Resource Library

Collecting data from center-based early care and education (ECE) settings poses unique challenges. Center directors and teaching staff have limited ability to participate in data collection activities because of time pressures and the immediacy of issues that arise in providing care to young children. Centers also vary widely in their size, funding, staffing and organizational structures, and quality, so instruments and methods for collecting data must be flexible enough to capture variation...

The National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) includes data from four integrated, nationally representative surveys conducted in 2012 to understand the supply of and demand for Early Care and Education in the United States. This fact sheet on home-based care provides the first nationally representative portrait of home-based providers of early care and education, describing individuals who care for other people’s children, age five and under, in home-based settings...

When there is evidence of racial and ethnic differences at any point in the service delivery spectrum—for example, in access to and take-up of human services, in the nature and quality of services received, or in the outcomes of service...

This Guidebook addresses the development of a common understanding and approach to measuring access to early care and education.

The Guidebook provides information in four sections:..

The first three years of a child’s life are a distinct developmental period, characterized by rapid brain development, reliance on relationships with adults, and extreme responsiveness to environmental variation. Yet little information is available about the specific knowledge, skills, and other attributes (that is, competencies) that are essential to the practice of teaching and caring for infants and toddlers (I/T) and are needed to support optimal development..

There is growing emphasis placed on evidence-based interventions, and opportunities to make programmatic decisions based on evidence reflect progress in promoting positive outcomes. However, some populations (e.g., ethnic and cultural minority communities, marginalized groups) may be left behind in efforts to build evidence, if they are more difficult to study. Over time, as evidence builds for the populations...

While many efforts to improve the quality of early care and education (ECE) have focused on increasing teachers’ and caregivers’ competencies and knowledge specific to the teaching of young children, a small body of research suggests that an ECE workforce that is mentally healthy can provide the best-quality care for children.

This report describes the research and evaluation activities undertaken by our Division of Child and Family Development in 2017. Brief project descriptions provide an overview of the range of projects conducted by the Division during the year in early childhood research, child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, cultural diversity, and human trafficking.

States and territories have increasingly worked to strengthen their early care and education (ECE) systems to more efficiently and effectively serve young children. It can still be challenging, however, to coordinate ECE systems’ multifaceted funding streams, services, standards, and regulations.This report summarizes publicly available information about the coordination or inclusion of Head Start across various aspects of state and territory ECE systems. 

The 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a coordinated set of four nationally representative surveys aimed at describing the early care and education (ECE) landscape in the United States, including the use and availability of care. Information was collected from individuals and programs providing ECE in center-based and home-based settings to children age birth through five years, and from households with children under age 13...