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One of the most enduring concerns in early childhood education is whether teachers in publicly funded pre-K programs should hold a four-year college degree. The educational requirements for pre-K teachers are lax at best and, at worst, severely negligent. According to Barnett (2004, 2011), less than half of all early education teachers hold a bachelor’s degree and many lack the technical training necessary to be considered effective.
Despite policymakers’ concerted effort to increase preparation standards for early childhood educators, the issue of teacher quality remains unresolved. The possible correlation between low-educational qualifications and teacher quality has raised questions about school readiness. Research largely suggests that children from low-income families are at great risk for school readiness deficits (Connell and Prinz, 2002; Sabol and Pianta, 2012), including, but not limited to, lower levels of classroom participation, limited vocabulary and marked differences in cognitive skills. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (2015), approximately 58 per cent of children, aged 4 and 5 years, are not yet enrolled in kindergarten and do not attend center-based care (e.g. preschools, pre-K programs and/or Head Start); yet, by some estimates, too many preschool age children still struggle to meet school readiness standards (Barnett and Lamy, 2013).
While research has acknowledged the educational benefits of receiving high-quality early education facilitated by highly skilled teachers, with both experience and credentials in early childhood development or a closely associated discipline (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2007), relatively few studies have addressed the importance of teacher quality in early childhood programs geared toward African American children situated in low-income urban communities. Given this, it becomes important, if not critical, to understand more clearly the influence that teacher’s educational background has on kindergarten readiness, with specific attention given to urban African American learners. This article attempts to deconstruct the extant scholarship on quality in early childhood education to make a case for why this body of literature should be extended to capture the effects, if any, that a pre-K teacher with a four-year college degree might have on kindergarten readiness for African American children enrolled in preschool programs in low-income urban communities.
To begin, this article provides a review of literature that discusses early childhood education and concerns of quality...