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From YouTube: Supporting Early Educators Lessons from Virginia's Early Childhood Teacher Recognition Program
Description
Dr. Daphna Bassok of the University of Virginia and EdPolicyWonks provides an overview of a successful teacher recognition program in Virginia that provides small retention bonuses to early learning teachers.
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A
Most
of
my
work
has
been
in
partnerships
with
states,
and
so
I
work
a
lot
with
the
department
of
education
in
louisiana
and
the
department
of
education
in
virginia
and
the
findings
I'm
going
to
show
you
today
are
from
both
of
those
contacts
with
a
focus
on
virginia,
where
I
think
we
have
tried
something
pretty
exciting
as
far
as
actually
trying
to
get
some
movement
on
solving
some
of
these
problems,
or
at
least
a
proof
of
concepts
that
states
can
make
progress
on
these
compensation
issues
and
on
quality.
So,
let's
see
all
right.
A
That
compromises
just
the
teacher
child
interactions,
which
are
kind
of
the
heart
of
high
quality
early
childhood.
But
the
other
thing
that's
happening
is
state
leaders
like
you
are
making
investments
in
early
childhood
quality
improvements,
and
so
these
are
going
to
be
coaching
and
professional
development
and
curriculum
investments
and
a
teacher
goes
to
those
training.
A
And
if
that
teacher
leaves
a
few
months
or
weeks
after
that,
training
that
investment
has
pretty
much
walked
away
with
them,
and
so
the
turnover
in
early
childhood
is
a
really
serious
problem
and
something
that
I've
been
working
on
studying
for
a
long
time
and
as
others
have
highlighted
today.
One
of
the
challenges
is
that
we
don't
have
great
data
on
this
workforce.
A
In
k-12,
we
collect
a
ton
of
data
on
early
educators,
so
it's
very
easy
to
know
how
much
teachers
turn
over
and
where
they
go
and
how
much
they
move
from
one
school
to
another
or
which
schools
they
move
to
in
early
childhood.
We
rarely
have
the
data
that
allows
us
to
do
that.
So
one
of
the
things
I
wanted
to
tell
you
about
is
the
work
we've
been
doing
in
louisiana,
where
we've
collected
data
on
every
single
teacher
working
in
a
publicly
funded
early
childhood
program.
A
So
these
are
teachers
working
in
pre-k
programs,
but
also
head
starts
programs,
child
care,
programs
etc,
and
one
of
the
things
we've
been
able
to
see
from
that
is
just
how
serious
this
instability
program
problem
is
in
early
childhood.
So
this
is
data
from
louisiana
and
what
that
first
purple
bar
is
showing
you
is
that
almost
two
in
five
teachers
lead
teachers
in
these
early
childhood
programs
that
we
see
one
fall
are
no
longer
there.
The
following
fall
so
about
40
percent
of
teachers.
A
Working
in
early
childhood
leave
their
site
before
the
next
year,
which
is
a
a
really
staggering
rate
of
turnover,
if
you
think
about
young
children
and
how
much
they
rely
on
their
early
educators.
But
the
other
thing
to
note
is
that
when
you
look
at
these
three
other
bars,
we've
broken
this
up
across
the
three
main
sectors
that
folks
have
been
talking
to
you
about
today.
A
So
pre-k
programs
in
the
public,
schools,
head,
start
programs
and
then
child
care
publicly
funded
child
care
centers,
and
what
you
can
see
is
that
in
child
care,
centers,
the
turnover
rates
are
even
more
staggering.
So
in
louisiana,
half
of
all
the
teachers
working
in
publicly
funded
child
care
centers
one
year
are
gone
by
the
following
year
and
that
is
pre-covered
pre-pandemic
and
has
only
gotten
exacerbated.
A
Now
there
are
many
reasons
why
turnover
might
be
so
high,
but
obviously,
after
all,
the
presentations
you've
watched
so
far
today,
one
candidate
excellent
explanation
is
going
to
be
the
compensation.
So
I
showed
you
that
child
care
teachers
are
turning
over
at
way
higher
rates
than
early
childhood
educators
working
in
public
schools,
and
this
is
just
data
again
from
louisiana,
showing
the
pay
of
early
educators
and
the
striking
thing
is.
A
We
see
these
middle
bars
here
for
child
care,
which
are
the
assistant
and
lead
teachers,
and
you
can
see
that
their
mean
annual
earnings
for
the
lead
teachers
in
child
care.
Centers
is
just
under
twenty
thousand
dollars
a
year
in
louisiana
for
pre-k
teachers
working
in
the
public
schools.
That
rate
is
twice
as
high
about
forty
thousand
dollars.
A
So
when
you
have
teachers
working
kind
of
equally
complex
jobs,
tiring
exhausting
jobs
in
some
ways,
even
harder
jobs
in
child
care,
because
they
don't
tend
to
have
summers
off
and
they
tend
to
work
longer
hours
but
you're,
paying
them
at
half
the
rate.
It
is
not
necessarily
surprising
that
you
would
see
these
very
high
rates
of
turnover
which,
like
I
said,
was
about
half
the
teachers
leaving
from
one
year
to
the
next.
So
a
lot
of
my
work
has
been
around
kind
of
documenting
these
disparities.
A
But
recently
I
had
the
opportunity
to
work
with
a
state
partner
to
actually
try
to
address
some
of
these
disparities.
And
so
I
wanted
to
tell
you
a
little
bit
about
virginia's
teacher
recognition
program,
which
was
a
new
program
in
2019
virginia
received
a
preschool
development
grant,
which
is
a
federal
grant
birth
to
five.
It
was
a
10
million
dollar
grant
and
when
they
announced
the
grant,
they
said
nearly
half
of
the
federal
funds
will
directly
support
innovative
early
educators
and
at
the
time
I
wasn't
sure
exactly
what
that
meant.
A
But
it
said
nearly
4
million
dollars
of
this
funding
will
directly
support
early
childhood
educators
to
accelerate
the
implementation
of
higher
standards,
reduce
turnover,
and
the
idea
was,
let's
give
early
educators
this
money
directly
and
not
necessarily
for
taking
on
more,
but
just
in
sort
of
recognition
of
how
hard
the
work
is,
how
much
we're
asking
of
them
and
how
low
the
compensation
is.
So
the
general
idea
was
like
we're
just
going
to
give
these
teachers
money
now
that
was
our
partner's
idea.
A
We
had
to
move
super
fast
because
the
federal
grants
when
the
pdg
started
were
just
for
one
year,
so
we
had
these
10
million
dollars
and
you
had
to
spend
them
down
very
very
fast.
The
idea
was:
could
this
money
help
improve
well-being,
teach
your
child
interactions,
job
satisfaction
and
ultimately
reduce
this
turnover
problem,
so
teachers
stay
longer
and
we
have
to
decide
all
these
things
really
fast
like
how
much
money
would
we
give
each
individual
teacher
and
who
would
be
eligible?
And
what
would
we
do
so?
A
Who
gets
the
incentive
and
how
large
are
they
and
all
these
complicated
questions?
But
I
am
a
researcher
and
I
was
really
fortunate
to
be
at
the
table
and
so
when
all
these
decisions
were
getting
made,
what
I
wanted
to
know
is:
can
we
not
just
do
it?
Can
we
do
it
and
study
it
in
a
way
that,
at
the
end,
we
can
tell
you
exactly
how
much
of
a
difference
it
made
like?
Did
it
matter
to
give
teachers
these
dollars
and
how
much
did
it
matter?
A
And
fortunately
I
have
a
wonderful
partnership
with
the
chief
school
readiness
officer
for
the
state
of
virginia
and
we
convinced
her
to
give
it
a
shot
and
set
this
up
as
an
experiment.
So
here's
what
we
did.
We
were
going
to
give
teachers
1500
as
financial
incentives,
and
the
only
thing
you
had
to
do
to
get
the
fifteen
hundred
dollars
was
stay
at
your
site.
So
we
were
looking
at
a
fairly
compacted
period
of
time.
A
Altogether
is
going
to
be
about
eight
months
and
if
you
stayed
at
your
site
at
the
three
months
point
we
gave
you
about,
we
gave
you
500
and
if
you
were
still
there
three
months
later,
500
more
and
if
you
were
still
there
at
the
end,
we
gave
you
500
more
up
to
1500
and
anyone
could
get
this
teachers
assistant,
teachers,
aides
staff,
anyone
working
with
kids
zero
to
five
full
time.
So
thirty
hours
a
week
or
more
and
again
this
was
child
care.
A
Centers
head
starts,
pre-k's
the
whole
kind
of
publicly
funded
system,
and
initially
we
had
25
virginia
communities
participating
and
we
had
enough
resources
to
give
this
to
all
their
teachers.
But
at
the
end,
a
large,
a
very
large
urban
county
in
virginia,
asked
to
participate
and
there
wasn't
enough
money
for
all
of
them
like
we
could
not
include
all
of
them
and
when
we
get
to
situations
where
you
have
scarce
resources
and
can't
give
them
to
everyone.
A
So
that's
just
to
highlight
that
turnover
is
very,
very
high
and
here's
what
happened
in
the
community
in
in
the
sites
that
received
the
money
there
86
of
the
teachers
were
there
so
meaning
we
increased
the
likelihood
that
teachers
stayed
at
their
sites
by
11
percentage
points.
Now
this
result
is
everybody.
This
is
all
the
teachers
across
all
the
different
programs,
but
if
you
were
paying
attention
in
the
earlier
presentations,
there
are
huge
differences
between
child
care,
head
start
and
pre-k
and
how
much
they're
getting
paid.
A
A
And
you
can
see
that
in
schools
there
wasn't
very
much
turnover
for
the
group
that
didn't
get
it
in
the
first
place,
like
almost
all
teachers
were
there
eight
months
later
anyway,
94
of
them
stayed,
but
in
child
care
centers
fully
30
percent
of
the
teachers
were
gone
eight
months
later,
so
very
high
rates
of
teacher
turnover,
and
this
is
what
our
experiment
did.
So
you
can
see
that
for
the
school-based
teachers
who
are
already
getting
paid
quite
a
bit
more,
it
made
no
difference
at
all.
A
The
retention
rates
were
exactly
the
same,
but
what
we
did
for
child
care
centers
is
we
basically
cut
turnover
in
half,
whereas
in
the
control
group,
thirty
percent
of
teachers
were
gone
in
the
group
they
got
fifteen
hundred
dollars
the
offer
of
it.
Only
fifteen
percent
were
gone,
meaning
half
the
teachers.
A
When
we
asked
the
teachers
what
they
used
this
money
for
like
how
did
it
matter
to
them?
What
did
you
would
they
do?
The
most
common
response?
83
percent
of
teachers
said
we
used
this
money,
they
were
allowed
to
use
it
for
anything,
but
they
used
it
for
housing,
for
food
and
for
bills,
so
for
very,
very
basic
needs.
A
So
I
wanted
to
close
with
a
quote
from
one
of
our
early
educators.
They
wrote
early
educators
are
so
often
left
out
of
the
conversation
when
it
comes
to
teaching.
This
grant
has
shown
us
that
our
work
matters.
I
am
hopeful
that
one
day
being
respected
and
recognized
for
what
we
do
will
be
a
norm
in
our
society.
A
A
How
even
small
resources
are
a
start
and
can
make
a
big
difference
for
the
lives
of
these
women,
but
also
for
the
quality
of
these
sites
and
for
the
children
they
serve.
So
I
will
stop
there.
Our
website
is
on
the
slide,
if
that's
helpful
and
my
email
address.
If
anyone
has
questions-
and
I'm
also
happy
to
answer
them
here,
thank
you.