Photo: Ivan Samkov from Pexels

In early education, challenges can sometimes overshadow progress, but today we’re happy to blog about inspiring progress that has been made in the city of Washington, D.C.

The Under 3 DC Coalition, which shines “a spotlight on the need for more public investments to support families with infants and toddlers,” has announced that its efforts have led to an investment of “$75 million that DC will use to begin to publicly fund increases in early childhood educators’ compensation.”

Raising salaries has been an uphill trudge for the field, mostly resulting in small salary increases that lag far behind the earnings of public school teachers doing comparable work. Now, however, the coalition – along with its partners DC Action and Educare DC – have advocated for “a tax increase for individuals with annual incomes above $250,000.”

As Under 3 DC explains, “Building a sustainable workforce by adequate compensation is one of the first steps to create high-quality programs that are accessible to families.”

An article published by the think tank Brookings concurs, pointing out that when Virginia invested in financial incentives for early educators, many more of them stayed on the job, “among child-care teachers: The financial incentive cut turnover rates in half, from 30% to 15%,” which created more stability for children.

To come up with guidelines for distributing the new funding in D.C., city officials have created an Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force that includes early educators, the schools superintendent, families, community organizations, early education advocates, and a policy expert.

This promising achievement, Under 3 DC says, has also produced key lessons for advocates:

1. “This work could not have been possible without the support and voice of early learning educators.
2. “Advocates cannot ignore equity issues and must center their work around the people who are often excluded. This will not always be simple, but it’s critical to building truly equitable systems.
3. “Wherever possible, collaborate rather than compete for funds against other groups advocating for funding for important, values-aligned policy, and work together to keep your joint asks simple, clear, and focused.
4. “Generate principles around raising revenue with partners/your coalition, review them together often, and find champions aligned with these principles.”

Early educators in D.C. are enthusiastic about this new investment in salaries and mindful of all the financial sacrifices they have already made.

“We shouldn’t have to use our retirement and other income to sustain our businesses. Government funding for child care should be evenly distributed, regardless of the setting,” Cynthia Davis, who owns a child care program, tells The Washington Informer. Davis is also the executive director of the DC Family Child Care Association.

“If this pay increase actually happens, it will affect family child care in a way that has never happened. Home-based child development programs have never been equally supported in legislation like this before and now we’re being included.”

“It’s an exciting moment in time. Hopefully, as we continue to advocate for the field of early childhood education, there will be an increase in compensation and respect for the educators in this profession.”