The La Follette School’s 40th Family Impact Seminar will focus on child care access and availability in Wisconsin. Alejandra Roz Pilarz, Anna Markowitz, and JoAnn Hsueh will share their research during the School’s signature event for the State Legislature.
The Family Impact Seminar program provides high-quality, objective information to legislators and policymakers, presenting research on key public policy issues that impact families.
Alejandra Roz Pilarz is an assistant professor in UW–Madison’s Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work. Her research examines how child care and early education experiences impact child development, especially the availability of child care during non-standard work hours (i.e., nights and weekends).
Pilarz’s presentation will focus on her project with the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to understand child care supply changes in Wisconsin. She will discuss the data emerging from that project and what it reveals about child care supply in the state.
Anna Markowitz is an assistant professor at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. Her research projects include the Study of Early Education in Louisiana, Teacher Turnover in Head Start, and Food Insecurity in Early Childhood. Her presentation will focus on the consequences of high teacher turnover in early childhood education, including the impact on child outcomes and the primary causes for teachers leaving the field.
JoAnn Hsueh is director of MDRC’s Family Well-Being and Children’s Development policy area. She is a principal investigator of MDRC’s Building, Advancing, and Sustaining the Early Care and Education Workforce (BASE) project, funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her presentation will focus on effective approaches to recruiting, supporting, and retaining a qualified early childhood education workforce.
The 40th Family Impact Seminar will be held in February 2022. Recent seminars have addressed toxic stress in children, the juvenile justice system, homelessness, and youth job training. Topic-specific briefing reports and issue briefs, along with videos of past seminars, are available online.