Research Connections’ librarians have curated this page to include publications that may be of particular interest to child care and early education policymakers, professionals supporting the workforce, and researchers. The publications were selected because they align with federal priorities, seasonal priorities, current events, or national interest. Many of the highlighted publications have been featured in Research Connections newsletters.
This brief explores theories on how to sustain the benefits of attending preschool through elementary school. The theories come from studies using data from students enrolled in Boston Public Schools and explore whether sustained preschool benefits are associated with skill type, post-…
What do preschool administrators think about preschool inclusion? This study examines key themes from interviews with 23 preschool administrators to gain a better understanding of perspectives on preschool inclusion and what resources are required to provide high-quality preschool inclusion.…
Black, Latina, and Latino prekindergarten teachers, directors, and technical assistance providers participated in six listening sessions in April 2022. The purpose of these listening sessions was to understand participants’ perceptions of ECERS-3. This brief summarizes key themes that emerged…
Understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children and ECE programs is essential. The University of Michigan and the Urban Institute published this synthesis of 76 studies, which offers evidence of the pandemic’s impact. The authors also provide policy recommendations informed…
Even with rapid and widespread expansion of states’ quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS)—tiered frameworks that assess, communicate, and improve early childhood education (ECE) quality—there exists no population-level information regarding which providers choose to participate in these…
Describing access across multiple dimensions provides decision makers with a deeper understanding of families’ ECE needs and emphasizes the need for multi-faceted policy solutions. Yet measuring and comparing access from different perspectives requires available data and a clear measurement…
In this report we share the results of case studies of four SOELs. To set the stage for the case studies, we highlight, in Section 1, the prior research that contributed to our conceptual framework. In Section 2 we describe our methodology. We then provide the individual case studies for each of…
This program evaluation study describes 3 years of implementation of Arkansas’s BehaviorHelp (BH) system, a statewide expulsion prevention support system for early care and education (ECE). BH coordinates three tiers of supports to ECE professionals, including phone support, on-site technical…
This program evaluation study looks at Arkansas’s BehaviorHelp system, a statewide effort designed to reduce the suspension and expulsion of young children by offering support to early childhood education professionals who face challenging behaviors in the classroom. The analysis discusses…
Despite substantial federal, state, and local investments in improving early care and education (ECE), we know little about whether ECE program quality has improved over time. The lack of data tracking the quality of publicly funded ECE programs at scale creates a substantial evidence gap for…
As part of its Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) initiative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored the RAND Corporation to study the cost of high-quality pre-K programming. The RAND study included three states — Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington — that were partnering with the…
This article explores teacher turnover in early care and education (ECE) settings. It uses data collected by the state of Louisiana as part of its quality rating and improvement system (QRIS). The data help answer questions about whether teachers who leave differ significantly from teachers who…