Impact of Professional Development Incentives for Early Childhood Education Workforce

Increased educational attainment among early childhood education (ECE) workforce members has been linked to improvements in classroom quality. Oregon ECE workforce members can pursue various professional development opportunities by participating in the state’s career lattice, a system that helps ECE workforce members determine goals and navigate pathways to higher education and training levels.

To help Oregon education stakeholders understand how to encourage career lattice participation, REL Northwest conducted randomized controlled trials to test whether sending emails and offering different financial incentives to ECE workforce members increased career lattice sign-up, education and training levels, and workplace retention.

The study found that:

• Sending emails encouraging career lattice sign-up had no detectable impact on career lattice sign-up or workplace retention.
• Sending emails offering a monetary incentive at an earlier-than-usual step on the career lattice had a positive impact on training hours recorded but no detectable impact on career lattice movement, college credit hours earned, or workplace retention.
• Sending emails about automatic enrollment in a scholarship program had no detectable impact on scholarship use, career lattice movement, college credit hours earned, or workplace retention.
• These findings suggest that low-touch interventions such as emails have promise for increasing training hours but are insufficient to induce changes in career lattice sign-up or continuing postsecondary education for Oregon ECE workforce members. The study provides information to guide future research, as well as information on how improved messaging and supports can reduce barriers to further education and training among the ECE workforce and how email campaigns can strengthen workforce communication efforts. Such information could be useful for state policymakers and professional development providers.