In this summary, we provide sustained evidence of the benefits of the District of Columbia’s wage enhancement program for early childhood educators, the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, to child care staffing. The summary is one in a series evaluating the implementation of the initiative during the 2024 fiscal year.

Why This Matters

Educator turnover negatively impacts child care supply and quality, and low wages are a common driver of educators’ job dissatisfaction and decisions to leave the field. Increasing educators’ pay can reduce turnover, keeping qualified educators in their jobs for longer and improving job satisfaction. In turn, child care programs can focus on providing quality care to children and meeting families’ needs, rather than spending limited resources repeatedly searching for and training new staff to fill vacancies. Recruitment and retention of high-quality educators results in better continuity in caregiving relationships, more positive caregiver–child interactions, and improved developmental progress for children.

The District of Columbia began enhancing the wages of early childhood educators in its licensed child care facilities in 2022 through a landmark initiative supported by tax revenue. The initiative is designed to increase early educators’ wages to achieve pay parity between early educators and their K–12 school counterparts. These wage enhancements have demonstrated continued benefits for child care businesses, educators, and children.

What We Learned

In fiscal year 2024, early educators, home-based providers, and center directors continued to report the benefits of the wage enhancement program, including attracting new educators, retaining talent, and reducing the likelihood that educators will look for a new job. Our key findings include the following:

• The initiative improves early educators’ intentions to stay in their jobs, reducing turnover for programs and making early educators less likely to leave the DC child care workforce.
• Although job seeking behavior is less common among educators whose employers offered wage enhancements, pay is still a key reason educators pursue other jobs.
• Center directors view participation in the initiative as crucial for attracting educators in a competitive job market.
• Continued financing of the fund means that child care programs can stay open and keep serving DC families.

How We Did It

We are undertaking a multiyear analysis of DC’s wage enhancement program for early educators in licensed child care facilities. For this analysis of fiscal year 2024 implementation, we administered voluntary web surveys in September–October 2024 and analyzed responses from 1,525 early educators, 67 home-based child care providers, and 123 child care center directors in DC.