Home visiting is a service delivery strategy for inter-generational family-centered supports during the pivotal window from pregnancy to early childhood. Expanded federal support for home visiting began with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program, which was authorized by Congress in 2010, and provides funding…

Our look at the well-being of California's early educators points to the need to consider work environments in early care and education (ECE) policy development. The learning environments of young children are also the work environments of the ECE workforce. Supportive and safe work environments that foster a respectful workplace climate can…

The availability of affordable and high-quality child care has long been an issue for the workforce. The escalation of this challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic brought needed attention and federal funding to support the child care industry and working parents. While such financial support is critical, the early childhood education (ECE)…

California is expanding transitional kindergarten (TK) to become a universal preschool program for all four-year-old children. Upwards of 300,000 children are expected to enroll in universal transitional kindergarten (UTK) by 2025, requiring thousands of additional lead teachers and classroom aides to meet lower student-to-teacher ratio…

The use of the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to improve early childhood education program quality is based in part on assumptions that the quality of programs can be measured and that quality ratings are associated with meaningful differences in learning outcomes for children. This report reviews all of the state QRIS validation…

Early care and education (ECE) programs for children prior to kindergarten in California are provided through a mixed delivery system that includes licensed home- and center-based programs as well as school settings. The requirements, experience, and supports for educators vary widely across settings, depending more on funding sources and…

As California policymakers start to chart a path forward beyond COVID-19, it is important to first understand and reckon with the pandemic's impact on child care programs and individual educators. This research paper presents findings from a survey of 953 California ECE programs and providers in June-July 2020. The results provide an in-depth view…

Research examining child-care providers' beliefs and behaviour has produced contradictory evidence perhaps because analyses commonly examine providers as a homogenous group. Among providers in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we used cluster analysis to identify groups based on profiles of beliefs. We found evidence for five…

Reflecting the growing momentum in support of quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) as a key strategy to improve early care and education quality, significant amounts of public dollars have been devoted to their development and implementation. In this brief, the authors report on their investigation of both quality rating and improvement…