Degrees for all: How to make day care more expensive, less available

From Joanne Jacobs.

"Requiring day-care workers to earn a college degree would backfire, critics said. It would drive experienced people out of the field, making day care harder to find and more expensive. And that's exactly what it's doing, now that the District of Columbia regulation has gone into effect, reports Justin Zuckerman on Reason. 

Ami Bawa, lead teacher and assistant director at a nursery school in northwest D.C., has 20 years of experience, but no degree. She's been waiting five months for a waiver that's supposed to be offered to veteran teachers. So far, nothing. Even if she gets to keep her job, she fears losing good teachers.

The evidence that a two- or four-year degree makes a child-care teacher more effective "is not strong," Robert Pianta, a professor of early childhood education at the University of Virginia, tells Zuckerman.

"Many day care teachers eager to retain their jobs have enrolled part-time at institutions such as Trinity Washington University," which has very loose requirements for its early education degree, writes Zuckerman. They "can take classes like American history and music appreciation but aren't required to take courses in early education." 

On the flip side, Nicole Page, a local preschool director, employs a teacher with a Ph.D. in family and children studies who's considered unqualified to teach at a day care because her degree isn't in early childhood education. Ten other teachers also don't meet the requirements."