At a time when many families are struggling to access early care and education for their children, some state policymakers are considering — or have already implemented — deregulation as a solution. But a recent survey finds that the people who work directly with young children on a regular basis believe this approach is misguided and has the potential to exacerbate supply challenges.
The survey, administered this summer by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit membership association that promotes high-quality early learning from birth to age 8, asked early childhood educators working across a variety of settings and roles about how various licensing requirements affect the operation of their programs.
In response, 95% of the nearly 4,000 educators who responded said that health and safety regulations are “extremely or very important,” while 93% said the same about staff-to-child ratio requirements and 89% felt that way about educator qualifications.
“Deregulation drives educators away, instead of solving staff challenges,” said Michelle Kang, CEO of NAEYC, in summarizing what her organization heard from educators who responded to the survey.
“These are hard jobs,” she added. “Reducing regulation is going to add more stress, more staff overwhelm, more staff call-outs, more staff leaving. If you don’t have the workforce, you can’t provide the care.”
Kang’s point reflects what educators themselves reported in open response questions in the survey. A lead teacher from North Carolina predicted that higher staff-to-child ratios — in which each teacher is responsible for more children — would increase burnout and ultimately compel more staff to quit their jobs, since the work would become untenable. A lead teacher in Illinois expressed concern that increasing the ratio would make it harder for her to keep children safe and to build relationships with children and their families.
Educators worry, most of all, that higher ratios would degrade the quality of care they’re able to provide. In the survey, 80% of respondents said they would be concerned about their ability to meet children’s individual developmental, behavioral and emotional needs if asked to care for more of them.
In some states, raising adult-to-child ratios is not a hypothetical idea. Nor is it for the country’s 1,600 Head Start programs, which face dramatically weakened standards — including a rollback of the program’s notably low ratio requirements — under a recent proposed rule from the Trump administration.
Last year, Indiana loosened its requirements around staff-to-child ratios. Licensed programs can now, for example, allow one staff member to care for up to five infants at a time (up from four the year prior), with a maximum group size of 12. One adult can also now care for up to six toddlers at a time (up from five previously), with a maximum group size of 14.
Jen Palmer, owner and director of the Growing Garden Learning Center in Morgan County, Indiana, said that she has continued to maintain a 1-to-4 staff-to-infant ratio in her program, adding that she “would never” put 12 infants in one room. But she was open to trying out the new ratio — one adult for every six children — in her toddler classroom, which she said was led by an especially talented, capable teacher. In August, Palmer put 12 toddlers — up from 10 — in one classroom with two teachers.
The teachers quickly noticed that they were losing track of individual children’s movements and behaviors. A boy in the classroom who was going through a biting phase became “harder to catch in the act,” Palmer said. That made it difficult to work with the child on managing his frustration in more appropriate ways. It also became harder to observe children individually and make referrals for physical therapy, occupational therapy and other support services, she said.
“It didn’t take us long to realize that, no matter how great the teacher is, this wasn’t an ideal setting,” Palmer said.
For now, a floater now assists the two teachers in that room. Once a couple of children age into the next classroom, the program will revert back to the old ratio, with classrooms of up to 10 toddlers for the two teachers.
Kang, of NAEYC, pointed out that these situations degrade “workforce well-being, but also child well-being.” Children are not served well when teachers can’t identify and meet their needs or intervene during incidents, and educators are more likely to seek other job opportunities when their workplace conditions become stressful or unmanageable.
Indiana state leaders are also considering a dramatic reduction in qualification requirements for early childhood educators.
Currently, lead teachers in licensed programs in Indiana are required to have a nationally recognized Child Development Associate or other college coursework. Under the draft rule, that requirement would be eliminated, and lead teachers would only need a high school diploma or GED. Assistant teachers, meanwhile, are currently required to have a high school diploma or GED. That requirement would also be removed. Education requirements for program directors would be lowered as well.
“This proposed rule makes Indiana less stringent than surrounding states,” the rule’s regulatory analysis reads.
Lisa Glaser, vice president of River City Church Childcare Ministries, which includes two program locations in Indiana that serves infants up to school-aged children, finds these proposed changes to be foolish.
“You’re not going to say, at any business, ‘Let’s have the least educated staff in the industry,’” she said. “What’s that going to cost you in the end? You’re going to be the least productive and least likely to make educated decisions.”
Glaser understands the state’s assumption, which is that by lowering qualifications, more people can enter the field of early care and education, accepting less pay and allowing more children to be served. In reality, she said, that’s not what will happen. Early childhood programs already struggle to compete with fast food chains and retail stores that hire unskilled workers. People will accept jobs where the pay is higher, and that’s unlikely to be in early childhood, Glaser noted.
Early childhood educators who have a CDA credential are more likely to stay in the field anyway, according to research conducted by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. Glaser has seen this firsthand.
“What we see is that people who get the CDA stay. Their passion is invigorated,” she said. They get to learn about brain development at different ages and are encouraged to get curious about what they’re seeing in early childhood classrooms. The coursework, she added, gives them an opportunity to find out if this field is really a fit — because it isn’t for everyone.
Glaser worries very seriously about what the changes in Indiana will mean for children, families and educators.
“Now you have more children to staff [and potentially] less educational requirements at a licensed center, across the board, from a director to the lead teacher and any other staff,” Glaser said. “We’re being hit on every side. It’s sad to watch.”
At the same time, providers are not shy about acknowledging areas for improvement in the regulatory system.
More than half of educators in the survey reported having to provide the same information to multiple agencies and spending excessive amounts of time meeting regulatory requirements.
“There’s definitely room to deregulate portions of those rules and standards,” said Glaser. “They can become very complex and hard to navigate.”
Palmer, of Growing Garden Learning Center, mentioned that the state could streamline systems across separate entities to prevent all the duplicate paperwork providers are currently required to submit. “It would save us so much time,” she said.
“I’m not against deregulation,” Palmer said, “but I am against lowering standards for children and calling that deregulation.”