How States Can Use Workforce Pell to Address ECE Workforce Shortages

Workforce shortages have presented an enduring challenge for the early care and education (ECE) field. Persistently low compensation makes it difficult to recruit and retain early educators, and turnover is high. Yet skilled early educators are important to local economies: Given that one in six U.S. workers ages 25 to 54 are parents with children too young to attend kindergarten, early educators provide nurturing environments for children that enable parents to work. Fortunately, the ECE field may have a new source of support. With the launch of new Workforce Pell grants this July, aspiring early educators could soon access federal financial aid for short-term training programs, strengthening the pipeline that brings skilled educators into the field.

Despite the opportunity that Workforce Pell presents, key features of the grant may pose challenges for the ECE field. Workforce Pell comes with numerous and complex requirements that will require states to collaborate across multiple sectors (e.g., institutions of higher education, workforce development boards, governors’ offices, and early childhood lead agencies). Further, the introduction of Workforce Pell is one of many recent changes to higher education policy that restrict financial aid access to programs that provide graduates with stronger wages—a potential obstacle for the low-wage ECE field.

This blog describes three major steps that states can take to make short-term ECE credential programs eligible for Workforce Pell grants. For each suggestion, we summarize some key considerations from the National Early Care and Education Workforce Center’s “Workforce Pell and the Early Care and Education Sector” brief.

Step 1: Governors can partner with state Workforce Development Boards to designate early care and education as an “in-demand” sector or occupation.

A key requirement of Workforce Pell is that programs must be recognized by the state as “high-wage,” “high-skill,” or “in-demand.” Of those three, the ECE field is most likely to meet the criteria for being “in-demand,” which are drawn from each state’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) plan. State leadership—including governors, state Workforce Development Boards, and state early childhood administrators—can collaborate with business leaders to incorporate ECE into state WIOA plans as a way to address staffing shortages, increase the availability of child care, and drive new business to the state. Importantly, the final Workforce Pell rule creates a meaningful opening for ECE apprenticeships. Students can use Workforce Pell to cover the classroom portion of their apprenticeship training, and Registered Apprenticeship programs automatically satisfy the state approval requirements that could otherwise block most ECE programs from accessing these funds.

Step 2: Institutes of higher education (IHEs) can partner with state early childhood agencies to strengthen data infrastructure and coordination to ensure benchmarks are being met.

To qualify for Workforce Pell, colleges must have data demonstrating that programs meet a 70 percent program completion rate and 70 percent job placement rate. States also need to report at least one year of outcome data for the program to become eligible for Workforce Pell. These requirements depend on states having more robust data infrastructure and coordination. IHEs can partner with state early childhood agencies and researchers to strengthen early childhood workforce registries and tracking systems at both the state and institutional levels.

Step 3: States can leverage broader ECE workforce retention initiatives to ensure that educator credentials lead to higher wages.

Workforce Pell requires that tuition and fees for short-term programs not be higher than the earnings boost gained from having that credential. While some states are working toward pay parity with K-12 educators, early educators in most states earn lower wages. To address this gap, many states have initiatives such as bonuses, wage supplements, and apprenticeships, or are piloting efforts to close salary gaps between ECE and K-12 educators. For instance, in the District of Columbia, the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund provides a quarterly award payment to providers in facilities that agree to pay a minimum salary. Recent legislation in New Mexico funds a salary scale for early childhood professionals that will increase wages tied to the state’s career pathways. These and other creative strategies could help ensure that credentials yield higher wages for early educators. While meant as an early educator retention strategy, they may also help secure access to Workforce Pell dollars and preserve broader financial aid support for the ECE field as federal agencies seek greater higher education accountability.