(NAME-MCE) Scholars Split on Pre-K Teachers With B.A.s

[Bill Howe]

   - [image: edweek.org] <http://www.edweek.org/>

 Scholars Split on Pre-K Teachers With B.A.s Amid push for four-year
degrees, evidence on effect is still unclear. By Linda
Jacobson<http://www.edweek.org/ew/contributors/linda.jacobson.html>


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With children's early years increasingly recognized as a critical time for
learning, more policymakers see a four-year college degree as a necessity
for teachers in preschool programs receiving state and federal money.

Many state-financed preschool programs require teachers to have four-year
degrees. And as federal lawmakers debate renewing the Head Start program for
disadvantaged preschoolers, they are mulling proposals to move toward a
similar requirement for at least a portion of that program's teachers.

Yet while those policies reflect what some leading experts in
early-childhood education have been advocating in recent years, other
researchers say the link between teacher credentials in preschool and
outcomes for children is not clear-cut. Indeed, scholars are vigorously
debating whether a bachelor's degree should be the standard for teaching in
the nation's early-childhood classrooms.

"The bachelor's degree has become the holy grail—the sacred symbol of
quality—among born-again universal-preschool advocates," said Bruce Fuller,
an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley. But he
says research is insufficient to justify a broad push to require preschool
teachers to hold such degrees.

And in a paper slated for publication next week in the journal *Child
Development*, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill say that, at this point, there is not "convincing evidence of an
association between [preschool] teachers' education or major and either
classroom quality or children's academic gains."

The paper was the result of a 2005 meeting in Chapel Hill at which
researchers gathered to take another look at what studies so far were saying
on the issue.
Advocating a B.A.

The drive to expect roughly the same credentials for those who work with 3-
and 4-year-olds as for those who work in K-12 schools picked up steam after
the National Research Council issued a report in 2000 calling for lead
teachers in preschool classes to have four-year degrees, as well as special
training in early-childhood education. Since that NRC report, *Eager to
Learn*, other studies have backed up the recommendation.
 Preschool Credentials

The education required of preschool teachers varies among states.

Twenty states require that teachers in at least one state-financed
prekindergarten program have a bachelor's degree. *


* In some cases, states have more than one state-financed prekindergarten
program, and not all necessarily require a bachelor's degree.

Thirty-one states require that teachers in state-financed prekindergarten
programs have specialized early-childhood training, but not necessarily a
bachelor's degree.

SOURCE: National Institute for Early Education Research

The Trust for Early Education, which later became the Washington-based
advocacy group Pre-K Now, issued a report four years ago concluding that
preschool teachers with four-year degrees and early-childhood training did
the best job of preparing children for kindergarten.

"Such teachers are more likely to be sensitive and attentive to their young
students; they are less directive and more responsive; and their
interactions with children are more constructive," Marcy Whitebook, the
director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, also at
Berkeley, wrote in that 2003 report, "Bachelor's Degrees Are Best." The
report added that language scores were also higher for students in
classrooms led by teachers with four-year degrees.

The National Institute for Early Education Research, based at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, N.J., issued a report before Ms. Whitebook's
that reached similar conclusions.

"Better-educated teachers have more knowledge and skills," wrote W. Steven
Barnett, the director of the center. "This makes them more effective
teachers for many reasons."

The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education went even further
in a 2004 white paper, recommending that even programs for infants and
toddlers be led by teachers with bachelor's degrees.
'No Clear Pattern'

Yet Diane M. Early, a researcher at UNC-Chapel Hill—and one of 19 authors of
the new paper in *Child Development*—said there is "no clear pattern"
showing a relationship between a four-year degree and positive academic
outcomes for children.

One reason, she said, could be that even if teachers have bachelor's
degrees, their training may not have focused on working with preschoolers.
 Moreover, added Robert C. Pianta, an education professor at the University
of Virginia, in Charlottesville, and another contributor, no consensus
exists on what students need to earn a bachelor's degree.

"The B.A.-non-B.A. debate in preschool is symptomatic of this larger issue
of how we ensure that what we are doing in teacher education contributes to
teachers' effectiveness in the classroom," he said.

The early-childhood debate parallels the one in K-12 education, where the
research is unclear over whether earning a master's degree makes a
difference in student learning, Mr. Pianta added. "Even when all teachers
have a B.A., as they do in K-12, kids' learning and the nature and quality
of experiences in classrooms is incredibly variable," he said.

Another reason for the lack of evidence, Ms. Early said, could be that many
teachers earned their degrees when it was considered inappropriate to stress
early reading and math skills in preschool.

Her findings may also differ from Ms. Whitebook's earlier work in part
because the two projects reviewed different sets of studies, Ms. Early
suggested. While "Bachelor Degrees Are Best" stressed studies on
center-based child-care programs, for example, the new analysis focuses more
strongly on public prekindergarten programs and on academic outcomes.

"I do not mean [the new paper] as an indictment of that project at all," Ms.
Early said about Ms. Whitebook's study. "She was clearly working with the
best information she had."
A Juggling Act

Beyond the research questions, practical considerations make it hard to
quickly impose degree requirements on preschool teachers, especially those
who have worked in the classroom for years.

Current preschool teachers may have anything from a high school diploma to a
graduate degree. That's in part because programs require different minimum
levels of training. And among those who don't have a bachelor's degree, the
amount of time it would take them to earn one varies.

Sonia Cedeño, who teaches 3-year-olds at the Egenolf Early Childhood Center
in Elizabeth, N.J., said earning her bachelor's degree after four years of
preschool teaching made a difference in her approach.

"It's like a doctor. You have to go and keep learning," she said, adding
that she values having a greater understanding of the research on child
development. Ms. Cedeño, 40, also got a $10,000 boost in her salary once she
earned her degree.

But even though Ms. Cedeño already had some college credit, earning her
degree took three years and involved taking a full load of evening classes
after working all day, while she and her husband juggled care for their two
children.

Another obstacle is that four-year institutions have not been the main
providers of coursework in early-childhood education. Early-childhood
educators may have trouble transferring credits from community colleges,
where much of such training occurs, to four-year colleges.

And when preschool or Head Start teachers earn four-year degrees, experts
say, they often eventually leave for K-12 schools, where they can earn more.

Special Training Cited

In a new book, *Standardized Childhood*, Mr. Fuller of Berkeley cites
research showing that teachers with bachelor's degrees and training in
early-childhood education were rated more highly by researchers than those
with bachelor's degrees but no special training.

"These findings suggested that specialized training contributes
significantly to child outcomes among teachers with less than a four-year
degree, and that the additional investment in a bachelor's degree may not
yield an additional boost for preschoolers," he writes.

Because much of Mr. Fuller's work has also focused on child-care and
preschool supply in Latino communities, he also suggests that to require all
state-funded preschool programs to hire teachers with bachelor's
degrees—especially those operated by community-based centers—would risk "a
purge of teachers with bilingual skills and cultural sensitivities."

Meanwhile, in a new paper on the educational levels of early-childhood
teachers, Ms. Whitebook, who wrote "Bachelor's Degrees Are Best,"
acknowledges Ms. Early's findings. But she says more data on the impact of
both two- and four-year degrees are needed. Ms. Whitebook also argues that
the field of early-childhood education is at a critical point.

The "enormous explosion" of prekindergarten in the states has largely been
carried out without "significant wage increases" or spending on training to
improve quality, she says in a 2006 paper on policies on early-childhood
teaching.

And that lack of progress, she suggests, reflects confusion over whether
preschool should be seen chiefly as day care or school; if it is the latter,
then the case for bachelor's degrees seems stronger.

"Fundamentally, public policy has not created higher expectations for this
workforce overall, because policymakers have remained stuck" between those
two views, Ms. Whitebook writes.

Ms. Early said even though the new paper raises doubts about whether
four-year degrees make preschool teachers more effective, she doesn't want
people to "leap to the other extreme" of thinking that in-service training
is all they need.

"I get scared that people are going to use this to cut salaries," she said,
"under the assumption that that will get us to high quality."

Coverage of education research is supported in part by a grant from the
Spencer Foundation.

Vol. 26, Issue 29, Pages 1,13


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