Childcare Landscape Study - Flipbook - Page 58
Davidson County Child Care Landscape Study Results
1
Thej People Behind Early
Care and Education
Understanding the Early Childhood
Workforce in Greater Davidson County, TN
DAVIDSON COUNTY CHILD CARE LANDSCAPE STUDY RESULTS | BRIEF 2
Introduction
High-quality child care is an essential resource for families and children. Reliable child care
enables parental workforce participation, simultaneously providing children with a safe,
nurturing, and structured environment that promotes healthy development.1 Quality child care
also strengthens families' economic stability, improving child developmental outcomes and
promoting broader economic growth.2
Despite the essential need for child care, families face challenges accessing and affording it, and
child care program directors face challenges recruiting and retaining educators and maintaining
financially sustainable businesses.3 Though these challenges are widespread across the country,
the key to implementing effective solutions requires understanding the specific local challenges
within states and regions.
United Way of Greater Nashville engaged the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center (Policy
Impact Center) at Vanderbilt University to conduct the Davidson County Child Care
Landscape Study. The purpose of the study is to collect localized data to understand the
strengths and challenges of the greater Davidson County child care system.
In Davidson County, Tennessee, which includes the capital city of Nashville, center-based
child care is the most prevalent type of licensed child care available to families with children
under age 5, and the local early childhood education (ECE) workforce is central to the
functioning and quality of these centers.a,4 This brief examines the size and composition of
the ECE workforce at center-based child care programs across greater Davidson County. It
is one part of a five-part series presenting the findings of the Davidson County Child Care
Landscape Study.
a Greater Davidson County has additional licensed child care options (e.g., home-based child care, drop-in child care,
before and after school-only providers) that are excluded from the scope of this brief.
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center 2026
www.pn3policy.org
