Early Childhood Atlas Now Has More Tools

JAN. 31, 2006 | The Early Childhood Atlas now includes more tools to make it easier to use and more versatile for policymaking, planning, and emergency preparedness.

A set of online tools for geographic analysis of child well-being and early childhood services, the atlas now includes Early Childhood Status Reports for counties and states and an archive of custom maps. The new tools complement the Early Childhood Map Maker, an interactive mapping tool that Rural Early Childhood launched in September.

“The hurricanes of 2005 demonstrated the immense value of easy-to-access geographic information about early childhood services,” Cathy Grace, Ed.D., director of Rural Early Childhood, said.

“Numerous state agencies and nongovernmental organizations have helped us create the Atlas and we are grateful for their participation. Now that we have refined the tools in the Atlas, we hope to expand it with many more datasets from state and federal agencies in order to make this tool as comprehensive and useful as possible,” Grace added.

The Early Childhood Atlas is a joint project of the National Center for Rural Early Childhood Learning Initiatives (Rural Early Childhood) of the Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute and the Community Information Resource Center (CIRC) of the Rural Policy Research Institute, University of Missouri.

Numerous public agencies and nongovernmental organizations are participating in the atlas by providing datasets. They include the Alabama Department of Human Resources; Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services; Florida Department of Children and Families; Louisiana Department of Social Services; Mississippi Department of Health; Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; Texas Department of Family and Protective Services; the National Association for the Education of Young Children; the National Registry Alliance; and the National Women’s Law Center.

The atlas contains a variety of early childhood service indicators, including:

• Location of licensed early childhood programs in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas, with capacity for programs in most of those states

• Names, location, and capacity of programs accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children

• Changes, between 2001 and 2005, in eligibility criteria for child care subsidies

“Thanks to major funding from the U.S. Department of Education and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, we have been able to incorporate these datasets at no cost to our agency and nongovernmental partners,” Grace said. “The Mississippi State University Early Childhood Institute will continue to make the Early Childhood Atlas available to as many organizations as possible.”

The Early Childhood Atlas team can help partner organizations prepare datasets, including elimination of personally identifiable information, for addition to the atlas. The team includes CIRC Director Christopher L. Fulcher, Ph.D.; geographer Erin E. Wilson, M.A., of RUPRI and the University of Missouri; cartographer Chad E. Landgraf of RUPRI and the Oklahoma Rural Health Policy and Research Center at Oklahoma State University; and research associate Yan Barnett of the University of Missouri. The atlas team will:

• Geocode each dataset in order to pinpoint services or recipients on maps (with full protection of anonymity)
• Merge each dataset into the Early Childhood Atlas, with clear acknowledgment of the source of the data
• Produce custom maps of indicators that are important to partner organizations, providing print-ready files and adding them to the atlas’s Early Childhood Map Archive

The Early Childhood Atlas team also can perform spatial, or geographic, analysis of agency and organization datasets such as:

• Finding how many licensed child care slots could be lost in a natural disaster
• Calculating the effects in individual communities of changes in eligibility criteria
• Tracking demographic changes in a service area

For more information about the services of the Early Childhood Atlas, contact atlas coordinator Elizabeth F. Shores.

CIRC performs spatial analysis and mapping for a wide variety of health and social services and economic development agencies in the United States and abroad. Its staff includes economists, geographers, cartographers, and programmers.

Rural Early Childhood is the centerpiece of national initiatives of the MSU Early Childhood Institute. It is a group of early childhood policy analysts focusing on quality and accessibility of early childhood education and early intervention in rural America.

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