High rates of teacher turnover are among the greatest barriers to building high-quality early childhood education (ECE) systems. In the United States, teachers working with the youngest learners turn over at much higher rates than those in the K-12 education system. For instance, our recent work shows that nearly half of child-care teachers in Louisiana leave their jobs from one year to the next. The pandemic made these already severe staffing challenges even worse. Center directors say they are struggling to keep and hire teachers and are therefore turning many families away.

Public investments in ECE programs are supposed to yield dual benefits: learning opportunities for children at a particularly formative life stage, and critical work supports for families and the economy. Teachers leaving at such high rates severely undermines both. Children learn less when they cannot form stable, attached relationships with their caregivers. Professional development initiatives are wasted when so many teachers leave before they can apply what they’ve learned. Centers cannot operate classrooms, or must shut down altogether, when they cannot recruit and retain enough teachers. And when child care isn’t available, parents cannot return to work and the economy cannot recover.

It is not surprising that turnover rates are so high in a sector where the work is hard but the pay is insufficient to cover even basic needs. Nationwide, child-care teachers are paid an average of $12 per hour and nearly one-quarter report not having enough money to pay for food. Many early educators can find higher-paying, lower-stress jobs outside of child care.

To address these high rates of churn, many states are now using federal COVID-19 relief funds to roll out  bonuses and financial incentives for child-care teachers in the hope of stabilizing this workforce. It is not yet clear how much these short-term funds are helping. And more generally, there is surprisingly little evidence on the link between compensation increases and teacher stability among early educators. That’s why—in partnership with the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, and our colleagues Molly Michie and Vivian C. Wong—we conducted a recent experiment to examine this issue.

Read the full article about paying teachers more by Daphna Bassok and Justin B. Doromal at Brookings.