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: Virginia completed an initial needs assessment of the birth to five system in 2019 and has completed annual reviews of progress towards the goals identified since then. In 2023, Virginia initiated a formal re-review of the Virginia Early Childhood Needs Assessment, through a contract with University of Virginia (UVA) and supported through PDG funds. The UVA team completed a comprehensive review of the initial goals and updated them using the data that Virginia has collected since 2019. The VDOE partnered also with Virginia Early Childhood Foundation to assist with field engagement on the Needs Assessment. This included engagement with Ready Regions, Family Councils, and the Virginia Promise Partnership Parent Advisory to inform and socialize Needs Assessment, including convening 9 regional roundtables across Virginia. The regional roundtables were an opportunity to review the Needs Assessment findings and hear feedback, over 350 attendees participated from around the state. Parents and families (200 participants) were paid a stipend for their time. Through Virginia’s needs assessment and strategic plan process, Virginia has identified key goals for expending CCDF funds to support quality. Virginia has developed a data strategy and uniform data system (LinkB5) for ongoing collection and analysis of measurement and improvement data across early childhood programs participating in VQB5. The use of LinkB5 on an annual basis is a requirement for all publicly-funded sites as part of VQB5’s required measurement and improvement activities, which as of the fall of 2023 includes 3,186 sites are participating, which represents 1,535 centers, 796 family day homes and 855 public school preschool programs across the Commonwealth. This means Virginia now has a more comprehensive data set that can be used to understand the needs of families and providers. 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: The following overarching goals related to quality were identified in the needs assessment completed in 2024: Goal area 1: All children deserve safe, nurturing care that supports their learning and development and prepares them for kindergarten. Goal area 2: To prepare all children for kindergarten, Virginia’s early childhood system must ensure they have access to quality teaching and learning experiences that meet their unique needs. Goal area 3: In order to accomplish this goal, Virginia must: 1) ensure educators are adequately compensated and supported to do their challenging work 2) establish a shared & equitable understanding of quality and its measurement 3) collect clear data about the workforce, the quality of teacher-child interactions, curriculum use, and children’s learning across a broad set of domains 4) provide supports for improvement, prioritizing educators who need it most. The needs assessment identified the following needs for Virginia’s continued work: 1. To support improved quality, Virginia needs to support consistent VQB5 engagement - Roughly 25% of publicly funded sites are new to participating in Required Year 1; Virginia is supporting them through this process by clarifying participation requirements and consequences for sites who do not participate. In the practice years, some sites did not complete local observations and as a result received incomplete ratings. VDOE is establishing action steps and consequences for incomplete CLASS observations to support the most complete collection of data for the site. In addition, Virginia is helping schedulers use clear and approachable communications, particularly for family day home providers. Virginia is working to increase the use of external observations and establishing a score replacement protocol when inconsistencies in observation scores occur. A small percentage of sites require intensive support. One in three sites that scored very low in Practice Year 1 did not participate in any state-supported improvement efforts. Virginia is prioritizing classrooms with low CLASS scores for coaching/TA supports and requiring that sites that receive a ￿Needs Support￿ rating participate in additional improvement planning, this will be required as of Fall 2024 for Needs Support sites. There is variation in curriculum implementation by site type. Virginia will continue to keep curriculum use optional, while also increasing approved options and targeted supports to sites who are not yet using curriculum in at least one classroom. 2. To support improved quality, Virginia needs to address workforce issues - Workforce issues like high turnover continue to pose challenges with improving quality. High rates of turnover impact Virginia's investments in child care and limit quality improvement, as there is a perpetual need to recruit and retrain new educators. As of 2022, teachers reported an hourly wage of $14.80, which is equivalent to $12.97 in 2019 real-dollar value and fewer than half of these educators have access to benefits. Inflation-adjusted wages for early educators have increased on average by just $0.71 per hour since 2019. 3. To support school readiness, Virginia should encourage publicly funded sites to embrace a culture of data use. Virginia must continue to provide teachers with training and resources to use screening data to inform instruction and individualization and inform site leaders on data-driven ways to coach and support teachers' instructional practices.