My research focuses on building the evidence base that state and federal policymakers need to make better decisions about early childhood systems — how educator pipelines form and break down, what it costs to deliver quality care, how subsidy policies shape access, and how data infrastructure can support ongoing learning and improvement.
Understanding ECE Workforce Needs in Massachusetts. In this brief, I use data from Massachusetts to explore the workforce math related to ECE expansion: How many educators will actually be needed? How many will need to be recruited, and at what pace? And how much of that recruitment will go toward growing the workforce versus replacing educators who leave?
Early Educator Wage Growth Under Massachusetts’ C3 Program (with K. Hyland). In Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) program distributes grants that can be used for workforce investments. We examined how educator wages changed during the program’s implementation and what factors explain variation in wage growth.
Early Education Workforce Supports at Scale: How state-level data and research could improve innovations and investments in Massachusetts (with M. Comb). This white paper seeks to outline the opportunity and imperative of building data and research capacity at the state level specific to improving our understanding of the ECE workforce.
Supporting Competencies of the Infant and Toddler Workforce: Case Studies of Competency Frameworks in Five States (with A. Mraz Esposito, D. Straske, F. Hurwitz, T. Nguyen, and C. Jones). To support the quality of care for infants and toddlers, states and organizations have developed competency frameworks to outline specific competencies that are essential to the practice of teaching and caring for infants and toddlers.This report provides a comprehensive picture of implementation of competency frameworks through in-depth case studies conducted in five states.
Operational Funding and Early Educator Wage Growth: Evidence from Massachusetts (with K. Hyland)
Using a Narrow Cost Analysis to Inform Payment Rates: A Brief for CCDF Lead Agencies (with K. Gonzalez, L. Karoly, J. Isaacs, and P. Willenborg)
Measuring Costs to Understand Supports for Quality in Early Care and Education Centers (with T. Schulte)
Braiding Federal Funding to Expand Access to Quality Early Care and Education and Early Childhood Supports and Services: A Tool for States and Local Communities (with K. Gonzalez)
Are Ratings from Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems Valid Measures of Program Quality? A Synthesis of Validation Studies from Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge States (with L. Fox, M. McCullough, and M. Herrmann)
Toddlers in Early Head Start: A Portrait of 3-Year-Olds, Their Families, and the Programs Serving Them (with C. Vogel, Y. Xue, J. Thomas, E. Bandel, N. Aikens, K. Boller, and L. Murphy)
Defining and Measuring Quality: An In-Depth Study of Five Child Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (with G. Kirby, L. Malone, and K. Boller)
Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education: A Review of Literature (with G. Kirby, K. Boller, E. Modlin, and J. Lyskawa)