Childcare Landscape Study - Flipbook - Page 10
Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study Results
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About the Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study
The United Way of Greater Nashville is engaging the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at
Vanderbilt University (Policy Impact Center) to conduct the Davidson County Child Care
Landscape Study to examine child care supply, population metrics that inform demand, and
the estimated cost of providing high-quality child care in Davidson County. The Davidson
County Child Care Landscape Study consists of three phases.
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Phase 1 focuses on using state- and national-level publicly available data to
understand the population and demographic characteristics of Davidson County that
inform local child care demand and current supply. Though these data provided a
foundational overview of the local child care landscape, they also revealed
limitations in what could be understood without targeted data collection to provide
more detailed, local data. A summary of key findings was released in March 2024.d
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Phase 2 consists of an in-depth child care supply analysis based on an original child
care provider survey. The Policy Impact Center developed and fielded the 2025
Davidson County Child Care Provider Experience Survey (Child Care Provider
Survey) between June and August 2025 to all licensed child care programs in the
greater Davidson County area. The Child Care Provider Survey asked about:
o Child care enrollment and open slots,
o Staffing, workforce characteristics, and educator wages,
o Child care program director experiences and challenges.
A total of 130 (116 center-based and 14 home-based) out of 275 (246 center-based
and 29 home-based) reachable child care programs participated in the Child Care
Provider Survey (47% response rate) and provided sufficient information to be
included in our analyses. We present findings from this phase throughout this fivepart brief series.
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Phase 3 uses a cost estimation model informed by Tennessee- and Davidson Countyspecific data and input from local child care experts and community partners to
estimate the cost of providing high-quality child care in Davidson County. We
discuss findings from this phase pertaining to center-based child care and homebased child care in Briefs 4 and 5, respectively, of this five-part series.
Results from the Nashville Child Care Landscape Study will inform child care expansion
planning, resource allocation decisions, and policy and funding advocacy.
A complete description of the methods used in this brief can be found in the online
Methods Appendix.
d The Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study Phase 1 Executive Summary can be found here:
RaisingReadersNashville_ChildCare_Study_Phase1Summary_0324.pdf
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center 2025
www.pn3policy.org
