While research shows early childhood education can benefit students well into their academic careers, there isn’t a lot of information on how these educators in pre-kindergarten classrooms can best be supported.
“Public school pre-K teachers are an understudied population,” said Elizabeth D. Steiner, a PK-12 education policy researcher at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization, and an author of a recent report about this slice of the teacher workforce.
RAND’s American Public School Pre-K Teacher Survey provides a comprehensive look at the educators teaching the nation’s youngest students and covers topics from instructional materials and educational technology to professional learning and pay, benefits, and intentions to leave. The survey was distributed to 1,586 pre-K teachers in public schools, and researchers then conducted 13 hourlong virtual focus groups with 36 pre-K teachers.
Given the growing body of research on the academic and social-emotional benefits of pre-K, as well as the demand from parents, more states and cities are investing in universal pre-K programs. There are about 1.7 million children—mostly 3- and 4-year-olds—enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs, according to 2024 data released in the 22nd State of Preschool report by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), a nonpartisan organization focused on early childhood education access and quality.
Still, as these programs expand, their quality remains uneven—and there’s not a clear consensus on the best ways for early childhood educators to meet young learners’ needs.
“There is a lot more that we can learn about [pre-K teachers’] classroom conditions, how they use materials, how they try to meet the needs of their students, and where they fit in the overall constellation of public schools,” said Steiner.
A mixed picture of the pre-K teacher workforce conditions
The average salary of pre-K teachers increased from $63,600 in 2024 to about $66,800 in 2025, or roughly 5%, according to RAND survey data. When adjusting for inflation, the increase was $1,500, or 2.3%.
In comparison, the average K-12 teacher salary in the 2024-25 school year is $74,177, according to the National Education Association.
Not all pre-K teachers experienced a pay bump after adjusting for inflation, RAND researchers found. Fifty-five percent of teachers reported their salaries dropped year over year, while 45% said they increased. RAND researchers believe this is because salaries did not increase or salaries increased at a lower rate than inflation.
Even so, the share of pre-K teachers who intended to leave their jobs dropped by about a quarter—from 18% in 2024 to 14% in 2025, according to the RAND report.
“There are so many factors that contribute to this statistic,” said Jordy Berne, who worked on the report and is an associate economist at RAND. “One of the other important things that is contributing to this is overall labor market conditions—previous research shows that when alternative job prospects worsen, people become more likely to stay in their current jobs.”
Professional learning is needed, survey shows
Early childhood educators often need a mix of skills and abilities to teach young students social-emotional competencies, cognitive skills, language and literacy, mathematical and scientific reasoning, and physical skills.
However, pre-K teachers said they have experienced challenges accessing professional learning, especially sessions relevant to the age group they teach, the RAND survey found. More often than not, teachers (64%) reported that their professional development facilitators were not pre-K experts. Sixty-two percent also said their school administrator does not provide guidance about which professional development classes to attend.
Pre-K teachers expressed a need for more professional learning in teaching math, understanding child cognition and development, and supporting motor and physical development. Additionally, teachers who received professional learning on instructional materials expressed needing more help to adapt the material for children with disabilities (64%) and English learners (60%).
“What teachers would often say [during focus groups] is that the material that is often provided to them by their school or district is often a good baseline, they hit the middle of the class, but they don’t always do a good job of extending [to other students],” said Ashley Woo, an associate policy researcher and contributor to the RAND report.
Pre-K teachers “might not be getting materials, in addition to the fact they don’t get professional learning on how to adapt those materials to support differentiation, and that’s why they’re having to make their own,” she said.
The survey found that many teachers reported creating their own instructional materials or using sites like Teachers Pay Teachers, especially to support diverse learners and teach numeracy.
“A lot of the material—supplementing and mixing and matching—is a professional good faith effort on the part of teachers to meet the needs of the students,” said Steiner.
“We may not want to strive for no mixing and matching or no supplementing—we just don’t know what the normative assumptions are, there aren’t any,” she said.
Pre-K teachers are feeling optimistic about educational technology
When it came to education technology, a majority of pre-K teachers (70%) received training on using these tools. The study found that pre-K teachers who received training on how to use a specific ed-tech tool used it more than those who did not receive training. For example, 39% of teachers who received professional learning on student assessment technology reported using the tool “more than half the time” or “every time,” compared to 29% of teachers who did not receive professional learning.
But only 37% of pre-K teachers received guidance on how to judge the quality of ed-tech tools, which could be an opportunity for schools and districts, researchers said.
The survey also asked pre-K teachers about the ed-tech tools they use to do their jobs. The respondents reported using technology that helps communication with parents (82%) and digital curriculum resources (83%) the most.
For instructional ed-tech tools, pre-K teachers reported using audio or video platforms (98%) and interactive whiteboards (77%) the most. Pre-K teachers in the focus groups said they commonly played music or videos during class movement breaks and used whiteboards for kids’ visual stimulation.
Two products that were used far less were electronic games (39%) and educational programs (23%). Pre-K teachers expressed concern about personal electronic devices’ potential harm to the development of social and communication skills of students, according to the report, although some teachers said these tools can provide individualized learning for some children, such as English learners or students with disabilities.
Additionally, the RAND report showed that pre-K teachers use generative artificial intelligence far less (29%) than their colleagues who teach elementary school (42%), middle school (64%), and high school (69%).
Pre-K educators may need more training in AI to see how its exposure could affect young students, researchers said.
