The Context: Low pay and a lack of benefits pose barriers to retaining ECE educators

Colorado is working to expand early childhood services to more families across the state, yet high turnover rates–caused by a lack of comprehensive benefits and low pay–pose a significant barrier to attracting and retaining talent.

While challenges with early childhood compensation are national, the high cost of living in Colorado makes the under-compensation of the ECE workforce particularly difficult for educators. Despite their qualifications and the unique demands of their profession, ECE professionals earn significantly less than their K-12 colleagues, often putting them near the poverty line. To address these issues, Colorado sought Afton Partners’ assistance in facilitating a process to design salary structures that support a thriving workforce and better reflect the professionalism and value of early childhood teachers.

The Goal: Improve early childhood workforce compensation and benefits structures

Building on previous work done for the Early Childhood Workforce 2020 plan, the Colorado Department of Early Childhood launched Colorado’s Early Childhood Compensation & Benefits Task Force. Specifically, they were charged with designing a compensation and benefits plan that would:

• Demonstrate a commitment to educators’ financial well-being
• Support the recruitment and retention of early childhood professionals
• Increase the perceived professionalism of ECE educators
• Provide a starting point for continuous early childhood system improvement

The Approach: Lived experience leads solution-finding

Although ECE educator compensation remains a widely shared challenge across the nation, we know cut-and-paste approaches simply don’t work. To ensure that final recommendations spoke specifically to the Colorado workforce’s needs and context, Afton Partners collaborated with the Center for Early Learning and Funding Equity and Pillars Research & Strategy to support research efforts and facilitate the Task Force in designing solutions.

Consisting of experts in early childhood policy, workforce development, higher education, advocacy, research, policy implementation, community business, and more, the Task Force created an intentional statewide stakeholder engagement process to gather feedback from early childhood educators who work in a variety of roles and setting types.

To ensure we captured the voices of as many early childhood educators as possible, we cast our net far and wide, recruiting both English and Spanish speakers to provide input. For our Spanish speakers, we provided facilitation services in Spanish to ensure they could share in their native language. Our virtual setting ensured providers wouldn’t have to travel or arrange care for their own children and allowed us to talk with individuals across the state.

Our focus group timing—scheduled during standard naptimes and evening hours—provided the best opportunities for providers to participate without compromising their regular job responsibilities.
Finally, to honor participants’ time and input, we provided a monetary stipend and professional development credit (offered through Colorado’s state system) for everyone who participated in the focus groups. Through intentional logistical decisions, we gathered robust and essential input that directly impacted the Task Force’s final recommendations.