By Francie Fink
The Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map (IECAM) provides comprehensive data on early childhood care and education across Illinois, helping policymakers, school administrators, researchers, and more to make informed decisions. At the heart of IECAM is its interactive database, which allows users to explore early childhood metrics at the state, county, and even community levels. The IECAM tracks essential public programs such as Head Start, Preschool for All, licensed child care centers, and more, giving leaders the insights they need to expand access and improve quality. Beyond this, IECAM provides visual maps and reports, revealing demographic trends and community-level indicators like poverty rates and population shifts.
I spoke with Keith Hollenkamp, Assistant Director of IECAM, to learn more about the way that he and his team integrate data from a number of sources—the U.S. Census, Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Human Services, and more—into the database. Hollenkamp, originally a journalist, joined IECAM just over seven years ago after obtaining a graduate degree in data science. Hollenkamp has preserved some of the lessons from his stint working in the engineering world: “I was working a lot with these data specialists and data scientists and my job was to take what they were doing and communicate it to the world.”
Research has long demonstrated the profound impact of early childhood education and childcare on a child’s development. The first five years are critical for fostering essential skills, cognitive growth, and social readiness. High-quality care during these formative years can set the stage for long-term success, leading to better career opportunities, stronger family support systems, and positive community engagement. However, the cost of childcare remains a significant barrier. In Illinois, parents face an average annual cost of $16,000 for infant care. Among the state’s 896,000 children under the age of five, 68% live in households where all parents are part of the workforce. Providing effective state and federal support to these families is both challenging and crucial.
As Hollenkamp says, “I like to tell people that data is only the first step of this. It can help illuminate the path forward, but it’s only part of the equation. When we work with people, it’s often the combination of data and their community knowledge that leads to real impact. They know their communities and school districts better than anyone, and our goal is for the data to complement that expertise. Ultimately, we want our work to better the quality of lives of children in the state.”
We discussed the capabilities of IECAM, why policymakers and school district administrators alike might use it, and exciting future plans for the tool. By the end of our conversation, it was clear to me that the tool is the premier way to interact with and explore critical early childhood indicators in Illinois.
Key Takeaways:
- Identifying Gaps — Determining how many people can recieve funding in a given area is IECAM’s core focus. With access to poverty level data, they can help stakeholders identify where people aren’t receiving what they qualify for.
- Expanding Capabilities — IECAM is launching a new “Data Hub” with more granular and timely insights, including monthly enrollment data broken down by geography, race, and ethnicity—an upgrade from past yearly snapshots.
- Supporting Quality and Funding — Beyond access, IECAM tracks program quality (e.g., ExcelRate ratings, workforce data) and helps schools and agencies with grant writing, funding proposals, and long-term planning by providing tailored data and maps.
- Data + Local Knowledge — Hollenkamp stresses that data alone isn’t enough; meaningful impact comes from combining statewide data with community expertise to ensure solutions fit local realities.
How was IECAM started?
IECAM has been around since 2006. We are funded by state agencies—the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS)—to be a public resource where anyone can see this data. Our goal is to support administrators, teachers, advocates, and researchers in using the data to benefit their districts, inform lawmakers, and ultimately, help them make data-driven decisions. IECAM was given to the University of Illinois to be a neutral body. We provide the data and context to users, but we don’t tell them what to do with it.
What is the benefit of this one-stop shop for early childhood data?
The bulk of our data comes from agencies and the programs that they run. As of now, we focus mostly on funded enrollment across early childhood sites. Essentially, how many sites within a given geography are providing services for children? That would be looking at programs like Head Start, Preschool for All, and others that are state or federally funded to provide care or schooling for children birth through five years old. That’s always been our core focus—determining how many slots are funded in a given area.
Thanks to our work with census data, we’re able to provide deeper insights into poverty levels within those areas. Since eligibility for many early childhood programs is tied to poverty status, we can help stakeholders identify and address slot gaps. Let’s say a county has 200 children living at or below 200% of the poverty level, but only 110 available slots in a program that serves that eligibility bracket. That leaves a slot gap of 90 children—meaning 90 eligible kids aren’t receiving the services they qualify for. Something is preventing full access, and we do a lot of work with schools and state agencies to provide them that information.
Pictured: Illinois childcare and education slot gap by county, FY2023. Source: IECAM.
Administrators and grant writers will often reach out to us when an RFP (request for proposals) comes in, and they need to include actual data. These are people trying to secure more Preschool for All funding for their district or additional funding for a particular project. We help by showing them, “Okay, here’s how many kids in that age range you’re currently serving, and here’s our best estimate of how many kids are actually eligible.” They can then use that information when writing their proposal to request more funding or services. We do this kind of work a lot, answering various data questions for people around the state. And mapping is a big part of it—geocoding locations and creating detailed maps broken down by zip code, legislative district, school district, or whatever boundaries they might need.
What are some of the metrics your team cares most about?
What we’re primarily funded to focus on is child care services—specifically, services provided by state or federal programs. But because we operate in this space, we’ve also worked on various projects involving other types of data, including healthcare data related to children. For example, we’ve examined issues like lead poisoning in children. We actually contributed to two versions of the Illinois Risk and Reach Report. That project covered 15 risk indicators and an analysis of 17 publicly funded programs. The “risks” reflect factors affecting children ages zero to five, while the “reaches” measure how well programs are addressing those risks. It also compares counties to each other in terms of their ability to mitigate risks.
Do you look at any metrics that indicate the quality of childcare programs?
Yes, good question. One initiative we track is called ExcelRate. ExcelRate is a system for recognizing the quality of child care centers and licensed family child care homes. They have what’s called the “Circle of Quality” designations: gold, silver, and bronze. In terms of broader quality metrics, state agencies are definitely interested in workforce data–things like the number of caregivers per site, for instance. We’re just starting to dip our toes into that space, so we’re beginning to get a bit more information to work with, which will be exciting to explore. But overall, the quality of care—in every sense of the word–for children, providers, everyone in between—is an important topic right now.
How granular geographically is the data you’re working with?
We have the addresses for all these providers, which allows us to geolocate them within any shapefile we choose. We typically work with about 13 different geographies, including state, county, zip code, legislative districts, school districts, and something called the “Birth to Five regions”. These regions are collections of school districts, each with its own Birth to Five Council that monitors early childhood services in the area. We try to geolocate the data in the most useful ways for our users. For example, if someone is a coordinator or superintendent for a specific school district, we can provide them with the data specific to that area.
Pictured: IECAM’s mapping of birth-to-five regions in Illinois. (Source: IECAM)
What sorts of reports and insights are you typically compiling for stakeholders?
We do a little bit of both project requests and exploring trends we are seeing in the data. For example, we get funding to create early childhood dashboards for the state of Illinois. But we also have the freedom to work on things ourselves–from a neutral perspective. One of the main projects we are working on right now is a significant overhaul of our website. We’re building a brand-new web interface, which we’re calling the Data Hub for now. It’s part of the Illinois Longitudinal Data System, which is designed to follow a child’s educational journey from birth through school and beyond–showing how a child might progress, for example, from receiving Preschool for All services to attending public school and later high school. In the past, we could only provide annual snapshots, like how many children were funded to participate in a program during a specific fiscal year. Now, for certain programs, we’ll be able to offer a monthly view of enrollment. For example, we can report that in January 2024, a specific number of children received CCAP or the child care assistance program—and break that down by race and ethnicity. We can expect it to launch in the next several months.
What is the timeline you have in receiving data from agencies?
Up until very recently, we were working only with yearly data. We have data sharing agreements with these agencies, and every Fall we update our database with that new data. But that’s changing now. We’re able to show enrollment numbers at an aggregated and highly anonymized level. For example, we can now provide monthly enrollment data for programs like the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) and Early Intervention. Users can select a specific month and view data that’s broken down by different geographies. It’s a huge step forward in terms of data accessibility and detail.
“What I really enjoy is working directly with people to help them access and understand the data they need. I really want to champion data literacy in the state, and encourage stakeholders to think critically about their information—understanding the limitations as well as the possibilities.”
-Keith Hollenkamp
You mentioned that much of your work involves determining gaps in how many children are eligible for public programming, compared to how many slots are currently funded. How straightforward is it to map out these eligibility requirements?
It’s difficult. For programs like Head Start and Early Head Start, it’s a bit more straightforward, as there is a specific federal poverty level threshold for enrollment. For a program like CCAP, it’s more complex. We work with our colleagues at NORC on that program, because for the past several years they have been developing a new way to estimate eligibility for CCAP. We’re working on incorporating that into our tool. I’ll say this, also, about the folks working in this space–they’re all lovely, intelligent, and savvy people in this for the right reasons. A lot of people are former educators, so they’re very knowledgeable.
What are other insights you’ve found from your work?
Identifying “desert zones” is really important. Desert zones are places in Illinois that aren’t getting the services they need. One of the key things we aim to do is provide data broken down by poverty level, race, and ethnicity. Then, if the data shows a childcare desert in a particular area, policymakers can use that information to direct funding or services where they’re needed most. Right now, for example, we’re collaborating with a group in Chicago to analyze funding flows across different programs. This isn’t something we typically focus on—our usual work revolves more around services and enrollment data—but in this case, we’re actually digging into the financial side to see where the money is going.
Pictured: Example dashboard showing changes in funded Head Start enrollment in Illinois over the past decade. (Source: IECAM)
How do you deal with custom data requests?
We try to help with every request we get, either by providing the data ourselves or—because we’ve been in this space for so long—by pointing people to where they can find it. For instance, we might direct someone to IDHS or ISBE if we know they manage the specific dataset being sought. What I really enjoy is working directly with people to help them access and understand the data they need. I really want to champion data literacy in the state, and encourage stakeholders to think critically about their information—understanding the limitations as well as the possibilities. When we walk people through our website, it’s so that they can then have information about their own community in their back pocket when talking to people who “make the decisions.”
What are some datapoints that in an ideal world you’d like to have, to help analyze to support the improvement of early childhood services and education?
Having the actual enrollment data is phenomenal, and ideally, I’d like to expand that. Right now, it’s focused on programs funded by IDHS, and I think there’s so much potential to widen the scope and get a clearer picture of how many kids are actually being served across different programs. One area that really interests me, is taking a deeper dive into Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) data. I think those kinds of insights would be incredibly valuable in making sure that people are getting the services they need in the places where they need them most.
We actually did an interesting project a while back called the “Landscape of Early Childhood Funding” which was funded by IDHS. There was this question around figuring out which sites are receiving blended funding—whether service providers are getting funding from multiple sources, like IDHS and ISBE. We worked with colleagues at Chapin Hall with the University of Chicago to take all this data from different agencies and create a comprehensive map of every unique service provider in the state and the funding they get. That project really helped illuminate some important patterns for IDHS.
Learn More/Get Involved
To learn more about IECAM, visit the website. Contact Keith Hollenkamp here.
Contact the Office of Data Science Research if you’re aware of other people or resources we could profile here. ODSR is a campuswide convening organization that facilitates collaborations, resource sharing, and public engagement focused on data science research activities at the University of Illinois.