Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies Series

The Massachusetts Family Child Care study is a two-year evaluation, conducted by Abt Associates Inc, the Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC) and the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), of the impacts of the LearningGames program on providers and children in family child care. LearningGames is designed to train caregivers to stimulate children's cognitive, language, and social-emotional development through a set of 200 simple games that encourage intensive, one-on-one interactions as a platform that allows the adult to engage the child in meaningful conversation, to listen to the child and respond to the child's questions and actions, and to scaffold and build on the child's growing skills at using and understanding language. The goal of LearningGames is to increase the frequency of rich language interactions between caregivers and children due to the importance of oral language development in children's understanding of words and concepts, in their ability to become competent readers, and in their long-term academic success and of the role played by rich language stimulation in promoting children's development. This evaluation of LearningGames examines the effectiveness of the program in changing the behavior of the family child care providers and the developmental outcomes for the children who are cared for by providers trained on LearningGames.

Baseline data were collected in the summer of 2005 with follow up observations taking place in the fall of 2006 and again in the winter of 2007. Of the 55 family child care provider networks in Massachusetts, 16 were sampled, resulting in 1,250 children enrolled in 353 study homes, though the study suffered a heavy overall attrition rate of 58 percent.

The data are provided in four data sets, one file containing data on the providers, a baseline observations file and two annual follow ups. The provider file (2005 Provider Data), includes data on: the provider's years of experience in family child care, their reasons for working as a family child care provider, what they would change about their job, what they believe is their responsibility for the children, their educational background, their age, sex, and race, the languages that they speak at home, the languages that they speak with the children in their care, and the types of materials that they read. Due to the descriptive sensitivity of the variables, this dataset requires a signed user agreement to access. All other datasets are publically available. The observation files include data from several measures: the QUEST Caregiver Rating Scale (subset of items), the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale, the revised Snapshot of Activities (from the OMLIT), the Read-Aloud Profile (from the OMLIT), and the TALK.The data include: the amount of time the provider shows interest in what children say or do, whether or not the provider seems to enjoy children, the average number of activities observed, the amount of read-alouds where the provider relates the book to group activities prior to reading the book, and whether or not the provider encourages children to do activities on their own.

The Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies is a multi-site, multi-year effort to determine whether and how different child care subsidy policies and procedures and quality improvement efforts help low-income parents obtain and hold onto jobs and improve outcomes for children. Funding from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) administered by the Child Care Bureau are divided into two purposes. The vast majority are aimed at assisting children of low-income working parents whose eligibility is determined by states within broad federal guidelines, while a much smaller portion (4 percent) work with state matching funds to improve the quality of child care for all children. For this studies series, four experiments were conducted, two test alternative subsidy policies for low-income families and two test approaches to the use of set-aside funds for improving child care quality for all children. The four study sites and focus of evaluation include: (1) effectiveness of three language and literacy curricula on teaching practices and children's language and literacy outcomes (Miami-Dade County, Florida); (2) impact of alternative eligibility and re-determination child care subsidy policies on parental employment outcomes (Illinois); (3) impact of alternative child care co-payment structures on use of child care subsidies and employment outcomes (Washington) and (4) effectiveness of training on Learning Games curriculum in changing care-giving practices in family child care homes and children's developmental outcomes (Massachusetts).

A two-year experiment, Project Upgrade tests the effectiveness of three different language and literacy interventions, Ready, Set, Leap! (RSL!), Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) and Building Early Language and Literacy (BELL) implemented in child care centers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that served children from low-income families. One hundred and sixty-two centers were randomly assigned to one of three research-based curricula or to a control group that continued with its existing program. The curricula, while grounded in a common set of research findings, differed in intensity, pedagogic strategies, and use of technology. In each center, one classroom that served four-year-old children was selected for the study. Teachers and aides assigned to the three treatment groups received initial and follow-up training as well as ongoing mentoring over a period of approximately 18 months, from Fall 2003 to Spring 2005. The study tested two kinds of outcomes: teacher behavior and interactions with children, and aspects of the classroom environment that support children's language and literacy development, measured through direct observation; and children's language and pre-literacy skills, measured by their performance on a standardized assessment.

To determine whether the interventions that had produced significant outcomes at the end of preschool had any lasting positive effects on early school performance, mathematics and reading follow-up assessments were done in the spring of the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 school years. Of the 1,535 children assessed in the original Florida Upgrade study, follow-up measurements were taken on 1,137 children (74 percent). Also obtained were follow-up measurements on 127 children who were in the study centers in the original randomized design, but who were not present at the time of the initial child assessments.

The Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies is a multi-site, multi-year effort to determine whether and how different child care subsidy policies and procedures and quality improvement efforts help low-income parents obtain and hold onto jobs and improve outcomes for children. Funding from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) administered by the Child Care Bureau are divided into two purposes. The vast majority are aimed at assisting children of low-income working parents whose eligibility is determined by states within broad federal guidelines, while a much smaller portion (4 percent) work with state matching funds to improve the quality of child care for all children. For this study series, four experiments were conducted, two test alternative subsidy policies for low-income families and two test approaches to the use of set-aside funds for improving child care quality for all children. The four study sites and focus of evaluation include: (1) the effectiveness of three language and literacy curricula on teaching practices and children's language and literacy outcomes (Miami Dade County, Florida); (2) the impact of alternative eligibility and re-determination child care subsidy policies on parental employment outcomes (Illinois); (3) the impact of alternative child care co-payment structures on use of child care subsidies and employment outcomes (Washington) and (4) the effectiveness of training on Learning Games curriculum in changing care-giving practices in family child care homes and children's developmental outcomes (Massachusetts).

The Washington evaluation was designed to test the impact of changing parental copayment levels on various child care and economic outcomes (such as type of care used, earnings, employment, etc.). The copayment amount refers to the amount that families who are receiving child care subsidies contribute to the cost of child care, while the copayment schedule refers to the amount or the rate at which the copayment changes as income increases or decreases. In all states, the copayment amount is larger for families with higher incomes. In Washington in 2005, a three-person family receiving child care subsidies paid 3 percent of the cost of child care if their income was 33 percent of the federal poverty threshold, but 16 percent of the cost of care if their income was 200 percent of the threshold. In the Washington child care subsidy program, families were divided into three income tiers. Families in Tier 1 had incomes at or below 82 percent of the federal poverty threshold, families in Tier 2 had incomes between 83 and 137.5 percent of the threshold, and families in Tier 3 had incomes between 137.5 and 200 percent of the threshold. Under the standard copayment schedule used by Washington in 2005, child care subsidy recipients in Tier 1 paid $15 per month, while recipients in Tier 2 paid $50 per month. Families in Tier 3 faced a sliding copayment schedule, with the copayment increasing by 44 cents for each additional dollar of income beyond 137.5 percent of the poverty threshold. In the evaluation, study participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: (1) a control group assigned to the standard copayment schedule, and (2) a program group assigned to an alternative copayment schedule, which had copayment amounts that were equal to or lower than standard copayment schedule amounts.