7.1 Quality Activities Needs Assessment

7.1.1 Needs assessment process and findings a. Describe the Lead Agency needs assessment process for expending CCDF funds on activities to improve the quality of child care, including the frequency of assessment, how a diverse range of parents and providers were consulted, and how their views are incorporated: The District is working to improve access, quality, and affordability of child care for DC families. To inform these efforts, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), as the lead agency for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), regularly collects and analyzes information from a variety of sources to identify needs and inform quality improvement and supply-building strategies. Data is collected and analyzed from various information sources on differing timelines (i.e. monthly, annually or ongoing). These information sources include: 1) Administrative data regularly collected from child development facilities and grantees to facilitate implementation of OSSE programming, including child care licensing data on facility location, capacity, ages of children served, deficiencies identified, and staff qualifications; monthly Child Care Subsidy Program data on participating facilities and children and families receiving subsidies; early educator participation in and satisfaction with professional development opportunities supported by OSSE grantees and approved trainers on an ongoing basis; and early educators participating in OSSE-funded credential and scholarship programs and their progress toward degrees on an ongoing basis; 2) Independent observations of child care program quality conducted annually using valid and reliable observation tools (the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale ￿ Third Edition [ITERS-3], Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale ￿ Third Edition [FCCERS-3], and Classroom Assessment Scoring System [CLASS®] for Pre-K) for all facilities participating in Capital Quality, the District’s quality improvement and rating system (QRIS), and/or the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund; 3) Feedback from child care program operators, collected via formal advisory structures, such as OSSE’s Child Care Recovery Working Group and monthly calls with child care stakeholders, as well as tracking informal feedback provided to OSSE staff; 4) Feedback from families and supports requested from those participating in the Quality Improvement Network Parent Committees and Policy Council, receiving Strong Start early intervention services or engaging with DC Child Care Connections (DC CCC), the District’s child care resource and referral agency (CCR&R); 5) Feedback from early educators collected via surveys administered to participants in OSSE-supported professional development and scholarship programs and Capital Quality ongoing participation surveys,; 6) Research and analyses conducted or commissioned by OSSE to address specific questions of interest, including the legislatively required cost modeling analysis, DC Child Care Provider Survey, and a child care facility study commissioned from an independent research partner to understand the current supply and demand for child care in the District and condition of child care facilities and supporting ecosystem infrastructure; 7) Research partnerships, including the District of Columbia Child Care Research Partnership Study and the Evaluation of the District of Columbia’s Innovative Subsidy Policies and Practices study, both funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Families; and 8) Review of academic literature and new research on early childhood program quality and child development. OSSE has put in place structures, at a leadership level, to facilitate regular review and sense-making of information from across these multiple sources to monitor progress and inform priorities for continuous improvement. As such, needs assessment is not a one-time activity or a specific deliverable, but an ongoing process that is embedded in and informs all aspects of OSSE’s work as the lead agency. b. Describe the findings of the assessment, including any findings related to needs of different populations and types of providers, and if any overarching goals for quality improvement were identified: Through the ongoing review of data and information to inform quality improvement strategies, OSSE has identified three priority areas for quality improvement efforts: 1) Developing and retaining a highly skilled workforce, 2) Improving program-level performance in the ITERS, FCCERS, and CLASS domains that reflect the quality of adult-child interactions that support children’s learning and development and 3) Strengthening child development home providers’ and center leaders’ understanding of and capacity to implement sustainable business practices. OSSE’s early learning strategy emphasizes developing and retaining a highly skilled and well-compensated early childhood workforce as a crucial lever for advancing the District’s goals for child care access, quality, and affordability. This focus is particularly informed by research demonstrating that quality child care is primarily a function of how early educators nurture and interact with children and the kinds of warm and responsive experiences and environments they create to promote early learning; feedback from child development facilities that recruiting and retaining a skilled early childhood workforce is one of the biggest challenges they face in expanding access to quality child care; and feedback from early educators on their satisfaction with and challenges in their roles and the supports they need to be successful and remain in the field. OSSE has set a goal to increase the number and percentage of early childhood educators meeting minimum education requirements for their roles, with the target to reach 100 percent of educators in all staff types meeting minimum education requirements by the conclusion of the fiscal year 2025-27 (FY25-27) CCDF Plan. OSSE measures educator progress in meeting the education qualifications for their staff role monthly. As of January 2024, 88 percent of center directors; 63 percent of teachers; 68 percent of assistant teachers; 74 percent of expanded home caregivers; 77 percent of home caregivers, and 78 percent of associate home caregivers met the minimum education requirement for their position. OSSE also regularly assesses progress along a continuum of supports for early educators and outcome measures, including professional development and scholarship offerings, progress on meeting credential and degree requirements, and early educator compensation, as well as through the research partnerships described above, which include direct engagement with early educators to solicit their perspectives on quality improvement and workforce support initiatives. Our focus on minimum education requirements is based on a belief that increasing the number of early educators obtaining these degrees and credentials will result in improved adult-child interactions and child learning and development outcomes. OSSE’s quality improvement strategies also prioritize ongoing professional development that builds program leaders’ capacities to support high-quality interactions and learning environments and early educators’ capacities to engage in high-quality interactions and strengthen instructional support. Based on 2023 observation data from the CLASS for Pre- K, 99 percent of child development facility programs met or exceeded the floor for Emotional Support, 97 percent met or exceeded the floor for Classroom Organization, 89 percent met or exceeded the floor for Instructional Support, and 88 percent met or exceeded floors across all three domains. Data also showed that child development facilities improved in all CLASS for Pre-K domains. Instructional Support, however, remains an area for improvement with only 10 percent of child development facility programs across the District meeting the target, compared to 89 percent for Emotional Support and 60 percent for Classroom Organization. For the ITERS-3, 99 percent of child development facility programs met or exceeded the floor and 4 percent of programs met or exceeded the target. For the FCCERS-3, 93 percent of programs met or exceeded the floor and 14 percent met or exceeded the target. To advance this goal, OSSE is prioritizing training focused on the DC Early Learning Standards (DC ELS), as well as training focused on infant/toddler teachers and family child care homes. OSSE has separate goals related to the Environment Rating Scales (ERS) and CLASS for Pre-K: 1) 100 percent of observed programs will meet or exceed the floor; 2) the percentage of programs meeting or exceeding the target will increase by six percentage points on the ITERS-3 and FCCERS-3 across all subscales; and 3) the percentage of programs meeting or exceeding the target will increase by five percentage points on the CLASS for Pre-K Instructional Support domain. Finally, OSSE is prioritizing strategies to build child development facility leaders’ and home providers’ understanding of and capacity to implement sustainable business practices. In support of this goal, the DC Early Childhood Education Business Collaboratory, a group of organizations supporting provider business practices in the District that OSSE co-convenes with the goal of increasing alignment across supports for child care businesses, recently developed a set of business competencies for child care program leaders (including home providers), which the collaborative members will use to align offerings to competencies and set goals for and measure progress in the improvement of child care provider business sustainability and practices. Capital Quality coaches continue to support child care leaders with technical assistance, communities of practice (CoP), professional development, and training. These findings are crucial in shaping the training and professional development initiatives targeted by OSSE.