Pay Equity: Berna Artis and Owen Schochet

It seemed fair to pay early childhood educators the same as K-12 teachers with similar education and experience. Taxpayers and policymakers in Washington, DC, agreed, setting up the Pay Equity Fund. The move increased ECE salaries by $15,000 per year, stabilizing the workforce and opening more childcare slots for families. NAEYC’s Daniel Hains talks with DCAEYC Executive Director Berna Artis and Mathematica Senior Researcher Owen Schochet about what’s working, what’s threatened, and what DC’s experiment signals about the fate of similar pay equity efforts around the country.