Is Day Care a School?

With two children in day care, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering - and occasionally worrying – if day care is doing the right thing for their development. In the end, Kelly and I have been happy with our day care if only for the reason that the people that work there genuinely care about our kids. It's obvious in all of their interactions with our kids, and that goes a long way in my book. We do what we can at home to keep them engaged and learning about different things, and we look for our daycare to teach the kids basic knowledge but also to be properly socialized (learning how to share and interact with others).
I mention this because I recently read an article by Rebecca Ruiz that argues that we should be doing much more to not only train early child care providers but also ensure that they make a fair wage (did you know that “The average salary for the nation's 2.3 million child-care workers is $19,605”?). As she writes:

Despite their meager incomes, the women who provide daily care to the nation's children -- 95 percent of workers in the field are female -- are increasingly expected to provide their charges with quality learning experiences. Research has shown that early-childhood learning is a key indicator for future academic and personal success, and in recent years, policy-makers and advocates have embraced the idea that child-care workers are an essential yet neglected part of the equation. Gone are the days when child-care workers were seen as doing little more than handing out blocks and Barbies.
In theory, it's a welcome shift for providers, who have long known that they play an integral part in the intellectual and emotional development of the children they watch. But in practice, we are a long way from treating, training, or paying child-care workers as professionals. Some 1.1 million child-care workers are paid relatives, neighbors, or friends. They often lack the necessary resources to create engaging curriculum; only about half of them have any college education. Teachers employed by child-care centers are much more likely to have some college education, but they only make up a quarter of the nation's child-care workforce.
The federal government, however, could change that by making a commitment to train and pay child-care providers as early-childhood professionals. The government's basic tool is the federal subsidy program known as the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG). The voucher-based subsidy allows low-income parents to afford child care but doesn't ensure decent pay.