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Tracking Improvement Trajectories Among Early Educators in Louisiana","","AERA Open January–December 2025 article examines how early care and education teachers improve with experience in publicly funded center-based settings in Louisiana. Using cross-sectional and three-year longitudinal data, it links teacher experience to observational measures of teacher–child interaction quality. Results show substantial gains over the period, especially for new teachers, and steeper growth for childcare centers and Head Start compared with school-based pre-K, despite lower starting scores.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/how-much-do-new-early-educators-improve-over-time-tracking-improvement-trajectories-among-early-educators-in-louisiana/590305/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/how-much-do-new-early-educators-improve-over-time-tracking-improvement-trajectories-among-early-educators-in-louisiana/590305.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Pentious","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the study measure when evaluating teacher improvement?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It measures observational quality of teacher–child interactions and examines how that quality changes as teachers gain experience.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How do the researchers analyze improvement over time?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"They use both cross-sectional data and longitudinal data that tracks individual teachers’ improvement trajectories across a three-year period.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What were the main findings about new teachers and program types?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Teachers show considerable improvement over three years, with particularly strong gains among new teachers. Childcare centers and Head Start start with lower scores than school-based pre-K but demonstrate steeper growth trajectories.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},590305,1792073183,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},1374404730887,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584241309317  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nHow Much Do New Early Educators Improve Over Time? Tracking Improvement Trajectories Among Early Educators in  \nLouisiana  \nLaura Bellows  \nAnna Shapiro  \nRAND Corporation  \nAnna J. Markowitz  \nUniversity of California, Los Angeles  \nDaphna Bassok  \nUniversity of Virginia  \nWe know surprisingly little about returns to experience among new teachers working with very young children, ages 2 to 5 years. This study begins to fill that gap using data on early care and education teachers working in all publicly funded, center-based settings in one state to document the relationship between teacher experience and an observational measure of teacher–child interaction quality. We used both cross-sectional data—similar to the data used in prior small studies—and longitudinal data that allowed us to track the improvement trajectories of individual teachers over a 3-year period. Our findings show considerable improvements over a 3-year period, particularly among new teachers (0.67 SD). Our longitudinal analysis also showed that, although teachers in childcare centers and Head Start began their careers with lower scores than teachers working in school-based pre-K programs, they demonstrated steeper growth trajectories.  \nKeywords: early care and education, returns to experience, education workforce, preschool, Head Start, child care, state policy, descriptive analysis, longitudinal studies  \nEffective early educators engage in complex, highly skilled work that supports the academic and social development of young children (ages 0–5 years) (e.g., Institute of Medicine [IOM] & National Research Council [NRC], 2015) . Unfortunately, early educators in the United States often experience very little training before or after they enter the classroom (Markowitz & Bassok, 2024). Quality varies considerably across ECE programs and is oftentimes too low to support young children’s learning (Bassok, Magouirk, & Markowitz, 2021; Weiland et al., 2022) .  \nThere is considerable interest in, and research on, policies and practices to support early educators and in turn improve the quality of early care and education (ECE) experiences children receive (Hamre et al., 2021) . However, we know surprisingly little about how early educators typically learn their work and the extent to which they typically improve over time. Unlike the large body of research on teachers’returns to experience in K–12 settings (e.g., Papay & Kraft,  \n2015), we are aware of no large-scale studies tracking the extent to which ECE teachers improve with experience.  \nIn K–12, it is widely recognized teachers improve considerably in their first few years of teaching (Boyd at al., 2008; Clotfelter et al., 2006, 2007; Harris & Sass, 2011; Kane et al., 2008; Ladd & Sorensen, 2017; Papay & Kraft, 2015; Rockoff, 2004; Wiswall, 2013) . We lack analogous information about whether early educators with more years of experience provide significantly higher-quality learning experiences than those who are just starting out. Understanding how much new teachers improve over time is essential for tracking the costs of teacher turnover, which is high in ECE settings (Bassok, Markowitz et al., 2021) . If, for example, teachers improve a great deal in their first year, finding ways to retain experienced teachers is particularly important. Unfortunately, good data to explore this question have been lacking.  \nLongitudinal data with ongoing measurement of quality are rarely available in ECE settings (Whitebook et al., 2018) .  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons  \nAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https:","cbCaieHHa9ONggAv","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieHHa9ONggAv","pdf",1452444,18,"English","# Study focus\n## Background and motivation\n## Data and methods\n## Findings\n## Implications for early education policy","[{\"question\":\"What does the study measure when evaluating teacher improvement?\",\"answer\":\"It measures observational quality of teacher–child interactions and examines how that quality changes as teachers gain experience.\"},{\"question\":\"How do the researchers analyze improvement over time?\",\"answer\":\"They use both cross-sectional data and longitudinal data that tracks individual teachers’ improvement trajectories across a three-year period.\"},{\"question\":\"What were the main findings about new teachers and program types?\",\"answer\":\"Teachers show considerable improvement over three years, with particularly strong gains among new teachers. Childcare centers and Head Start start with lower scores than school-based pre-K but demonstrate steeper growth trajectories.\"}]","How Much Do New Early Educators Improve Over Time? Tracking Improvement Trajectories Among Early Educators in Louisiana | PDF",1792069296,45]