Congress can ensure our children thrive by empowering their educators - Fortune
By Mark Reilly
Sarsha Martin wanted to teach young children. She persevered through three years as an early childhood educator in Jumpstart’s program at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and began her career as a kindergarten paraprofessional. Yet, the low pay, coupled with her student loan debt, forced Sarsha to leave the educator workforce. Sarsha’s brief tenure as an early educator is unfortunately not rare. Unless we act now, classrooms will continue to lose out on talent like her.
The pandemic has exacerbated the ongoing teacher shortage in preschool classrooms around the country. Early educators are burnt out, and potential teachers are dissuaded by the gaps in the system, including low wages, long hours, lack of training, and few classroom resources. The Build Back Better plan’s investment in early education is long overdue, but any new investment will only make a difference if we support current educators and bolster the workforce pipeline. In turn, this will help counteract the devastating impact of COVID-19 on gender equity and the economy, as 1.4 million more American mothers remain out of the larger workforce than the year before the pandemic.
Ensuring highly-trained teachers are in every classroom is especially critical in low-income communities, where students are most often underserved. The skills and well-being of these professionals are critical to students’ life-long success, but the high costs associated with obtaining a degree, historically low pay, and limited to no professional development or health care benefits remain as systemic obstacles.