The objective of this project to inform renewed efforts to improve the quality of child care subsidized under through the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). Literature to date has primarily examined whether child care subsidies are associated with child care quality and stability, but little is known about the extent to which payment policies and practices, which vary across states, can mediate the relationship between subsidy receipt and quality of care. This study will combine data on payment rates and practices (drawn largely from the Child Care and Development Fund Policies Database) with a variety of quality indicators available in the most recent and comprehensive data set available: the National Survey of Early Care and Education (2012). First, the research team will draw on the Urban Institute's CCDF Policies Database to address the questions: (1a) How much do child care center and family child care home payment rates vary across states, both in absolute terms and relative to market rates? (1b) How much do payment practices and policies vary across states? The analysis will focus on provider-friendly policies and practices, that is, practices that affect provider willingness to participate in CCDF and the net amount and stability of CCDF revenues (e.g., use of contracts, payment for absences, copayment policies, and length of certification periods). The second research question to be explored is: (2) How much variation is there in the quality of child care centers and family child care homes attended by subsidized children? This question would use the NSECE to look at a variety of program and caregiver characteristics linked to child care quality, including child: staff ratios, staff turnover, caregiver education, caregiver experience, and professional development activities. Finally, the key analytical questions are: (3a) What is the association between payment rates and the quality of child care attended by subsidized children? (3b) What is the association between payment policies and practices and the quality of child care attended by subsidized children? Main analytic tools for this third set of questions will include multivariate regression analysis and propensity score matching (PSM), which can provide evidence of a causal link between payment rates and payment practices and child care quality. Answers to these research questions are of high policy relevance to federal policymakers and state administrators as they seek to improve the quality of early education and care for low-income children receiving child care subsides. The project will result in a user-friendly report of findings, a methodological paper, a policy brief, an article submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, and related blogs and poster presentations.


The goal of this secondary data analysis is to examine how ECE program factors are linked to parent engagement in child care, and in turn how this engagement leads to school readiness and child well-being. This study draws data from a subset of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a nationally representative longitudinal dataset. This study will test a complex longitudinal model to identify specific pathways by which parent engagement in the ECE program and with the child is linked to improved kindergarten school readiness and social-emotional well-being among children enrolled in center-based care in preschool. This study will address three specific goals: (1) To identify specific ECE program factors, ranging from structural or distal characteristics such as program type and accreditation to more proximal, process, characteristics such as the quality of caregiver child relationships that are linked to ECE parent engagement practices; (2) To examine the extent to which ECE parent engagement strategies are associated with higher levels of parent-ECE engagement; and (3) To identify the extent to which parent-ECE engagement during preschool is linked to kindergarten school readiness skills and social-emotional wellbeing, both directly and indirectly through increases in parent-child engagement in learning activities. This study will also test whether these links between ECE factors, parent engagement and children's school readiness and well-being vary for low-income families, who are the most at risk for poor school readiness and well-being at kindergarten entry. This project has the potential to identify critical levers for future policy and program development aimed at improving ECE efforts to promote parent engagement, and maximizing the effectiveness of this engagement for children's early school success and well-being. To help meet this goal, this project includes a number of specific dissemination activities aimed at practitioners, policy makers and researchers.


This study aims to fill gaps in previous research by using data from the most recent cohorts (i.e., 2006 and 2009) of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) to identify meaningful constellations of Professional Development (PD) support received by Head Start teachers, and to examine the extent to which specific constellations of PD support contribute to supporting a skilled and effective workforce by having positive impacts on teachers' practice, as well as children's academic and socio-emotional outcomes. To address these research goals the study uses two complementary approaches: a traditional variable-centered approach to examine the association between the number of specific PD supports teachers receive and outcomes; and a person-centered approach to examine patterns of PD experiences among teachers by estimating profiles of teachers experiencing similar constellations of PD, and their association with outcomes. The goal of this study is to provide programs and centers, as well as researchers and program developers, more nuanced information about the specific, real world constellations of PD supports Head Start teachers actually receive across a school year, and their associations with teachers' practice and children's outcomes. This information can be used to inform the types of PD researchers and programs developers create, and inform Head Start programs and centers as they go through the process of selecting which types of PD support to provide to their teachers to make the most of the funds allocated for PD. In both cases, the information could be useful to improve the effectiveness of the PD that is currently being offered to Head Start teachers.


This study will examine the enrollment of children in CCDF subsidized providers during early childhood and the effects of these enrolments on the school achievement outcomes of children in grades third to eight. The needs that will be addressed in the proposed project include, first, exploring how, when, where and what factors systematically influence whether low-income households enroll their children in early care and education providers receiving CCDF-funding. Second, it studies how those enrollment choices are causally related to the achievement test scores in math and reading during grades third to eighth. Findings from this research will characterize the experiences of those low-income children as the result of their exposure to child care receiving CCDF subsidies, examining what factors affect their parents' choices of child care subsidies at different levels of analysis (neighborhood, household, parental, children characteristics) and evaluating the effects of children exposure to ECE providers receiving CCDF subsidies on school achievement outcomes. The project contextualizes in a strong partnership with federal, state and city agencies implementing and administering CCDF programs in Illinois and the city of Chicago. This collaboration led to the development of the study research questions. The findings of this research will further the state and national understanding of the efficacy of child care subsidy policies and their impact.


The overall goal of the project is to identify thresholds of early childhood education quality in predicting social-emotional, cognitive, and language outcomes in multiple secondary data sets that can inform national and state policies that promote optimal child development through early childhood education and child care settings. The project's three objectives are to: (1) compare different analytic strategies for identifying thresholds of quality; (2) replicate the analytic strategy with multiple national and state data sets to determine if thresholds are similar or different across data sets and to examine convergent findings across data sets; and (3) examine subgroup differences to determine whether minimum levels of quality necessary to promote positive development differ based on family resources (e.g., family income, parent education); child characteristics (child sex, age); child minority status and cultural background (child language, race, ethnicity); or program context (geographic setting/program auspice). Data sets from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHSREP), Quality Interventions in Early Care and Education (QUINCE), Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES), Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLSB), Study of Statewide Early Education Programs (SWEEP), Educare Learning Network (Educare), and Nebraska Student and Staff Record System in preschool and infant toddler databases (NSSRS) will be used. The research team's previous ACF-funded research examined thresholds or active ranges of quality that influenced children's development using Generalized Additive Modeling analysis paired with linear spline modeling. The study will build on this work by incorporating two complementary yet distinct methods. Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling will be implemented to account for the nested structure many of the data sets offer. Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines provide a means for efficiently examining a large number of variables and determining the existence of key interaction effects (i.e., moderators or sub-group differences in the relationship between quality and outcomes). Results from this investigation will provide a much-needed empirical basis for the high-stakes cut points now in use in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems and tiered reimbursement systems. Identifying converging results across multiple data sets will increase confidence in the validity of thresholds identified.


The project will address three objectives: (1) to provide descriptive information comparing the ECE experiences of subsidy-eligible and ineligible children, (2) to analyze the impact of various subsidy policies and practices on the percent of children served, by state, and (3) to assess which subsidy policies and practices improve disadvantaged families' access to ECE. This study will address these objectives by answering a series of related research questions: (1) What are the child care preferences and choices of subsidy-eligible families (and do they differ by families' language or racial/ethnic status or the child's age)? Do subsidy-eligible families experience poorer access to child care, compared to ineligible families?; (2) How are copayment policies, reimbursement rates, eligibility thresholds, and lengths of eligibility periods associated with percent of eligible children who are served (and are certain policies associated with increased subsidy receipt for eligible non-English-speaking families, racial/ethnic minorities, and infants/toddlers)?; and (3) Are copayment policies, reimbursement rates, eligibility thresholds, and redetermination lengths associated with greater access and use of high-quality child care (and do certain policies facilitate access and use of high-quality ECE for non-English-speaking families, racial/ethnic minorities, and infants/toddlers)?; Among all subsidy-eligible families, how are these subsidy policies associated with access and use of high-quality care (and do certain subsidy policies facilitate access and use of high-quality ECE for non-English-speaking families and racial/ethnic minorities)? These research questions will be addressed by linking data from two sources: the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) and the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database. Data will be analyzed using rigorous analytical techniques - primarily, regression models, in addition to descriptive statistics. These models will allow us to look at subsidy-eligible children as a whole, as well as by race/ethnicity and age group served (i.e., infant and toddlers).Findings from this work will be disseminated to state CCDF administrators, federal CCDF policymakers, ECE researchers, and the broader early childhood research and policy fields. Dissemination will take place through presentations at conferences, as well as the production of a research paper and policy brief.


Research indicates that children and their parents fare better on a range of outcomes when living in stable, low-conflict, two-parent families. The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) provides grants to fund healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs to strengthen and improve the quality of relationships by offering a range of services from relationship education for high school students to marriage and relationship skills building for adult couples. In order to identify and evaluate strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of HMRE programs, ACF has initiated the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) project. STREAMS is a large multi-site random assignment impact evaluation of HMRE programs serving adults and youth that is designed to answer multiple practice-relevant questions. During its first year, the study will gather input from practitioners, program developers, and research experts about priority research questions and how the study can best contribute to the field. STREAMS will emphasize program improvement and answering questions of particular policy relevance. Research questions of potential interest include what program elements or implementation strategies are key to achieving outcomes and how program engagement can be improved. After refining the study research questions, the study team will identify and recruit up to six evaluation sites in which to conduct both an in-depth process study and rigorous random assignment impact evaluation of HMRE programs.


The purpose of the Youth Education and Relationship Services Project is to better understand the services that federally-funded Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs are providing to youth. The project will describe the implementation of HMRE programs and the youth these programs serve, assess the alignment of HMRE programs with best practices in the field, and identify promising approaches that grantees are using to meet the needs of youth in HMRE programs. The ultimate aim of this project is to inform future efforts to improve HMRE programs serving youth.


Same-sex couples and lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals who may become involved in same-sex relationships - whether adults or youth - face distinct challenges and elevated risks (e.g. of homelessness, poverty, perceived social stigma) compared with their non-LGB counterparts. These vulnerabilities highlight the importance of providing LGB-relevant Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) services, that is, knowledge and skills to form and sustain stable same-sex relationships. While substantial changes have occurred in the legal and social climate for LGB individuals and couples, HMRE programming has most often been developed in the context of opposite-sex relationships. Little is known about the extent to which grantees have or are currently serving same-sex couples or LGB adults/youth. Even less is known about promising practices to serving same-sex couples and LGB adults/youth within HMRE programming. OPRE awarded a contract to the Urban Institute (subcontractors are Public Strategies and the Williams Institute) to provide an assessment of the current state of the HMRE practice field, and to identify and promote promising approaches for serving same-sex couples and LGB individuals - whether adult or youth - who may become involved in same-sex relationships. The project includes one services component and two optional services components. Services component one will examine how HMRE programs currently approach, and could approach, serving LGB populations by conducting a wide range of data collection. From this work a series of proposed parameters for serving these populations and a series of parameters for serving these populations will be created. If awarded, in optional services component two, a small set of developers will revise their HMRE curricula to be appropriate when delivered to LGB populations. If awarded, in optional service component three, a set of organizations will implement the revised curricula. Successes and challenges in implementing the revised curricula will be tracked and a final process report will document the approaches and results from implementation of the new curricula.


The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency Capstone project will produce a final synthesis report on the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project () and conduct related dissemination activities. The final synthesis report will discuss overall findings from the BIAS project, synthesize lessons learned across the eight project sites and during the knowledge development period, situate the findings within the broader context of applied behavioral insights and human services policy, and discuss implications for future research and practice. Additionally, the BIAS Capstone project will widely disseminate BIAS findings to inform research, policy, and practice stakeholders.


The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project () demonstrated that applying behavioral insights to challenges facing human services programs can improve program operations and outcomes at relatively low cost. The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency Next Generation project will continue ACF's exploration of the application of behavioral science to the programs and target populations of ACF. This next generation project, launched in September 2015, will build on the activities and lessons of BIAS by designing interventions for human services programs using insights from behavioral science and testing them using randomized controlled trials. BIAS Next Generation will also go beyond the work of BIAS in several ways including: working with additional ACF programs; testing additional types of interventions (including going beyond nudges and considering changes to program structures and choice architecture); collecting additional types of information (including conducting implementation research to better understand intervention mechanisms); and creating dissemination materials targeted specifically to program administrators and operators.


This project will investigate how existing work on racial and ethnic disparities could inform more accurate identification and interpretation of ethnic and racial differences in programs administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). This project will lay the groundwork for ACF to more comprehensively assess whether racial and ethnic disparities exist in ACF administered programs at any stage in the service delivery system, including - a) in the access to and take-up of human services; b) nature and quality of services received; and c) outcomes of services. The project will capture the existing state of work on these topics through a literature review and will consult with experts. This project will also conduct preliminary data analyses to identify racial and ethnic differences between eligibility and utilization of ACF programs. Building on this initial work, the project will develop a plan for more comprehensive data analyses to reliably identify racial and ethnic disproportionalities and disparities in a range of ACF programs and services, allowing ACF to identify whether disparities exist, the magnitude of any disparities, and how these disparities may vary across ACF programs. The goal of this project is to learn how a better understanding of racial and ethnic disparities could be used to improve ACF's human service program delivery.


ACF launched the Two-Generation Approaches to Improving Family Self-Sufficiency project in September 2015 to better understand approaches that intentionally combine intensive, high-quality, adult-focused services with intensive, high-quality, child-focused programs. Conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, this project seeks to better understand two-generation approaches and provide options for how these emerging models might be evaluated. Although there is growing interest in this area, there is not yet sufficient evidence about how these models achieve their goals or if they can be implemented at scale. The project will include a targeted literature review, expert consultations, and field work to identify and describe program models, including program goals and objectives; assess how well defined and evaluable the models are; engage stakeholders in a discussion regarding the potential evaluation of any of the models; and develop options for evaluations that may be feasible, relevant, and useful to ACF and the field. A final report will be available in 2017. ACF has a particular interest in two-generation approaches, as many ACF programs that support vulnerable children and adults either mandate or allow flexibility for providing services for additional family members. For example, since its inception in 1965, Head Start has been considered a two-generation program, providing children with enriched learning environments and helping families to access the services that will enable them to support their children's development (e.g., parenting education, social services, health and mental health services). Other ACF programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and programs under the Office of Community Services provide services to all family members. With growing attention on the newest iteration of two-generation programs, this project seeks to begin building the evidence to help these and other programs implement strong approaches to that support parents, children, and families. This work will complement the OPRE-funded grant program Head Start University Partnerships: Dual-Generation Approaches (). The Two-Generation Approaches to Improving Family Self-Sufficiency project has a specific focus on the goals of family self-sufficiency and well-being.


This project provides evaluation-related support for organizations awarded implementation grants for the further development and testing of interventions for youth with child welfare involvement who are most likely to experience homelessness. Key project tasks include conducting evaluability assessments, providing technical assistance on use of data required to inform implementation and continuous quality improvement activities and on the development of formative evaluation plans; and conducting a process evaluation of grantees' implementation processes and outcomes.


In September 2015, the ACF Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in collaboration with the Children's Bureau (CB) awarded a contract to Mathematica Policy Research to carry out the Design Options for Understanding Child Maltreatment Incidence. The purpose of this 18-month project is to develop design options for a potential future study or group of studies that would leverage existing administrative data, innovative methods, and advanced statistical techniques to obtain accurate and ongoing surveillance on both the incidence of child abuse and neglect and types of related risk. While research has advanced substantially over the past 20 years, the future use of innovative research methods and tools creates enormous possibilities for developing a better understanding of child abuse and neglect to inform practice and policy. Since the 1970s, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has supported efforts that provide national-level data on the incidence of child abuse and neglect. This project will allow for the identification and prioritization of key research questions; exploration of design options, including innovative methodological approaches; review of existing administrative datasets and ongoing surveys; examination of measurement issues; and consideration of resource allocation.


Through this contract, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) plans to implement Federally-sponsored impact, outcome, and implementation studies of the second round of grants awarded under the extension of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program. The goal of these studies is to rigorously evaluate approaches being used by HPOG grantees to provide Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals with opportunities for education, training, and advancement that lead to jobs that pay well and address the healthcare professions' workforce needs by focusing on sectors expected to either experience labor shortages or have high demand. While these studies will institute a new portfolio of work around the new HPOG grants, they will build on what we have learned and continue to learn from OPRE's current career pathways portfolio (see the description of the components of this portfolio below).


The purpose of the project is to conduct longer-term follow-up studies of participants in the Assets for Independence (AFI) Evaluation. Through this project, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) plans to implement 36-month and 60-month follow-up studies of the Federally-sponsored Assets for Independence (AFI) Program. The goal of the study is to rigorously evaluate the longer-term effectiveness of AFI-funded Individual Development Account (IDA) projects on savings, savings patterns, and asset purchase by low-income individuals and families at two AFI grantee sites. While research suggests that IDAs help low-income families save, rigorous, experimental research is limited and the majority of research has not focused on AFI-funded IDAs. This study will complement and augment the current AFI Evaluation, which examines outcomes at approximately 12 months after entry into the study. This follow-up evaluation will further understanding of the AFI-funded IDA projects by addressing unanswered questions regarding the program's overall impact on long-term participant outcomes.


The Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Study (Baby FACES) is a nationally representative, descriptive study of Early Head Start programs and children. The goal of the study is to provide information about the characteristics and experiences of EHS children and families and the programs that serve them for the puporse of supporting program planning, technical assistance and research. Baby FACES will provide the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), the Office of Head Start (OHS), and the early childhood community with timely and relevant information about EHS program perforamnce, including program implementation, service quality, quality improvement efforts and outcomes for children and families.


The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) is a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of children and families who have been the subjects of investigation by Child Protective Services.There have been two cohorts of children enrolled in the survey, which makes available data drawn from first-hand reports from children, parents, and other caregivers, as well as reports from caseworkers, teachers, and data from administrative records.NSCAW examines child and family well-being outcomes in detail and seeks to relate those outcomes to experience with the child welfare system and to family characteristics, community environment, and other factors. In September 2015, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in collaboration with the Children's Bureau awarded a contract to RTI International to carry out the third cohort of NSCAW (NSCAW III). An overarching goal of NSCAW III is to maintain the strengths of previous work, while: 1) better positioning the study to address the changing child welfare population, and 2) increasing the project's overall utility.


This contract will enhance the analytic capacity of the National Survey of Early Care and Education Data by constructing analytic variables to answer key early care and education questions; processing and disseminating restricted use data that allow for sophisticated analyses of early care and education supply and demand by linking household and program data at the community level; developing technical assistance resources and conducting technical assistance for researchers and analysts wishing to mine the NSECE data; and conducting analyses in response to questions posed by ACF and its early childhood programs.


This contract will support the development of professional development tools to improve the quality of infant and toddler nonparental care, building on the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT) observation tool (2010-2014). This project supports ACF's vision for helping ECE programs and staff deliver quality services that promote positive outcomes for young children. The Q-CCIIT PD Tools project will: (1) create research-based Professional Development (PD) resources and materials that align with the Q-CCIIT; (2) design and conduct a field test to examine use of the PD tools in conjunction with the Q-CCIIT; (3) design a large-scale implementation and evaluation study of the measure and PD tools.


The Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness project (HomVEE), is a transparent, systematic review of the evidence base for multiple home visiting programs for pregnant women and young children birth to age 5. The project, conducted through a contract to Mathematica Policy Research, aims to improve knowledge about overall efficacy, efficacy by outcomes, information on subgroup populations, and implementation of home visiting models. The project conducts a comprehensive review of the evidence of effectiveness of home visiting program models that support children's health and development, school readiness, reductions in maltreatment, positive parenting practices, and improved family self-sufficiency (when in conjunction with child outcomes). Users can access the site at: .


The Tribal Evaluation Institute (TEI) provides technical assistance, leadership, and support to promote excellence in community-based research and evaluation of Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) initiatives that serve American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and families through the Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. Example focal areas of technical assistance to grantees include: developing and implementing a rigorous evaluation of home visiting; selecting, adapting, and developing culturally appropriate data collection tools and measures; tracking and measuring benchmarks; developing and modifying existing data systems; continuous quality improvement; data protection and privacy; and ethical dissemination and translation of evaluation findings derived from research with AI/AN to external audiences. Additionally, TEI will produce design options for a customized Management Information System (MIS) for Tribal MIECHV grantees to use for performance measurement and continuous quality improvement activities.


The Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) Study is a four-year study that will examine the MSHS programs and practices, and the children and families served by the MSHS program. MSHS provides early childhood support for migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The study will examine program practices in multiple domains, including enrollment, recruitment and dual language support. The study will also explore the wellbeing of children and families receiving services. A particular focus of the MSHS Study will be language practice and language assessments utilized across centers.


Faculty from the Michigan Infant-Toddler Research Exchange are developing and testing an integrated parent-teacher intervention to support infant/toddler social emotional (SE) development based on an established and tested model, the Mom Power (MP) intervention. MP was developed for high-risk mothers and targets caregiver sensitivity by building capacity for reflection and empathy to children's emotional needs. This attachment-based group intervention helps parents understand children's attachment needs using video and activities designed to promote parental reflective functioning. It also increases caregiver coping through mindfulness practices. Evidence suggests that MP is effective at improving both caregiving sensitivity and reflective functioning. This 5-year project will be completed in four main study phases: 1) refinement and Implementation evaluation of a teacher intervention component based on MP model; 2) refinement and Implementation evaluation of an integrated teacher-parent modification of MP; 3) evaluation of effectiveness of the integrated teacher-parent intervention to change caregiver outcomes, caregiver-child interactions, and child outcomes, including tests of moderators and mediators; 4) Implementation evaluation to assess sustainability and scalability of the integrated intervention within the Early Head Start (EHS) context.


The purpose of the project is to adapt two research-based parent and teacher interventions, Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) and Beginning Education: Early Childcare at Home (BEECH), to examine the benefit to low income infants' and toddlers' language, cognitive, and social-emotional development as well as self-regulation skills. PALS and BEECH include web-based parent and teacher training courses with remote coaching and in-person meetings that support the adults' developing a set of core behaviors that comprise a responsive interactive style including responses that are contingent to children's needs and interests with rich language input. Both interventions incorporate video exemplars of the target behaviors with caregivers from diverse backgrounds, uploaded videotaped interactions of parents or teachers interacting with children, and caregivers critiquing videotapes of their interactions with their coach remotely. We will adapt the interventions for the EHS center-based setting and for a hybrid delivery format with collaboration from Early Head Start (EHS) staff and families. Classrooms will be randomized to receive PALS and BEECH vs business as usual practices. We will assess change in target vs. control teachers' responsive and instructional behaviors and evaluate intervention effects on children's skills. Results of the study will show whether raising the quality of parent and teacher responsive behaviors across both the home and EHS center-based classroom settings result in an added benefit to children's learning and development, compared to no intervention in either setting.


This project will implement and evaluate the Getting Ready 0-3 (GR03) intervention in collaboration with rural Early Head Start (EHS) partner agencies. GR03 is an inventive, evidence-based intervention that strengthens the relationships children have with adults as well as partnerships between parents and other providers responsible for the care of their children. In GR03 teachers and parents identify and build on a child's strengths; establish developmental targets; and co-create meaningful, consistent home-center plans to support developmentally appropriate targets. GR03 is implemented via carefully constructed professional development for teachers, whereby they learn intentional relationship-building and parent-professional partnership strategies, including a sequenced collaboration framework that supports continuity across settings and use of child-focused practices. Furthermore, GR03 is (a) readily integrated within EHS programmatic structures; (b) grounded within agency, community, and family strengths; and (c) individualized for centers, staff, families, and children with varying levels of need. The project will be conducted in three phases. Phase 1 will serve as a pilot to develop training and implementation protocols and assess fit within EHS partner agencies. Phase 2 will consist of a randomized cluster trial with repeated measures design to examine the impacts of GR03 on parent- and teacher-child relationships, child-focused adult parenting and teaching practices, and parent-teacher partnerships relative to EHS families in the business as usual group to understand how to support most effectively the language and social-emotional development of EHS center-based children. Phase 3 will focus on sustainability.


The overall goal of this project is to implement an inquiry-based approach to improve parent and teacher practices, which will support and improve developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers. The intervention will have two phases. Phase 1 will focus on supporting Responsive Caregiving practices (for both parents and teachers) to promote the social and emotional development of infants and toddlers. Phase 2 will focus on the Facilitation of Discovery and Exploration (again, for both parents and teachers), to promote cognitive as well as language and early literacy outcomes of infants and toddlers. A randomized control trial (RCT) will be implemented to evaluate the efficacy of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 components. The intervention approach is based on Practice-Based Coaching (P-BS), the coaching model already in use in Head Start/Early Head Start. We will enhance the current coaching model (P-BS) as well as current teaching and learning practices, by integrating an intentional focus on inquiry.


The goal of GCEP is to gauge the effectiveness of select policies, programs, and services outlined in the State Plan, as developed by the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), the lead agency for CCDF in Georgia, and its partners. DECAL will use the CCDBG Implementation Research and Evaluation Planning Grant to create a research agenda to help ensure that Georgia's low-income families (eligible for subsidized childcare) have access to high-quality early care and education services. GCEP includes two phases, the first of which is funded by this current grant opportunity. (Phase II may be funded by subsequent grant opportunities). Phase I focuses on four objectives to: 1) develop a coherent research agenda for Georgia's CCDF plan; 2) use administrative data to conduct preliminary research and data analyses on select CCDF goals; 3) implement specific process evaluations of key CCDF initiatives; and 4) plan for a large-scale, rigorous CCDF evaluation that will measure the impact of CCDF policies and programs on access to high quality child care. These objectives align with ACF priorities of this grant program to: 1) plan policy-relevant research based on evaluation of policies in response to the CCDBG Act of 2014; 2) build capacity in research and evaluation; and 3) address issues of current relevance to CCDF decision makers. Phase I evaluation activities focus on initiatives related to three DECAL CCDF goals embedded in Georgia's 2016-2018 CCDF State Plan. Georgia's three CCDF goals are: 1) Reduce the cost of higher quality care for children and families receiving subsidies; 2) Raise the quality of teachers working with specific populations; 3) Implement new, innovative initiatives that build on other successful Georgia early education programs. Each of these state goals has specific initiatives designed to ensure that the goals are met. The evaluation activities will focus on how successful the initiatives are in accomplishing these goals. The proposed project will work to identify the best methods to evaluate how effective Georgia's new CCDF initiatives are in meeting critical CCDF program priorities and Georgia's overarching goal of increasing access to high-quality childcare for children receiving childcare subsidies.


The 2014 CCDBG Act has the potential to have large impacts on the children, families, and providers that participate in the subsidy system. The impacts are likely to be particularly salient for home-based providers and the children and families they serve due to increased requirements for some. Such is the case in Oregon where approximately six in ten children in the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program are in home-based care and almost four in ten are in homes that have not been inspected or monitored and whose level of quality is unknown. In response to the 2014 CCDBG Act, the Oregon Legislature increased requirements and quality investments to ensure healthy, safe, and high-quality home-based options for children and families in the subsidy program. Thus, Oregon is ideally situated for a study of the impact of implementation of the 2014 CCDBG Act. Increased understanding of home-based care within CCDF programs has policy implications for Oregon and the nation. Home-based care is a predominant form of care in the United States (NSECE, 2015) and is sometimes the best, or only, option for families. For example, families from traditionally underserved populations such as racial or linguistic minorities may find home- based care best able to provide cultural and linguistic congruency. Another example involves families with an infant, toddler or child with special developmental needs who may require or prefer care in a home. A third group includes families with employment constraints such as unpredictable schedules and nontraditional hours, which typically make home-based care the only option. Oregon legislators and other policy makers are committed to ensuring that these targeted populations have access to healthy, safe, and high-quality home-based childcare within the CCDF program. Oregon will build the capacity to conduct research whose overarching goal is assessing the impact of the 2014 CCDBG Act's implementation on children, families, providers, and the quality of home-based childcare. In Phase I Oregon will expand its ability to merge administrative data sets to be able to assess the extent to which implementation affects participation in the CCDF program in Phase II. Oregon also proposes to increase the capacity of its Early Learning data systems in order to capture increased detail on participation in professional development and support activities (PD/Support). The Legislature invested in PD/Support for home-based providers as part of its response to the 2014 Act. More detailed data will make it possible for the State to conduct a rigorous study of the impact of PD/Support on the quality of home-based care in Phase II.


The project, Assessing the Impact of Child Care Subsidy on Program Access and Quality: Evaluation Planning, aims to lay the foundation for future evaluative work that will contribute to knowledge about the efficacy of early care and education (ECE) programs, including child care subsidies, in achieving recent federal goals and priorities such as increasing access by low-income families to high-quality ECE programs and promoting the healthy development and school readiness of children served. The 2016-2018 Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) State Plan for Oklahoma details the state's implementation steps to address the requirements included in the 2014 reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act. For the most part, the state already meets many of the Act's new requirements through existing services and programs. However, there are aspects of the Act that will require changes in state policy and/or additions to existing services. Additionally, there are existing policies and initiatives that, in the past, did not have sufficient capacity to be rigorously evaluated. This Phase I project will support planning and development of evaluation work that will lay the foundation for assessment of key aspects of Oklahoma's CCDF subsidy program. These key aspects, to be assessed in Phase II, include understanding features of access (e.g., how parents learn about and access programs; patterns of program use by children; coordination and collaboration across ECE programs available to low-income children), as well as supporting quality improvement (e.g., possibility of developing a self-assessment tool for quality monitoring and improvement). In this context, for this Phase I project we will establish a researcher-practitioner partnership with nationally recognized early childhood researchers at Georgetown University (Objective 1); examine how parents use information about subsidized programs to select care (Objective 2); explore possibilities for supporting providers as they self-assess program quality to promote continued quality improvement (Objective 3); and refine a data system to describe where subsidy recipients receive care, what alternatives they considered and, for the non- recipients, which alternatives they actually pursued among the other ECE programs listed above (Objective 4). Accomplishing these objectives will endow the Lead Agency with the expertise, partnerships, systems, information, and deliverables needed to prepare a competitive application for Phase II project funding, to implement the research plan.


The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 incorporated several statutory changes intended to promote child well-being. One of those changes, a longer redetermination period, was intended to lead to longer program participation spells, more stable usage of high quality childcare arrangements, and more stable parental employment spells. Identifying the actual effects of the new redetermination policy is a priority for the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) and its partner agencies. With funding from this planning grant, IDHS will build on its existing partnership with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to develop a comprehensive research and evaluation agenda to answer whether and how extending the CCDF redetermination period from six months (three months if self-employed) to twelve months will affect broad outcomes in three domains: 1) parental employment; 2) continuity of care, and; 3) access to childcare quality. Funding from this planning grant will be used to design a comprehensive, well defined, and achievable research plan to answer those questions. The plan will draw on the Illinois Early Learning Council's research agenda and will incorporate feedback from Illinois program and policy experts in the ECE field as well as technical research experts. This process will ensure that grant activities are informed by a diversity of critical stakeholders both within DHS and in partner organizations so that deliverables and products are methodologically rigorous, optimally policy relevant and can provide actionable policy recommendations that reflect the realities of Illinois' complex early learning and development system. IDHS will leverage resources and deliverables from this planning grant to enhance its own internal capacity to manage and conduct CCDF research and evaluation. Four main outcomes are expected under this grant: 1) A literature review; 2) An inventory of data sources; 3) Creation of a research advisory committee, and 4) Development and validation of an evaluation research proposal. These components of the planning strategy will provide IDHS with a clear, high quality, and actionable research plan to evaluate the impacts of the new redetermination policy on Illinois children and families participating in the CCAP program.


The Washington State Department of Early Learning (DEL), the designated state lead agency for administration of Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) funds and programming, will conduct the Washington State CCDBG Research Planning Project. The main goal of the project is to plan to generate new policy-relevant, timely and useful knowledge regarding how implementation of the CCDBG Act of 2014 and Washington's 2015 Early Start Act have 1) impacted continuity of care for children in families receiving subsidy; 2) impacted stability for childcare providers who accept subsidy; and 3) contributed to or prevented disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups of children and providers. Vulnerable groups include children/families receiving subsidy and childcare providers serving subsidy families in rural areas, those who are non-English speaking, and those from communities of color. The Washington study will make use of administrative data, linking across data sets containing data on subsidy families, children, and providers and those containing provider quality rating data. This planning project will help inform a Phase II application to implement the planned research project. Expected outcomes of the 18-month Phase I project include: 1) Develop a research and evaluation plan to examine implementation of Washington's 2015 Early Start Act specifically as it relates to the desired outcomes of child continuity and provider stability, and to examine outcomes among vulnerable groups in the state; 2) Generate meaningful administrative measures of child continuity and provider stability that may be used as outcome measures for the proposed research as well as incorporated into agency analytics to examine trends over time, geographic variation, and variation within and among identified vulnerable population groups; 3) Increase research capacity within the Washington State Department of Early Learning as well as across state agencies such that the state is able to compete for Phase II funding to implement the research plan; 4) Include the process and findings of the planning grant in the Department's annual Early Start Act progress report to the governor and legislature, providing visibility for the project and opportunity to inform future policy decisions.


In line with the goals of the CCDBG Act of 2014 to enhance the quality of childcare for low-income children, the Nevada Division of Welfare and Supportive Services Child Care and Development Program enacted a policy on March 1, 2016 to require specific training for Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) providers. Non-licensed providers must take 30 hours of health and safety training pre-service or during an orientation period of 90 days and then 24 hours of training annually thereafter. It is expected that the implementation of this new policy will improve the quality of care received by children who access informal care through FFN providers. The goal of the Phase I planning grant is to develop a rigorous evaluation of the implementation of this new policy that could be carried out during Phase II. By increasing health and safety and early education and childcare training for FFN providers through this new policy, it is expected that the quality of care received by children from FFN providers will increase. During Phase I, the lead agency will work with stakeholders and researchers to determine how to measure the effects of the new FFN training policy on child outcomes. Through this process, it is also expected that the lead agency will outline processes for data collection, analysis and data sharing, expand partnerships, and better utilize data to educate stakeholders and State leaders and inform decision-making processes. The existing Quality Rating and Improvement System in Nevada, Silver State Stars QRIS, assesses and promotes quality in formal early childhood care settings including child care centers, family care centers, and school district pre-kindergarten programs. An outcome study is currently being conducted in the State in which the outcomes of children that attend high quality rated childcare centers are being compared to the outcomes of children that attend low quality rated childcare centers. Centers are identified as being high or low quality based on their QRIS star rating. Lessons learned during the current outcome study will be reviewed during Phase I and will help inform the research design for the proposed project. Additional considerations that will be examined during Phase I planning include: operationally defining the variables of interest for the outcome study, selecting appropriate valid and reliable outcome measurement assessments, and evaluating data system needs and improving data infrastructure.


The Childcare Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Implementation Research and Evaluation Planning Grant offers the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) opportunities to better understand how aspects of the current subsidy system shape the stability of children's participation in high quality early education and care, and to identify and evaluate cost-effective ways to improve stability. Through a review of ongoing research and exploratory analysis of existing data as well as interviews with families, EEC will identify subgroups of families and children who demonstrate greater instability in access to subsidized early education and care, and will work to understand the drivers of instability and inequitable access to high quality early education. The grant will then support the planning of an evaluation of potential policy changes to increase equitable access, which could be funded through Phase II, if offered.


The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), as the lead proponent and implementer of this project, will engage other agencies such as the Northern Marianas College, Public School System (Early Head Start, Head Start, & Early Intervention Program), Commonwealth Health Corporation (Early Childhood Comprehensive System and Home Visiting Program), Department of Labor-Workforce Investment Agency (WIA), Department of Community and Cultural Affairs (DCCA) - Child Care Licensing Program, and Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS) implementation consultants, in conducting the work of the CCDBG Implementation Research and Evaluation Planning Grant. Increasing Access to High Quality Care for Infants and Toddlers is the focus of this project as CCDF implements the requirements of the CCDBG Act of 2014. Two research questions will frame this project: (1) How does an increase in investment in quality improvement (from an increased infant and toddler care set aside) increase access to high quality care; and (2) How can state systems better support CCDF's efforts to increase access to high quality infant and toddler care? Because of CNMI CCDF's lack of experience and expertise in research and evaluation, the project approach will include participation from researcher partnerships to help create a data system, full participation in the research consortium, peer-learning opportunities, partnerships with state agencies, and flexibility in improving and incorporating lessons to be learned through the process.


This project presents a rigorous evaluation of administrative changes in Massachusetts designed to make the process of accessing and maintaining child care subsidies more family-friendly. Through a collaborative research partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education & Care (EEC), the project will use mixed methods to evaluate recent administrative changes that transitioned the local and responsibilities for child care voucher eligibility reassessment from seven regional Child Care Resource and Referral agencies (CCR&Rs) to contracted child care providers. The study is designed to: (1) evaluate the impacts of the changes on key policy outcomes, including stability of subsidy receipt and continuity of care; (2) identify the specific mechanisms producing these effects; (3) document implementation and fidelity to the new administrative process from the perspective of four affected groups (EEC, CCR&Rs, providers and parents); and (4) examine effects on providers and families, with a focus on providers in low resource areas and families who traditionally under-participate in public programs.


This partnership will examine quality improvement activities among family child care providers (FCCP) in the context of California's Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC). Through a combination of survey and in-depth qualitative methods, the project will compare providers' experiences in two regions operating with different Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. Specifically, the study will explore the conditions under which FCCP adopt and sustain changes in their daily routine activities caring for children.


The purpose of this project is to study family child care providers' (FCCP) perceptions and participation in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) and to examine the impact of a quality improvement framework that is uniquely designed to meet the needs of the FCCP population. This partnership will document the experiences of FCCP in two different QRIS in Delaware and Kentucky, evaluating a quality improvement framework adapted to meet the needs of FCCP. Specifically, the project will investigate the implementation of a community of practice (COP) model and coordinated curriculum- focused professional development and the effects on FCCP participation and quality improvement within QRIS. The study uses a mixed methods approach including quantitative and qualitative methodologies.


This project explores the potential role of state and community-level collaboration in enhancing child care quality, access, satisfaction, comprehensive services, and ultimately family and child outcomes, with an emphasis on care for infants and toddlers. The initial focus is to describe the nature of collaborations between the state Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agency, the state Head Start Collaboration Office, and, where applicable, the state agency with administrative oversight for pre-Kindergarten (pre-K). We consider four dimensions: actors, activities, interactions and goals. The study methods and procedures will be conducted in two phases. The first phase looks at the state-level actors, activities, interactions, and goals and paints a national picture of trends regarding state agency collaboration. The second phase looks in-depth at two states - Maryland and Vermont - to link state-level collaboration with local-level collaboration among providers and local organizations and the relationships between collaboration and child care access, utilization, and quality.


Researchers at the University of Chicago and Urban Institute continue their partnership with Illinois and New York child care administrators and four local offices to develop an empirically-informed and practically-relevant knowledgebase regarding the determinants of subsidy stability and child care continuity. Phase 2 focuses on provider- and subsidy program-related factors that impede families' access to high quality and stable subsidized arrangements and examines strategies to successfully integrate subsidized providers into quality improvement efforts. Phase 2 includes: (1) case studies of local sites including policy and document analysis and interviews with key subsidy and quality improvement program stakeholders; (2) mapping of the supply of high quality care against subsidy-eligible families' child care needs; (3) an analysis of how Phase 1 survey families' subsidy trajectories are associated with provider quality and stability characteristics; and (4) a qualitative study of subsidized providers.


This research partnership will examine the validity of the Virgin Islands' Quality Rating and Improvement System by: (1) assessing the measurement strategies and psychometric properties of measures used to assess early care and education (ECE) quality; (2) examining the effects of introducing QRIS and new licensing regulations on the supply and quality of ECE; and (3) examining the developmental trajectories of children to identify predictors of early school success in the VI context.


This cooperative agreement, awarded to the University of Chicago in 2013, supports the development, implementation, and ongoing operations of a Data Center to support family self-sufficiency research and activities. This Center will serve as a hub to support the development of state and institutional capacity for data collection, linkage, and where necessary, storage in order to provide access to high quality data to practitioners and policymakers in family self-sufficiency programs and research. During its first year, the data center conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and developed a prototype for a web-based data archive and analysis tool. Currently the center is working with states and localities to add data and functionality to the web-based data archive to improve its utility for state and local policymakers and researchers.


The goal of this project is to identify state policy choices that increase household economic stability over time, either by promoting earnings stability or by supplementing income from earnings. It will examine the stability of household income as a function of specific state program rules for five key safety net programs- TANF, Medicaid/CHIP, SNAP, child care subsidies, and child support. Research questions include: (1) Are there state-level choices in the design and implementation of safety net programs associated with household income (in)stability? (2) If so, are such rules associated with unstable earnings, unstable benefit receipt, or some other mechanism? (3) Are there sub-populations that enjoy more or less stabilizing benefits from safety net programs? The 2004 and 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) will be used in this project. A difference-in-differences technique will be used to estimate associations between state level safety net program rules and longitudinal measures of household income stability. Households led by single, less-educated mothers will be compared to married two-parent households with less education. State-level policy choices in the five safety net programs from 2004 to 2012 will be defined and coded using publicly available sources of information. Income stability will be defined using a set of measures that capture the frequency, magnitude, and direction of changes in total household income and its main components, earned income and means-tested income.


Three main activities will be conducted to establish a foundation for a practice based examination of social welfare implementation in Minnesota: (1) A meta-analysis of implementation studies focused on interventions for low-income children and families. It will focus on the questions of 'what policy issues do implementation scholars study?' and 'what relevance might this literature have for policy implementation practice?' (2) A policy field analysis examining the major laws, institutions, and networks at the state level. (3) Initiation of in-depth field-work involving observation and interviews of implementation practitioners at the state level. It will explore practices around implementation challenges or quandaries and how they are resolved. For the meta-analysis, three sources (the Expanded Social Sciences Citation Index, WorldCat, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses) will be used because of their breadth and interdisciplinary reach. Articles published since 2003 in one of these sources will be assessed according to research approach and methodological rigor, content area, and significant findings. The program content area for the policy field analysis will be identified in consultation with the Scholars Network. Information will be gathered through publicly-available sources (legislative review, budgets, program reports) and informal interviews with field-level actors. For the field research, implementers will purposively be identified within the selected field to study in detail. Ethnographic research methods will be utilized, such as participant observation and semistructured and unstructured interviews, to document day-to-day practices. Documented and recorded data will be analyzed through iterative deductive and inductive coding.


The proposed work consists of two integrated lines of inquiry that successively broaden and deepen our understanding of economic disconnection and its relationship to family reunification. The first aim is to: (1) Discern patterns of family income dynamics and types of economic disconnection relative to spells of child welfare involvement. (2) Assess the impact of different economic trajectories on family reunification. The second aim is to identify how child welfare and economic services workers: (1) Identify and perceive disconnected parents. (2) Perceive disconnection as a barrier to family reunification. (3) Evaluate the resources they are able to provide families. (4).Utilize agency policies and perceive coordination across agencies. Work to answer the first aim will use a previously created, unique longitudinal database of Washington State administrative data on child welfare program involvement, employment, and cash assistance receipt over the period 1998-2010. Trajectories of family income by source prior to, at, and after the point of child removal will be linked to child welfare permanency outcomes (reunification, adoption, or guardianship). The approach for the second aim will include reviews of policy and practice documents, visits to child welfare and public assistance offices, interviews with stakeholders inside and outside of the system, and focus groups with front-line workers. Data from these sources will be coded and organized by topics and themes.


Prior successfully implemented work on enhancing father involvement will be used to identify effective strategies for equipping fathers and families with the tools to promote stability and self-sufficiency. Specific aims are to: (1) Develop an intervention suitable for promoting family stability and self-sufficiency through targeting fathers. (2) Evaluate the intervention in a randomized, clinical trial. A national survey of fathers and mothers of young children will be conducted, using conjoint analysis to identify the specific preferences and potential barriers of father engagement in early childhood settings. Respondents will be asked to make tradeoff decisions similar to those that are made routinely in everyday life. An intervention will be developed based on the survey results and on an existing model to promote father engagement in parenting programs through participation in a father-child recreational program. In a randomized, clinical trial, 60 fathers will be recruited through a local Head Start program and assigned to the enhanced intervention or a business as usual control group. Outcome measures will include proximal measures of parenting, father-child relationships, indicators of parenting stress and family stability, and father and child mental health. Distal outcomes will include economic outcomes (e.g., monthly salary and child support contributions) and maintenance of gains.


This research seeks to understand how and why households enter and exit material hardship, the extent to which federal program participation acts as a buffer, and how material hardship, not poverty, affects children and adults over the long-term. Specifically, the research will: (1) Identify how individual-level characteristics (e.g., family type, veteran status) and decisions impact the experience of material hardship. (2) Document how structural determinants at the state level (e.g., use of technology in application procedures) influence individual well-being. (3) Evaluate the consequences of material hardship over the life course (e.g., fertility, college attendance). Econometric techniques will be applied to data from the 2008 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Models of material hardship will be developed based on four domains of need: home, medical, bill-paying, and food hardship. Analyses will include descriptive analyses and individual fixed effects models.


This project suggests a twofold approach to better understanding specific dimensions of family stability among those vulnerable to financial and nonfinancial hardships. First, the earlier qualitative studies will be expanded by exploring how people living in two rural New England sites (one with decades of high child poverty, the other without) navigate the challenges and opportunities that are specific to life in nonmetropolitan counties. Second, stemming from the early research for the first project, a quantitative study will be conducted that explores the impact of parents' stable employment on the likelihood that their children work full time when in young adulthood. The first study includes existing data from previous studies and qualitative data from focus groups conducted in local communities. Focus groups will be held with rural social service providers and the families they serve. Transcripts from these focus groups and interviews will be coded and analyzed to identify key themes. The second study will use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Components from the PSID will be linked to build an intergenerational file that connects measures of parents' employment with those of their children. Further, geocoded PSID data will be used to analyze how the community context (for example, county differences in poverty and urbanicity) may moderate the intergenerational effects of stable employment across generations.


The main purpose of this project is to examine how state policy changes in child care subsidy affect child care subsidy receipt and child care stability among young children in Illinois. Specific aims are to examine: (1) How policy changes (increases in family income eligibility; increases in provider payment rates; and unionization of home-based providers) affect continuity of child care subsidy receipt. (2) How such policy changes affect stability in child care arrangements. (3) How such policy changes affect families with a history of TANF receipt. The study will use monthly child care subsidy administrative data from the state of Illinois from 2001 to 2013. The project will create a longitudinal dataset of young children under age three who first received a child care subsidy and follow them through age five. The project will employ a quasi-experimental design and create one group of children who experienced the 2005-2008 policy changes (experimental group) and an earlier group of children who did not (control group). Propensity score matching will be employed to compare how the two groups differ in continuity of child care subsidy and stability of child care. The study will also conduct analyses with subsets of the samples with TANF histories, to determine whether the policy changes affected this group differently from the rest of the low-income group.


The study will expand the research base regarding the effects of one particular early childhood education (ECE) quality improvement strategy - providing individualized instructional feedback to ECE staff on the basis of classroom observations. It will use rigorous, econometric methods to identify treatment effects- exploiting the random selection process to receive observations and feedback as part of the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) study. The outcome variables of focus include both ECE staff outcomes (i.e., staff retention and participation in professional development) and child outcomes (i.e., early language and literacy skills and social-emotional development). The study is highly relevant given state efforts as well as state and federal resources expended toward improving child care quality. As state policy makers determine how to implement the I of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), understanding the effectiveness of particular quality improvement efforts is imperative. Evidence of the effectiveness of lower cost, light touch strategies is especially relevant for quality improvement efforts implemented on a statewide scale.