2022-2027
The Center to Support Research and Evaluation Capacity of Child Care and Development Fund Lead Agencies, supported by a five-year OPRE grant, builds research and evaluation capacity in the child care subsidy policy field by facilitating information sharing, learning, and collaboration across ACF-sponsored research partnerships funded by OPRE.
The Center will help to ensure that the research conducted by the sponsored research projects informs CCDF Lead Agencies and the child care and early education policy research field more broadly, and will increase knowledge on child care subsidy policy topics through synthesis and analysis of research and data.
The Center will pursue three key goals:
- Building Research and Evaluation Capacity among ACF-Sponsored Research Partnerships
Strengthen capacity among child care policy research partnerships and other OPRE-sponsored research projects to conduct rigorous research and evaluations of child care and early education policies. Through learning communities, sponsored project teams will communicate regularly to share lessons learned, develop collective expertise and resources, and identify opportunities for collaborative conceptualization and analyses. The Center will also support the development and use of culturally responsive and equitable methods that are appropriate for understanding diverse populations, considering historical, contextual, and cultural factors.
- Communicating Research
The Center will share knowledge and insights gained from the ACF-sponsored grant programs and sponsored research projects described above to inform decision-makers at the local, state, and national levels in crafting and implementing policies, initiatives, and practices related to the CCDF subsidy program and child care and early education more broadly. Center activities will incorporate various methods to communicate information and innovations with ACF partners and grant recipients and with the broader research and policy communities. This will include written products informed by the work of the grant recipients that address topics of interest to CCDF Lead Agencies. Further, the Center will support communication among research partnerships, federal staff, and ACF Technical Assistance Providers.
- Advancing Research
The Center will generate knowledge for the field by synthesizing evidence and analyzing data and information to increase the knowledge base on topics of interest to the child care and early education policy field (i.e., ACF, CCDF Lead Agencies, and partners).
The Center is led by the Urban Institute with their partner Mathematica.
The OPRE point of contact is Alysia Blandon.