There is an emerging need for community colleges engaged in early childhood education and teacher training to help teachers and aides in the national Head Start movement meet the increased credential requirements mandated under the reauthorization of the Head Start Act. The Center for Community College Policy at the Academy for Educational Development is partnering with NACCTEP to recommend that policymakers at the federal, state, and postsecondary level take several steps to help Head Start boost their professional credentials and training.
For over four decades, the federal Head Start program has provided millions of young children from impoverished backgrounds with access to early childhood education and basic health services. By some important measures, Head Start has helped put children on a trajectory for academic and economic success. Teachers in the Head Start program play a crucial role in this process, by laying the foundation for preschoolers’ future academic and social development. But what happens when there is an unintended, yet serious equity gap in the professional credentials of teachers serving different student populations in Head Start?
In 2007, as part of the reauthorization of the Head Start Act, the U.S. Congress made improving the academic caliber of Head Start programs a priority. By 2011, all Head Start classroom teachers must have at least an associate degree with an emphasis in early childhood education. By 2013, 50 percent of all Head Start teachers must have a bachelor’s degree with a focus on early childhood education with the goal of all Head Start teachers eventually earning the credential.
Yet many Head Start teachers and teacher assistants working in the Migrant and Seasonal and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities—among the nation’s most economically disadvantaged populations—face significant obstacles in returning to school for additional coursework and professional training. These barriers include: high tuition costs; a lack of access to two- and four-year colleges in their rural and remote communities; difficulty transferring credits among those institutions; unfamiliarity with college processes and cultures; and, in some cases, a lack of proficiency in English, which can make enrolling and succeeding in credit-bearing college courses difficult.
These teachers’ struggles are reflected in recent federal estimates of degree obtainment within the Head Start teaching population. While the overall Head Start teacher force, nationally, appears to be relatively close to reaching the 50 percent goal set out by Congress for securing bachelor’s degrees and other credentials, their peers in the migrant, seasonal, and AIAN Head Start community lag far behind.
Just 16 percent of migrant and seasonal Head Start teachers have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 43.7 percent of the overall program’s teaching population; only a slightly larger portion of AIAN program teachers, 19.8 percent, have that credential. The portion of teachers who have at least an associate’s degree from the migrant and seasonal program, 51.2 percent, and the AIAN program, 55.5 percent, also lags well below that of the overall Head Start teacher force, at 77.1 percent.
This creates a significant opportunity for community colleges that are willing to step up and partner with their local Head Start agencies to meet the professional development needs of these early childhood educators. A new White Paper being released in the next few weeks outlines a series of recommendations to policymakers including: the need to conduct a national needs assessment; the development of new college curricula and instructional models that blend English language development with classroom teaching; new delivery mechanisms; and targeted financial aid.
The strategies discussed not only have the potential to increase the professional credentials of migrant, seasonal and AIAN Head Start teachers, but also to provide these educators with new opportunities to acquire crucial skills for working with disadvantaged young children. Creating a deeper pool of Head Start teacher talent has another important benefit: it will give students in some of the nation’s neediest communities a much stronger academic and developmental foundation to prepare them for the challenges they will face in the K-12 system, and for the rest of their lives.
Community colleges, with their significant successful track record in helping non-traditional students and working adults meet their educational goals will have a critical role to play in this new initiative. For colleges interested in learning more, additional information about the initiative will be presented at the NACCTEP conference being held in March in Baltimore or via email from asingh@aed.org.
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