After months, the New Hampshire Executive Council approved an agreement to fund the Market Rate Survey and Narrow Cost Analysis, two data methods used to determine how much federal dollars the state receives for childcare and family copay for the scholarship assistance programs. (Photo by Maya Mitchell/NH Bulletin)
Every three years, the federal government redetermines how much money to give New Hampshire for childcare subsidies.
In New Hampshire, childcare subsidies are funded primarily by the federal Child Care and Development Fund. How much money the state receives is determined after it submits a required statistical analysis of statewide childcare costs and a plan for how federal dollars will be used.
That type of data collection and analysis requires significant effort and coordination among childcare providers, data analysts, and state officials. New Hampshire usually contracts out the data collection work to a third-party vendor, for which the Executive Council must approve the contract.
However, for months, the council has withheld approval of a contract with the Carsey School at the University of New Hampshire to begin the process, even with the deadline to complete the survey and the plan just a little over a year away.
During a meeting Wednesday, councilors reversed that decision, clearing the way for the first step in a monthslong process to ensure the state gets the correct amount of federal funding for childcare.
To analyze childcare costs and get the necessary information for the federal government, New Hampshire uses two methods: the Market Rate Survey and the Narrow Cost Analysis.
The Market Rate Survey evaluates the “price tag” of childcare tuition to help the state gauge the spread of prices among the different types of programs. The survey includes information from providers about tuition rates, program capacity, and other data the state might need. The Narrow Cost Analysis captures the discrepancies between what it truly costs to provide quality childcare and the gaps in subsidy rates.
Responses to both the survey and the cost analysis help determine what parents pay as a cost share for the N.H. Child Care Scholarship Program, in addition to helping the state Department of Health and Human Services write its biennial Child Care and Development Fund plan for the federal government and determine federal funding amounts.
Jess Carson, professor and director of the Center for Social Policy and Practice at the Carsey School, will serve as campus director for the project. She said it is important for providers to complete the survey to make it easier to “make the math work.”
“If we are not paying attention to what the full spread of costs look like across the state, it’s going to be really hard for the state to be able to calculate and support a reimbursement rate that makes sense,” Carson said.
The council withdrew the first contract at a meeting on March 25 over concerns that UNH’s indirect costs — a budget line item included in contracts for overhead expenses such as administrative services and building utilities — for state contracts were too high. It has been a recurring concern for the council, and despite approving other contracts with UNH that same day, they pulled the Market Rate Survey contract in an attempt to lower costs.
On Wednesday, the Executive Council approved the new contract without debate.
Now the state will pay the Carsey School more than $5,000 less than originally planned, and only after the contract is completed, and give analysts less time to complete the survey and analyze the results. The final survey report must be sent to Department of Health and Human Services officials by April 15 of next year, to give officials adequate time to include the results in their next Child Care and Development Fund plan for the federal government, which is due July 1, 2027.
Efforts to improve response rates
The last time the survey and cost analysis were conducted was in the spring of 2024. New Hampshire received a 53.2% response rate from 393 providers, below the “allowable for an approved methodological quality of a market rate survey,” Carson said.
The state failed to meet federal requirements and has to be issued a waiver for the survey to be used.
According to Jackie Cowell, executive director of Early Learning New Hampshire, one reason that happened was the introduction of a new vendor for the survey contract and poor communication from department officials.
The last survey was conducted by Brodsky Research and Consulting, a Colorado-based consulting firm that operates in the early care and education industry.
“People didn’t necessarily know if they could trust their information with that contractor, because there were all sorts of financials they had to share,” Cowell said. “My understanding is that people felt threatened that if they didn’t do it, they couldn’t apply for certain grants. That really put a bad taste in people’s mouths.”
To fix that, state officials chose the Carsey School, which runs the New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium, an in-state research network that has worked with the childcare field on past projects.
Additionally, providers said that past technological issues with the survey made it difficult to complete. Carson said when it comes to getting good survey responses, ease of experience matters.
“You can’t ask people to fill out something if it’s confusing to them, or if it takes them forever, or if they feel like they don’t understand where their data is going or being used for, and then just expect them to do it,” she said.
Since 2024, the state has improved some of its information technology systems for New Hampshire Connections, the online portal for childcare providers.
However, to help improve survey response, the council approved paying over $75,000 to Salesforce on April 15 for a tool that would enhance the user experience for New Hampshire Connections, making the survey “less burdensome” to navigate, according to Carson.
This story was originally published by New Hampshire Bulletin and is being reprinted here under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Click here to visit NH Bulletin and view their other stories.