Problematizing the Panacea: Early Childhood Educators' Experiences, Perceptions, and Priorities in the Context of Californias’ Universal Preschool Rollout

Micah Card

Advocates argue that universal prekindergarten (UPK) can increase access and wages in the inequitable early childhood education (ECE) market, supplement the childcare needs of working families, close educational achievement gaps, and increase the economic power of the nation via future returns on investment. California is set to transform the state's system of education in both function and scale through its new UPK initiative, introducing a new public school grade for 4-year-olds and a new teaching credential to staff it. These changes represent a critical case not only for the analysis of education policy but fundamental questions of what (pre)school is, the relationship between the form and function of educational provision, and what it means to be an educator. This study centers on the most feminized, racialized, and historically exploited labor force in U.S. education: early educators. Early indications suggest these policies will fundamentally shift ECE provision across the state, including work conceptions, conditions, and training in ways that may further marginalize the existing workforce and exacerbate inconsistency in ECE quality across the field. Theorizing policy as socially practiced within power relations, this qualitative study examines how educators across sectors and regions experience, navigate, and negotiate these policy changes. Data include a survey of ECEs, interviews, and ethnographic case studies of early educators at work. The primary contribution of this study is contextualized data and nuanced analysis of early educators' lived experiences, which are underrepresented in research and policy, contributing to ongoing inequality and poor working conditions in ECE.

About Micah Card

Micah Card is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research centers on the workforce and political economy of early childhood education (ECE). Rooted in interdisciplinary theories of culture, knowledge, and power, Micah uses qualitative methods to examine and illuminate the lived experiences of early educators across policy contexts, including how cultural-historical discourse around race, gender, labor, and science shapes the working conditions and politics of expertise in the field. In addition to the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, her work has been supported by the UCSC Center for Labor and Community and the UCSC Science and Justice Research Center. Micah's approach to research in this area is uniquely situated by her extensive training and experiences across twenty years of teaching, academic and creative disciplines, and as a first-generation college student. Micah holds a B.A. in Women & Gender Studies from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in Education from UC Santa Cruz, and an Early Childhood Associate Teacher credential from the American Montessori Society. In addition to classroom teaching, she has served as a certified California Early Childhood Mentor Teacher for pre-service early educators, UCSC Graduate Pedagogy Fellow, and Professional Development Teaching Fellow for the UCSC Department of Education. Micah has likewise published and presented work on progressive early childhood education, critical and constructivist pedagogies, intersectional perspectives on children's rights and the ECE workforce, as well as cultural critique and media literacy.