A recent study, Who’s Caring for the Kids? The Status of the Early Childhood Workforce in Illinois-2008, was conducted by researchers at National-Louis University’s McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership and the Early Childhood Parenting Collaborative at the University of Illinois.
Early childhood teachers are not representative of or prepared to teach the changing population of children in Illinois. Most early childhood teachers speak only English, yet more than one-third of children in Illinois speak a home language other than English. The workforce also lacks gender diversity.
Only 1 percent of lead teachers and directors are male.
For more information about the study: http://cecl.nl.edu/
Or you can download the executive summary of the study here:
http://cecl.nl.edu/research/reports/whos_caring_summary_2008.pdf