Q&A with: Jade Jenkins
December 7, 2022
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In a special Q&A series for our 10th anniversary, the UCI School of Education asked Associate Professor Jade Jenkins about her areas of interest, her work on the statewide universal prekindergarten expansion, advice to students and more. Jenkins focuses her research on child and family policy, and early childhood policy in particular.
Q: Tell us about your research interests and why you’ve dedicated your career thus far to these areas. A: I study early childhood policy, which is kind of a subset of child and family policy, which is essentially publicly-funded programs focused on families with young children ages 0-8. Most public policies for children and families in the U.S. are targeted toward families living near or below the poverty level, or children with special needs, so programs and policies available for these families are at the core of my research interests. |
Jade Jenkins
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In my college years, I started learning about the importance of early childhood development, and the basic idea that little ones are sponges that absorb their environments, for good and for ill. I came to realize that if we want to generate social change, reduce poverty and improve well-being at scale, it was clear that we need to ensure opportunities for all kids starting on day one.
A core motivation for my research is my professional experience with Florida’s early care and education system. In spite of the research showing that early childhood is a unique opportunity to mitigate the effects of poverty on development, I saw that the policies surrounding subsidized childcare, prekindergarten and early intervention were not grounded in science. With this firsthand experience in policy implementation, I pursued a Ph.D. in Public Policy to develop the evidence for policy reforms targeting disadvantaged young children.
Could you share about research you’re working on?
State-level governments are the major players in creating and implementing policies targeting families with young children. Indeed, when people hear about “pre-k,” they may not know it, but public prekindergarten programs are entirely state developed and funded. In turn, we have 50 different versions of early childhood policy in our country, and so several of my projects look at how these differences in policies across states (e.g., quality of preschool programs, how much funding per child is offered, how much red tape is involved in enrolling in programs) actually affect child and family well-being. For example, I’m working on a project examining the extent to which states' rules and funding for child care subsidies – assistance for working families to pay for child care on sliding fee scales – affects the total amount of child care slots available in that state, and whether there are more providers offering the type of care working families often need, such as non-traditional hours or weekend care. These differences in policymaking could improve opportunities for families to stabilize their employment and keep children from having to change providers, which is bad for their development.
With California’s expansion of universal prekindergarten (UPK) beginning this school year, you’ve been actively involved as a member of the California Department of Education research design team. What is your role and why is this work important?
The California Department of Education (CDE) is really trying to embed in their UPK program an inclusive and scientific approach to child development and education. The research design team is aiming to bring in research capacity that CDE can’t house on its own – from researchers across the UC system, research firms that have been working in California for a long time, and other scholars with content expertise – to cover as much scientific territory as possible as the program expands. There are so many different components of a preschool program – classroom curriculum, assessment of children’s skills, teacher certification, training and support for classrooms. Informing these components with science is the very essence of policy research. As a UC faculty member and as someone who studies preschool, I see my role in advising these decisions in real time as fundamental to the mission of both the UC system and my own work. I’m excited to be in the right place at such an important time.
What are the greatest opportunities and challenges this expansion faces?
A core motivation for my research is my professional experience with Florida’s early care and education system. In spite of the research showing that early childhood is a unique opportunity to mitigate the effects of poverty on development, I saw that the policies surrounding subsidized childcare, prekindergarten and early intervention were not grounded in science. With this firsthand experience in policy implementation, I pursued a Ph.D. in Public Policy to develop the evidence for policy reforms targeting disadvantaged young children.
Could you share about research you’re working on?
State-level governments are the major players in creating and implementing policies targeting families with young children. Indeed, when people hear about “pre-k,” they may not know it, but public prekindergarten programs are entirely state developed and funded. In turn, we have 50 different versions of early childhood policy in our country, and so several of my projects look at how these differences in policies across states (e.g., quality of preschool programs, how much funding per child is offered, how much red tape is involved in enrolling in programs) actually affect child and family well-being. For example, I’m working on a project examining the extent to which states' rules and funding for child care subsidies – assistance for working families to pay for child care on sliding fee scales – affects the total amount of child care slots available in that state, and whether there are more providers offering the type of care working families often need, such as non-traditional hours or weekend care. These differences in policymaking could improve opportunities for families to stabilize their employment and keep children from having to change providers, which is bad for their development.
With California’s expansion of universal prekindergarten (UPK) beginning this school year, you’ve been actively involved as a member of the California Department of Education research design team. What is your role and why is this work important?
The California Department of Education (CDE) is really trying to embed in their UPK program an inclusive and scientific approach to child development and education. The research design team is aiming to bring in research capacity that CDE can’t house on its own – from researchers across the UC system, research firms that have been working in California for a long time, and other scholars with content expertise – to cover as much scientific territory as possible as the program expands. There are so many different components of a preschool program – classroom curriculum, assessment of children’s skills, teacher certification, training and support for classrooms. Informing these components with science is the very essence of policy research. As a UC faculty member and as someone who studies preschool, I see my role in advising these decisions in real time as fundamental to the mission of both the UC system and my own work. I’m excited to be in the right place at such an important time.
What are the greatest opportunities and challenges this expansion faces?
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It’s pretty epic that the largest state in the country, larger than most other countries, is offering a universal education program for all 4-year-olds. This makes it concrete that there is nothing magical about age 5 – the typical kindergarten entry age – with respect to children’s learning, and that families should have public support for the education of their children prior to the traditional K-12 timeline.
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“At UCI School of Education, I’m surrounded by top-tier colleagues who examine human development and learning across the lifespan, as well as educational policy scholars." – Associate Professor Jade Jenkins |
However, this universal provision of three hours of public school-based educational care for 4-year-old children represents a tectonic shift in both the childcare market and the scope of California’s public schools. We know that these systems work together to promote both children’s development and family employment, and that in investing in UPK, California is hoping to support both children and their parents. Yet, as families enroll in this part-day program, working parents will need to navigate multiple systems to coordinate “wrap-around” services that match the workday. The decision to offer a three-hour program will raise challenges for children, families, community-based early childhood education (ECE) providers, and schools as they navigate the transitions now built into their days. Specifically, schools and ECE providers will need to adapt to changing student populations and the provision of new services, as well as manage complex transportation logistics. Families and children may struggle to navigate the transitions within the day, both because of time lost for employment, and because children may lose important rest activities, or struggle to adapt to multiple large classroom settings each day. Though schools and community-based ECE sites will strive to provide cohesive, supportive experiences, it is unclear whether this policy plan will either promote development or work for working parents.
What do you think is critical for the rollout to be successful?
As my UCLA colleague Anna Markowitz and I have written, it is essential that CDE invests in and supports implementation research. Specifically, gathering data on what districts are doing in terms of their curriculum, assessment, wrap-around services, transportation and teacher supports; and by surveying parents to see what opportunities and challenges they see in participating in the program. We need research-practice partnerships with school districts to understand in real time what they need support for, and what they think is going well, so that we can report back to CDE. This type of implementation research would allow CDE and its stakeholders to collaboratively refine policies, find resources and supports for schools, or inform teacher preparation programs.
How has being at the UCI School of Education informed or advanced your work and your other research?
Policy research is inherently interdisciplinary, but Public Policy departments, like where I got my degree, do not have the breadth of disciplinary knowledge one needs to really understand their policy field. At UCI School of Education, I’m surrounded by top-tier colleagues who examine human development and learning across the lifespan, as well as educational policy scholars. Infusing my policy and systems-level research aims with the science of development and learning has expanded my research agenda into areas I never could have imagined. I learn something new every day around here!
What is it like working with our students?
It’s really fun to work with students who are coming at education sciences from so many different lenses and real-life experiences, as varied as the interests and training of our faculty. One of the more rewarding experiences is teaching students who are skeptical of, or confused by, the idea of having training in policy analysis in an education program. I love hearing testimonies of how students truly appreciate learning to see things from the perspective of a policymaker or policy researcher, and how much policy has influenced both their lives and the subjects of their research, without ever having realized.
What is your favorite advice you give to your students?
Get a job! Just kidding – I don’t phrase it exactly that way, but I always encourage my undergraduate students to work in the field after graduation and get some real-world experience in a career area they are interested in before thinking about any kind of graduate education. This gives you so much valuable information about who you are, what you want to be (or what you don’t want to be) and what is important for your life and career. That understanding is critical for your career trajectory, especially given the cost and sacrifice one makes in going back to school. You need to be 99% sure that you want to sacrifice the foregone income and go into debt for a graduate training program!
In honor of the School of Education’s 10th anniversary, we’re asking our community to share their favorite memory from their time at the school. Could you share yours?
It's not so much a memory as it is the research family I’ve developed being a part of the school. These are my people!
What do you think is critical for the rollout to be successful?
As my UCLA colleague Anna Markowitz and I have written, it is essential that CDE invests in and supports implementation research. Specifically, gathering data on what districts are doing in terms of their curriculum, assessment, wrap-around services, transportation and teacher supports; and by surveying parents to see what opportunities and challenges they see in participating in the program. We need research-practice partnerships with school districts to understand in real time what they need support for, and what they think is going well, so that we can report back to CDE. This type of implementation research would allow CDE and its stakeholders to collaboratively refine policies, find resources and supports for schools, or inform teacher preparation programs.
How has being at the UCI School of Education informed or advanced your work and your other research?
Policy research is inherently interdisciplinary, but Public Policy departments, like where I got my degree, do not have the breadth of disciplinary knowledge one needs to really understand their policy field. At UCI School of Education, I’m surrounded by top-tier colleagues who examine human development and learning across the lifespan, as well as educational policy scholars. Infusing my policy and systems-level research aims with the science of development and learning has expanded my research agenda into areas I never could have imagined. I learn something new every day around here!
What is it like working with our students?
It’s really fun to work with students who are coming at education sciences from so many different lenses and real-life experiences, as varied as the interests and training of our faculty. One of the more rewarding experiences is teaching students who are skeptical of, or confused by, the idea of having training in policy analysis in an education program. I love hearing testimonies of how students truly appreciate learning to see things from the perspective of a policymaker or policy researcher, and how much policy has influenced both their lives and the subjects of their research, without ever having realized.
What is your favorite advice you give to your students?
Get a job! Just kidding – I don’t phrase it exactly that way, but I always encourage my undergraduate students to work in the field after graduation and get some real-world experience in a career area they are interested in before thinking about any kind of graduate education. This gives you so much valuable information about who you are, what you want to be (or what you don’t want to be) and what is important for your life and career. That understanding is critical for your career trajectory, especially given the cost and sacrifice one makes in going back to school. You need to be 99% sure that you want to sacrifice the foregone income and go into debt for a graduate training program!
In honor of the School of Education’s 10th anniversary, we’re asking our community to share their favorite memory from their time at the school. Could you share yours?
It's not so much a memory as it is the research family I’ve developed being a part of the school. These are my people!
