Finding degreed teachers for pre-k not so tough, group argues

The Children's Campaign certainly doesn't give up without a fight.

For nearly four years now, the Tallahassee based group has argued passionately about the need to have teachers with 4-year degrees in early education teaching the state's prekindergarten students. With almost dispassionate regularity, Florida lawmakers and even some folks who run pre-k programs have said finding the teachers would be too tough - especially as schools endeavor to meet the class-size reduction amendment.

Not deterred, the Children's Campaign asked the Florida State University Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy to look at data from the Florida Department of Education with one question in mind: Could the state meet teacher capacity levels for all pre-k to be taught by degreed teachers within five years? (That's the time frame proposed in identical House and Senate bills [HB 741/SB 702] that don't get heard.)

The group got its answer this week, and it looks to be a solid "yes."

The FSU center reported that Florida's current Voluntary Pre-K enrollment is about 120,000 children in 8,846 classrooms. For a three-hour day per program, that requires somewhere between 4,423 and 5,000 teachers. Already, 2,770 of the pre-k teachers have degrees. "Based on those figures, it is projected by FSU that only 1,653 to 2,230 new teachers would be needed over the next five years," the Children's Campaign states in a release.

That's a far cry from the 12,000 teachers that many lawmakers contend the pre-k program needs.

Could the supply meet the demand? Sure, the FSU center and Children's Campaign contend. More than 14,500 teachers are expected to graduate from Florida's colleges and universities by 2013. Another group of teachers are expected to come to the state from elsewhere, and recent retirees might be interested in supplementing their income too.

"We're already more than half way toward capacity," Children's Campaign president Roy Miller told the Gradebook. "We're just blown away by the numbers. The whole argument against degreed teachers ... is bogus."

He suggested that the state agencies in charge of VPK oversight should stop simply marketing the program and instead work to make it be the "high quality" system that voters approved in 2002. It shouldn't take an advocacy group to figure out what the state's numbers say, Miller said.

For more information, see the Children's Campaign pre-k web site, www.qualityprek.org.

Comments

[Venetia]

Now that we know, thanks to the Children's Campaign, that we have identified enough degreed teachers to meet 2013 pre-k mandates, who is going to identify the funds to pay these degreed teachers what they deserve? Certainly not parents who are already over-burdened; certainly not the state, considering the current budget cuts; certainly not the national or state early childhood accrediting organizations, who have become so elitist. The FL VPK reimbursements are pitiful and don't come close to offsetting costs. Shame on these organizations! Let's get realistic. In the current economic recession going from impending to full-blown, how can we expect middle class families to keep their heads above water, work, pay taxes, child care, medical expenses, not to mention housing and food. Perhaps our friend Monisha has some ideas?

[Kate Sroka]

The arguments against requiring a bachelor degreed teacher for the Voluntary PreK program go far beyond the issues of supply or cost. They are to do with whether this really is a wise qualification for the nature of the work.
There are many people who work in the field of Early Childhood every day who realize that a sound education in Early Childhood development is indeed appropriate but a Bachelor's degree with the large number of credits required in non-related subjects (algebra for example)is not appropriate. An insistence on this qualification will mean that many highly intelligent, kind, loving, patient, witty, experienced teachers will not be "qualified" for this work and VPK providers will be obliged to hire "qualified" but less suitable people.We early childhood educators know of no other job where the personality of the teacher is so overwhelmingly important for successful outcomes in very young children. We need to be extremely careful what we wish for.