Plan aims to fix Head Start teacher pay
Proposal could lead to $10,000 raises on average
How low is preschool teacher pay?
Really low.
Early-childhood educators seldom make enough to live comfortably. It’s a crippling reality that not even Head Start teachers can escape.
Head Start, the federally funded early childhood program for low-income children, has rigorous academic requirements and quality standards. Yet the average salary for Head Start teachers of all degree and job levels, across the country, is roughly $38,500. Teachers with a bachelor’s degree don’t make much more, with an average salary of just under $40,000.
The paltry pay, combined with the physically and emotionally exhausting work, is a big reason turnover is so high in Head Start programs.
Ultimately, the kids suffer, too: Opportunities to learn, interact and thrive are hampered when staff are missing or overburdened.
Now, in news shared exclusively with USA TODAY, the Biden administration is working to raise Head Start staff salaries with a proposed rule that would require they be paid at least as much as local prekindergarten or preschool teachers who work for public school districts. That could amount to pay increases of more than $10,000 on average.
Staff vacancies, waiting lists
The poverty rate among early-childhood educators is eight times higher than for K-8 teachers, the data shows. And while pay for public school teachers has its own issues, the higher salaries and greater benefits of school districts are a big draw for Head Start staff, who often must rely on public assistance or leave their classrooms for other jobs.
Under-resourced parents with few options often find themselves with even fewer options these days amid Head Start staffing shortages and resulting quality issues – and the impact on early-learning classrooms is clear.
A February survey found that 20% of Early Head Start and Head Start classrooms were closed, with a large majority pointing to staff vacancies as the cause. Overall, about 1 in every 5 staff positions was vacant, with most departing teachers citing low compensation.
With Head Start’s strict low student-teacher ratios, these vacancies mean fewer slots for children. A 2023 brief by the National Head Start Association found an estimated 137,000 to 275,000 children on waiting lists for Head Start or Early Head Start programs. That’s as many as a third of currently funded spots.
The ultimate goal of the Biden administration’s proposed rule is “to continue to keep Head Start as the gold standard when it comes to child care in America,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told USA TODAY.
“And to do that, you’ve got to increase the compensation, the salary and the benefits that we pay to these wonderful professionals who care for our kids,” he said.
Pay parity rule proposed
In April, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to come up with strategies for ensuring pay parity between Head Start staff and elementary educators while also expanding access to the families most in need.
The proposed salary increase grew out of that, with the administration hoping the bureaucratic rulemaking process is more conducive to it becoming a reality than relying exclusively on Congress to hash out funding bumps, said Katie Hamm, the deputy assistant secretary for HHS’s Office of Early Childhood Development.
As with Biden’s use of negotiated rulemaking, or neg reg, to enable widespread student loan debt forgiveness following the Supreme Court’s rejection of his original strategy, administration officials see this route as a preferred one for achieving his Head Start goals. Budget proposals in Congress earlier this year have sought to cut rather than increase Head Start funding.
The proposed rule was displayed on the Federal Register late Wednesday afternoon, meaning it’s effectively live and available for viewing in the U.S. government’s daily journal.
Its official publication, likely on Monday, will trigger a 60-day public comment period, after which the department will deliberate any changes and publish a final rule, though Hamm said the timeline for that isn’t yet clear.
In the face of spending cuts this year, many Head Start and Early Start programs found themselves having to choose between staff pay changes and funding for children’s resources. Some observers worry about the consequences for students that these efforts to boost worker pay could have.
Becerra stressed that the proposed policy, whatever it looks like after the rulemaking process, ought to elevate rather than detract from resources for student learning.
The administration hopes the rule makes Head Start, as Becerra put it, the destination for early-childhood professionals, rather than a jumping-off point to a higher-paying job in K-12 education or elsewhere.
“No parent is going to want to send their child to a day care center that doesn’t have quality teachers, good environment, all the elements that provide for learning,” Becerra said.
“Our intent with this proposed rulemaking is to ensure that we drive not just kids to Head Start … but that we also drive professionals to Head Start to be the teachers of the future. And that’s been tough.”