Educators push back on early childhood ed licensing plan

A recent bill in the Vermont Senate would offer a pathway for early childhood educators who operate outside of public education to become a recognized profession in the same way as nurses or hair stylists.

The bill, S.119, was inspired by a January report from the Office of Professional Regulation that recommended creating a process of licensure for early childhood educators through its office.

Sen. Allison Clarkson, D-Windsor, one of two lead sponsors on the bill, said licensure can provide consistency and professionalization, as well as increased wages.

“We have undervalued, in a really substantial way, the (age) 0- to 7-education,” she said. “This will make more consistent their education and training, so that people have a much better notion of what the education they’ve had and what they’ve been exposed to.”

The bill is modeled after the career ladder for nurses, which Clarkson and fellow sponsor Sen. Rebecca White, D-Windsor, said is one of the most successful in the state.

The new plan calls for three steps in the ladder: ECE 1, ECE 2 and ECE 3. Each step is an increasing professional license that coincides with mounting experience, either through college credit or work hours.

In the current state of play, childcare is regulated on a by-facility basis, meaning each individual facility receives a license. The bill would end that practice, requiring individual educators to be licensed rather than their facilities.

Another aspect of S.119 is the increased accountability it looks to provide, Clarkson said. If passed into law, the bill would create a board comprised of people in the profession that will review and process complaints, holding educators accountable for any unethical actions.

Currently, if an early educator commits any sort of wrongdoing, they can leave the workplace without repercussion and go to another job, leaving the facility to carry the blame.

“Licensure really sets the bar for professional expectation,” Clarkson said.

Missing the recent crossover deadline won’t stop Clarkson and White’s work — they plan to attach the content of S.119 to H.472, a bill that recently passed out of the House aiming to adjust licensing fees for various professions.

The early education bill met some resistance in the Senate Committee on Government Operations two weeks ago from public education professionals across the state.

Don Tinney, president of the Vermont National Education Association, said in a March 27 committee meeting that it would be duplicative to create a separate licensing process through the Office of Professional Regulation when one already exists in the Agency of Education.

“We do not believe a redundant system would serve either our pre-K-12 system or the early childhood education system,” he said.

Andrew Prowten, assistant director of education quality at the Vermont Agency of Education, had two main concerns for S.119. In the bill’s current state, the first level of the career ladder authorizes the holder to work in a public setting, which he said goes against existing federal regulation.

Prowten also said the bill is ambiguous when Act 166 comes into play. The 2014 law provides access to publicly funded pre-kindergarten education and sets prequalification standards for educators and facilities.

The assistant director said S.119 does not make clear how the two licenses would be distinguished and that it would take an amendment to Act 166 to do so.

Sen. Brian Collamore, R-Rutland, who heads up the Senate government operations committee, said the bill has his strong support.

“I’m hoping that we can somehow find, and I use this term all the time, a sweet spot that would include provisions that are in the bill but would also satisfy AOE’s concerns,” he said.

The committee chair believes that a streamlined system could help those interested in the profession avoid what he sees as unnecessary education and, therefore, unnecessary debt.

“If I just graduated from, in my case, Rutland High School, and I’m now 18 years of age, I’ve got to spend four years at the next level up incurring debt to get a bachelor’s degree just in order to work in a preschool or a pre-K school,” he said in the committee meeting.

The bill has been met with broad support from early childhood educators themselves. Stephanie Carvey, co-executive director of the Rutland County Parent Child Center, said in March 26 testimony that she strongly supports creating a licensing process as the bill charts out.

“Vermont has already laid the foundational supports to help our workforce make the transition to licensure,” Carvey said. “If these supports had been in place earlier, we would have seen stronger retention through past challenges. Licensure won’t harm the workforce. It will help it.”

Carvey said the clarity of licensure is critical for employers as well, who would be able to better gauge an applicants’ experience with the proposed system.

“Ultimately, it all comes back to doing what’s best for our children,” she said. “Licensure is the remaining piece of the system puzzle.”

(Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.)