Good morning Chairman Mendelson and members of the committee. My name is Ruqiyyah Anbar-Shaheen and I lead DC Action’s early childhood policy team as the Director of Early Childhood Systems; DC Action is a member of the Under 3 DC coalition. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today and thank you for your commitment to early childhood education. My testimony today will focus on the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund.
The Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund (PEF), administered by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), grows the quality and capacity of the early childhood education system by providing participating early childhood education programs with funding to increase the salaries of the early childhood educators they employ to approximate parity with educators of older children in the District’s public school system. In FY24, OSSE distributed more than $67 million to 365 child development facilities to raise wages for more than 3,600 early childhood educators.
Importantly, the Pay Equity Fund operates as an important component of the necessarily multi-pronged early childhood education system that serves children from birth to age five. Young children need high-quality early learning opportunities, regardless of their parents’ income or work status, or their ward of residence. A child’s years up to age three are a time of rapid and foundational brain growth that lays the trajectory for a child’s life. High-quality early childhood education supports social-emotional and cognitive development that sets a child up to have better regulated emotions, get along better with others, control impulses, have fewer behavioral issues, and have greater academic success in school. It is a period of unparalleled opportunity for returns on investment that come from children’s outcomes including higher educational attainment, higher earnings, reduced need for special education services during their K-12 years, and lower need for government assistance later on. Supporting early childhood educators’ ability to provide this high quality care by providing salaries commensurate with their necessary education levels – something providers cannot afford to do on their own without charging families more than they can pay – is a critical need in realizing the benefits of early childhood education.
The Pay Equity Fund has led to higher quality early childhood education for families
The quality of early childhood education is generally predicated by three key factors: the quality of adult-child interactions, the suitability of the physical environment, and the strength of a program’s administrative infrastructure. Quality is a key factor in supporting the best outcomes for children and achieving the greatest returns on public investment in early learning. While the Pay Equity Fund can play a role in strengthening all of these factors, its benefits are most salient in bolstering adult-child interactions and reducing burden on the operations of a facility.
Urban Institute’s 2024 study, Studying the Implementation of DC’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, reports that providers are finding it easier to retain their best educators and to attract the most qualified new (to their facility) educators because of their facility’s participation in the PEF. Additionally, more than half of child care directors have observed that their educators are better able to provide high-quality interactions with children and that because of their facility’s participation in the PEF, educators can better focus on the needs and development of children they work with.
These reports are supported by the recent increase in quality ratings of OSSE-licensed child care facilities participating in Capital Quality. In their FY24 performance oversight responses, OSSE states that across participating programs, the proportion of facilities with the two highest quality designations – quality and high-quality – increased from 54% to 83% since the pandemic. This represents approximately the same time period during which the Pay Equity Fund was implemented, suggesting that the Pay Equity Fund has played a critical role in improving the quality of early childhood education that the District infants and toddlers receive. The equity implications of this change are especially notable since the majority of Capital Quality participants also participate in the child care subsidy program, which serves more than 5,100 infants and toddlers whose families have low to moderate incomes.
Further, since the Pay Equity Fund went into effect in 2021, early childhood educator qualifications have skyrocketed, with 83% of all directors and educators in OSSE-licensed child development facilities meeting or exceeding the District’s higher credentialing requirements.1 This is important because “higher teacher qualifications are significantly correlated with higher quality early childhood education and care,” according to one review of 48 studies of lead early childhood educators. The Pay Equity Fund provides the meaningful compensation increases educators deserve as they further their education. The combined impact of higher credentials and increased compensation driving educator retention means more children receive care from highly skilled and experienced educators who support their learning, help them reach key developmental milestones, and provide critical early interventions when challenges arise.
A 2024 economic analysis conducted by Mathematica researcher Owen Schochet and economist Dr. Clive Belfield of Queens College, City University of New York supports this interpretation of the Capital Quality data. The analysis finds that more District families could be able to access quality early childhood education that, prior to the Pay Equity Fund, was often more likely to be accessed by families with higher income. The analysis finds that benefits to children and families from increased quality and greater availability of child care as a result of the PEF program’s implementation constituted nearly 70% of total program gains, which also include gains from benefits to educators and child development facilities. In fact, the analysis finds that the total return on investment of the pay equity program is an impressive 23%, meaning for every dollar we spend, $1.23 is returned.
The Pay Equity Fund is the key to creating more early childhood education seats
In its first year of implementation, the Pay Equity Fund resulted in a 7% increase in the early childhood education workforce, or 219 early childhood educators by quarter three of FY 2023, according to the recent study by Mathematica. This growth could translate into between 876 and over 2,000 infant and toddler child care seats, all without increasing costs to families.2 For a sector that consistently lacks the educator and seat supply to meet families’ demand for child care, this potential capacity growth could reduce the costly burden of inadequate and unaffordable child care, allow more families to work, improve their productivity, and grow their careers, all while affording to remain a District resident in a community they love. As a result, the District could make progress stemming the hundreds of millions of dollars lost annually to challenges related to reliable child care.
The Pay Equity Fund is efficient, equitable, and responsive to budgetary limitations.
Last spring, in FY24, OSSE reconvened the Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force, at the request of the DC Council, to examine the Pay Equity Fund and make recommendations about its future implementation, including the program’s financial sustainability. I am proud to have served on this Task Force, which made well-considered, informed, and measured decisions about how to ensure that the Pay Equity Fund continues to drive equitable and transformative change in early childhood education while controlling cost growth.
The Task Force’s work became more urgent when Mayor Bowser proposed eliminating the Pay Equity Fund in the FY25 budget. DC Action and our Under 3 DC partners are grateful that the Council was subsequently able to largely restore the program’s funding in the final FY25 budget. The Task Force consisted of policy experts, directors and educators from child development facilities, economists, leaders of child care associations, OSSE leadership, and DC Health Benefits Exchange Authority leadership. With OSSE’s thoughtful collaboration, the group made extensive recommendations for how to 1) reduce the total cost of the Pay Equity Fund in line with constrained FY25 budget parameters, and 2) allocate the available resources more equitably and efficiently. The group also made direct recommendations to OSSE about how to improve communication with providers and educators, and how to address existing administrative pain points with the Pay Equity Fund.
Further, as part of the group’s work, OSSE agreed to identify an appropriate setting to regularly convene and collaborate with Pay Equity Fund stakeholders after the conclusion of the Task Force’s work, to ensure that there are sufficient opportunities for individuals and organizations directly impacted by the Pay Equity Fund to provide feedback on its administration. OSSE has yet to convene this space, and we look forward to working with the Division of Early Learning (DEL) leadership to ensure that this body is identified and begins to meet on a quarterly basis as soon as possible. Chairman, I hope this commitment from OSSE-DEL is a matter you will address in oversight questions with the Acting Director to get answers on their implementation plans.
While the recommendations the Task Force made were necessary in the context of the limited resources allocated to the program, they were not without considerable sacrifice. In FY25, fewer early childhood educators are eligible to receive salary increases through the Pay Equity Fund, meaning fewer children are likely to receive the benefits of the program.
Fair pay for early childhood educators unlocks the full potential of DC’s early childhood system
Fair pay for early childhood educators directly addresses the pain points in the early childhood education system, improving the quality and accessibility of early childhood education and preventing a greater cost burden on families. When educators receive fair compensation, they are more likely to pursue higher credentials, which in turn leads to higher-quality education for young children. Competitive wages also help attract and retain qualified professionals, reducing turnover and ensuring consistency in the classroom. A stable and well-trained workforce enables the early childhood education system to expand, increasing the number of available seats for families. This is especially crucial in the District, where the demand for early childhood education far exceeds the current supply, leaving many families without access to reliable care and quality learning opportunities for their children.
The benefits of the Pay Equity Fund are clear. There are few investments the District has made that have shown such clear results in such a short time for so many people. OSSE should be commended for all their success catalyzing system-wide improvements in early education; the District cannot go back now on all the progress it has made. Just as our PK-12 system requires funding predictability to thrive and create the best educational outcomes for our children, so too does our early learning system require financial stability. Threats to the Pay Equity Fund undercut our quality achievements, our gains in educator and seat supply, and our ability to stem rising cost of care placed on parents, risking the appeal of raising a family in the city if parents see child care as constantly under attack. Last year’s proposed elimination of the Pay Equity Fund left the early learning sector reeling and it cannot sustain further disinvestment, especially when we know the investments are doing exactly what they are supposed to in unlocking the full potential of the District’s early learning system.
I welcome your questions. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.