EEC adds workforce and program measures to public KPIs dashboard

The Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) said it has expanded its public key performance indicator dashboards to add workforce filters, new program participation measures and residential placement data, and that the agency will update the dashboards monthly.

Agency officials said the updated dashboard now shows educator wage averages by role with regional filters, the percent of programs participating in Child Care Financial Assistance (CCFA) and new information about licensed residential-placement programs. Adrienne Murphy, senior director of data analytics at EEC, told the advisory group: "We update the data in the dashboard monthly," and said the agency added region filters and new visuals in February.

Why it matters: The dashboards are intended to increase transparency about supply and demand in early education and care, provide data for local planning and let providers, employers and policymakers track changes in participation, capacity and wages over time. Murphy said the wage metric currently uses data from the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) application process and has limitations; she urged users to offer feedback as the agency builds toward an educator portal that could provide more granular data.

Dashboard highlights offered to the advisory group included a new visual for the percent of licensed programs participating in CCFA, which EEC said rose from about 50% to about 70% after recent years of outreach and contract work. The dashboard also provides CCFA caseload figures disaggregated by subsidy type, program openings and closings, and program capacity over time, officials said. The agency combines U.S. Census data with internal data sources to estimate the proportion of children statewide and regionally served by formal early education and care programs.

EEC staff asked the advisory group to help spread awareness of the dashboards to practitioners in the field and to send suggestions to the analytics team. "Amy put our team email address, and it's also on the dashboard. If folks have questions or feedback long after this meeting, happy to take it via email as well," the commissioner said.

The dashboard and contact information are available on EEC's website; officials encouraged advisory members to submit requests for additional metrics, filters and uses cases as the agency iterates the tools.