How Attitudes about Work Differ Across Program Types and Staff Roles

A woman wearing glasses and a suit is smiling in front of a flag.

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.


Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”

This document may be printed, photocopied, and disseminated freely with attribution. All content is the property of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership.

This resource is part of our Research Notes series. 


The attitudes of those who work in human service fields are critical to the outcomes of the people they serve. Research suggests that factors such as overwork, poor interpersonal relationships with colleagues, dissatisfaction with pay, lack of employee involvement in decision making, and low levels of support from management contribute to negative workplace attitudes and lead to high turnover (Leider, Harper, Shon, Sellers, and Castrucci, 2016; Reynolds, 2007). In early childhood education, relationships between teachers and children are affected when teachers experience workplace stress (Cassidy, King, Wang, Lower, & Kintner-Duffy, 2016; Whitaker, Dearth- Wesley, and Gooze, 2014; Zinsser and Curby, 2014). The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment found that insufficient teaching supports and inadequate compensation lead to poor program quality and high turnover (Whitebook, King, Philipp, and Sakai, 2016).


To better understand the conditions that affect attitudes about the workplace, the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University examined data from child care center staff and administrators who completed the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) (Bloom, 2016). While attitudes about the early childhood workplace were mostly positive, negative work attitudes differed by the employee’s role, program type, and program size.


SAMPLE AND METHODOLOGY


An existing dataset of 2,652 child care center staff and administrators, who completed the ECWES online survey between August 2015 and March 2017, was examined. Participants represented 197 programs from 15 states or Canadian provinces. Their highest level of education was well distributed: 20% high school or GED, 32% some college, 18% associate degree, 20% baccalaureate degree, 3% some graduate studies, 6% graduate degree, and 1% post-graduate studies or doctoral degree. On average, participants worked in the field of early childhood education for 11 years; were with their current employer for five years; and served in their current position for four years. At the time of completing the survey, participants worked in a number of roles as indicated in Table 1.

A table showing the frequency of administrative roles

There was also a distribution of program types where the participants were employed. Figure 1 shows the various types of programs represented in the sample.

A graph showing the percentages of different program types

Eighty percent of the programs served infants, 93% served toddlers, 97% served preschoolers, and 61% of the programs served school-aged children. The average enrollment was 115 (SD = 89) and the average licensed capacity was 146 (SD = 124).


The ECWES is a reliable and valid instrument that measures multiple aspects of the workplace environment including work attitudes, ideal perceptions and expectations about the workplace, and ten dimensions of organizational climate. One domain—work attitudes—was selected for this analysis. It assesses perceptions about the organization by selecting from ten descriptors (five positive and five negative) of how the employee feels about the organization. Frequencies were compared to characteristics of the participants and their programs using one-way ANOVA to determine whether factors could predict work attitudes.


FINDINGS


Analysis of the survey responses revealed that overall, child care employees were more positive than negative in their attitudes about their workplace. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents put extra effort into their work, took pride in their center, and were very committed to working there. About half of the respondents plan to work at their current place of employment for the next two years or more. However, only 25% of the respondents felt it would be difficult to find a job as good as the one where they were currently working. Additionally, about 15% of the respondents often thought of quitting. Less than 10% of child care employees felt trapped in their jobs, struggled with being committed to their center, felt they were just putting in time, or would not care about the center if they left. Table 2 shows the frequency and percent of responses about work attitudes.

A table showing the number and percent of work attitude responses

Responses were analyzed to determine if there were differences in work attitudes by the characteristics of respondents or by the characteristics of the child care centers where they worked. No differences in attitudes about work were found based on gender or highest level of education. Differences were found for respondents based on their roles, by program type, or by program enrollment.


There was a statistically significant difference between respondents based on their role as determined by one-way ANOVA, F (10, 2641) = 3.052, p = .001, η2 = .011. A Tukey post hoc test revealed that work attitudes among directors and assistant directors were more positive than staff in other roles. However, the magnitude of these differences was small.


Significant differences were also found, using one-way ANOVA, among the types of programs where respondents worked F (10, 2641) = 2.603, p = .004, η2 = .001. The effect size of these differences is very small and should be considered when understanding the magnitude of this finding. Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations for the different types of programs. Mean scores are computed by averaging the number of Work Attitude Responses, ranging from -5.0 (five negative work attitudes selected) to 5.0 (five positive work attitudes selected).

A table showing work attitudes by program type

A statistically significant difference was also found between groups based on the size of program enrollment when a one-way ANOVA was performed, F (2, 2645) = 20.37, p = .000, η2 = .015. Program size was grouped as small (1-69), medium (70-139), and large (140+). A Tukey post hoc test revealed that work attitudes among staff in large programs (m=1.90, sd= 1.95) were rated lower than those of small (m=2.52, sd= 1.85) and medium (m=2.39, sd= 1.94) sized programs.


DISCUSSION


Findings from this study suggest that a majority of child care center staff have positive work attitudes and plan to continue working at their current place of employment. However, there is a small portion of employees who have serious negative attitudes including feeling trapped in their jobs, lack of commitment to the center, or are “just putting in their time.” The finding that 15% of child care workers frequently think about quitting their jobs is consistent with high turnover in early childhood education. Early childhood program leaders should work to identify negative attitudes in the workplace, because of their effects on the quality of care and education, including interactions with children.


Differences in work attitudes between administrators and staff serving in other roles suggest a need for examination of attitudes among teaching and support staff. Less positive work attitudes among staff in the non-profit sector indicate that additional research is needed to understand what specific factors contribute to this disparity. Furthermore, this study identifies the potential challenge of maintaining positive work attitudes in larger centers. However, the small magnitude of effects in these group comparisons indicate that further study is advised to confirm group differences.


REFERENCES


Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons.


Cassidy, D. J., King, E. K., Wang, Y. C, Lower, J. K., & Kintner- Duffy, V. L. (2016): Teacher work environments are toddler learning environments: teacher professional well-being, classroom emotional support, and toddlers’ emotional expressions and behaviours. Early Child Development and Care. DOI: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1180516


Leider, J. P., Harper, E., Shon, J. W., Sellers, K., & Castrucci, B. C. (2016). Job satisfaction and expected turnover among federal, state, and local public health practitioners. American Journal Of Public Health, 106(10), 1782-1788. doi:10.2105/ AJPH.2016.303305


Park, M. R., & Myeong-Gu, S. (2017). The role of affect climate in organizational effectiveness. Academy Of Management Review, 42(2), 334-360. doi:10.5465/amr.2014.0424


Reynolds, J. J. (2007). Negativity in the workplace. American Journal of Nursing, 107(3), 72D.


Whitaker, R. C., Dearth-Wesley, T., Gooze, R. A. (2014). Workplace stress and the quality of teacher-children relationships in Head Start. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 30(2015), 57-69.


Whitebook, M., King, E., Philipp, G., & Sakai, L. (2016). Teachers’ Voices: Work Environment Conditions That Impact Teacher Practice and Program Quality. Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley.


Woestman, D. S., & Wasonga, T. A. (2015). Destructive leadership behaviors and workplace attitudes in schools. NASSP Bulletin, 99(2), 147-163.


Üstün, A. (2017). Effects of the leadership roles of administrators who work at special education schools upon organizational climate. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5(3), 504- 509.


Zinsser, K. M., & Curby, T. W. (2014). Understanding preschool teachers’ emotional support as a function of center climate. Sage. DOI: 10.1177/2158244014560728.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025
Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed.  Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.
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