Turnover Rates in Child Care Settings

By: Katie 

As a freshman in college, I scanned through many job ads asking for tutors, babysitters, nannies, and afternoon counselors. I was surprised to find an ad from a child care center asking for ‘teachers.’ I thought, “Well, I’m definitely not a teacher. I don’t have my degree yet!” Yet as I began working at this center as an afternoon teacher, I realized that what I was doing really embodied what a ‘teacher’ does. I, along with the other teachers at the child care center, was engaging these young children in a way that laid the foundation for their social, cognitive, physical, and language skills. I was truly inspired by the work that the teachers were doing, but I was troubled by one thing: the teacher turnover rate was quick and often.

This frequent turnover had a negative effect on students’ well-being at the center as the children would continually be creating relationships with adults only to see them leave. This turnover rate seemed to be affecting the quality of care the children were receiving as they were unable to build strong relationships with their teachers. As I researched, I realized that this turnover rate is not uncommon in child care settings. Nationally, the turnover rate for early care staff is 25% to 50% each year (Barnett, 2003). This led me to wonder about the cause of this high turnover rate.

Research suggests that child care workers often leave due to inadequate compensation, few benefits, and availability for alternative employment. The annual wage of a lead teacher in a childcare setting is “5,000 less per year than the average wage for any other role in comparable educational qualifications” (NAEYC, 1995). Those that do come into the early care field with an education background often leave for similar but higher paying jobs in the K-12 sector education. Those that may not come into early care with a degree are even worse off. The median salary for teaching assistants and child care workers is $16,299. This would qualify early child care workers to be paid less than parking lot attendants (Barnett, 2003). With this low compensation often comes low benefits for the early care workforce. The extremely low satisfaction with compensation and benefits encourages early child workers to search for alternative employment with more attractive financial benefits, whether it is in the education field or not.

The high turnover rate in early childcare settings, largely due to inadequate compensation, has a huge effect on the quality of care because, “teachers who leave tend to be more highly qualified than those who stay” (Barnett, 1995). The big question is: how can we increase the quality of centers by attracting and retaining high quality teachers?

One way to do this is by providing opportunities for career advancement and therefore an increase in pay. Organizations like the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Project provide scholarships for those seeking career advancement opportunities. Programs and organizations like these can help with retention of quality staff by providing the opportunity for higher compensation while increasing the teacher’s area specific training. This specific training will also increase the quality of care provided as it will offer both the newer and more experienced teachers with applicable knowledge of positive environments for children. Research has shown while higher education usually does correlate with higher quality, more experience does not (Torquati, Raikes, Huddleston-Casas, 2007). This is why it is important to provide teachers with specific training pertinent to the quality of care in early childhood settings.

Educating our youngest citizens is an incredibly important job in our society. Low compensation prevents highly educated individuals from ever stepping into an early childcare center, drives many away to higher education, and plagues the morale of those who choose to stay in childcare settings. This in-turn affects the quality of early child care settings across the country. Investing in quality rather than quantity of child care teachers will provide young children with positive and enriching environments in the crucial years of early development.  

References

Barnett, W. S. (2003). Low wages= low quality: Solving the real preschool teacher crisis. Preschool policy matters, 3(8).

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). (1995). Quality, Compensation, and Affordability in Early Childhood Programs: A position statement of the National Association of the Education of Young Children. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PSQCA98.PDF.

Torquati, J., Raikes, H., & Huddleston-Casas, C. (2007). Teacher education, motivation, compensation, workplace support, and links to quality of center-based child care and teachers’ intention to stay in the early childhood profession. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22(2), 261-275.