Through the Stability Project's PhotoVoice component, educators used photos and personal reflections to document the work that often goes unseen – and to share what they want Milwaukee to better understand about ECE. Together, their stories paint a powerful picture of the day-to-day life of early educators – and the critical role they play in supporting children, families and communities.

To better understand what’s been happening beneath the surface of our ECE sector, Milwaukee Succeeds launched the Stability Project – a first-of-its-kind effort that brings together data, PhotoVoice and focus groups. A key part of this work is a set of new ECE-specific metrics developed by the Milwaukee Succeeds data team. The first among them is churn, which shines a light on the sector’s instability.

To better understand which child care programs are able to persist despite ongoing challenges, Milwaukee Succeeds developed a second metric: the stability rate. While churn measures turnover, the stability rate measures consistency, helping us identify which programs remain open year after year and where long-term endurance exists within the ECE sector.

Over the course of the Stability Project, Milwaukee Succeeds has worked to better understand what instability in ECE really looks like – and what it means for our city. First came churn, then came stability. Now, we’re looking at the most visible and immediate form of instability: program closures.