New degree focuses on early childhood education policy
Programs gain steam as nation grapples with struggling system
This winter, Rice Lake’s Shasta Westaby received an unexpected email from a familiar name.
State lawmakers were working on a bill relating to child care. Given Westaby has almost 15 years of early childhood education experience and runs a child care out of her home, one lawmaker wanted her opinion.
Westaby said she was excited to be consulted, explaining that child care providers often feel left out of policy conversations that affect their day-today operations.
Westaby is among the first eight graduates of an online master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater focused on preparing students to drive early childhood policy change. Launched in 2022, the Early Childhood Education Policy program saw its first graduates in 2023.
“(The state lawmaker reaching out) is a pretty big step forward, and if I hadn’t done this master’s program I would not have been in a position to give my advice and say, ‘Jump on this one; it’s a good one,’” Westaby said.
Programs like the one Westaby completed are still rare, but UW-Whitewater’s new degree coincides with a growing national effort to create a new academic discipline in early childhood education policy.
These programs are gaining steam as lawmakers nationwide grapple with the realities of a struggling child care system, including limited child care options and high care costs while child care workers make meager wages. Wisconsin is no exception: This legislative session saw a number of child care bills put forward, but few made it to the governor’s desk.
Advancing a new field
Lucy Heimer, a professor at the university and coordinator of the UW-Whitewater program, said its “broad yet focused” curriculum — covering the history of early childhood education and care, leadership and advocacy, aspects of the legislative
process and more — is necessary to bolster strong policy arguments that create change.
“There are very few programs out there that support educators and practitioners in deepening that sense of self as an agent for policy change,” Heimer said. “Those working in the field of early childhood education and care get so siloed and overwhelmed with daily operations that they don’t see themselves as advocates, when, in fact, it is through their narratives or stories that the change happens.”
Since 2018, the Early Childhood Policy in Institutions of Higher Education initiative has been working to make “early childhood policy” its own academic discipline and has funded several related degree programs and research centers across the U.S.
But the initiative’s goal is broader: to see the new discipline crop up in more degree programs and, someday, even a distinct academic journal, said Kathy Thornburg, an ECPIHE principal investigator and professor emerita at the University of Missouri’s College of Education & Human Development.
As part of its goal to spread early childhood policy programs across the U.S., the initiative created a free, opensource online curriculum to be incorporated into existing programs or used to create new ones. There’s no data to show how widespread the new discipline is nationally.
“We just threw the net out and hoped that many, many people would find the material and see the importance of the field,” Thornburg said.
The program at UW-Whitewater is the best example of the materials working as intended, Thornburg said: Heimer found the curriculum online and adapted it to fit her vision of the master’s program — namely an emphasis on access and equity. While UW-Whitewater has not been funded through the ECPIHE initiative, Heimer said she sees the resources, national connection and dialogue it creates as invaluable.
“She’s our star,” Thornburg said. “She founded it, developed it, and now she has graduates, and we’re so proud of her.”
Experts around the U.S. are already studying the various issues that intersect with early childhood, Thornburg said, like education, child development, social work and law. The question is how to tie their work together as a package in the interest of ensuring policy makes effective change.
“Policies must be much broader to help support the first years of a child’s life, their family, along with the workforce working with those children,” Thornburg said.
What’s next for program graduates?
Students in the UW-Whitewater program have a range of ties to early childhood in Wisconsin. Some work for the state Department of Children and Families, and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Others, like Westaby, are child care providers.
In creating a new academic discipline, it’s important to go beyond just tying together different fields, Heimer said. Instead, the people driving policy need to have a good understanding of the different languages, cultures and financial issues that are inseparable from questions about crafting policy that meets people’s needs.
At the heart of all this policy work needs to be respect and care, both for children and their caregivers, Heimer said. She believes the UW-Whitewater program hits this message home.
Westaby is now running for a seat on the Rice Lake City Council, a move she feels well equipped for after earning her master’s degree. She hopes that doing so will not only allow her to influence local policy, but better ensure people like her — with firsthand experience in child care — have a say in state, and even national, policy discussions.
“If I’m in their world, they can’t ignore me anymore,” Westaby said. “I want to be able to use my knowledge and voice to be an advocate for equitable policies across the board, not just for children and families, but also for those who do this job.”
Other program graduates are looking to leverage their new degree in other ways. Luis Godinez is an educational assistant for Milwaukee Area Technical College’s early childhood program.
He plans to continue to advocate for bilingual early education policy, just as he did for a policy project required to complete the UW-Whitewater program.
“There’s this idea that because we live in the United States, we should only speak English,” Godinez said. “Through policy, I want to change that way of thinking.
“To me, bilingual education can only help everybody. Even if you’re not a native speaker of another language, it’s OK to learn another language to expand your way of thinking.”
Godinez said earning this master’s degree opens doors for advancement within the MATC system; he is now qualified to be an early childhood education instructor.
This idea of being a “teacher of teachers,” as Westaby put it, is a goal the master’s program can also help her achieve. Inspired by the instructors she had through achieving her various degrees, Westaby said she hopes to pour her experiences into the next generation of early childhood professionals.
In a way, she has already started teaching other providers. For her project, Westaby created an advocacy toolkit for family child care providers, those who run child care programs out of their homes.
She has already been asked to present the toolkit at the Wisconsin Family Child Care Association Conference in May.
“I think, historically, there hasn’t been as much education (on policy) for providers at the family child care level,” she said. “So I really want to take my knowledge and experience to other family child care providers in languages and processes that they can understand.”
More information on UW-Whitewater’s early childhood policy master’s program can be found at bit.ly/MSEECEPolicy.
Cleo Krejci covers higher education, vocational training and retraining as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com . Follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci. Support her work with a tax-deductible donation at bit.ly/RFADonation .
Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email mlammert@gannett.com or call 920-993-7108. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to Report for America by visiting postcrescent.com/RFA