ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief introduction to preschool education in the US and to the ECE workforce. In the current context of public education, teachers at all grade levels are struggling with unfunded mandates, loss of control over their work, increasingly aggressive and punitive accountability systems, and persistent attacks on the quality of their work, which they take very personally. Head Start pays slightly better than average for teachers with associate degrees ($12.20) and bachelors or higher degrees ($15.90). In 2015, as Currie and Rossin-Slater argue, even high quality and universal preschool education cannot fully address the range of challenges that undermine children's health and well-being, especially children living in poverty. Given that HS sits at the center of national ECE policy debates, it makes for an interesting and important arena within which to study many of the pressing issues of preschool education, especially those related to teaching children in poverty.
