About

Daphna Bassok is a Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development. She directs the Study of Early Education through Partnerships (SEE-Partnerships) and works closely with early childhood policy makers at both the Virginia and Louisiana Departments of Education. Her research addresses early childhood education policy, with a focus on efforts to improve early childhood systems at scale, particularly policies aimed at supporting the early childhood workforce. She is leading a multi-year evaluation of Virginia’s Federal Preschool Development Grant Birth-5 initiative, which aims to expand access to stable, affordable, and quality early education for vulnerable families and children. Her team is conducting the first randomized controlled trial measuring the impacts of financial support for early educators on reducing turnover. Additionally, she collaborates with colleagues in Louisiana to study systemwide change efforts, including quality rating and improvement systems, credentialing approaches, and COVID recovery efforts. Her work has been funded by various agencies including the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Political Science
• Developmental psychology
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Business
• Demographic economics
• Nursing
• Physics
• Environmental economics
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• Racial and Ethnic Wage Gaps Among Early Educators

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-04-24

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <span>The data were collected through LinkB5, the data system that supports Virginia’s Quality Rating and Improvement System, Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5). The paper used data collected during the 2024 LinkB5 Registration period, specifically teacher profiles, site profiles, and the entity connections table. The dataset is owned and collected by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) in compliance with applicable federal and state laws. The University of Virginia accessed the data under an interinstitutional data-sharing agreement.</span>

  PublisherDOI

• Does teacher turnover relate to lower safety and quality in child care settings?

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2026-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Associations among early childhood educator compensation, wellbeing, and job commitment

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Racial and Ethnic Wage Gaps Among Early Educators

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-04-24

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <span>The data were collected through LinkB5, the data system that supports Virginia’s Quality Rating and Improvement System, Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5). The paper used data collected during the 2024 LinkB5 Registration period, specifically teacher profiles, site profiles, and the entity connections table. The dataset is owned and collected by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) in compliance with applicable federal and state laws. The University of Virginia accessed the data under an interinstitutional data-sharing agreement.</span>

  PublisherDOI

• How Much Do New Early Educators Improve Over Time? Tracking Improvement Trajectories Among Early Educators in Louisiana

  AERA Open · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We 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.

  PublisherDOI

• The Early Care and Education Workforce in the United States

  2025-07-17 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Is authorized capacity a good measure of child care providers’ current capacity? New evidence from Virginia

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2024-12-12 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Compensation and Staffing Challenges in Child Care: Statewide Evidence from Pandemic Relief Applications

  Education Finance and Policy · 2023-07-25 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Child care teachers support young children's learning and development and parents’ ability to work. However, they earn far less and turn over at far higher rates than K–12 teachers. COVID-19 exacerbated staffing challenges, and the child care workforce was 5.9 percent smaller in January 2023 than in January 2020. While low compensation likely drives turnover in early childhood education, there is relatively little large-scale evidence on the link between compensation and staffing challenges. We summarize the limited pre-pandemic evidence and use pandemic-era data from 90 percent of publicly funded child care centers in Louisiana to describe the relationship between sites’ compensation and staffing challenges. In October 2022, 15 percent of centers’ lead teacher positions were unfilled—nearly quadruple the 4 percent national vacancy rate for public school teachers. Of centers with any vacancies or hires in the past six months, 65 percent turned families away and 84 percent hired less-experienced or -qualified teachers than desired due to staffing challenges. Centers with higher wages were significantly less likely to report staffing challenges, turn families away, and hire less-experienced teachers, after controlling for center characteristics and region. Our findings and prior evidence suggest that wage increases are promising for stabilizing the child care workforce.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reducing Complexity to Support Families Navigating Early Care and Education Systems

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-03-01 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  Most families with young children in the U.S. need reliable, high-quality early care and education (ECE) programs that help adults support their families while supporting children’s development. Yet the fragmented nature of public investments in ECE has led to a complex system that is difficult for families to navigate. We describe how families struggle to access publicly funded ECE programs because they face challenges in finding information about options and in surmounting administrative barriers to enrollment. We highlight how these problems are exacerbated by the lack of coordination across publicly funded programs and present promising approaches that states and localities have taken to support families and reduce fragmentation within the ECE system. We conclude by discussing implications for policymakers and researchers who seek to build ECE systems that streamline services in service of families.

  PublisherDOI

• Hard-to-staff centers: Exploring center-level variation in the persistence of child care teacher turnover

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2022-01-01 · 22 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Susanna Loeb

  33 shared

• Scott Latham

  32 shared

• Maria Fitzpatrick

  24 shared

• Thomas S. Dee

  Stanford University

  22 shared

• Anna J. Markowitz

  19 shared

• Daniel Player

  University of Virginia

  7 shared

• Eva Galdo

  United States Department of Education

  7 shared

• Justin B. Doromal

  Urban Institute

  6 shared

Labs

• EdPolicyWorksPI

Awards & honors

• Virginia Education Science Training (VEST) Fellowships