An Implementation Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention to Enhance Salaries and Improve Quality in Rural Child Care Centers Serving Families with Low-Incomes

Background: This paper describes an implementation evaluation of a pilot intervention in 35 rural childcare centers in Illinois which was designed to improve job quality for the childcare workforce and increase service quality for children enrolled in the centers. Specifically, the State of Illinois provided participating centers financial grants that were conditional on (1) enhancing teacher salaries according to state mandated minimums and (2) participation in coaching for directors and continuous quality improvement activities for teachers. Drawing from the administrative burden (Herd & Moynihan, 2018) and trust (Hardin, 2002) literatures, we examine the role of communication clarity, complexity of program rules and procedures, and institutional and interpersonal trust between center directors and state staff in explaining center directors positive and negative experiences with the intervention.

Methods: 35 rural childcare centers whose clientele included at least 40% subsidized families voluntarily participated in the pilot intervention. We conducted one-hour in-depth interviews, between September-April 2023, with center directors. Interviews focused on director experiences with the pilot program as well as their understandings of how different components of the pilot influenced program quality and staffing, especially credentialing, retention, turnover and staff morale. We coded interviews, using both a priori and emergent codes, and created Excel matrices to aid analysis, per conventional content coding methods.

Results: The pilot was well received by participating center directors overall, especially resources to support teacher salary enhancements and the director coaching components. Directors reported that state grant support toward salary enhancements improved competitiveness, incentivized credential seeking, and enhanced teacher satisfaction. Yet, directors identified several challenges to implementing new payroll schedules centering on IT infrastructure, reporting processes, and time constraints. Directors expressed almost uniform positivity about the monthly coaching meetings attributed to perceptions of the coach as trustworthy, knowledgeable, and focused on solving practical problems. The continuous quality improvement component of the pilot received mixed reviews. Many participants found the activities to be helpful, especially keeping classroom instruction focused on attainable goals, but some viewed activities as “busy work” and identified challenges related to turnover, time constraints, and teacher buy in. Other participants reported that they already had equivalent continuous quality improvement approaches in place, and the activities were redundant with ongoing processes.

Conclusions and Implications: Interim results of this pilot are encouraging but also suggest that some design revisions may be necessary to reduce bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden and help directors comply with program requirements and ultimately fulfill state objectives of improving childcare workforce compensation and service quality. We will discuss our collaborative partnership with state early care and education administrators and how it is a mechanism for providing feedback and suggestions for reform before the initiative is scaled as part of a broader state initiative.