Laying the education foundation for young learners
By Lesely Crawford
I became an early childhood educator because of students just like D, a 3rd grader who should have been able to recognize at least 100 high-frequency words but only knew 20. I worked intensely with him; the skills in which I supported him, including recognizing letters and their sounds, blending and decoding consonant-vowel-consonant words, and sounding out some basic words, are ones cultivated in early childhood education (ECE). During that school year, I realized that I could make a more foundational difference if I dedicated my professional life to our youngest learners, so I opened ABK Learning & Development Center to address the needs of diverse learners just like D, who is never far from my mind.
Today, my center is home to 40 students and 12 ECE staff. We thrive on early reading and math skills that our children will be expected to know by the time they leave our facility — being able to write their name, not just recognize it; understanding and recognizing environmental print; and most, if not all, letters and their sounds. Through play, we expose our children to a literacy-enriched environment.
My path was clear, however what I didn’t realize were the other struggles I would face moving from the K-12 system to early childhood education, including a substantial decrease in my salary, less robust health insurance, and a quick education in health and human services department requirements. The expectations are constant in this fast-paced space where tennis shoes are my best friend and I wear many hats, from educator to nutritionist to nurturer. My story isn’t unique and is why the number of ECE staff has steadily declined in recent years.
To make this teaching path more sustainable for my colleagues and me, Pennsylvania lawmakers must approve Governor Shapiro’s 2025–26 budget, which includes $55 million for continuous investment in early childhood workforce incentives. Here are some ways to best use the money to ensure our youngest learners are equipped with a solid start to their education:
- Ensure wages are similar to other teaching professions. The average annual salary for an ECE worker ranges from about $27,000 to $31,000. To compare, the average for a K-12 teacher is around $46,590 in Pennsylvania and $74,945 nationally. The increase in wages would allow my staff to pay health insurance costs that they currently pay out of pocket. Health insurance is not a given in our profession; I have to weigh paying staff a living wage or paying for health coverage. I help by paying copays or covering health bills that staff struggle to pay. K-12 teachers, on the other hand, have options to pay part of their health insurance as a shared cost with their employer. In addition, my staff struggles at times to get to work, and the cost of getting there can be high as most of my staff use public transportation or rely on private transportation. Oftentimes that cost falls on me so that it doesn’t affect their take-home pay.
- Treat early childhood educators with respect to ensure more people are drawn to the profession and make it a career in which they feel valued. For me, that means understanding that what we do at my center revolves around providing a strong base for every young learner, focused on foundational literacy and math, as well as building social and emotional skills. I put a lot of effort into developing phonological awareness, letter/sound recognition for my students, and the expectations of success I have for them.
- Provide adequate training to support the increased deficits in social and emotional skills our children face. For example, students today are coming to childcare facilities with traumatic experiences so challenging that we are spending the majority of time trying to manage a very chaotic space that includes children hitting, biting, destroying the classroom, and using negative language. Training sessions that I would like my staff to have include trauma-informed care and social and emotional learning, so that we are in a better position to address the needs of the students we serve — increasing academic performance, boosting mental health, and reducing behavioral issues.
If D had experienced a high-quality early learning center that equipped him with an early literacy foundation, it would have paved the way for his ability to read during his early elementary school years. All students deserve this right. As ECE providers, our main objectives are to provide a safe, healthy, and educationally sound environment for our students to thrive. Increased funding would assure that we maintain quality educators who go beyond expectations to ensure the needs of our children are always met.
Lesely Crawford is the Owner/Director and kindergarten teacher at ABK Learning & Development Center in Pittsburgh. She is a 2024–2025 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.
