Author Description

Demand for child care services has grown steadily over the last few decades due to demographic trends, public policies, newly discovered links between brain development and early environments, and the number of parents entering the labor market for reasons such as welfare reform. As a result, most U.S. children under five spend time on a regular basis each week in nonparental care. Despite the growing demand and the increased recognition of the importance of early childhood development, the child care industry suffers from high turnover among both staff and leadership, thereby imperiling the overall quality of care provided by child care centers. In "By a Thread: How Child Care Centers Hold On to Teachers, How Teachers Build Lasting Careers," Marcy Whitebook and Laura Sakai examine how child care programs and their staff subsist in a field characterized by low pay, low status, and high turnover and what the impacts of these factors are on the quality of child care provided. Their study is based on an in-depth survey of 75 mid-size, relatively high-quality child care centers located in an economically thriving region. They collected data on salaries, training, and educational background for all teaching staff employed at the centers at three points in time, 1994, 1996, and 2000. These data provide a detailed picture of the entire teaching workforce at the 75 centers in 2000, and allow a comparison of the workforce in that year to those in 1994 and 1996. This inside look paints a disturbing picture of a dedicated yet poorly-paid, high-turnover workforce. Part I of the book focuses on staff departures and center quality. In it, Whitebook and Sakai relate the types and magnitude of turnover occurring among teachers at child care centers to the level of quality provided there. They present empirical evidence on the correlation between center quality and staff stability as well as the perspectives of teachers and directors in their survey who reflect on the challenge of a