Advocacy in Early Childhood Education: Defining Its Importance and Impact
Advocacy plays a vital role in shaping the future of early childhood education (ECE). As ECE professionals, parents, and community members, we have the power to influence policies, promote quality education, and support the growth of children during their most formative years. Advocacy in early childhood education is any action that supports the well-being of young children, families, and educators. It involves educating and influencing others about issues affecting young children and their families.
What is Advocacy?
Advocacy is generally defined as any action that supports or defends a specific cause or issue. The goal of advocacy is to cause change and can be accomplished through a variety of activities. In the context of early childhood education, advocacy involves raising awareness, driving change, and amplifying the voices and needs of children, families, and the ECE workforce.
The role of advocate, both for the clientele professionals serve, and for the profession itself, was not included in the list of commonly accepted criteria of a profession presented at the beginning of this chapter. Nonetheless, advocacy is identified as an important obligation for many professions, including early childhood education. As members of a profession, we have access to evidence-based information and have acquired firsthand knowledge about what children and their families need to successfully grow and develop.
Why Advocate for Early Childhood Education?
Children, families, and early childhood educators all hold essential rights. Children have the right to grow in an environment that nurtures their curiosity, ideas, and exploration through high-quality learning experiences. Families have the right to affordable, accessible, and high-quality childcare. Educators have the right to fair compensation and professional recognition.
Standing Up for Rights
Part of the advocacy obligation for early childhood educators is standing up for the rights of those we serve-young children and their families. Advocating for recognition, for compensation that is comparable to similar professions, for regulation that is not in opposition to what we know to be good for children and families are all ways of advocating for the profession.
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Addressing Systemic Injustices
Breaking down systemic injustices is vital and begins with those who provide services directly to children and families (NAEYC 2021). Early childhood advocacy is embedded in everyday interactions, which can include making children’s learning visible in the community, connecting with local officials to increase public funding, and working toward justice and liberation for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities and for those who continue to be marginalized by oppressive systems.
Ensuring Equitable Access and Opportunity
One necessary systemwide change is a focus on equity, especially on representation and compensation-including pay, benefits, and working conditions-that can advance parity in early childhood education. For example, research shows gaps in access and opportunity for children of color and children with disabilities and wage disparities between Black and White early childhood educators, which affect their health, well-being, and overall life outcomes (Meek et al.
Shaping Policies and Investments
As an early childhood education professional, you hold an ethical obligation to advocate on behalf of the children in your programs and in your larger communities and to serve as a voice for young children everywhere by leveraging your expertise (NAEYC 2011). Therefore, it is important to stay informed about current issues related to early care and education and to advocate for equitable policies and investments that ensure all children can thrive (Stegenga et al.
How to Be an Advocate for Early Childhood Education
Advocacy can happen on many levels-whether through conversations with families, engagement in local community efforts, or participation in national campaigns for better funding and resources. Advocacy actions can range from simple, daily interactions-like talking with parents-to more significant steps like speaking at community meetings or contacting lawmakers.
Raise Awareness
Many people underestimate the long-term impact of early childhood education. Share research and success stories that highlight the role of quality ECE in cognitive, emotional, and social development.
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Build Relationships with Families
Parents and caregivers are powerful allies in advocacy. Foster open communication about the value of early learning, encourage their involvement in the classroom, and provide them with tools to advocate for their child's education.
Engage in Professional Development
Strengthening your own expertise demonstrates your commitment to the field and positions you as a credible advocate. Attend workshops, earn certifications, and stay informed about ECE trends and policies.
Join Advocacy Groups or Professional Organizations
Organizations like the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and local ECE advocacy groups provide resources, training, and opportunities to connect with like-minded professionals. Involvement with well-positioned early childhood organizations, such as a state NAEYC affiliate or local chapter, can help you engage in grassroots advocacy and contribute to advancing the profession.
Speak to Policymakers
Reach out to local representatives, school boards, or policymakers to share your perspective on issues like funding, educator wages, or access to quality childcare. Policymakers need data and statistics, but even more, they need to hear how real people are affected by the policies they set.
Use Your Classroom as a Platform for Change
Your classroom is a powerful space to model inclusive, high-quality teaching practices.
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Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful advocacy tool. Highlight the achievements of children, families, or educators within your program. As an early educator, your story can be a powerful tool. Elected officials and our communities need to hear from you. Your experiences in the field are valuable. Moreover, decision-makers need to hear from professionals like you who understand daily realities of caring for and educating young children.
Vote and Encourage Others to Vote
As part of living in a democracy, voting is an important civic duty. As an extension of your voice, your vote helps to elect people who make decisions about funding and public policies. This, in turn, impacts equity, access, and community well-being. Support their right to vote. Stand up and speak out against systemic voting oppression.
Collaborate with Others
Collaborating is especially important. Amy O’Leary, a former NAEYC Governing Board president, invites us to collaborate with families and other educators as “allies in advocacy-fighting for investments in early education and in educators” (2019).
Understand the Policy Landscape
Be sure to educate yourself about regulations that apply to your professional setting. Educators working in some organizations, especially government agencies and nonprofits, have to be mindful of policies and procedures around lobbying.
Build Relationships with Elected Officials
When you contact an elected official, share your story as a person, as a voter, as a professional. Talk about the children and families that you care for and the impact that you make. Be transparent and open. Relationships are at the heart of early childhood education. Just as you engage in reciprocal relationships with children and families, you can also build connections with elected officials.
Addressing Key Policy Areas
The Early Childhood Workforce Index includes five essential elements of early care and education policy to support early educators:
- Qualifications and educational supports
- Work environment standards
- Compensation and financial relief
- Workforce data
- Financial resources
Qualifications and Educational Supports
Adequate preparation and access to foundational knowledge is necessary for teachers and administrators to develop the skills to provide high-quality learning experiences for children.
Policy Opportunities for Change:
- Align qualification requirements across settings with national recommendations.
- Establish minimum requirements that reflect foundational knowledge for all early childhood teaching staff.
- Require a bachelor’s degree with ECE specialization and individual licensure or certification for lead teachers and program leaders.
- Develop strategies and ensure sufficient financial resources to disrupt systemic barriers to education and to create the conditions for success in higher education.
- Collect data about scholarship programs and other educational initiatives to identify disparities in access and to assess whether such programs are providing appropriate levels of support.
- As new qualification requirements are implemented, develop an intentional strategy to support the existing workforce to avoid displacing current early educators from their jobs.
Work Environment Standards
Workplace supports, such as paid planning time and paid time for professional development, are needed to ensure ongoing reflection, development, and educator well-being.
Policy Opportunities for Change:
- Recognize and remedy the racial and class inequities embedded in quality rating systems by providing sufficient public funding for all programs to meet standards.
- Provide financial resources and technical assistance to enable programs to implement standards in a reasonable period of time and to sustain compliance with these standards over time.
- Require all programs that receive public funding to complete training on the standards and to complete an annual self-assessment and improvement plan.
- Identify and implement strategies for ECE teachers, faculty, quality improvement staff and other stakeholders to learn about work environment issues, including via technical assistance, professional development, and teacher and leader preparation programs.
- Establish the right of all ECE staff to organize/join a union.
- Ensure protections are in place for workers who report workplace or regulatory violations.
- Regularly collect data from early educators to assess how they experience work environment standards.
- Provide PPE and sanitizing supplies, free access to COVID-19 testing and priority access to vaccines, guaranteed paid sick leave, guaranteed health coverage, and guaranteed pay of no less than the locally assessed living wage.
Compensation and Financial Relief Strategies
Achieving sustained improvements in the quality of early childhood education services depends on upgrading the rewards associated with employment. Appropriate compensation and economic security are indispensable for attracting and retaining skilled educators.
Policy Opportunities for Change:
- Prioritize appropriate compensation - wages/salaries as well as benefits (e.g., health insurance, retirement plans) - as an essential component for rebuilding the early care and education system.
- Educate policymakers and the public at large about the importance of better pay and benefits for ensuring a skilled and stable early educator workforce.
- Establish wage and benefit standards that: set the wage floor at the locally assessed living wage; account for job role, experience, and education levels; and calibrate up to parity with similarly qualified elementary school teachers.
- Ensure regular adjustments for cost of living and changes in educational attainment.
- Dedicate sufficient public funding for all programs to meet wage and benefit standards.
- Collect data on early educator compensation in order to identify and remedy racial wage gaps and other pay inequities, such as lower pay for infant-toddler teachers.
- Frame advocacy messages to clarify that financial relief initiatives (tax credits, stipends) are an interim strategy, not a long-term solution to achieve appropriate wages and benefits.
Workforce Data
Designing and implementing professional development and strengthening workforce supports requires up-to-date and comprehensive information.
Policy Opportunities for Change:
- Develop and commit to a plan to enact required participation in state workforce data systems by all members of the ECE workforce, whether employed in schools or licensed center- and home-based child care settings.
- Ensure that data systems support analysis and reporting and are used to:
- Assess the impact of policy and funding decisions on early educators.
- Inform local, state, and national ECE reform efforts.
- Identify and remedy disparities in such areas as compensation, educational attainment, and tenure according to, for example, race, age, and geography.
- Identify potential federal (e.g., Child Care Development Fund [CCDF]), state, and local funding sources and design advocacy strategies to secure funds for workforce data collection, management, and analysis.
- Ensure that workforce data collection and analysis are part of early childhood governance structures and support the integration of workforce data systems with broader early childhood data, such as licensing databases, resource and referral databases, quality rating and improvement systems, early childhood health data, and K-12 data.
- Prioritize workforce data system development and improvement in state CCDF plans.
Financial Resources
Appropriate preparation, on-the-job support, and compensation for the ECE workforce requires mobilizing additional and more sustainable public funding.
Policy Opportunities for Change:
- Identify the public funding needed at the state level to ensure ECE access for all children and families as well as good jobs for educators.
- Estimate the true cost of services that relieves the financial burden on families, while also advancing preparation, workplace supports, and compensation of the workforce.
- Determine the extent of the cost gap between existing resources and what is required to accomplish reforms.
- Create a plan for phased implementation.
- Identify costs associated with each phase and incorporate data collection and analysis to facilitate learning and adjustments during the implementation process.
- Commit to securing dedicated, sustainable funds to realize reforms.
- Develop an educational campaign to assist policymakers and the public in understanding the costs of building an equitable system and the benefits of this investment.
- Support national proposals, such as a ”New Deal” child care infrastructure investment, to increase the number and safety of community-based facilities.
- Prioritize ECE in state budgets in addition to or in the absence of increased federal funding.
Advocacy in Action: Examples
Advocacy comes in many forms, and each level of involvement plays a crucial role. Advocacy actions can range from simple, daily interactions-like talking with parents-to more significant steps like speaking at community meetings or contacting lawmakers.
- Personal Advocacy: Speaking up about what you know to be best practice for young children during your workday. Sharing information with parents, coworkers, or agencies you cooperate with. Referring families to reliable agencies within your community or providing them with written resources.
- Public Advocacy: Speaking out to address issues of concern in the larger community. Voting with early childhood education in mind or writing to your congressional representatives at the state or federal level.
- Educational Advocacy: Working on behalf of students to ensure they receive appropriate support and resources. This can involve advocating for special education services, such as individualized education programs (IEPs), or additional support like tutoring or classroom accommodations.
Overcoming Barriers to Advocacy
Often those of us in the early childhood education field feel uncomfortable with the idea of advocacy. It may feel too political, too aggressive, or require one to be able to speak eloquently about an issue. None of those characterizations need be true about advocacy. Early childhood practitioners can feel isolated and consequently limited in influencing policymakers or the public. Luckily, at both the state and national level, advocacy groups exist to support individuals in their advocacy efforts.
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