Leaders and legislators in Delaware have utilized a multi-pronged approach to develop the state’s educator pipeline, with a focus on recruiting, training, and supporting educators. Those efforts include strengthening high school Teacher Academies, establishing apprenticeships and “Grow Your Own” programs, expanding year-long teacher residencies, and increasing compensation.  

Rep. Kim Williams, who chairs the House Education Committee, has led these efforts over multiple years. “We’ve made incredible strides in recruiting and retaining great teachers by investing in them and removing barriers to the classroom,” she said recently.  

A new slate of bills looks to continue Delaware’s commitment to educators.  

HB 51 will establish a pre-apprenticeship option for teachers in training, as well as create an apprenticeship for paraprofessionals/teacher aides. The goal of a pre-apprenticeship is to give students a jump-start on their career path.  

In a pre-apprenticeship, students can engage in a series of advanced courses that count toward their official educator certification—similar to how a dual enrollment course yields college credit while students are in high school. 

The Teacher Aide Apprenticeship program, to be established by the Delaware Department of Education, is designed for paraprofessionals (also known as teacher aides) who are working toward an associate degree. The program will provide paraprofessionals with structured, on-the-job training and coursework. It will be linked to teacher residency and apprenticeship programs, allowing teacher aides to transition to certified teacher roles while benefiting from career advancement and wage increases throughout the program. 

This bill builds on the framework created by HB 138 (152nd GA), which established teacher apprenticeships in Delaware. Apprenticeship programs are an effective earn-and-learn model for career development that provides real-time, on-the-job training and mentoring, while also offering the professional training required for career growth. 

Rodel agrees that by breaking down barriers to the teaching profession, providing economic and professional support, we can ensure our aspiring educators are well-prepared to serve Delaware’s diverse student population.  

As interest in apprenticeships in teaching has grown among districts and charter schools, the pilot program that started with Appoquinimink School District and Wilmington University has expanded.  

Two related bills have been introduced this year: SB 52, which removes barriers to retired educators filling substitute positions, and HB 12, which would provide scholarships to Teacher Academy graduates enrolled in Delaware education preparation programs. This scholarship provides one more way Delaware students can pursue a career in education at no cost or very little cost to them—and even get paid while they go to school, through programs like apprenticeships and residencies. 

In 2021, Delaware committed to changing how it calculates payment rates for Purchase of Care, the state subsidy that helps cover child care tuition for low-income families—moving from the market rate to the “cost of care” methodology. The Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) and the Department of Education (DOE) have been approved by the Administration for Children and Families to conduct both methodologies, and the 2024 study has been released.

The state hired Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies again in 2024 to release a new report and estimator tools for child care centers and family child care.

Delaware joins 10 other states that have moved in this direction, with some using cost methodology to pay for early care and education in the state budget.

While the cost estimates do not guarantee a higher subsidy rate (and has not yet been funded), this tool provides much more transparency into the gap between what resources are truly needed and what is provided today.

What costs are considered and what do we mean by quality?

The tool calculates the total cost of child care—which is primarily driven by the educators in the classroom: their qualifications and salaries, and the size of the group of children and role/responsibilities. Typically in education, early childhood or K-12, personnel comprise about 70 percent of costs.

Research demonstrates that adults with professional qualifications (AA/BA degrees in child development or a related field) that lead smaller group sizes (three children at infant age group, up to 15 in preschool settings) are the most successful in supporting child development. Another key element is providing time for these professionals to plan, assess, engage with families—and partner with other experts like behavioral health consultants, occupational therapists, and curriculum coordinators.

The tool incorporates Delaware’s increasing minimum wage—which reaches $15/hour in January 2025, as well as an updated target compensation scale (to reflect 2024 values), which aligns early childhood workers’ pay with K-12 educator compensation (inflation adjusted from our 2022 scale), adds benefits, and provides a pathway (and incentives) for educators to reach higher levels of qualifications. Child care deserts and shortages are driven by low wages paid to educators—in many cases minimum wage—which are driven by low state reimbursement rates.[1]

What did the study find?

How much more is needed to truly fund the cost of care—and the cost of the quality care all children deserve? Delaware needs to invest:

1. More per child – to reach the quality level recommended by Delaware experts (certified teachers, paid a fair wage, and with small group sizes), we need to invest 38-108 percent more per child just to pay for the basic legal requirements established by the state—and 95-150 percent more than what the state pays today to fund quality, researched-backed care. The study shows that programs cannot break even with any age group—which means they are going into debt or making compromises with their staff and programming.

 Center Based Child Care ^– Annual Child Care Subsidy Reimbursement Rates Per Child (Purchase of Care)

Children with special needs are entitled to 5-8% more, a Delaware Working Group of experts recommended the state invest 20-50% more per child.

^ Family child care centers have similar costs, with estimates even lower in most cases.
* state requirements including licensing and minimum wage
** includes updated target salary scale, quality programming and family supports, and employee benefits and paid time off.

 

These findings are similar to the 2022 study, which found that Delaware was funding child care centers found that Delaware is underinvesting per child 12-86 percent more per child just to pay for the basic legal requirements established by the state–and 163-181 percent more (or 263-281 percent of what we pay today) to fund quality, researched-backed care.

Investments made in the last eight years have prevented these gaps from widening further. An additional $60 million in the state budget  has helped keep up with rising costs and closed the geographical gap for Kent and Sussex counties.  We are serving 2,600 more children; five years ago, Delaware was investing in about one in seven, and today we invest in one in five. We have made incremental progress and now look to make the transformational kind of progress children deserve.

2. …In five times as many children as we are today (and based on their needs). Today, only 19 percent of children under age five are in a publicly funded early learning program—including Purchase of Care, Head Start, state pre-K (ECAP), and district special education programs. That means Delaware is not investing in at least 80 percent of children’s participation in educational programming before kindergarten. State funding for children with special needs is extremely limited, and additional funding for English learners is nonexistent.

The majority of a child’s brain is developed before kindergarten. How do our investments compare with K-12 education? In Delaware:

	Child Care (Purchase of Care)	K-12
Access	Covering less than 20% of children	All children
Per Child Per Year	$11,375-13,625	$20,231
Child’s Needs	5-8% for children with special needs	30-100% for children with special needs 9% for multilingual learners
Year	Year Round	9 months
Day	10-12 hours	7 hours

 

When federal, state and local dollars are taken into consideration, we spend $3.17 billion per year on K-12 education. But many costs are greater during birth to five: early learning requires more adults, more consumable goods (diapers, wipes, etc.), and more equipment (cribs, cots, separate sanitary toys) per child than in later years— so we expect costs to be larger per child.

What’s Next?

Consolidating governance of early learning investments would streamline funding and program standards to ensure they are as accessible to programs and families as possible—for example, combining funding for child care and pre-K programs into one agency, as 25 other states have done.

In order to fund these significant gaps, state revenue strategies may need to be explored, and a number of states are pursuing plans to support early childhood investments. For example, in the last five years, several states have increased revenue measures to pay for early learning, leveraging taxes on high-income individuals, payroll taxes, or general fund taxes like property and sales taxes, which are not in place in Delaware.

The cost of care study results present a huge opportunity and long-term movement—for Delaware to provide foundational services that all children deserve, that are the strongest investments government can make, and that most developed countries already provide.

 

MONTHLY Gap between the Cost of Basic Care (meeting state requirements) and Purchase of Care (state subsidy)

Programs offering school age (ages 5-12) programming can produce revenue; any other age group cannot cover costs

MONTHLY Gap between the Cost of Quality (meeting state funded preschool standards) and Purchase of Care (state subsidy)

Programs can break even for any age group

 

[1] Other costs in the tool include occupancy costs, insurance, taxes, food, classroom supplies, inclusion supports, reserves for capital costs, screening (developmental, vision, hearing). And, the tool assumes other sources of revenue for eligible programs, including CACFP food program.

(Not included are all the systemic supports needed to achieve these goals, including scholarships, professional development, quality improvement systems, monitoring, and more.)

As we wrote in March, a handful of tragic incidents across the state have shone a spotlight on child safety and abuse risks at child care centers. Health and safety complaints to the Office of Child Care Licensing are up 30 percent over the last year, according to the Department of Education, which oversees child care licensing. 

In turn, Delaware legislators introduced in May a package of bills aimed at improving child safety. 

While new regulations and processes will be helpful, deeper state investments remain the big-picture key to truly unlocking all that early childhood education has to offer. Although Delaware has ramped up its early child care budget in recent years, much more is still needed. Today, most child care workers don’t earn a living wage, and many families are shut out from both available programming and from state benefits.  

SB 294 will build the capacity of the Office of Child Care Licensing by providing equitable compensation of licensing specialists, on par with other Delaware Department of Education employees. 

As a result, SB 294 will: 

• Reduce turnover and the current litany of open positions—and improve recruitment.  
• Provide more capacity to investigate complaints made against child care centers. Today, the process can take weeks, putting children at risk while complaints are being considered. 

 

This bill would likely carry a fiscal note, but as most would agree, such investments are worth it if they keep children safe.  

 

SJR 7 directs the Office of Child Care Licensing to modernize the child care licensing system, including an electronic system to streamline processes for providers, create efficiencies and enable the state licensing specialists to respond more quickly to complaints. The system needs to be implemented within the next two years. 

Delaware’s child care licensing process still utilizes paper files, adding to slow government churn and limited data systems. As mentioned in a previous blog, DDOE is requesting proposals from potential vendors to address this challenge. SJR 7 would establish timelines and requirements to ensure these plans deliver.  

SJR 7 aims to:  

• Provide better data for making decisions – for example, there is no way to know today how many children are served in child care in Delaware or the true capacity of providers to serve families  
• Make recordkeeping easier for providers and licensing specialists. 

 

SB 295 will strengthen the process for child care programs to obtain job applicants’ child care employment history. 

Currently, employers at child care centers are required to submit “service letters” to the Department of Labor that includes information on current and past employees. 

The bill mandates a few updates to this reporting process, requiring these letters specifically include: 

• Information about engagement in prohibited acts (like rough handling and physical abuse, yelling, sexual abuse, denying children basic needs, or restraining children beyond holding them, as outlined in Delaware licensing regulations 
• Concerns the previous employers would have about the employee providing care to children  

 

SB 295 also requires the Office of Child Care Licensing to report employers suspected of not adhering to these requirements. 

While these bills signal steps in the right direction, more remains to be done to stabilize the child care industry.  

As mentioned, actually investing what it costs to deliver quality care (instead of a much lower rate based on a convoluted system) to providers would allow them to hire, retain, and develop staff. Supporting the workforce should also include benefits, including mental health support for educators.  

Delaware also should implement protection plans for children while complaints are being investigated, and the state should make regulatory updates would ensure child care workers who have engaged in prohibited acts are not permitted to continue working in the field.  

Additionally, lawmakers could consider supporting lead remediation and filter updates in child care centers, as the state now does for K-12 schools.  

Delaware continues to focus on early literacy, a critical benchmark for a child’s educational development, and an area where Delaware (along with most of the nation) has declined in recent years. Recent focus has been on the NAEP scores, which have put Delaware below most other states and well below some of our neighbors, and with one of the steepest drops nationally.

In response, local lawmakers and literacy advocates continue to build on the broader adoption of what’s known as the Science of Reading, an evidence-backed body of research on literacy and reading acquisition.

Delaware has earned national recognition for some of its recent efforts, including from the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University. Check out this video profile of Delaware Delivers: Providing rigorous instruction to all students.

What’s new with Science of Reading?

A new bill, SS 1 for SB 252, has been filed that aims to strengthen teacher preparation by monitoring programs to ensure they are training candidates on Science of Reading techniques. The bill directs the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) to monitor and report on the strength of these approaches in all educator preparation programs as part of the Educator Preparation Report Cards.

This effort builds on several others that aims to strengthen Science of Reading statewide, including SB 133 (from the 151^st General Assembly), which required teacher preparation programs that   prepare elementary school, early childhood education, or special education teachers or reading specialists must provide instruction in evidence-based reading instruction. SB 133 also required DDOE to establish a minimum number of hours of training that instructors in educator preparation programs must complete in evidence-based reading instruction.

Gov. John Carney included funding for literacy coaches in his Recommended FY 25 Budget. Embedding state-deployed coaches led by a cohesive state strategy was a key component of Mississippi’s success in improving early literacy.

The DDOE has been focused on implementing the state Literacy Plan and recent legislation related to Science of Reading-aligned teaching and assessment.

What’s next in Delaware

• This fall, Wilmington University and nonprofit tutoring provider Reading Assist Delaware will launch a new approach to supporting the educator pipeline called Tutors to Teachers.
• Thanks to private grant funding, the state will partner with Reading Assist to deliver high-dosage tutoring to more K-3 students during the school day.
• Identifying strong ways to scale models beyond traditional 1:1 in person models, including small groups and virtual tutoring, which are underway in models including Reading Assist and Book Nook in Delaware.

 

What else should Delaware consider?

As Delaware looks to other states for inspiration, there are policy opportunities to go further including:

1. Establishing Criteria for Interventions. While Delaware requires interventions for students who struggle with reading and provides guidance to schools on selecting intervention tools, we do not have requirements to adopt interventions grounded in the Science of Reading. And, the state does not have a vetted and approved list of evidence- based interventions for districts to adopt.
2. Expanding the Pipeline to Scale Tutors.
   1. Leverage federal funding: The U.S. Department of Education is encouraging institutions of higher education to leverage federal work study funds to hire students as teachers and to take advantage of federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) dollars to pay tutors.
   2. Leverage educator preparation programs, starting in high school, to train tutors and ensure they can be paid.
3. Strengthening Standards and Assessment of Teacher Candidates. Delaware has been critiqued by national organizations including Excel in Ed and the National Center for Teacher Quality because the state’s test does not adequately address all required components of the Science of Reading. About half of states have adopted a strong reading licensure test addressing all five components of the science of reading.

 

In addition to policy improvements, there are a number of implementation components that Excel in Ed has identified for Delaware, including strengthening requirements for parent notification, creating and monitoring individual reading plans, reinstating summer school requirements, and transparency related to curriculum.