Designing a Stronger Early Childhood Workforce Pipeline: Aligning Access, Pathways, and Investment Across Colorado’s Education Systems

Colorado Education Initiative and the Buell Foundation have released a new report: Designing a Stronger Early Childhood Workforce Pipeline: Aligning Access, Pathways, and Investment Across Colorado’s Education Systems. A robust early childhood education (ECE) ecosystem is necessary for a thriving workforce: for families who need to be sure their young children are safe while they themselves go to work; for educators who need to earn a livable wage that allows them to thrive; and most importantly, for children, who need high-quality access to the earliest foundations of learning. Preparing and supporting the adults who teach young children is increasingly seen as a critical foundation to Colorado’s education investments. Colorado has long been a pioneer in education innovation — our unique local control context incentivizes local solutions to local challenges and can be one of our state’s greatest assets. When local lessons inform statewide approaches, policies and systems are stronger and more sustainable. Colorado’s ECE system is no exception: it is characterized by strong local leadership, deep practitioner expertise, and recent policy and practice momentum that has broadened access statewide.

That said, the system remains fragmented, unevenly resourced, and financially unsustainable for both providers and educators. These pressures show up most clearly in rural communities, infant and toddler settings, and among multilingual and low-income educators, where affordability, navigation barriers, and limited advancement opportunities continue to constrain the pipeline.

At the same time, the ECE workforce ecosystem is primed for evolution. Bright spots across the state have demonstrated that when vision, effort, and resources align, quality educator
pathways can emerge. With growing statewide momentum — including a focused Department of Early Childhood committed to alignment — the conditions for deeper integration are increasingly within reach.

This work builds upon and complements recent state-level and philanthropic investments in ECE workforce development — many of which focused on compensation, credentialing, and
local implementation strategies. The issues named are not new, but with renewed momentum in ECE, the time is right to address a critical and underexplored area: the role of ECE career pathways in preparing future early childhood educators. By exploring both where these efforts exist and the conditions that enable or constrain them, this report offers actionable  guidance for scaling and sustaining more integrated approaches.