Funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, this project is intended to build knowledge about what drives turnover in the early care and education (ECE) workforce and to evaluate promising strategies to support recruitment and retention of qualified a qualified ECE workforce. Better comprehension of how various conditions, incentives, and strategies may affect ECE workers, depending on individuals’ backgrounds, programmatic and local contexts, and features of care settings, can inform public and private efforts to support states and programs in their activities to build and retain a qualified ECE workforce. The project includes a review of the knowledge base, including an environmental scan of existing strategies for workforce retention, expert consultation, and stakeholder engagement. Future activities may include descriptive and demonstration studies. MEF, a subcontractor to MDRC, will lead stakeholder engagement and several components of the environmental scan.
