Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS)

2018-2023

Leadership is widely recognized as an essential driver of organizational performance and improvement, but little is known about its role in driving quality of early childhood programs and outcomes for staff and families. In launching the Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) sought to fill the definitional and measurement gaps to help the early childhood field understand how effective leaders can improve quality experiences for staff and families in early care and education (ECE) settings.

OPRE contracted with Mathematica Policy Research and its subcontractor, the University of Massachusetts, Boston, to conduct this study. The study team identified three leadership elements, mapped out and tested their associations to center and staff outcomes, and developed a new measure of leadership in center-based ECE settings. Project staff and OPRE partnered with substantive, technical, and practical experts to inform the work. 

The study team completed the following tasks:

  • Reviewed the existing research literature to identify the key features of effective ECE leadership and highlight gaps in our understanding
  • Constructed a theory of change that shows how ECE leadership can support positive center, staff, family, and child outcomes
  • Developed a compendium of existing measures aligned with the theory of change to identify measurement gaps
  • Identified promising leadership development initiatives and methods of evaluating them
  • Conducted a descriptive study in 110 centers that received funding from Head Start or the Child Care and Development Fund to test hypothesized associations between leadership elements and center and staff outcomes in the theory of change
  • This study is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov  under the title Early Care and Education Leadership Study: Descriptive Study (ExCELS).
  • Information collections related to this project have been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0582. Related materials are available at the Early Care and Education Leadership Study page  on RegInfo.gov.
  • The most currently approved documents are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. 202205-0970-013 with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (E.g. interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents.
  • Data are being archived at the Child and Family Data Archive   https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38706

Point(s) of contact: Nina Philipsen, Bonnie Mackintosh, and Krystal Bichay-Awadalla.

Related Resources

Explore this brief from the OPRE-funded Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS) to understand what is known about what leadership looks like in center-based early care and education settings and how it functions to improve center quality and, in turn, children’s experiences and outcomes.

Learn about ExCELS theory of change which is an illustration of what leadership looks like in center-based ECE settings and how leadership by center managers and teaching staff can influence outcomes.

Explore this OPRE-funded brief that presents findings from a review of research on Early Care and Education (ECE) leadership development initiatives from the Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS) that focuses on leadership in center-based ECE settings.

The Distributed Leadership brief presents an overview of distributed leadership and its role in supporting quality improvement, as well as provide an example of how ECE settings can achieve distributed leadership from a quality improvement initiative called the Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) project.

The Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS) measure administration and scoring guide provides information to support users in administering and scoring the ExCELS measure.

Explore this new OPRE-funded Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS) measure that was developed to capture three leadership elements in center-based early care and education settings, including who participates in leadership, what individuals bring to leadership, and what center staff do as leaders.

This user’s guide provides information to support researchers who are conducting secondary analysis with the ExCELS descriptive data.

This ExCELS compendium describes measures of leadership relevant to early care and education (ECE) settings by identifying what information exists and what information is needed to better understand leadership and its influence in ECE settings.

This literature review and the ExCELS project as a whole focus on leadership within center-based ECE settings, at the building or center level.