Childcare Landscape Study - Flipbook - Page 105
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.h
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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 five-part brief series.
•
Phase 3 uses a cost estimation model informed by Tennessee- and Davidson County-specific
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 home-based 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.
h 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 2026
www.pn3policy.org
