Each year the expectation of teachers by many politicians, educational administrators, and the media is to raise the academic performance of students. This is a reasonable expectation since teachers have the most consistent contact with students and control over the learning environment and its components. Standardized tests, the teacher's report card, show too many early childhood students testing below grade level. Some might conclude that children are struggling to learn but perhaps it is the teachers themselves who struggle at teaching them. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover through the lived experiences of novice K-3 early childhood educators their perception of their traditional four-year teacher preparation programs' (TPP) effectiveness on their practice. The research questions that guided this study were (1) How do novice Early Childhood Education teachers describe their perceptions about the usefulness of teacher preparation courses to their daily classroom practices? (2) What relevance do novice Early Childhood Education teachers draw between their practicum and student teaching experiences and their pedagogical practices? and (3) How do novice Early Childhood Education teachers describe their experiences with mentors and residency programs on their skills as educators? This was a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the data for the study. The interviews took place on Zoom to capture each novice teachers' responses to the twenty protocol questions and any probing questions that the researcher asked to obtain more details to a response. The data was coded and analyzed for common themes related to K-3 novice teachers' perceived effectiveness of their teacher preparation programs (TPPs) on their practice in the classroom. Their perceptions of preparedness were a direct reflection of their self or teacher efficacy. Throughout this study, the identity of the participants remained anonymous. The novice teacher interview data suggested that although the novice teachers in this study acknowledged that their TPPs prepared them to create lesson plans, build relationships with students and families, and manage classroom, they felt that their programs did not prepare them for the reality of the high demands to function understand extremely tight timelines nor the skills to teach young learners "how-to" read or do math which left them with feelings of unpreparedness. The significant findings of this study suggest that there may be benefits of TPPs soliciting anonymous feedback from in-service novice teachers who graduated from their programs about their experience in the field to help discover ways to improve the instruction of their programs' pre-service teachers. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]