguistically aligned with many of the families being served by our child care system.