Massachusetts Early Education and Care Cost Model

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Preschoolers playing with a toy together

The Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) is committed to providing high-quality early education and afterschool and out-of-school time care to children across the Commonwealth. Massachusetts was recently approved by the federal Office of Child Care (OCC) to use an alternative methodology to inform child care financial assistance rates. 
 

AIR's Collaboration with EEC

By continuing to make progress on our rates better reflect the cost of care...we are enabling our providers to better recruit and retain their staff and invest in high-quality initiatives without transferring those costs onto families. 

- Amy Kershaw, EEC Commissioner

EEC is working with AIR to update, refine, and expand the Commonwealth’s current child care cost models. The goal of the project is to systematically and accurately model the costs of care (both current costs and aspirational costs) and revenue used to support child care in various settings and regions of the Commonwealth. The methodology will allow EEC to make data-informed strategic investments and policy decisions about child care financial assistance rates as well as program and workforce stability, quality, and sustainability.

AIR will approach this work in two phases. Phase I (May 2024 – December 2024) will focus on initial updates to the cost model and provide recommendations around rate changes for fiscal year 2025. Phase II (October 2024 – June 2025) will focus on refining and enhancing the cost models to inform future rate decisions. Additionally, both phases include an analysis of tuition data to give EEC more comprehensive data to inform decisions.

A key component through both phases is meaningful engagement with early educators and child care program directors, advocacy groups, umbrella agency directors, and other key informants in the Commonwealth. The inclusion of input from these broad audiences ensure that the cost model product represent both the cost of care as it currently stands and the cost of an aspirational, or ideal, level of care. Our partnership with EEC is also critical to this work and allows us to be certain information provided can immediately inform decisions and set the Commonwealth up for future cost model updates they can conduct on their own.