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Child care workforce

New Vanderbilt Study Finds Nashville Child Care System Faces Interconnected Challenges in Supply, Workforce, and Affordability

As families across the country navigate the pressures of finding and affording child care, new research from Vanderbilt University’s Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center examines what that landscape looks like in greater Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, Tennessee

Brief 5: Estimating the True Cost of High-Quality Home-Based Care – Insights from True-Cost Modeling

Home-based child care plays a small but vital role in greater Davidson County, Tennessee, offering families flexibility, affordability, and culturally aligned care, particularly for infants and toddlers. This brief uses a cost estimation model to examine the true cost of providing high-quality home-based child care in the region, where providers often serve simultaneously as educator, owner, and director.

Brief 4: What High-Quality Center-Based Child Care Really Costs, and Why No One is Paying It – Insights from True-Cost Modeling

The market price of child care reflects what families can afford to pay, not what it actually costs programs to provide high-quality care with a well-compensated workforce. This brief uses a cost estimation model to examine the true cost of providing center-based child care for children under age 5 across greater Davidson County, Tennessee.

Brief 2: The People Behind Early Care and Education – Understanding the Early Childhood Workforce

The early childhood education workforce is central to the quality and functioning of center-based child care programs, yet directors across the country face persistent challenges recruiting and retaining educators. This brief draws on survey data from 116 child care programs to describe the size and composition of the early childhood education workforce across greater Davidson County, Tennessee.

Executive Summary: Davidson County, Tennessee Child Care Landscape Study

The Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study examines local child care supply, population metrics that inform demand, the local ECE workforce, operating conditions of local child care programs, and the estimated cost of providing high-quality child care in greater Nashville, Tennessee.

Willing Providers, Waiting Families: Subsidized Child Care in North Texas

In North Texas, child care providers already serving subsidized families are willing to serve more; yet, thousands of families remain waitlisted. Download the brief Child care is one of the highest expenses families with young

2025 Prenatal-to-3 Legislative Roundup

With most legislatures adjourned for the year, we recap the 2025 action on state policies to support children and families. So far this year, lawmakers throughout the country debated—and many passed—legislation that aligns with four key components of the prenatal-to-3 system of care.

Low Pay, No Matter the Path for Early Childhood Educators: Findings from North Texas

Recent survey data from North Texas indicate that early childhood educator wages remain far below the local living wage, regardless of years of experience or education level, offering little incentive for educators to stay or

The North Texas Child Care Workforce Study

The North Texas Child Care Workforce Study provides a comprehensive picture of North Texas’s early care and education (ECE) workforce, including workforce size, child care supply, educator characteristics, and experiences and challenges child care directors

How fixing child care could boost Tarrant County’s economy

Tarrant County needs about 2,000 more early childhood educators to fully staff existing child care centers. That shortage makes it harder for parents — especially mothers — to work, according to a new study analyzing