Better early childhood policy starts with understanding the daily demands of the classroom—and giving educators a voice before decisions are made.
By Mercedes Finstuen
Walk into an early childhood classroom on any given day and you will quickly discover that the work of educating young children rarely happens according to plan. There may be eight infants crying at once. A toddler may be struggling through a transition to the bathroom. A preschool teacher may be attempting to lead a lesson while another child is overwhelmed, dysregulated, and overturning the dramatic-play kitchen after a conflict with a peer. And somehow, the teacher is expected to meet every child’s varying needs, create differentiated learning experiences, maintain safety, document learning, communicate with families, follow licensing requirements, complete assessments, implement curriculum, attend professional development, and keep the classroom moving swiftly and smoothly. This is early childhood education.
It is also a reality that too often feels far removed from the rooms where policies are written. There is a bridge between the classroom and the policymaking table that desperately needs to be built.
The people making decisions about early childhood are not necessarily indifferent to children. In fact, many enter public service because they deeply care about improving outcomes for children and families. The problem is not always a lack of care. It is a problem of lack of proximity. Policy can look very different from a conference room than it does from the classroom floor.
Consider Minnesota. Minnesota’s licensed child care requirements establish minimum ratios of one adult for every four infants, one for every seven toddlers, and one for every ten preschoolers, with corresponding maximum group sizes. Those numbers exist for important reasons: safety, supervision, and quality matter. (Minnesota Department of Human Services) But anyone who has actually spent a day in a classroom knows that a ratio is more than a number.
One teacher with four infants is not simply responsible for four bodies. That teacher is feeding, changing diapers, soothing, observing, communicating, documenting, supporting attachment, watching for developmental cues, responding to four developing nervous systems, and sometimes even integrating art crafts or developmentally appropriate activities – often simultaneously.
And when a classroom loses a staff member, the mathematics of ratio may remain technically compliant while the lived experience of the classroom changes dramatically. That distinction matters. Directors and childcare advocates in states such as Florida, Indiana, and Alabama stated that their states have increased student to teacher ratios and decreased the minimum qualifications for lead teachers. Increasing the overall stress put on the already strained system.
Minnesota itself acknowledges the workforce strain. The state reports that many providers cannot operate at full capacity because of a shortage of qualified workers. Minnesota is also confronting burnout, exhaustion, high turnover, and wagers that are often below the cost of living for early childhood educators. This is where policy and practice can begin to drift apart.
A regulation may be designed to strengthen quality. A training requirement may be designed to protect children. An assessment may be designed to provide valuable information. A new initiative may be designed to improve outcomes.
But what happens when several well-intentioned requirements land on the same teacher, in the same classroom, on the same day? The answer cannot simply be, “The requirement is important.” We also have to ask, “What does implementation actually look like?”
Minnesota’s current child care regulation modernization process offers an important example of what can happen when that question is taken seriously. The state engaged providers and other stakeholders through dozens of meetings, focus groups, and surveys. One recurring concern was that staff qualification requirements did not always align with the realities of the existing workforce; the state reported more than 4,000 variances in 2024 related to staff qualifications (Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families).
That is not merely a compliance issue. It is a signal. When the people responsible for implementing a system repeatedly tell us that a requirement is difficult to reconcile with the reality on the ground, we should not immediately label them resistant to change. We should become more curious. What are they seeing that we are not seeing? The disconnect extends beyond Minnesota.
On a weekly call with child care advocates across the country, continue to report a massive wave of centers closing, high levels of teacher shortage, large cuts in childcare support programming, funding constraints, and difficulty providing individualized support to children with disabilities or challenging behaviors which leads to early childhood expulsions in programming. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that every provider it visited reported limited staffing for students who needed individualized support, particularly for children with disabilities. (U.S. Government Accountability Office).
At the same time, states and communities continue to wrestle with questions about kindergarten readiness, assessment, curriculum, workforce qualifications, child care access, and school readiness. These are important conversations. But somewhere in those conversations, we have to remember the child sitting in the classroom.
A child who cannot yet regulate their emotions cannot simply be handed another academic expectation and told to perform. A child experiencing chronic stress may need connection before correction. A teacher experiencing burnout may need support before another professional-development mandate.A classroom with a staffing shortage may need additional capacity before another initiative is layered onto the existing workload. And a family struggling to access services does not experience our carefully separated systems as separate systems. They experience one child, one family, and one complicated journey through all of them.
This is why the bridge matters. We need policymakers who understand policy. But we also need policymakers who understand people. We need educators who are willing to step beyond their classrooms and advocate. And we need policymakers who are willing to step into those classrooms–not for a photo opportunity, but to listen, observe, and understand. Imagine if policymakers regularly spent meaningful time inside early childhood classrooms. Where they felt the impact of the implementation of the policy that they are putting into place. Not just a ten-minute tour. Not a staged classroom visit. But a full morning.
Watch the arrival period. Sit through circle time. Observe lunch. Serve lunch. Experience a transition. Watch a teacher support a dysregulated child while simultaneously maintaining the safety of the rest of the classroom. Support a teacher cleaning up a destroyed classroom from a child enduring an amygdala hijack. Then sit down with that teacher afterward and ask: What is helping you? What is getting in your way? What would you change if you could?
That experience would not replace research or data. It would give data context. And educators need a reciprocal invitation to the table. Teachers, directors, family childcare providers, special education educators, coaches, and early learning professionals should not only be surveyed after a policy has been designed. They should be part of the design process from the beginning.
There is another bridge we need to build as well: the bridge between data and lived experience. We should absolutely measure outcomes. We should know whether policies are working. We should examine child development, workforce stability, family access, program quality, and educational outcomes. But numbers should not become disconnected from the humans behind them.
If teacher turnover rises, we should not simply record the percentage. We should ask why. If a child is repeatedly removed from the classroom because of behavior, we should not simply record the incident. We need to ask what the behavior is communicating. If an assessment shows that a child is struggling, we should not only ask whether the child is ready to engage and learn. We should ask whether the environment is ready to support the child from an emotionally safety, love, and connection perspective. If a program cannot meet a new requirement, we should not immediately ask why the program is failing. Or have licensing visits that harshly mark a yes or no response with no context.
We should ask whether the system was designed with the realities of implementation in mind. This is not an argument for eliminating accountability. It is an argument for making accountability more intelligent. We should not lower expectations for children or educators. We should make expectations developmentally appropriate, relationally grounded, and achievable within the conditions we create.
Children deserve more than preparation for the next grade level. They deserve opportunities to develop emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, communication, resilience, problem-solving, empathy, critical thinking, collaboration, and a sense of belonging. These are not “soft skills”. They are human skills. They are the foundation upon which healthy communities are built. And educators deserve more than praise for being “essential.” They deserve to be seen as professional whose knowledge truly and deeply matters.
Early childhood educators are not babysitters. They are not simply providers keeping children occupied while parents work. They nurture relationships. They support developing brains. They create environments where children learn whether the world is safe, whether adults can be trusted, whether their voice matters, and whether they belong. The first years of life are not simply a holding place before “real school.” They are foundational years that yield all future success.
So perhaps the question before us is not whether policymakers or educators care more. Perhaps the question is whether we are willing to stop working from opposite sides of the bridge. Minnesota has an opportunity to model what collaboration can look like. The nation does too.
Bring educators into policy conversations naturally and systematically before decisions are finalized. Bring policymakers into classrooms before assumptions are formed. Create advisory groups that include people who are actively serving children every day–not simply those who study the system and data from a distance. Pilot major changes before expecting every program to implement them at scale. Collect both qualitative and quantitative stories.
And, perhaps most importantly, create a culture where educators can tell policymakers, “this is not working,” without being dismissed as resistant, while policymakers can say, “help us understand,” without being viewed as disconnected. We do not need another divide. We need a bridge. Because the goal on both sides of the table is ultimately the same: children who are safe, healthy, connected, capable, and prepared to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
That requires wisdom. It requires humility. It requires courage. And it requires us to remember that education is not a transactional industry with children walking around with dollar signs above their heads. It is relational. It is human. It is one of the most consequential investments a society can make.
Our children deserve policymakers who understand the classroom. Our educators deserve policymakers who listen to the people doing the work. And our communities deserve a system built not merely around what looks good on paper, but around what actually helps children thrive.
The bridge is possible. But we have to be willing to meet each other in the middle.
Mercedes Finstuen, M.Ed., is the founder of Mindful Foundations, an early childhood educator, consultant, and advocate for whole-child and community transformation.
