2024 Session Videos

• Chrishana Lloyd, Child Trends
• Michelle Maier, MDRC
• Yoonjeon Kim, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California at Berkeley
• Sara Mead, District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education
• Ola J. Friday, Early Educator Investment Collaborative

This session built on the NRCEC 2022 plenary session, Addressing Historical Inequities in Early Care and Education: Strategies to Support Workforce Equity. The presenters for this plenary represented and brought research, policy, and philanthropy perspectives and identified and discussed issues related to compensation, equity, and innovations relevant to the early care and education workforce. The panel started with grounding remarks that made linkages between what has happened historically in the early care and education field and present day. Presenters then shared research and data from California and Washington, DC to shed light on compensation related challenges and solutions. The panel ended with a forward-facing look across the nation at the ways in which states and communities are addressing workforce compensation issues through research, policy, and practice.

• JoAnn Hsueh, MDRC
• Sandra Barrueco, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Jocelyn Bowne, Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care
• Cindy Decker, Tulsa Educare

Early childhood is a pivotal period for children’s growth, learning, and development. Having an accurate portrait of children’s development helps ensure early care and education systems, programs, and educators can make data-informed decisions about how to better support early learning. Yet, to date, researchers, programs, and educators have grappled with the absence of timely, reliable, and unbiased data on children’s outcomes. In this state of the field session, Dr. Hsueh discussed the limitations of the existing landscape of child assessment tools, how data are collected, and the usefulness of the data to support educators and early learners, including children with diverse cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds. She offered a reimagined paradigm for measurement development that centers the needs and perspectives of communities of educators, families, and young children. She discussed the potential of this paradigm for unlocking the promise of future assessment tools to advance more equitable, high-quality learning opportunities for all early learners, but also highlighted the challenges and tensions that may emerge as a result. The session concluded with a guided discussion with panelists providing reactions and priorities for new assessment tools from research, policy, and practice perspectives to suggest next steps and directions for the field.

• Lina Guzman, National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families, Child Trends
• Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Brandeis University
• Deana Around Him, Child Trends
• Latrice Rollins, National African American Child and Family Research Center, Morehouse School of Medicine

The 2020 U.S. Census shows that the racial and ethnic diversity of children (and the overall population) is increasing, with children of color accounting for all the growth in the child population between 2010 and 2020. In 2022, Hispanic (of any race), Black, Asian, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander and Multi-racial children made up over 50% of the child population with White children making up 49% of all children. This increased racial and ethnic diversity in the child population is coupled with persistent and often large inequities in access to health-promoting and economic-securing resources and services, safe and affirming experiences, and disparities in outcomes for many children of color. Yet, most early childhood research and interventions have been framed through a Eurocentric and monolingual dominant lens that disregards the social contexts, cultures, languages, heterogeneity, and strengths of communities of color. In this session, speakers provided insights on approaches being taken to develop population-specific evidence to promote the health and well-being of children from historically minoritized communities that can inform early childhood systems and practices.

• Justin Brian Doromal, Urban Institute
• Erica Greenberg, Urban Institute
• Owen Schochet, Mathematica
• Andrea Vazzano, Child Trends
• Hannah Matthews, District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education
• Sia Barbara Kamara, District of Columbia Early Learning Collaborative

This symposium examined Washington, DC’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund (PEF), a groundbreaking initiative that supplements early educator wages through sustainable public funding. It featured three papers using mixed methods to collectively explore the PEF’s implementation, labor market effects, and personal narratives from DC educators. Representatives from DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the DC Early Learning Collaborative discussed the findings and their implications for future program planning and research.

• Martha Buell, University of Delaware
• Christen Park, SRI Education
• Erin Tebben, The Ohio State University
• Amanda Williford, University of Virginia
• Marie Lamonica-Sarro, Virginia Department of Education

The suspension and expulsion of children from early childhood programs is recognized as harmful and unproductive. This paper symposium examined data from three states to provide insights into why some educators persist in the use of exclusionary practices despite policy interventions and targeted teacher supports. Understanding educators' reasons for using exclusionary practices can inform policymakers and program leaders to build more effective expulsion prevention strategies.

• Milagros Nores, National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)
• Shantel Meek, Children's Equity Project, Arizona State University
• Gerry Cobb, Pritzker Children’s Initiative
• Ann Whalen, State of Illinois
• Sara Vecchiotti, Couch Family Foundation

Many young children in the United States are thriving and have access to the conditions and resources they need to grow up healthy. However, a substantial number of young children face challenging conditions such as: poverty; food insecurity; exposure to violence; and inadequate access to health care, well-funded quality schools, and mental health care. In many cases, the historical origins of unequal access to crucial supports for children's physical, emotional, and cognitive development are rooted in policies that intentionally segregated and limited various populations' access to resources and create opportunity gaps that intertwine and compound to affect academic, health, and economic outcomes. The National Academies report, Closing the Opportunity Gap for Young Children, identifies and describes the causes, costs, and effects of the opportunity gap in young children and explores how disparities in access to quality educational experiences, health care, and positive developmental experiences birth through age eight intersect with academic, health, and economic outcomes. The report identifies drivers of these gaps in education, mental health, and physical health and offers recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, community organizations, and philanthropic organizations to address these gaps so that all children have the opportunity to thrive. This session presented key aspects outlined in the report and incorporated the reflections and consideration of policymakers and philanthropic organizations deeply immersed in the policy, practice, and research areas addressed by the report.

• Laura Erickson, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, DHHS
• Michelle Sarche, University of Colorado-Anschutz Medical Campus
• Kim Clum, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, ACF
• Louis Gasper, Capacity Building Center for States at ICF

This session presented a dynamic conversation that highlighted best practices for partnering with individuals with lived experience in research and how early childhood programs and researchers can learn from other human services contexts. The session began with an overview of emerging strategies for equitable engagement of participants with lived experience in research based on cross human services research from the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Next, panelists discussed how they have engaged with experts with lived experience to inform Head Start research with Alaska Native and American Indian participants and child welfare research and technical assistance. A panelist from ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation also discussed efforts to incorporate participatory, community engagement methods into research and evaluation. Panelists presented their understanding of what it means to partner with those with lived experience, why partnering is foundational in their work, how they do this and how it continually evolves, how this changes what they learn from their work, and considerations they feel are important to take into account. The session concluded with an audience discussion including questions and reactions for panelists, sharing of relevant experiences, and thoughts about implications for early childhood research.

• Melissa Kull, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago
• Sara Shaw, Child Trends
• J. J. Cutuli, Nemours Children's Health
• Monette Ferguson, Alliance for Community Empowerment
• Nathan Bossie, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Housing instability and homelessness is a critical barrier to family and child well-being and a key issue for early childhood equity. This symposium addressed the intersections between housing and early care and education (ECE), highlighting challenges families face and the invaluable roles that ECE providers play in supporting families and providing a platform for intervention. Together, these papers highlighted the importance of innovative multi-systems approaches to supporting families with young children.

• Deborah F. Perry, Georgetown University
• Sangeeta Parikshak, Office of Head Start, ACF
• Amittia Parker, Georgetown University
• Eva Marie Shivers, Indigo Cultural Center

While the origins of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) predate Head Start, this national program was one of the earliest federal commitments to integrating mental health consultants into early childhood education. Now, IECMHC is available across the country in a wide range of early childhood settings, including child care, home visiting, and early intervention services. The evidence base for the effectiveness of IECMHC has been built over the last two decades, yet there remain unanswered questions still to study. This session featured a discussion with a panel of individuals who have led IECMHC evaluations, delivered IECMHC in Head Start, and championed the next generation of research and evaluation questions that center the role of social justice in IECMHC.