2024–2029
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has contracted with Mathematica and its partner Urban Institute to better understand (1) compensation strategies Head Start grant recipients are using to improve how they recruit, retain, and ensure the well-being of educators; (2) funding strategies they use to support higher compensation; and (3) the implementation and efficacy of strategies to improve compensation for Head Start educators.
Head Start educators provide valuable early care and education (ECE) and child development services to young children and their families. However, the ECE workforce is among the lowest-paid in the U.S. and experiences high turnover. More information is needed to support decision-making and practices related to improving recruitment and retention of highly-qualified educators. The Office of Head Start within ACF has released guidance and Information Memoranda to stabilize the Head Start workforce since 2020 and released a final rule in 2024 (Supporting the Head Start Workforce and Consistent Quality Programming ), which includes improving compensation for Head Start staff. This project aims to address knowledge gaps in how these policies, along with state and local contexts, may inform changes in compensation to support Head Start educators.
The following research questions will drive the project activities:
- What role does compensation play in recruiting, retaining, and ensuring the well-being of educators in ECE and other fields? For example, what strategies for improving compensation have been documented in ECE and other related fields? What are the common facilitators of and barriers to implementing such strategies?
- To what extent do Head Start grant recipients engage in strategies to improve educators’ compensation? For example, what are some specific strategies, how widespread is their use across grant recipients, and how equitably do grant recipients apply them across educators?
- How do Head Start grant recipients implement strategies to improve educators’ compensation; how do they fund these strategies; and how effective are these strategies in improving outcomes for Head Start educators and programs more broadly?
The project team will address these questions through the following activities:
- Conducting an assessment of the landscape through a scan of available information and key informant interviews to (1) document and synthesize the available information on compensation strategies for Head Start, ECE, and related workforces and (2) identify research gaps and challenges, and opportunities for new research in the larger project.
- Designing studies to learn what compensation strategies Head Start programs (grant recipients or delegate agencies) use, how they fund and implement those strategies, and what impacts those strategies might have on educators and programs.
Additional project activities may include (1) a web-based survey to explore compensation strategies that Head Start programs pursue and approaches they use to fund and implement those strategies and (2) an implementation study to document how Head Start programs plan, implement, and sustain compensation strategies, and the perceived or observed relationship between those strategies and their desired outcomes. The project team will also design a future efficacy study of the impacts of a specific compensation strategy on recruiting and retaining educators and ensuring their well-being. Collectively, each study will aim to build on the previous study, providing a body of evidence that will address the project’s research questions and help point to action for sustainable, equitable, and ideally improved compensation for Head Start educators.
To help shape the project, the project team will engage with a range of people directly impacted by disparities in educator compensation (for example, Head Start program staff) and those with a vested interest in policies and practices related to compensating Head Start educators. These groups will include people with lived experience, state and local ECE leaders, training and technical assistance providers, ECE thought leaders, and subject matter experts on educator compensation. They will also help the study team communicate project findings in accessible, meaningful, and useful ways to the field through various products, such as briefs and presentations.
Points of contact: Nina Philipsen, Paula Daneri, Krystal Bichay-Awadalla, and Drew McGee