Resource Library
VECF strives to ensure that evidence and data inform our work so that we can provide tools for our partners across the Commonwealth to utilize high-quality information to inform their work. Below, find different resources that speak to the development of an early childhood sector that allows all of Virginia’s children to thrive.
Be sure to check back, as this resource library will be regularly updated.
The Study of Early Education Through Partnerships (SEE-Partnerships) team at UVA leads 3 primary research activities to evaluate and inform Virginia’s Federal Preschool Development Grant Birth to 5 efforts including: large scale workforce surveys of early educators and leaders, family surveys of birth to 5 families seeking care and programming, and the first ever randomized controlled trial measuring the impacts of financial supports for early educators on reducing turnover.
Young children thrive when they have stable and engaging relationships with their caregivers.1 Unfortunately, teacher turnover is a problem for many early care and education (ECE) sites. Recent studies suggest that in the U.S., roughly one-third of early educators turn over each year. High levels of turnover have negative implications for child development and make it difficult for ECE sites to operate effectively and reliably, creating challenges for parents who need to go to work.
Early educators play a vital role in children’s lives. However, teachers in child care centers leave their jobs at very high rates and high turnover can negatively impact young children, their families, and the economy more broadly.
Virginia wants to make sure that all families with young children have access to opportunities for learning and development and that those options meet families’ needs and preferences. The Mixed Delivery program is an effective, strategic program to support academic, social, and lifelong success for all of Virginia’s children.
Community Report
The Family Voices Project was a way to listen and learn from families’ experiences and preferences in child care and preschool. The goal of this document is to share the findings with families and community stakeholders so they can use this information as they participate in local and state-level discussions about increasing access for all families to high-quality early learning programs. This is a PDG B-5 project.
Community Report
This report describes the racial/ethnic composition of teachers in child care centers and school-based early childhood education (ECE) programs participating in Virginia’s Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five initiative. This report is from EdPolicyWorks at UVA.
This report summarizes the findings from an examination on the progress and challenges of early childhood systems building in Virginia with a focus on communities that are part of VECF’s Smart Beginnings network and provides recommendations for how VECF, state government, and local leaders can more equitably and effectively serve children and families.
The strategy map is intended to serve as a guide for VECF as well as its public and private partner organizations in planning, executing, and tracking progress on their efforts to build equitable and durable early childhood (EC) systems across the Commonwealth of Virginia.
This report finds Virginia’s investment in early childhood development and school readiness to be inadequate. It describes a financing profile with glaring unmet needs resulting from severe shortfalls in funds for essential programs.
SUMMARY: Local community systems improve access, use, and quality of important services for children and families. SRI wrote this brief independently under contract to VECF.
Virginia is committed to advancing school readiness for all young children, preparing them for success in school, the workforce, and life. Virginia recognizes the need and urgency to convene its leaders, policymakers, and families to envision and create an effective and sustainable system.
Positive experiences during the early years can dramatically change a child’s life. Recently, Virginia has taken bold steps to explore the potential benefits of mixed delivery.
This edition uses a shorter time frame, reviewing trends over the past five years in two domains – Risks and Results. The most recent five years of data were selected in order to provide timely data and identify meaningful trends that may be harder to detect due to random year to year variation.
In recognition of the Commonwealth’s ten-year investment in Smart Beginnings (2006-2016), the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation is proud to present this edition of Virginia’s School Readiness Report Card through the lens of a decade’s trends in key indicators of school readiness.
Virginia’s School Readiness Report Card provides an opportunity to examine and assess the capacity and effectiveness of the state’s system supporting the comprehensive school readiness of young children.
The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation undertook this study in order to quantify the fiscal resources Virginia devotes to fostering child development and school readiness in the first five years of life.
In the spring and summer of 2017, the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, in collaboration with the Virginia Community College System, conducted a survey of early education program administrators and teachers across the Commonwealth.
Virginia’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) awards quality levels to child care and preschool programs based on four nationally recognized quality standards and best practices: the education and qualifications of the staff, the curriculum or intentional teaching approach the program uses to guide children’s learning, the learning environment, and teacher-child interactions.
A snapshot of Virginia’s quality rated early education programs: December 31st, 2018.
Leaders’ Position Statement on Early Childhood Teacher Preparation.
Bridging the Divide: Higher Education and Early Childhood.
Supporting Virginia’s interest in competency based credentials, recognized and valued by Virginia employers and state agencies across the child care, Head Start and education sectors.
Bridging the Divide: Higher Education and Early Childhood Leaders’ Position Statement on Early Childhood Teacher Preparation.
Virginia’s Preschool Puzzle provides a framework for navigating this process, using the experiences of existing local programs to illustrate some challenges and opportunities that come with collaboration.
VECF intends for the directory to guide investment and decision‐making in Smart Beginnings communities and to support the quality and capacity of local services to offer the best possible gain on community investment.
