Early educator Kayla Pinto. (This photograph was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.)

It can be challenging for early educators to go to college. They often have to squeeze in classes, keep up with homework, keep working, and pay tuition.

But as writer and developmental psychologist Suzanne Bouffard explains in a Hechinger Report article, innovative public policies and programs can help — and Massachusetts is one example of how.

Bouffard’s article — “To boost preschool quality, Massachusetts invests in college degrees for teachers” — starts by telling the story of Kayla Pinto, who “knew she had found her calling from the first day she taught preschool at the YMCA in Somerville, Massachusetts.”

Pinto had “grown up attending programs at the Y in this small city just north of Boston, and she started working there when she was 14. But it wasn’t until her early 20s, when she was asked to fill in for an absent preschool teacher, that she realized how much she connected with young children.”

“Pinto, 33, now a veteran teacher with 11 years’ experience, still has a passion for becoming a better teacher every day. One thing she doesn’t have is a bachelor’s degree. That limits the salary she can earn at a community center like the Y and prohibits her from working in the higher-paying public pre-kindergarten sector, where the qualifications required of a preschool teacher are similar to those needed to teach elementary school.”

Pinto had tried college, but she left amidst financial struggles and other challenges. Other early educators tell similar stories. And because their salaries are low, early educators hesitate to take out student loans, knowing how hard it would be to pay them off.

Fortunately, Massachusetts has created solutions.

In 2005, the state Legislature “approved the Early Childhood Educators Scholarship Program. It covers all or almost all of the cost of tuition for any Massachusetts early educator who is working in the field and obtaining a degree.” This scholarship program is helping Pinto earn her bachelor’s degree.

Massachusetts also has “an initiative called MassTransfer, which encourages students to earn an associate degree at a community college, then transfer to a bachelor’s program at a four-year school.”

And Massachusetts officials are “testing out a new, competency-based pathway with a small group of early childhood educators who have already been in the field for many years. Those educators can earn college credits by successfully completing assessments demonstrating their knowledge or by completing online coursework. It’s a way to ensure that early childhood educators have the knowledge and skills they need while acknowledging the experience that seasoned teachers have gained already.”

Needless to say, there is more work to do. As the article notes:

“Early childhood experts and officials know that for higher education initiatives to work, they must ultimately be accompanied by efforts to improve teachers’ salaries.”

Winifred M. Hagan, an associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, who is quoted in the article, says public and private organizations should help address the problem of low salaries. She notes:

“Here in Massachusetts, we have a robust economy and we have all these industries benefiting from the early childhood system… But no one pays into the system.”

Civic and business leaders will have to tackle this issue. But in the meantime, Massachusetts should be proud of the paths it has paved to help early educators go to college. However, state policymakers should be itching to make more progress, because expanding academic opportunities for early educators would result in a more dynamic preschool experience for children.