INCENTIVES Early Childhood, an affilate of Child Care WAGE$® of Chapel Hill, N.C., was started by the New Mexico Association for the Education of Young Children (NMAEYC)  in the summer of 2010 as a pilot program in Santa Fe County.    INCENTIVES provides pay supplements every six months to early childhood teachers or assistant teachers based on the level of education of the teachers.    The program is designed to encourage teachers and assistants to commit to their programs and to the early childhood field and to continue to take college classes in Early Childhood Education (to increase the size of their pay supplements).     For the pilot program, only teachers of infants, toddlers or 2-year-olds in Santa Fe County are eligible.   NMAEYC plans to expand the INCENTIVES program so that it will be available to teachers and assistants in ALL New Mexico counties and available to educators working with ALL children birth to age 5.

Attached below is an article about the results of the first year of INCENTIVES, which ended in the summer of 2011.    No INCENTIVES participants left their place of employment during the year -- so that their was NO turnover of early childhood staff -- and about half of the participants took additional college courses toward Early Childhood Education degrees.   That meets the two principal goals of INCENTIVES -- to reduce staff turnover and to encourage early education teachers to take more college classes.