Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data Grants

The Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data grants aim to support researchers conducting secondary analyses of data to address the goals and outcomes of programs administered by ACF, in particular, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). Findings from these grants are intended to inform policy, program administration, and future research. Researchers may conduct secondary analyses of survey, program evaluation, or administrative data.

CCDF is the primary federal funding source for child care subsidies and aims to help eligible low-income working families access child care and early education and to improve the quality of child care for all children. CCDF is administered as a block grant to state, territory, and tribal governments. CCDF also aims to improve the quality of care and promote children’s healthy development and learning by supporting child care licensing, quality improvement systems to help programs meet higher standards, and training and education for child care and early education workers.

Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data grant recipients must conduct analyses to address key questions of relevance to the goals and outcomes of child care and early education (CCEE) programs that are funded, at least in part, by CCDF, and disseminate findings from those analyses. For the purpose of this grant, CCEE includes center-based and home-based child care programs serving children birth through 12 years where all or part of the revenue is generated through sources such as CCDF subsidies and may also include other federal programs such as Head Start and public prekindergarten.

The specific goals of the Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data grants are as follows:

• Produce new evidence of relevance to the goals and outcomes of CCDF;
• Encourage active communication, networking, and collaboration among prominent child care and early education researchers and policymakers; and
• Build the capacity of child care and early education researchers to rigorously analyze existing data sets and disseminate their findings to multiple audiences.

The 18 grant recipients (below) were funded with Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data grants (PDF). 

Point(s) of contact:  Bonnie Mackintosh.

The 2022 Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data grant recipients are:

Affiliated Institution/Organization	Project Title	PI - Name
American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences	The Effect of Quality Rating Improvement Systems on Children's Later Academic Achievement	Dr. Katie Dahlke
Chapin Hall Center for Children	Child Care Demand and Tools for Measuring Spatial Accessibility	Dr. Robert Goerge
Chapin Hall Center for Children	Stress, Depression, and the Role of Racial and Ethnic Concordance in the Early Care and Education Workforce	Dr. Tiffany Burkhardt
Child Trends, Incorporated	An Ecological Study of the Black Home-Based Child Care Workforce During COVID-19	Dr. Katherine Paschall
Child Trends, Incorporated	Asian or Asian American Families Experience of Child Care Usage and Disruptions in 2019 and during COVID-19	Dr. Jing Tang
Cornell University	An Examination of New Funding and Policies on Early Care and Education Access in Post-Pandemic New York State	Dr. John Sipple
National Opinion Research Center	Intergenerational Perspectives on the Use of Relative-based Early Care and Education Relative-based ECE	Dr. Sarah Kabourek
Northwestern University	Competition or Cooperation? The Effect of School-Based Prekindergarten Roll-Out during COVID-19 on CCDF-Funded and Head Start Programs in Chicago	Dr. Terri Sabol
Public Policy Associates, Incorporated	Secondary Analyses of Data on Child Care Subsidy Equity	Dr. Nathan Burroughs
The Regents of the University of California, Irvine	Improving the Access, Quality, and Supply of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Providers: Evaluating the Impacts of the 2014 CCDF Block Grant Reauthorization	Dr. Jade Jenkins
The University of Alabama	Understanding Provider, Community, and Policy-Level Influences on Subsidy Program Participation Among Home-Based Child Care Providers	Dr. Alison Hooper
University of Delaware	Understanding Child Diversity in Centers Accepting Child Care Subsidies and Links with State CCDF Policies	Dr. Jason Hustedt
University of Delaware	Instructional Coaching and State Early Care and Education Policies: Inclusion, Alignment, and Evidence-Based Practices	Dr. Anamarie Whitaker
University of Denver	Supporting Home-Based Child Care: An In-Depth Look at Educators Supports, Well-being, and Use of Supportive Practices in Context	Dr. Amy Roberts
University of Massachusetts Boston	Who Is Looking for New Jobs? The Characteristics of Teacher Turnover and Factors that Contribute to Workforce Retention	Dr. Songtian Zeng
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center	Expanding Child Care Subsidies: Impacts of Increasing New Mexico's Income Eligibility Threshold	Dr. Kevin M. Estes
University System of New Hampshire	Refining Measurement of Child Care Supply and Demand	Dr. Jessica A. Carson
WestEd	Predictive Validity of ECERS-3 Rating Thresholds Used in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems	Dr. Sarah Johns

 

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Secondary Analyses of Child Care and Early Education Data Grants
Project Abstracts

American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences

• PI: Dr. Katie Dahlke
• The Effect of Quality Rating Improvement Systems on Children's Later Academic Achievement

Research has shown that early investments in children’s lives through quality early care and education (ECE) experiences contribute to academic, social-emotional, health, and behavioral outcomes that persist into adolescence and adulthood. Heckman and Masterov (2007, p. 36) argued that early investments are particularly important for children from disadvantaged families and have economic and social benefits to society: “Redirecting funds toward the early years is a sound investment in the productivity and safety of American society, and also removes a powerful source of inequality.” Given these advances in scientific knowledge regarding the impact of ECE, coupled with increasing needs for ECE to support single and/or working parents, many states have implemented policies to increase access to ECE for disadvantaged families and to improve the quality of such experiences.

Many states have implemented a Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) as a strategy to improve developmental trajectories for vulnerable young children. These systems aim to increase access to quality ECE programs through a combination of market-based and input-based quality improvement strategies. Such systems typically operate through four mechanisms: (a) establishment of quality standards and rating structures; (b) assessment and assignment of program quality ratings based on the standards; (c) provision of inputs for quality improvement, including professional development and financial incentives; and (d) dissemination of quality ratings to parents to improve quality through a market-driven approach.

Although most states have implemented a QRIS, rigorous causal research to estimate the impact of such investments is limited. QRIS research has focused primarily on implementation and validation of quality rating indicators. Using the variation in the timing of QRIS implementation across the first 25 states that implemented a system, the proposed study will use a comparative interrupted time series (CITS) approach to estimate the impacts of QRISs on children’s later academic outcomes in reading and mathematics measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The sample will focus on children who are from lower-income households (based on their eligibility for free/reduced lunch). The study will also examine how the effects of QRISs on children’s later academic outcomes (in Grade 4) vary based on how the QRIS is implemented. Specifically, the study will investigate whether differential effects exist across QRISs by how they set up their rating structure and by whether the QRIS offers financial incentives or technical assistance.

Chapin Hall Center for Children

• PI: Dr. Robert Goerge
• Child Care Demand and Tools for Measuring Spatial Accessibility

Policymakers planning resource allocation or identifying community needs for child care need to know where supply is adequate compared to what households need in their area. However, the analytical methods that feed state-of-the-art child care desert maps rely on strong assumptions about how households access care in their communities. This application proposes a study using the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) data that will develop a towards a novel approach of assessing child care gaps in policy applications that is directly informed by empirical patterns of child care choice decisions.

The local supply and household choice data available in the 2012 and 2019 NSECE provides the best possible data basis for estimating a model of child care demand that considers spatial variation in both child care supply and demand, and does so across geographic settings that vary by density and transportation networks. This project extends our own previous work estimating child care demand models using state and local administrative data. We will use statistical methods that identify the relevance of household contextual factors in the likelihood of selecting specific local providers, of how these factors trade off against one another, and how these tradeoffs differ depending on household characteristics and circumstances. This emphasizes the fact that accessibility is multidimensional and depends on a match between locally available providers and individual households’ needs.

Our methods will be explicitly developed to be useful in building tools to assess child care gaps in any given jurisdiction, given publicly available data on residential patterns and provider data. This would make it possible to update or remake tools such as the U.S. Child Care Deserts map (childcaredeserts.org ) using readily-available data and with a stronger basis of rigor. To assess the ability for our proposed method to extrapolate predictions to other jurisdictions, we will use the multiple years and geographies represented in the NSECE sample in “cross- validation” exercises to simulate—and measure the successes of—these predictions.

This project connects to broad goals of the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) by ensuring that programs such as the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) are maximally effective at ensuring child care accessibility by eligible families, by helping ensure that there is sufficient supply of child care slots that these families want and need to rely on. This work will bring together two teams led by nationally recognized experts in both child care research and policy, and will develop and disseminate open-source tools for use in future research and policy analysis. This work will establish a new class of statistical models not yet applied to NSECE data. And for the broader community of researchers, this analysis would contribute a critical and more rigorously-established accessibility measure to other work that connects disparities in child care access that contribute to broader social disparities, and which evaluates the impacts of future policies on child care accessibility.

Chapin Hall Center for Children

• PI: Dr. Tiffany Burkhardt
• Stress, Depression, and the Role of Racial and Ethnic Concordance in the Early Care and Education Workforce

The early care and education (ECE) workforce is experiencing concerning levels of stress and depression (Elharake et al., 2022; Jennings et al., 2020) that affects their practice and interactions with children (Fantuzzo et al., 2012; Hamre & Pianta, 2004; Li Grining et al., 2010; Smith & Lawrence, 2019). To address this issue, the factors that predict elevated levels of stress and depression must be identified. Wages (Madill et al., 2018; Roberts et al., 2019), supervisory support (Jenson & Solheim, 2020), and professional development (Post et al., 2020) have been associated with teacher well-being, yet additional research is needed to understand the predictors of teacher stress and depression in early childhood settings.

Racial and ethnic concordance, or matching, between teachers and children has been found to predict positive child outcomes (Dee, 2004; Redding, 2019), but it has rarely been examined as a source of teacher stress and depression. One study found that racial concordance is associated with lower K-12 teacher stress (McCarthy et al., 2020). The proposed study will be the first to examine the effects of teacher—children racial and ethnic concordance on stress and depression in the ECE workforce. We will also examine other staff-level (i.e., wages, supervision, professional development), center-level (i.e., turnover rate), and community-level (i.e., poverty and population density) predictors of stress and depression. Furthermore, we will explore interactions between racial and ethnic concordance and the other factors in predicting ECE staff stress and depression levels.

We will conduct secondary analyses of data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), a large-scale nationally representative survey of the ECE workforce. We will link the datasets from the center-based providers (center-level data) and the center-based provider workforce (staff-level data). To ensure we are conducting this study with a racial equity framework, the NSECE dataset will be assessed for potential racial and ethnic bias prior to analysis using the Racial Bias in Data Assessment Tool (Burkhardt et al., 2021), developed by the research team. We will then implement recommendations to address any identified limitations following the strategies highlighted in the tool.

Because the NSECE used a multistage probability design, we will use a model-based approach with weights to estimate variation that can result from the clustered relationships in the data (i.e., center-level and community-level) as well from the staff-level characteristics. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) will be estimated including weights to understand the factors that predict ECE staff stress and depression and the role of racial and ethnic concordance. The results from this study can help the field prioritize and support well-being within the ECE workforce, which not only would benefit teachers but would also promote supportive, positive environments for the children in their care.

Child Trends, Incorporated

• PI: Dr. Katherine Paschall
• An Ecological Study of the Black Home-Based Child Care Workforce During COVID-19

Home-based child care (HBCC) is an essential facet of the child care and early education (CCEE) system and is the most prevalent non-parental child care arrangement for children birth through five. Black women comprise a significant portion of the HBCC workforce, and their businesses are a critical support to minoritized communities, families with infants and toddlers, and families needing care at nontraditional hours. Black HBCC providers face a unique constellation of stressors and supports, from the structural to personal levels; these stressors were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, placing extreme stresses on this segment of the workforce, and leading to high rates of closures among the HBCC workforce. In response, the federal government and state government responded with financial relief, but it remains unclear how effective that relief was at retaining the Black HBCC workforce, and if it buffered Black HBCC providers against the pandemic’s impacts on their physical, mental, and financial well- being.

In this proposed secondary data analysis study, we draw data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE; W1), the NSECE COVID-19 follow-up surveys from 2020 (W2) and 2021 (W3), structural racism and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) state policy databases, and the New York Times COVID-19 database. With these data, we plan to examine how conditions prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the well-being (physical, mental, and financial) and retention of Black HBCC child care providers in the CCEE field. Such conditions include personal and professional characteristics, receipt of COVID-related financial relief, as well as structural racism. In this proposed project, we will address four specific research questions (RQs):

• What were the well-being (physical, mental, and financial) and career trajectories of the Black HBCC workforce from 2019-2021?
• How much variation in well-being and retention during the COVID-19 pandemic is explained by structural racism as well as the personal and professional characteristics of Black HBCC professionals prior to the pandemic?
• How much variation in Black HBCC provider well-being and retention is explained by COVID-19 exposure and/or local COVID-19 death rates during the pandemic?
• Did receipt of pandemic-related financial assistance and/or the presence of state-level child care COVID-19 response policies independently; or in combination with other personal, professional, and community characteristics; promote the well-being and retention of the Black HBCC workforce?

The findings generated by this proposed project have the potential to identify critical social policy levers for supporting the Black HBCC professionals. To advance this goal, the proposed project will also include ongoing engagement with an HBCC provider advisory group as well as dissemination activities targeted to research, policy, and HBCC audiences.

Child Trends, Incorporated

• PI: Dr. Jing Tang
• Asian or Asian American Families Experience of Child Care Usage and Disruptions in 2019 and during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed the lives of many working families, particularly for families of color and families with lower incomes. Many families with young children had to adjust their work schedules or child care and early education (CCEE) arrangements to deal with the disruptions caused by an unavailable provider or a sick child. These unpredictable interruptions can result in work absences and even job termination. Although this is a prevalent challenge for families with young children, there are few nationally representative studies that have examined CCEE disruptions among the subset of households with children under 5 or changes in the patterns of CCEE and work disruptions during the pandemic.

In addition to pandemic-related CCEE challenges, Asian or Asian American (AAM) families experienced a dramatic increase in racialized violence, xenophobic-based business loss, and discrimination-related mental health issues in tandem with the spread of the virus. Even prior to the pandemic, there has been limited research specific to how AAM families in the U.S. experience CCEE. Lack of research and under sampling also obscure the needs of AAM families who live in poverty. This shortcoming complicates the ability to build CCEE policy that is responsive to the needs of the fastest growing racial group in the nation, especially one so acutely impacted by the pandemic. To address these research gaps, this project includes two objectives: (1) describe how AAM families utilized CCEE and experienced CCEE-related employment disruptions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic using the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) Household Survey; and (2) describe how AAM families experienced CCEE disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic (July 2021 to February 2022) using the Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey (HPS).

We will focus on AAM households with at least one child under age 5, as this age group is more likely to rely on CCEE than school-aged children. The analyses will include pairwise comparisons to identify significant differences in CCEE use and disruptions within AAM households by income level (i.e., AAM households with lower incomes compared to AAM households with higher incomes). When sample sizes allow, the analyses will also include pairwise comparisons to identify significant differences between AAM households and households of other races/ethnicities (i.e., AAM households compared to Black, White, Hispanic households).

This project represents a first attempt to focus specifically on AAM families and potential changes in their CCEE use and disruptions in relation to the pandemic. The findings of this project will help states and policymakers identify how to support access to high-quality care as well as parental employment specifically for children from AAM households with lower incomes.

Cornell University

• PI: Dr. John Sipple
• An Examination of New Funding and Policies on Early Care and Education Access in Post-Pandemic New York State

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical role child care plays for supporting working families with young children, and by extension, businesses and the larger economy. Child care deserts and declining numbers of child care programs, already a significant problem pre-pandemic (Malik et al., 2018; Jessen-Howard et al., 2018, National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance, 2020; Sipple, et al., 2020), were exacerbated when child care programs closed beginning in March 2020. To stabilize a fragile and struggling child care system, significant federal investment has been made in recent years as the country struggles to respond to and recover from COVID-19. This unprecedented influx of funding has created new opportunities to both support and expand a system that provides access to high quality early care and education (ECE) for all families in need.

The complexity of the ECE landscape and the relevant policy interactions provide opportunity and potential challenges in the face of this influx of funding. For example, states could facilitate connections between child care programs and more stable, better-funded early childhood systems (e.g., state-funded PreK programs). These connections could provide needed supports for child care providers to plan budgets and potentially invest in as higher salaries and benefits for their employees. Additionally, there could be a focus on policies that improve market rates for child care subsidies (e.g., base subsidy payment rates on minimum wage; Adams, et al., 2021).

Our research team has been investigating patterns of child care accessibility across New York State (NYS) using data that includes information about child care and state prekindergarten programs, subsidy administration, special education rates, and local community characteristics. With funding from Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) we have enhanced our data collection with monthly extracts during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are positioned to extend our pre-pandemic research by examining how child care accessibility has changed during and after COVID-19. Specifically, the objectives for this proposed work are as follows:

Investigate child care capacity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with attention to community characteristics (i.e., geography, community wealth, presence of universal prekindergarten (UPK), subsidy generosity, etc.), child care policy shifts (e.g., caps on subsidy parent co-payment), and influx of new funding (e.g., funding for child care expansion).
Examine the relationship between child care capacity and the outcomes for special education students over time (e.g., pre- and post UPK implementation, pre- and post-COVID-19).
Explore how UPK and CBO partnerships relate to child care capacity changes during COVID-19.

We investigate these objectives with data from the NYS Education Department, the NYS Office of Children and Family Services, and the National Center for Education Statistics. Using these data over time, we can investigate in the context of economic challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic how this informs cross-sector policy making and implementation.

National Opinion Research Center

• PI: Dr. Sarah Kabourek
• Intergenerational Perspectives on the Use of Relative-based Early Care and Education Relative-based ECE

Education is a key determinant of family economic mobility due largely to the strong association between educational attainment and lifetime earnings. Early life experiences are particularly influential for both outcomes since this is a critical period for rapid brain growth and neuron development. Importantly, studies show that the quality of these experiences vary across early childhood and education (ECE) types: center-based care is more likely to provide high quality experiences for young children than other types of care. In response, public investments have sought to increase and availability and accessibility of high-quality center-based care to families in recent decades. However, nearly half of children under the age of 5 receive relative-based care, the majority of which is provided by grandparents. Although many families opt for relative-based care, our understanding of who the families are who utilize grandparent care as their primary source of ECE remains extremely limited.

The present study aims to address these gaps and understand 1) how access to different types of ECE relates to use of relative-based care as a primary source of ECE, and the extent to which this association varies, 2) quality of relative-based care, and 3) household employment and time use. To do so, we propose a novel approach by utilizing two sets of nationally representative survey data, each designed to capture the unique perspectives and experiences of individuals in early and middle adulthood (parents) and later adulthood (grandparents), respectively, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of the ECE landscape and the families navigating it. Secondary data allow us to answer questions on populations for which we cannot generate experimental studies; leveraging multiple datasets further addresses incompleteness or important gaps in individual surveys.

We aim to answer two interrelated questions:

• Parents’ perspective (2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE)). To what extent is access to relative-based and center- and home-based care associated with the use of relative-based care? To what extent does this relationship vary by perceptions of relative-based care quality and parent employment and time use?
• Grandparents’ Perspective (2018 Health and Retirement Study (HRS)). To what extent is proximity to children and grandchildren (access) associated with the provision of ECE? To what extent does this relationship vary by quality of care grandparents are able to provide (i.e., their health) and their own employment and time use?

By incorporating factors from parents’ and grandparents’ perspectives, this study provides new insight in addressing American families’ ever-changing needs and choices regarding ECE, particularly timely given the likely increase in relative-based care due to COVID-19 ECE disruptions. In particular, findings may help guide consumer education efforts toward families with a variety of options for ECE. Families that select relative-based care despite having a variety of choices may need additional information about care choices. If relative-based care selection reflects an underlying preference not associated with access or awareness, information about these families will provide new understanding of ECE supply and demand.

Northwestern University

• PI: Dr. Terri Sabol
• Competition or Cooperation? The Effect of School-Based Prekindergarten Roll-Out during COVID-19 on CCDF-Funded and Head Start Programs in Chicago

The child care and early education (CCEE) market in the U.S. is at a major crossroads. On one hand, the upturn in federal and local investment over the past decade has led to an increased expansion in publicly funded preschool and further expansion is expected. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly disrupted the already fragile child care market. In this context, numerous questions remain regarding how different sectors of the CCEE respond to one another in the context of COVID-19. More specifically, there is little research on what happens to Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) funded and Head Start programs in terms of availability and quality when school-based prekindergarten enters the market.

In the proposed study, we explore this question within the context of Chicago’s universal prekindergarten (UPK) which was rolled out during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chicago’s UPK combines school-based prekindergarten programs that offer free, full-day preschool for all 4- year-olds, and CCDF-funded and Head Start programs that serve eligible low-income children in community-based organizations. We seek to examine (a) how the roll-out of school-based pre-K programs has changed the enrollment and availability of CCDF-funded and Head Start programs within Chicago communities, (b) how changes in the overall CCEE landscape affect the average quality in communities, as well as the quality of CCDF-funded and Head Start programs, and (c) whether these changes differentially affect communities with high proportions of low-income residents. To address our research aims, we will adopt a quasi-experimental approach (i.e., difference-in-differences), using large-scale administrative data from Chicago Public Schools, City of Chicago Department of Family Support Services, and American Community Survey from 2017 to 2023. Lessons learned from the study will not only inform the City of Chicago’s UPK programming but also provide insights for locales nationwide that are interested in improving access and quality for their youngest learners.

Public Policy Associates, Incorporated

• PI: Dr. Nathan Burroughs
• Secondary Analyses of Data on Child Care Subsidy Equity

This secondary data and analysis research project will examine key issues related to the accessibility of center-based child care for underserved groups, with findings broken down by demographics, including race, ethnicity, and income level. Using existing secondary data, the study will seek to understand the effects of child care subsidy policy changes on access to high-quality child care over time and identify policy barriers, additional research needs, and ways to address disparities at the state and national levels. The overarching goal of the work will be to improve access to quality child care for families in need.

The research questions will be answered through an examination of secondary data available. The objective is to understand whether the increasing importance of center-based care and the associated decline of family and home-based care have had a differential impact on subgroups. The project will address whether the expanding prevalence of and policy preference for center-based care over other provider types places an unequal burden on racial and ethnic minority groups (e.g., Black and Hispanic populations) and those in poverty. The findings will inform ongoing child care subsidy policy decisions and contribute to the broader literature about the effects of changes instituted under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 (S. 1086, 2014). 

The Regents of the University of California, Irvine

• PI: Dr. Jade Jenkins
• Improving the Quality and Supply of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Providers: Evaluating the Impacts of the 2014 CCDF Block Grant Reauthorization

Finding and paying for child care is a significant barrier for parents seeking employment or education. The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) distributes federal funds to states to subsidize child care for low-income families. Historically, parents utilizing CCDF funding have faced challenges finding quality providers that meet their needs. To address these challenges, the CCDF was reauthorized by Congress in 2014 for the first time since welfare reform in 1996 and included new key provisions that aimed to increase the quality and supply of providers (Federal Register, 2016). Provisions were also targeted at unlicensed home-based providers that included background checks, training standards, and health and safety requirements. However, we do not yet know how these large-scale legislative changes have impacted CCDF providers across the country.

Our study aims to produce empirical evidence related to CCDF outcomes by examining how state-level changes in CCDF policy during the post-reauthorization period affected the supply and quality of center and home-based providers in the CCDF program. Specifically, we ask: to what extent did the CCDBG reauthorization change the supply and quality of CCDF providers? We test how key state CCDF policy changes targeted by the reauthorization affected the population and characteristics of CCDF providers using a quasi-experimental difference-in- differences approach to assess policy impacts in a national sample of center and home-based providers in 2012 and 2019. We leverage restricted-access provider-level data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE; 2012 and 2019) collected through surveys of center and home-based providers and the workforce, which includes state identifiers to link providers with their state’s CCDF policies. Our key provider-level measures of supply and quality include the proportion of CCDF providers offering non-traditional hours of care, or offering flexible hours, child-staff ratios, and attending professional development or trainings. To assess heterogeneity in the impact of policies across contexts, we will test for differential effects of the reauthorization policy changes by community poverty rates, urbanicity, and in communities of color. We have already begun to review and identify relevant items from these databases to demonstrate the feasibility of our research design and operationalization of key study constructs in both study waves (e.g., provider quality), and are approved to access the restricted-use versions of the NSECE data.

Our study allows us to explore the major dimensions of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) 2014 reauthorization’s goals in all 50 states and investigate how the landscape of CCDF providers may have changed post-reauthorization. Evaluating how the most substantial child care legislation of the past 20 years affected the population of CCDF providers is essential to early childhood policy and is a first step to understanding whether CCDF families may have improved access to quality child care providers. We aim to disseminate the findings of our study through multiple avenues to inform local and state policymakers, researchers, and to early care professionals.

The University of Alabama

• PI: Dr. Alison Hooper
• Understanding Provider, Community, and Policy-Level Influences on Subsidy Program Participation Among Home-Based Child Care Providers

The proposed project focuses on home-based child care (HBCC) providers’ participation in the child care subsidy system and the provider-, community-, and state-level characteristics that affect participation. There is a continuing decline in HBCC providers accepting child care subsidies. At the same time, there is growing evidence documenting the vital role of HBCC providers in meeting families’ early care and education (ECE) needs, especially those families in rural communities and working non-traditional hours.

We combine secondary data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education, Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database, Quality Improvement Systems (QIS) Compendium, Child Care Licensing Study, CCDF state plans, and CCDF Administrative Data to analyze multi-level predictors of HBCC providers’ subsidy participation.

We have three primary aims: 1) To develop and validate composite indicators for the provider- friendliness of state ECE policies, 2) To explore multilevel factors associated with HBCC providers’ subsidy participation, and 3) To identify the effects of provider-friendly ECE policies on HBCC providers’ subsidy participation. Specifically, we emphasize the combination of state ECE policies—looking across CCDF, licensing, and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS)—that may make conditions more favorable for subsidy participation through nationally representative cross-sectional and state-by-year longitudinal analyses. Our work is the first to include a rigorous policy analysis focused on licensing, subsidy, and QRIS policies and their separate and combined effect on HBCC providers’ participation in the subsidy system.

Findings can inform investments and innovations in state early childhood systems and state and national CCDF policy to help better engage HBCC providers in the subsidy program and other quality improvement activities and regulatory systems. This will help ensure more eligible children and families can access ECE programs that meet their needs.

The proposed study addresses these primary research questions:

• What composite indicators best summarize complex, multidimensional variations in the provider-friendliness of three ECE policy areas (i.e., CCDF, QRIS, and licensing)?
• How does HBCC providers’ participation in the subsidy system relate to provider-, community-, and state-level characteristics?
• Does an increase in provider-friendliness of state ECE policies lead to an increase in the number of HBCC providers participating in the subsidy system, after controlling for general underlying differences across states and years and observed time-varying confounders?

University of Delaware

• PI: Dr. Jason Hustedt
• Understanding Child Diversity in Centers Accepting Child Care Subsidies and Links with State CCDF Policies

The purpose of this project is to improve understanding of the degree to which child care centers accepting subsidies serve demographically diverse populations of children. A key goal of the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is to provide subsidies for families from low income and underserved backgrounds. This is seen as a way to support more equitable access to high quality care. Because demand for CCDF subsidies outstrips the number of available slots, it has been necessary to further prioritize which children and families are served. Priority groups identified in the federal CCDF reauthorization include children with special needs and those experiencing homelessness. State CCDF policies further determine which specific families will qualify and set details such as provider reimbursement rates and family copayment rates. These policy decisions are likely to have further implications for which centers participate in the subsidy system and which families enroll. Yet, our understanding of child diversity in centers accepting subsidies is incomplete.

This study leverages data from two recent national datasets — the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) and the 2018 CCDF Policies Database — and will address a set of research questions related to child demographic diversity and how this relates to centers’ subsidy participation. Our secondary analysis will be organized around four phases. Phase I will present a descriptive overview of demographic diversity of children enrolled in centers accepting subsidies, as compared to centers that do not. Phase II will investigate associations between state CCDF policies to child demographic diversity. Next, Phase III will examine unique influences of state CCDF policies on enrollment of children from prioritized populations. Finally, Phase IV will classify our nationally representative sample of child care centers into latent profiles on the basis of diversity of enrolled children. The initial 2019 NSECE sample size is approximately 7,000 providers of children age 5 and under, with smaller sample sizes depending on variables needed to address some research questions, and the CCDF policy database includes policies from all 50 states. Proposed analytic techniques include descriptive statistics and logistic regression for Phase I; multivariate regression for Phase II; propensity score methods for Phase III; and latent profile analysis, multinomial logistic regression, and the BCH method for Phase IV. Results will be used to better understand diversity among children served by CCDF, how this may differ based on provider characteristics, and implications of state policy for serving prioritized populations.

We will employ a multi-pronged dissemination plan to share our findings. This will involve journal articles for academic audiences as well as policy and practice briefs designed to communicate with federal policymakers, state policymakers, and child care providers, focusing on how state CCDF policies and provider participation in the subsidy system relate to providing child care access for diverse children.

University of Delaware

• PI: Dr. Anamarie Whitaker
• Instructional Coaching and State Early Care and Education Policies: Inclusion, Alignment, and Evidence-Based Practices

In order to equitably serve all children, there is a pressing need to increase the quality of early care and education (ECE) programs and the quality and competencies of all those working in the field. Our proposed study aims to fill a gap in the ECE field by systematically analyzing ECE state-level policies to determine whether and how coaching is included, which specific coaching components (e.g., dosage, content, strategies) are provided, whether the coaching policies and practices are evidence-based, and the extent to which state-level agency policies are aligned with each other. To accomplish this goal, we rely on innovative policy analysis using existing data from several sources including states’ CCDF plans, state pre-K policy documents, and QRIS policies and guidelines. We specifically focus on ECE center-based policies when distinctions are made between home and center-based programs as more children are served in center-based programs and most preschool aged children in nonparental care are enrolled in some type of center-based care (Cui & Natzke, 2020). Recent research suggests that analyzing policy documents for alignment has the potential to illuminate where (mis)alignment may occur in state-level policies and raises important questions about how state systems can further coordinate to create streamlined processes and policy documents for ECE providers (e.g., Whitaker et al., 2022).

Our study is directly aligned with the Administration for Children and Families’ interests, particularly around using rigorous research to inform policy decisions, and addresses the specific goals of the Secondary Analysis Grant on producing new evidence and building the capacity of ECE researchers to analyze and disseminate findings to various stakeholders. Specifically, we propose answering the following project research questions:

• To what extent is coaching included in state ECE regulations and policies?
• What specific aspects of coaching are prescribed and what guidelines are available in policies/state programs?
• To what extent is the coaching that is prescribed in the guidelines or available in policies or programs aligned with evidence- or research-based coaching practices?
• To what extent are the within state ECE policies aligned across programs and policies in regard to coaching?

Our study has the potential to significantly inform the ECE practice, policy, and research fields by systematically documenting the extent to which current ECE policies, specifically those serving many low-income families, include evidence-based coaching practices and whether the guidelines and requirements are aligned across programmatic sector policies. This project will greatly inform how coordinated ECE state policies are around an important professional development and programmatic quality domain, while highlighting where misalignment may occur that could result in burden to ECE providers, administrators, and policymakers.

University of Denver

• PI: Dr. Amy Roberts
• Supporting Home-Based Child Care: An In-Depth Look at Educators Supports, Well-being, and Use of Supportive Practices in Context

The aim of this project is to conduct policy- and practice-relevant research that assesses the associations among various supports for home-based child care (HBCC) educators, educators’ well-being, and their use of supportive practices with children and families. We propose utilizing the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) 2019: Home-based Provider dataset, which includes nationally representative data of both regulated family child care (FCC) educators as well as family, friend, and neighbors (FFN). Specifically, we seek to identify the extent to which access to and use of various supports for HBCC educators relate to educators’ personal health and mental health, and use of supportive referral practices for children and families, as well as their use of expulsion practices. Additionally, given that structural factors often shape access and utilization in communities with concentrated poverty, as well as rural communities, we seek to understand the extent to which poverty density and rurality relate to access to and use of resources, as well as educator well-being and practices.

Although high quality supports for the workforce and workforce well-being have been shown to be important for positive relationships, interactions, and outcomes for children, HBCC remains an understudied population, especially FFN. A key contribution of this proposed study is the examination of both FCC and FFN educators, as well as the consideration of various supports for educators, including those that have been traditionally studied, such as training or professional development, and other less understood supports that are particularly relevant to HBCC, such as provider networks and health insurance. Furthermore, our proposed utilization of nationally representative data allows for a broad understanding of the HBCC workforce.

In general, we hypothesize that greater access to and use of supports will relate positively to educators’ use of supportive referral practices and negatively to use of expulsion practices, and that aspects of educator well-being will mediate these associations, and community context will moderate these associations. By understanding specific associations and pathways, and possible differences among FCC and FFN, findings will identify what resources are most associated with well-being and supportive practices, suggesting ways to prioritize supports to FCC and FFN with considerations for community context.

This proposed study can contribute to research, practice, and policy in various ways, including: 1) identifying supports that relate to HBCC well-being and practices, respectively, and suggest where future investments can be made for program administrators, policymakers, and technical assistance providers to support HBCC educators, and 2) understanding the role of systemic factors that shape access and utilization among HBCC educators which may suggest where resources should be targeted to promote equitable access among HBCC educators.

In summary, this study addresses multiple research priorities, including supporting the well-being of the child care workforce, building the supply of high-quality child care, supporting the needs of families who utilize child care, and understanding structural factors that shape access.

University of Massachusetts Boston

• PI: Dr. Songtian Zeng
• Who Is Looking for New Jobs? The Characteristics of Teacher Turnover and Factors that Contribute to Workforce Retention

Workforce turnover is an urgent problem in early care and education because it results in ECE personnel shortage, creates organizational instability, and undermines quality care and education for all young children. A timely investigation is needed to understand how program contexts and various personal and professional factors contribute to teachers' turnover intention. Moreover, it is important to identify if vulnerable workforce populations are more likely to exhibit turnover intention from the racial and social justice perspective. Despite the detrimental impact of ECE workforce instability, little is known about the dynamics contributing to high rates of staff turnover in ECE programs (Caven et al., 2021).

The proposed project focuses on the quality of ECE workforce by examining their job seeking behaviors and rationale to understand the mechanism of ECE workforce recruitment and retention for building sustainable, high-quality ECE supply. The goals of this study are to 1) understand the characteristics of ECE teachers who seek jobs; and 2) identify risk and protective factors that may contribute to turnover or support job retention of the ECE workforce.

The proposed secondary data analysis study is based on the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) dataset, the most updated dataset available with a diverse cross-sectional sample of ECE center-based program educators and contains rich information on child, teacher, family, and classroom levels. Methodologically, applying weighted descriptive analysis, latent profile analysis, and hierarchical logistic regression with the most comprehensive and newest national representative ECE workforce sample enables us to model the dynamic and interacting factors at the personal and program levels that contribute to teacher job retention.

This timely investigation provides new insights related to concerns regarding potential policy and practices to “recruiting and retaining a qualified child care and early education workforce” and “supporting the well-being of the child care workforce.” It will provide new insights related to the  concerns regarding policies and practices to mitigate ECE workforce turnover, promote workforce retention, and establish sustainable workforce supply. Findings will inform practices to better retain ECE workforce, as well as policy at the national level to support sustainable supply of high-quality ECE workforce and provide quality, equitable, and stable care and education for all young children.

University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

• PI: Dr. Kevin M. Estes
• Expanding Child Care Subsidies: Impacts of Increasing New Mexico's Income Eligibility Threshold

The State of New Mexico (NM) has undertaken unprecedent expansions in income eligibility for child care subsidies in the past two years. In August 2021, NM expanded the income eligibility threshold for child care subsidies to be the broadest ever in the United States. Using funds from the American Rescue Plan, the state increased initial eligibility thresholds from 200% of the federal poverty level to 350%, the highest income eligibility ever for subsidies in the U.S. On April 28th, 2022, NM announced an additional historic expansion: that beginning May 1, 2022, all families enrolled in the state's subsidy program, the Childcare Assistance Program, will no longer owe copays for child care services, thus making child care cost-free for thousands of families within the state. While this subsidy expansion is designed to support the dual Child Care Development Fund goals of encouraging parental employment and improving the quality of care for all children, the impacts of these policy changes on families are unknown.

The project proposed here will add new information to the literature on child care subsidies by:

• Providing the first estimated effects of a subsidy expansion greater than 300% of the federal poverty level
• Providing the first estimated effects of a copay free child care system for families up to 400% of the federal poverty level (Post May 1st, 2022)
• Documenting how a subsidy expansion affected the demographic composition of child care subsidy recipients (by income, racial and ethnic groups, families with unstable housing, children with disabilities, and single parents).
• Estimating the effects of subsidy expansion on quality using a state's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) in addition to effects on families' choices of provider type.
• We will conduct this analysis using administrative data provided by the NM Early Childhood Education and Care Department that they report to the Administration for Children and Families on form ACF-801. We will have time series data from before the first eligibility expansion through at least the end of 2022.

University System of New Hampshire

• PI: Dr. Jessica A. Carson
• Refining Measurement of Child Care Supply and Demand

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated issues long known to the early child care and education sector. Low- and middle-income families experienced income losses that pushed the cost of high-quality child care further out of reach. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics still finds 100,000 fewer child care workers than pre-pandemic, reducing child care supply below its already-insufficient levels. Yet amid these dismal conditions short-term resources and new political will have arisen to support the sector, bringing opportunities for states to invest like never before. Although states have responded unevenly in leveraging the opportunity, there is a shared push to develop more slots to meet both pent-up pre-pandemic demand and families’ new needs as they grapple with new modes of work and new priorities for their children’s care.

To develop the right amount of care, states would benefit from some demand-informed target. Yet even pre-pandemic, child care demand has been proxied almost uniformly as the number of young children whose parents are in the labor force as estimated via the American Community Survey (ACS). We assert that disrupting the assumption that only and all children whose parents are in the labor force need care allows states to refine demand estimates to account for unmeasured demand and parental preference in more realistic ways. Similarly, the field’s understanding of “supply” typically equates to the number of licensed slots within a place. However, long-running workforce shortages mean the number of children that a site could legally serve is not necessarily the same as the number for which it can realistically care, representing significant divergences between licensed and actual capacity. As with demand, refining child care supply estimates can yield a more pragmatic and actionable planning tool than now exists.

Using data from the ACS, the Current Population Survey, the Early Childhood Program Participation Survey, the Household Pulse Survey, the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), and state administrative records, we propose a series of alternate specifications that refine traditional baseline estimates of demand to account for elements of parental preference in likelihood that a child will need a nonparental care. Similarly, we propose to utilize state administrative, NSECE, and workforce data to extend supply estimation beyond licensed slot counts to also consider desired capacity, unused capacity, and workforce shortages. These refinements will result in ranges of supply and demand estimates that can be leveraged by multiple on-the-ground stakeholders. A peer-reviewed paper and several non-academic tools, including a series of geographically specific factsheets, a single-page overview, and a webinar will support the field’s ability to engage with these alternatives.

WestEd

• PI: Dr. Sarah Johns
• Predictive Validity of ECERS-3 Rating Thresholds Used in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems

Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), implemented in most states in the U.S., are designed to increase the quality of early care and education (ECE) programs, parents’ understanding of and demand for high quality ECE, and children’s developmental outcomes. QRIS ratings often have high-stakes implications such as access to ECE scholarships for families living in poverty or financial resources for ECE programs. Despite high-stakes, widespread use, QRIS ratings have shown little to no predictive validity with children’s developmental outcomes (Fox, 2019). Psychometric validation research is needed now more than ever before, with recent calls for QRIS rating scale revisions (Cannon, 2017), research on the impact of rating scale psychometric properties (Burchinal et al., 2016) and a nationwide transition in the most common QRIS assessment tool, the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS).

The ECERS is a classroom observation tool used in center-based preschool classrooms that measures environmental factors and interactions that support children’s development. The majority of QRIS (71%) currently use the ECERS—alone or in conjunction with other quality indicators—to assess and rate ECE programs’ level of quality. Eight QRIS have transitioned to using an updated version of the ECERS release in 2015 (ECERS-3) yet cut-scores and scoring procedures in QRIS ratings have largely remained the same during the transition to the new version (Build Initiative & Child Trends, 2021). Findings from a large psychometric validation study suggested that the ECERS-3 has at least as much predictive validity as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), the second-most common assessment tool used in QRIS (Early, 2018). That said, both ECERS-3 and CLASS exhibit small correlations with growth in children’s developmental outcomes (Brunsek, 2017; Early, 2018). Because 71% of QRIS use the ECERS in their rating scales, research on its psychometric properties is needed to increase the predictive validity of ratings with children’s developmental outcomes.

The aim of this proposal is to expand knowledge about the predictive validity of the ECERS-3 tool used in the context of QRIS ratings. To accomplish this, data from the Large Scale Psychometric Assessment of the ECERS-3 study will be linked with data from the Quality Compendium, which compiles data on each QRIS in the U.S. The purpose of linking these datasets is to simulate QRIS ratings using ECERS-3, CLASS, and other available quality indicators and to examine the predictive validity of simulated QRIS ratings with children’s outcomes. Outcomes of interest include preschoolers’ growth over the course of the year in expressive language, pre-literacy skills, mathematical reasoning, behavioral regulation, social- emotional well-being, and health status. This proposal addresses gaps and extends previous research on the ECERS-3 tool in two important ways: (1) by examining the categorical cut- scores for ECERS-3 that maximally retains the tools’ association with children’s outcomes and (2) by evaluating methods for combining ECERS-3 scores with CLASS scores and other quality indicators, as is done in many QRIS, to predict children’s outcomes more robustly.