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Imagine you work for an advocacy organization in one state and you want to find out how other states are raising revenue to support early education and care. If you Google “child care tax revenue or daycare tax payments,” almost all the results pertain to the tax credits that individuals can apply for when they file their taxes. Refining your search terms might give you better results, but it might take hours to track down the most useful and relevant sources.

, a new tool from the at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, makes the search easier and more productive. For example:

• Contemplating an apprenticeship program? The Navigator will show you the first such program in the United States鈥擶est Virginia鈥檚 鈥攁s well as a resource on apprenticeships from the . A little more digging will take you to Philadelphia for a created by the (a program of the ) and a created by of the National Union of Hospital & Health Care Employees and 11 Philadelphia hospitals.
• Exploring revenue streams for your city? The Navigator highlights social impact bonds in Chicago; soda taxes in Philadelphia () and Seattle; and property taxes in San Francisco and Seattle.
• Are you a policymaker or advocate in Virginia? (Or maybe you live in a state with political or demographic qualities comparable to Virginia.) The Navigator offers resources and information on the scholarships for early childhood educators, the state鈥檚 Longitudinal Data System and more.

Early Learning Nation magazine interviewed the Zaentz Institute Co-Director Nonie K. Lesaux and Research and Policy Analyst Jackie Ramos-Draper to discover how the tool came about and what the plans are for improving it.

When you go to the Navigator, your search is organized into what Ramos-Draper calls the five pillars that support an equitable, high-quality early education and care system: Infrastructure and Systems, Dedicated Funding Streams, Cost Estimation for Subsidies, Expansion of Child Care and Early Childhood Education Services, and Workforce. Lesaux notes that they are discussing adding a sixth pillar for infant and toddler programs, but the plan is to keep the number limited to preserve simplicity. Search results often lead users to , a longitudinal study following 4,000 Massachusetts children.

鈥淲e鈥檙e researchers at our core,鈥� Lesaux said. 鈥淲e’re also deeply committed to trying to be really helpful to the field. Our mission is to broker knowledge.鈥� She says the Navigator arose in response to the need for resources on how states and cities were making policy. 鈥淧rofessionals from around the country were consistently asking, 鈥榃hat are other places doing?鈥� Tools like this exist for K-12 education and in public health, but not in early childhood.鈥�

Lesaux keeps these users in mind at every step of the design process. 鈥淭hey have no time and not a lot of bandwidth to ideate. The more we can help them get to the information they need, the better they will ideate.鈥�

Ramos-Draper says she imagines staff at a city or state government office or an advocacy organization 鈥渄igging through press releases, PDFs of community presentations from 10 years ago, budgets or bills and executive orders. If their goal is replication and customization, it would be really difficult to find all the information they need. That frustration might deter them from bringing about meaningful policy change. With the Navigator, they have an organized place for discovering the processes by which these strategies were implemented or passed.鈥�

Lesaux and Draper describe the present moment as one of both opportunity and risk. On one hand, the American public cares more than ever before about disparities in access to quality care. On the other, as American Rescue Plan funding fades, cities and states need to identify revenue streams to sustain systems.

Designed for constant improvement, the Navigator initially went out to a testing group of 19 people representing a cross section in the field. 鈥淭hey told us they鈥檝e never had anything like this before,鈥� says Lesaux. 鈥淭hey said they would be using it all the time, and, of course, they asked for even more features 鈥� such as information from more cities.鈥�

Minnesota Rep. Dave Pinto reported, 鈥淚’ve been considering how our state might dedicate a funding source for early care and education. I’ve known that other states, and cities,聽 have done this, but researching exactly what they’ve done would be a major project. Having this information in one place is an enormous help. In fact, within five minutes of being on the site, I had come across a promising approach that I had not heard of before.鈥�

Since the tool鈥檚 initial launch, the team has added several new features, including additional search filtration options, downloadable tables and data visualizations, and more options for sharing content.

While the Navigator continues to expand and improve, plans are also developing to demonstrate its usefulness at conferences and roundtables around the country, where Lesaux, Ramos-Draper and others will present patterns and trends that the tool reveals. Peer-support tools will facilitate city-to-city and state-to-state collaboration. An in-person Navigator Institute kicked off in December, with teams from Georgia, Vermont, California and other states coming to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to explore a policy challenge alongside the Zaentz Initiative experts.

This story originally published on Early Learning Nation and is now archived on 社区黑料. Learn more here.