Families with young children need access to affordable, high-quality childcare options in their community. Yet, according to education researcher Daphna Bassok, accurately measuring child care access—which is a critical first step towards improving it—is remarkably challenging.
“Most states just lack the data needed and their definition of access is too narrow,” said Bassok, professor of education and public policy at EdPolicyWorks, a research center based at the UVA School of Education and Human Development and the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. “Our typical measures of access fail to take into consideration whether sites are affordable, whether they actually have slots open, or whether they provide care that is high quality.”
This fall, in partnership with the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF), Bassok and her team were awarded $1.2 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a new project that will fill this gap.
