Early Childhood Education (ECE) Workforce Study

The Ohio Education Research Center’s Dr. Joshua Hawley is a co-Principal Investigator on a project led by NORC at the University of Chicago to study the early childcare workforce. The study, funded by the Sloan Foundation, examines two research questions:

1. How does the expansion of school-based pre-kindergarten - and other targeted pre-K funding for specific subgroups - affect the earnings, and recruitment and retention of early care and education workers?
2. Do changes in the minimum wage, or other efforts to increase wages, affect the earnings and retention of early care and education workers?

This study will leverage the administrative employment data from a newly formed and growing collaboration of six participating states from the Multi-State Data Collaborative. Study findings employing rigorous designs will be positioned to inform the field on this topic to fill gaps in the knowledge base.

There are two high-level goals this project seeks to achieve:

1. To build a research partnership with a group of states that will inform their decision-making on this topic;
2. To demonstrate the value of this partnership by addressing research questions that are forward-looking and will advance the academic and practical knowledge base in how to build and sustain a robust ECE educator workforce.

The OERC will serve as a key partner in the execution of this research. Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Joshua Hawley will lead the OERC’s involvement, drawing on his extensive experience in economics of education and workforce development.

The OERC will facilitate and strengthen relationships with Ohio state agencies. Dr. Hawley will serve as a liaison between the research team and Ohio stakeholders, ensuring alignment with state priorities.

The OERC will provide substantive expertise on Ohio data sources and policy landscape and contribute to the design and interpretation of analyses focused on the impacts of minimum wage changes and pre-K expansion and will assist in contextualizing findings within Ohio’s policy environment and labor market conditions.