Hub Overview
The Colorado Lab’s Evidence-Building Hubs help the state work more efficiently by coordinating research efforts, avoiding duplicate work, expanding useful data, and strategic planning. The Colorado Lab has served as an Evidence-Building Hub for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) since the CDEC’s inception in 2022.
In 2023, CDEC received a $3.85 million grant from the Early Educator Investment Collaborative (EEIC) to plan and carry out ways to permanently raise pay and benefits for early care and education (ECE) professionals. In October 2024, CDEC contracted with Colorado Lab to serve as the Early Childhood Workforce Evidence-Building Hub (the Hub) for this grant. Activities include:
- Creating a research plan that focuses on the most important needs throughout the grant;
- Finding, organizing, and managing vendors to produce relevant and actionable research; and
- Working with CDEC’s partner engagement vendor to use the Hub’s evidence for action.
The Hub is building evidence to:
- Understand the ECE workforce compensation problem space.
- Guide how new money could be best spent in the ECE system for compensation.
- Inform how to redirect existing ECE money to workforce compensation.
- Generate more disposable income for the ECE workforce.
The Hub creates a yearly strategy report with updated research priorities and recommendations for CDEC. It also produces a yearly evidence report that shares progress and key findings.
Actionability
ECE workforce evidence-building activities all three key evidence-building sources to guide decisions: the best research available, the needs of the community, and the knowledge of experts. The Hub’s findings can be used by:
- CDEC and Workforce Division leaders to help plan how to improve pay for early childhood workers.
- Lawmakers and policymakers to guide funding and policy choices that support higher pay for the ECE workforce.
Get Involved
For more information about working with the Colorado Lab, see Government and Community Partnerships or Research Partnerships.