Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley (CSCCE) is the national leader in early care and education workforce research and policy since 1999. CSCCE provides research and analysis on the preparation, working conditions, and compensation of the early care and education workforce.

CSCCE develops policy solutions and create spaces for teaching, learning, and educator activism. the organization’s vision is an effective public early care and education system that secures racial, gender, and economic justice for the women whose labor is the linchpin of stable, quality services.

State allies can call on CSCCE to:

Provide research findings and insights tailored to their states.

CSCCE develops and manages extensive research on each state’s child care workforce, and can help allies use that research in new and powerful ways, such as presenting to legislators and other stakeholders and informing legislation, testimony, and policy proposals. We also work with groups and agencies to develop research and analyses tailored to their needs, such as evaluating a state’s ECE degree programs or early educator work environments.

Help them strategize ways to leverage data to drive policy conversations about early childhood workforce compensation, data systems, and higher education.

CSCCE works with state allies to develop and inform their early care and education vision that includes a comprehensive workforce strategy and effective workforce policies.

Additional Support for State Policy Advocacy:

Researching and updating the yearly Early Childhood Workforce Index.

The Early Childhood Workforce Index is an effective tool that compares states, puts wages in context of local living wages, and provides research-backed policy recommendations. The Index can be foundational to state’s ECE workforce advocacy. In addition to the Index being a state resource, it’s also disseminated at the federal level and among broader policy making communities to draw attention to national ECE workforce issues, and propose recommendations to reduce racial stratification, increase compensation, improve working conditions, reform higher education, and improve the collection of data.

Researching and updating the ECE Workforce Compensation Database.

CSCCE maintains a central Compensation Database that tracks compensation initiatives across the country detailing how initiatives are funded, how funds reach educators, and how those funds are making an impact.

On the Ground:

In Massachusetts, advocates rely on CSCCE for ECE workforce compensation content expertise for the Massachusetts Early Childhood Agenda.
In Vermont, CSCCE recently provided support for salary scale development and helped advocates plan how to fund a salary scale and ensure accountability, message the salary scale to family child care providers, and address benefits for part-time staff. CSCCE was invited to give testimony to Vermont’s legislature before it went on to pass its landmark 2023 Child Care Bill.