“People tend to think of this as unskilled work,” Whitebook said, “when in fact the work of facilitating the education and development of babies is every bit as complex as working with kindergartners.” The low pay, she added, means that some teachers are under stress, which can make it harder to engage with children. “Nobody working with young children should be worrying about feeding their own families.”

Beyond that, Whitebook’s research suggests that when wages are better, particularly for childcare providers who have invested in a college degree , the quality of the teachers increases, turnover decreases, and, most importantly, the quality of care and education that kids receive goes up. Yet, as the report outlines, only a slight majority of caregivers and teachers in center-based settings and not quite a third in home-based settings have an associate’s degree or more. “You can’t separate the preparation, the reward, and the support of the workforce from the quality of care that children receive,” she said. “They’re inseparable.” Right now, what teachers earn has little to do with their qualifications and a lot to do with where they work and how old the children are, so there’s little incentive to pursue higher education and those who do often leave the field for something more lucrative.

Research indicates that children who have quality opportunities to learn in the early years not only do better in school, but are more likely to have successful careers later, and even to be healthier as they age. And the need for these programs is greater than ever. More children are growing up in either homes where both parents work or single-parent homes than in previous generations. More than 11 million of the 23.7 million children under age 6 in the U.S. live below 200 percent of the poverty line, meaning that without early-childhood education, they are likely to start kindergarten already behind their more affluent peers.

“Undervaluing the nation’s early childhood educators flies in the face of what we know about brain development and the optimal time for learning,” Education Secretary John King said in a statement. “Educating children before kindergarten requires significant knowledge, expertise, and skill—especially in light of the critical importance of the early years for children’s growth, development, and future academic and life success.”

There’s certainly robust debate about what constitutes “quality.” Dale Farran, a professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, caused an uproar in the education world last year when she published a groundbreaking study calling into question the long-term benefits of some preschool programs. But Farran wasn’t saying preschool is bad. In fact, Farran is perfectly open to the idea that quality preschool programs do offer lasting benefits. Separate research indicates that schools with small teacher-to-student ratios that follow curriculum specifically developed to increase things like language development and cognitive skills have very real impacts. But she wants policymakers and other advocates to do their research before throwing money at programs that aren’t thoughtfully designed. One factor that helps explain why the country doesn’t have enough quality programs is, as this new report suggests, its failure to effectively cultivate or compensate a cadre of early-childhood educators who are prepared to offer quality instruction. Whitebook is careful to say that many childcare workers care deeply about children and are doing the best they can with the resources they have. But, she said, “it’s really hard if you don't understand children and what you can do in that situation to support their development.”