We have new data to share! Child Care Aware of America recently utilized Alliance CORE attendance data to give an update on their “Picking Up the Pieces” report across rural/urban/suburban lines. Below, we will also share some of our interesting findings from an age group attendance analysis.
We at Early Learning Ventures have been lucky. We’ve formed partnerships with many wonderful organizations at all levels of the industry, from having Small Business Majority on a webinar to teach providers about PPP to starting the Ka ‘Upena pilot for Hawaiian home providers with Early Childhood Action Strategy.
We would like to do more. We would like to extend an invitation for collaboration to you. It could be a webinar or a #WhatsUpWednesday where you share your expertise. It could be connecting on data for a blog or grant. Alternatively, it could be much deeper! Regardless, if you have interest in collaboration, please reach out to Michael Taylor.
Attendance by Age Group Analysis
There has not been much real-time data available across the nation to see if there are differing effects of the pandemic on different child age groups. From a request from a national partner, we decided to look ourselves.
First, we took millions of child check-ins and aggregated them. Next, we separated all of these check-ins by age group – using Colorado’s standards for infants (0-18 months), toddlers (18-36 months), preschool (36-72 months), and school-age (72+ months). Finally, we crossed age groups by facility type (home vs. center) and subsidy status.
Many possible stories and analyses can be gleaned from this kind of data. Rather than go through all of the data, we wanted to highlight two interesting trends.
School-Age Children Keeping Sites Afloat
Fascinatingly, during the nadir of the pandemic, there was actually one group attending sites in the ELV network at higher rates than they had been pre-pandemic. School-aged children filled many of the vacated slots for childcare providers over the summer, perhaps due to the lack of other options for families.
This trend was seen at both homes and centers, although centers had a slightly higher spike. The distribution between children on CCCAP and those on private pay leaned heavily to the non-subsidy category.
Not All Infants are Alike
Infants and toddlers seemed to have very similar trends at a glance, but that does not mean there were identical results within an age group.
Specifically, we were curious if young infants (0-12 months) were returning to care at similar rates to “old” infants and young toddlers (12-24 months).
And, while there was much similarity during the nadir of the pandemic, we have seen that those younger infants have not returned to childcare in the same manner as the 12-24 month olds. This divergence started at the beginning of the school year (early September), but has continued on through the start of 2021.
Final Thoughts
This was an introductory look at how the pandemic has affected various age groups. We have the data and would be happy to dive deeper with interested parties. And, should you have various other parameters you’re curious about, we would be happy to chat about that as well.
Here is Part 1 of the Real-Time Data series, Part 2 of the Real-Time Data series, and Part 3 of the Real-Time Data series.
Thank you very much, have a wonderful day,
Michael Taylor
ELV Membership Development Manager
mtaylor@earlylearningventures.org
(317) 518-5203
