While personnel shortages negatively impact all young children and their families, there is a disproportionate impact on young children from historically marginalized and underserved communities, including communities of color, those experiencing poverty, and those with disabilities. To address the national crisis of recruiting and retaining teachers serving young children with disabilities, members of the Trohanis TA Projects at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) recently released the resource "Recruitment and Retention of Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education Personnel: A Synthesis of Innovative Practices." This synthesis, which is a compilation of strategies from across the country for attracting, preparing, and retaining staff who support young children and their families, is located on the Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center website under the resource topic personnel development, recruitment and retention.
 
Drawn from research and innovations from states and local programs, these strategies show promise in helping recruit and retain early intervention/early childhood special education (EI/ECSE) practitioners and leaders. In addition, the team is hosting a national personnel learning solutions community of practice that is focusing on this topic to support state work to address shortages.
 
The work is being led by ECTA Technical Assistance Specialists Jani Kozlowski, MA, and Paula Grubbs, PhD. To launch this project in May 2023, they gathered input from their ECTA team and partners, and invited a group of professionals to join their technical working group.
 
The diverse group included: Allyson Dean, EdD, who is now an inclusion and disabilities specialist in the federal office of Head Start; leaders from professional organizations representing occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech language pathology; representatives of the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children; leaders working in early childhood special education at the state and national levels; and representatives from other national centers doing similar work. In addition, family members of children with disabilities and the teacher of the year—an early childhood teacher in Montana—were members of the technical working group.
 
Through online meetings in summer 2023, the group identified priorities, and solutions implemented by various states and localities, and compiled the findings to create the synthesis. Kozlowski emphasizes the diverse channels the team utilized to gather innovations from the field and across the country, noting that the group not only looked at strategies published online but also used an online form through which community members could share innovations.
 
Trohanis leaders regularly hear, from those in the field, how difficult staff recruitment and retention is in the early childhood space. Seeing a gap, since there had been no focus on personnel who support early intervention and early childhood special education, Grubbs and Kozlowski began this project to explore EI and ECSE exemplars and pull relevant strategies from other sectors that could work for EI and ECSE. The leaders are committed to positive child and family outcomes and believe this is best served when children with and without disabilities learn together in an inclusive environment.
 
The key strategies identified by the group are:

• Compensation, loan forgiveness, and other financial incentives: low compensation and low societal valuation impact the number of individuals who enter the profession. A variety of ways to address this are included in the synthesis.
• Grow your own programs: These programs recruit local candidates to earn degrees and licenses in partnerships between early intervention and early childhood special education and educator preparation providers.
• Public awareness about career opportunities: To change the perception that teaching is not a promising career path, it is important to implement robust strategies that positively promote and market educational settings.
• Ongoing professional learning and practice-based opportunities: High-quality professional development opportunities ensure professionals receive ongoing training to maintain/extend existing skills and knowledge, with a focus on evidence-based practice and adult learning principles.
• Leadership and advancement opportunities: Leadership plays a crucial role in improving teaching and learning practices. It is essential to give EI/ECSE professionals opportunities for leadership and advancement.
• Supportive workplace environment strategies: Leadership plays a crucial role in improving teaching and learning practices. Factors that contribute to job satisfaction include administrative support, communication, and individual decision-making.

This synthesis is only phase one of this work; phase two will include organizing the identified strategies and making them available in a searchable database. This database will curate updated strategy examples on an ongoing basis, include tags to help users find what they need and help leaders in the field think carefully about the strategies most likely to be successful given the context in which they work.

“In education and human services, we sometimes hear, ‘tell us the answer; tell us how to solve this issue,’” says Grubbs. “We recognize that the right answer is dependent on context and that each place has its own individual context. We hope that by sharing the framework that folks can see solutions for various issues, understanding that it is so contextually different depending on factors such as where you are, how big your program is, and whether you are in a childcare desert.”

“In education and human services, we sometimes hear, ‘tell us the answer; tell us how to solve this issue,’” says Grubbs. “We recognize that the right answer is dependent on context and that each place has its own individual context. We hope that by sharing the framework that folks can see solutions for various issues, understanding that it is so contextually different depending on factors such as where you are, how big your program is, and whether you are in a childcare desert.”
 
Kozlowski and Grubbs, who hope that their work helps states learn from one another, organized the innovations by building on “Attract, Prepare, Retain: Effective Personnel for All initiative,” a framework created by the federal Office of Special Education Programs. Grubbs stresses that the synthesis includes short-, medium, and long-term strategies, many of which do not require extra funding.
 
The Early Childhood Personnel Solutions Learning Community, led by Grubbs and ECTA colleague Ted Burke, provides an opportunity for state leaders to get together to discuss the strategies in the synthesis and continue to learn from one another.
 
The project leaders emphasize the importance of drawing a link between personnel workforce shortages and issues around inclusion of kids with disabilities. They see inclusion as a potential solution to some of these challenges.

“Throughout the synthesis, there are strategies for how leaders can recruit and retain staff who will best meet the needs of the children they serve,” says Kozlowski.

“Throughout the synthesis, there are strategies for how leaders can recruit and retain staff who will best meet the needs of the children they serve,” says Kozlowski. “For example, in Head Start programs where children are primarily Spanish speaking, leaders know that it is critical that they hire teachers who are also Spanish speaking. For many reasons, staff are most effective when they represent the communities that they serve.”
 
Grubbs agrees, saying, “It's important to think about the ways in which we can help folks select strategies that can intentionally diversify our workforce because we know that makes long-term positive differences in child and family outcomes.”