PROJECTDC Child Care Policy Research Partnership

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  • An Implementation Study of the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund
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  • An Implementation Study of the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund

    Early childhood educators play essential roles in providing stable and high-quality child care for young children and supporting their development and growth. As is also true nationwide, historically low wages in the District of Columbia have led to challenges in compensating and retaining qualified early childhood educators,and in turn, building quality child care systems from which families benefit. In 2022, the District of Columbia passed legislation to tax the wealthy, generating revenue to increase compensation for early educators working in licensed DC child care programs.

    The first of its kind nationwide, the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund represents an innovative, long-term, and sustainable strategy for addressing early childhood educator compensation. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is implementing the fund in three phases.

    In FY2022, it provided one-time supplemental payments to early educators in licensed centers and home-based programs—$14,000 for full-time lead teachers and $10,000 for assistant teachers and associate caregivers. In FY2023, payments are being distributed quarterly and starting in FY2024 funds will be distributed to child care facilities to infuse funds into the system, including but not limited to early childhood educators’ wages. The Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund aims to increase early educators’ pay to a minimum at par with DC public school teachers with similar education levels.

    Our implementation study seeks to answer the following research questions:

    1. What opportunities and challenges do wage supplements offer child care employers, particularly regarding staff recruitment and retention?
    2. What opportunities and challenges do wage supplements offer early educators? For whom, and under what conditions, are the wage supplements successful in meeting desired outcomes?
    3. Who chooses to request wage supplement funding and who does not, and how do these groups vary? How do Pay Equity Funds impact early educators’ compensation and staff retention? How do facilities with lower or higher staff retention vary regarding staff pay and facility/program/community characteristics?

    Beginning in 2022, our implementation and outcomes evaluation will include:

    • Repeated surveys of child care program directors and early educators
    • Follow-up focus groups with child care program directors and early educators
    • Analyses of new administrative data
    • Key informant interviews

    Our work will provide evidence on the take-up of the Pay Equity Fund payments, how directors and early educators perceive the wage supplements, and how the increase in wages is or is not associated with staff retention and with unintended consequences, such as benefit cliff effects. Applying an implementation science approach, we will examine for whom and under what circumstances wage supplements do or do not work well and why.
     

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