Families’ and Early Educators’ Experiences With the Early Care and Education System in Minnesota

In March 2022, Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF)[1] to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota’s quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2021[2] and includes several research activities designed to assess how Parent Aware is supporting the state’s children, families, and the ECE workforce.

This report details findings from one component of the Parent Aware evaluation focused on understanding the experiences and needs of families and early educators in Minnesota. From November 2023 to March 2024, the research team at Child Trends surveyed more than 300 families and 400 early educators working in licensed ECE programs across the state to learn about their experiences navigating the ECE system in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, how they work together to support children’s healthy learning and development, and how state systems—including Parent Aware—can better support their needs. In Spring 2024, our team invited a subset of the families and educators who completed the survey to participate in focus groups in which we collaboratively explored and elaborated on preliminary findings from the surveys.