To increase the supply and quality of child care and early learning opportunities, policy and funding must be oriented towards recruiting, supporting, and retaining a diverse, prepared, and compensated early childhood education (ECE) profession working in centers, schools, and family child care homes. This is a comprehensive challenge that requires comprehensive solutions as well as a nuanced and research-based understanding about who is most likely to leave the ECE field and what it would take to help them stay and thrive. Such understanding can help policymakers and program leaders build, pilot, and fund effective programs, investments, and incentives.  

Highlighted Problems

• Too many early childhood educators are leaving or intend to leave the workforce, worsening the challenges of child care supply, affordability, and quality. 

Black and Latino/a ECE educators indicate that they intend to leave the field at disproportionate rates, decreasing the valued diversity of the ECE field.  

Study questions¹

What is the relationship between the type and amount of professional support accessed by ECE educators and their self-reported intentions about staying or leaving the ECE field? Are there racial/ethnic differences? 

Findings² 

• There is a statistically significant relationship between professional support and intentions to stay in the ECE field. 
  • After controlling for factors known to impact educators’ intentions to leave the field³, more access to and use of professional support is associated with a decrease in the odds of reporting an intention to leave the ECE field.  
  • The benefits are compounding: For each additional professional support used, the odds of reporting an intention to leave the field decreases by 9 percent. 

• The relationship between professional support and intentions to stay in the field is more pronounced among Latino/a and Black respondents. 
• Among all of the types of professional supports listed, three specific topics and types—those related to policy and advocacy, those related to helping educators understand and achieve standards of quality, and those that were delivered through professional development (PD) or training—were most significantly associated with reduced odds of intending to leave the field.  

These findings build on previous evidence indicating that access to professional support increases professionals’ commitment to and engagement in the field.⁴ They lead to a conclusion that increasing, supporting, and incentivizing access to and use of professional supports, especially those that use PD and training opportunities to focus on quality and advocacy and those that are intentionally inclusive of Latino/a and Black educators, are important to facilitate retention of a diverse ECE workforce. These efforts may also decrease isolation, lead to improvement in skill and knowledge, and support educator well-being— all of which are important and meaningful outcomes. At the same time, any professional support-focused strategy should be implemented alongside the priority of increasing compensation for early childhood educators, which remains the most effective and important means of increasing supply and quality in child care and early learning.   

¹In 2022, NAEYC conducted a national online market survey of the ECE workforce in English and Spanish to better understand the needs of the field. In 2024, NAEYC designed a study using the survey data as part of an effort to better understand the relationship between the type and amount of professional support accessed by ECE educators and their self-reported intentions about staying or leaving the ECE field, while disaggregating the analysis to uncover group differences.
The data for the study included responses from 2,975 teachers currently working in ECE programs from NAEYC’s 2022 market research survey. In addition to an array of respondent demographic and ECE program characteristics, the survey data also captured teachers’ self-reported quarterly use of professional supports, as well as to their self-reported intentions of leaving the ECE field within the next 12-18 months.

²For the purposes of the survey, types of “professional supports” included the following options: professional development and training, standards of quality, ECE research, books and journals, policy and advocacy support, special interest groups, opportunities to connect with other ECE professionals, membership benefits, employment benefits, credentialing and renewal support.

³Statistical predictors in the backwards stepwise regression model included: gender, race/ethnicity, English as primary language, highest educational degree, compensation, age group served, tenure in the ECE field, and workplace type.

⁴Paschall, K., Madill, R., & Halle, T. (2020). Demographic characteristics of the early care and education workforce: Comparisons with child and community characteristics (OPRE Research Report #2020-108). https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/early-care-and-education-workforce-d...