New EC*REACH Publication: System-Level Impacts: Highlights from Chicago’s Universal Pre-kindergarten Expansion and the Local Early Care and Education Market

In this brief, the EC*REACH team finds that Chicago’s Universal Pre-Kindergarten expansion led to only a slight decrease in the number of family child care providers and had no impact on center-based providers within local early care and education markets. There was no impact of the expansion on average capacity.

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This research highlight examines the impact of the Chicago Universal Pre-kindergarten expansion on the community based organizations (CBOs) within the early care and education market, including center-based providers and family child care. We know from our previous research that the Chicago UPK expansion increased both capacity and enrollment in free, full-day seats in school-based pre-K programs (offered through Chicago Public Schools) for 3- and 4- year olds. We now examine to what extent the UPK expansion led to CBO closures or reduced CBO capacity.

We found that the impacts of the UPK expansion on local CBOs are small, leading on average to about one half of a program closure per ECE market, and no change in average capacity. Closures primarily occurred in family childcare programs and not center-based programs.

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