Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Oregon Child Care Research Partnership began in 1989 as a virtual organization designed to provide decision makers with accurate information on which to base child care policy and practice decisions.  Partners came from a state university, the subsidy agency, the Governor’s child care policy office, and a child care resource and referral agency.   They identified core child care policy-relevant questions basic to State decisions including the child care supply and demand, affordability, and quality.   Using survey and administrative data they have provided decision makers accurate information since 1990.  Over the years, partners from universities, State agencies, and practitioners have continued to work together and the core role and functioning of the Partnership continues today.   Partnership research is used in State and local decisions about child care and early learning.  This presentation will share a range of examples of the impact Partnership research has had on State policy, focusing on families’ subsidy eligibility, the early learning workforce, and quality of child care settings. 

Child care subsidy policy is one area in which Partnership research has had substantive impact.  The five-state study of subsidy use continuity (Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas), revealed that half of Oregon parents on the subsidy program had spells of 3 months or less, the shortest of the five states in the study.   In response, the State moved from 3 -to 6-month eligibility policy.  As studies documented longer but still short spells, Oregon became one of the first states to implement 12-month eligibility policy, in advance of the 2014 federal law requiring this longer eligibility period.  Another study documented an association between payment rates and type of care selected by parents.  These findings contributed to payment rates at close to the 75^th percentile since 2007.  Yet another study found that parents could not predict their copayments and that, in fact, the copayments changed frequently, a surprising finding to the State and one that led to changes in how often copay amounts change. 

Policy on the early learning workforce provides another example of the Partnership’s role.  As the State moved to link licensing and Workforce Registry data, the Partnership articulated key policy-relevant questions and identified what variables would be needed in the new data system to answer these questions.  Using the data from this new system which includes all persons working in regulated child care facilities in Oregon, Partners complete annual studies of characteristics of the workforce.   Findings from these studies along with a Partnership policy brief which documents the linkage between characteristics of the workforce and child outcomes, have contributed to a major professional development initiative.  Finally in the area of quality, Partners devised a methodology for measuring structural indicators of quality in all regulated child care facilities and have been reporting these findings since 2006.  The Quality Indicators project was a forerunner and is now part of the State’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) and continues to provide basic quality information on all facilities, regardless of whether or not they participate in QRIS.