SEE-Partnerships in Virginia

Our SEE-Partnerships team has worked with the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF) since 2018 to better understand the Commonwealth's early childhood care and education (ECCE) landscape and improve early childhood opportunities at scale. In 2019, we evaluated Virginia's RecognizeB5 educator incentive program, conducting the first ever randomized controlled trial that measures the impacts of financial supports on reducing turnover among early educators. Using our own large-scale surveys and Virginia's cutting-edge ECCE administrative data, our team has continued to support state and local partners and help them study the early educator workforce and issues related to ECCE access.

SEE-Partnerships in Lousiana

In 2012, Louisiana passed the Early Childhood Education Act (known as Act 3), which aimed to overhaul the state’s fragmented ECE landscape into a cohesive system that provides all young children with access to high-quality early childhood education. At the heart of this effort was a unique Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). Louisiana’s QRIS is unique in that participation is required for all sites receiving public funds and that ratings for each site are based solely on detailed data collected in every classroom with a widely used observational measure of teacher-child interactions. To support quality improvement, Louisiana has also introduced a variety of policies and initiatives aimed at supporting early educators improve high quality early learning opportunities.

Through a long-standing research policy partnership with the Early Childhood Office in the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), our team at UVA and UCLA is working on research to support system-wide ECE improvement. As part of SEELA and our partnership, we have fielded large-scale ECE workforce surveys, conducted validation studies examining the link between QRIS ratings and child outcomes, and explored how Louisiana families access early learning opportunities. Our current projects focus on the ECE workforce and strategies to support early educators during COVID-19 reopening efforts.

SEE-Partnerships in Arkansas

In Spring 2023, the Arkansas LEARNS Act, a wide-sweeping education reform, was signed into law. As part of its focus on improving literacy and kindergarten readiness, the LEARNS Act established local early childhood lead organizations, called "Local Leads," to create a strong system of local partnerships throughout the state that are working towards these goals in a way that meets their unique local needs. Local Leads are tasked with coordinating across public and private providers and other community agencies serving children and families, identifying gaps in services (including conducting unduplicated child counts), creating a comprehensive local plan, building local partnerships, and supporting families' access to early childhood programs.

Over the next several years, the SEE-Partnerships team at UVA is partnering with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) on a formative evaluation of the implementation of the Local Leads model across 3 cohorts to learn from the diverse strategies and experiences of Local Leads, each of which is piloting its own approach to this work. 

Thanks to our partners & funders

Our team's work has been supported through multiple federal, state, and local funding sources, including the Administration for Children and Families, the Spencer Foundation, the Walton Personal Philanthropy Group, and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation. We are thankful to our sponsoring agencies and organizations for their support. Without them, our ongoing research and partnerships would not be possible.