Data 101: Understanding Early Childhood Education and Care Data in Chicago

Chicago has a vast landscape of early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs and services. There is a wealth of publicly available data that can help us understand the population of young children and families in the city and the ECEC programs that serve them— and examine differences over time and across communities.  

EC*REACH and the Chicago Early Childhood Integrated DataSystems (CECIDS) teams collaborated to develop this set of resources to help agency and program leaders, policymakers, and advocates find and make good use of the data available, including an introduction to:       

• What data are, and how to examine someone else’s interpretation of data;
• What makes Chicago’s ECEC landscape diverse and complex, including the funding and regulatory structures that make it complicated;
• What these realities mean for Chicago ECEC data;  
• Where to find those data;
• What to keep in mind when you are looking at and using data; and
• Where to turn for additional support.

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Click the links below to access three distinct resources:

1. Introductory video – This 90 second video provides a brief orientation to this Data 101 project as an easy onramp for new audiences. Share this video with anyone who might be interested in learning about how they can find and use Chicago ECEC data. Spanish version coming soon.    ‍
2. Summary handout –Whether you are preparing to facilitate a session or simply need a stand-alone streamlined summary, this resource summarizes the core ideas of Data 101 in an easily accessible written format.
3. Annotated slide deck – This PowerPoint presentation deck offers a more detailed exploration of the concepts summarized in the handout and video. Each slide includes speaker notes to guide your facilitation and support your delivery of the content. Designed to be flexible to suit your audience and context, the deck includes both condensed and expanded versions of some key concepts.

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For more information or questions, contact us at ecreach@northwestern.edu or cecids@niu.edu.

‍This project was sponsored by Start Early in support of the Office of the Mayor’s Every Child Ready Chicago (ECRC) initiative.