Schools

 NPR - The Biden administration is working to address the low wages of teachers in the federal Head Start preschool program by implementing a new rule. Many Head Start centers have struggled to hire enough staff to keep their classrooms open due to these low pay rates. Nationally, the average salary for Head Start teachers is around $41,000. In perspective, a public school-based preschool teacher earns around $53,000 on average.

The pay at Head Start, a program meant to help children living in poverty, is so low it forces its staff to live in poverty, NPR’s Cody Turner says. The pay has resulted in, nationally, nearly one in five Head Start teachers quitting last year, according to the Biden-Harris Administration. The rule the administration has created would require these teachers to receive a pay bump of as much as $10,000 per person. The problem is that without new funding from Congress, local programs would have to cover the cost of the pay increases, possibly leading to some programs cutting services.