Early Childhood Projects

In December 2018, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) received a federal Preschool Development Birth through Five Initial Grant Award (PDG B-5). In partnership with the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF) and researchers at UVA, VDOE began a set of efforts to improve early childhood opportunities at scale. In January 2020, VDOE received a three-year PDG B-5 Renewal Award to continue this work.

Through a long-standing research practice partnership with the Early Childhood Office in the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), our team at UVA and UCLA is working to better understand the impact of Louisiana’s QRIS and other reform efforts on creating system-wide ECE improvement.

Young children thrive when they have stable and engaging relationships with their caregivers. Yet early educators are among the lowest-paid workforces in the United States, which likely contributes to high turnover rates in childcare settings. To address both turnover and compensation challenges in the early childhood education (ECE) workforce, state and local governments are increasingly considering approaches to improving early educators’ compensation, including through retention bonus programs. In 2023, MSDE piloted the ECSTRA Program as a potential policy strategy to help stabilize its ECE workforce. ECSTRA directed American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds directly to eligible early educators who remained in their same childcare sites and roles for an up-to-8-month period via retention bonuses.

IRB-SBS #5536