Making the Invisible Visible: Introducing the ECE Churn Metric
For many families, child care isn’t just a support system – it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible. Work schedules, school routines and daily life all depend on reliable, consistent care.
But across Milwaukee, that stability is far from guaranteed.
Early childhood education (ECE) programs are frequently opening and closing, creating ripple effects that reach far beyond the classroom. When a program shuts down, families are forced to scramble, with parents missing work and children losing both learning time and the trusted relationships they’ve built with their teachers. The impact also extends to employers, communities and the broader economy. In fact, ReadyNation estimates that insufficient child care costs Wisconsin about $2.6 billion each year in lost earnings, reduced productivity and lower tax revenue.
Yet for years, much of this instability has remained hidden.
A New Way of Seeing Stability
To better understand what’s been happening beneath the surface, Milwaukee Succeeds launched the Stability Project – a first-of-its-kind effort that brings together data, PhotoVoice and focus groups to provide a holistic view of the sector. A key part of this work is a set of new ECE-specific metrics – churn, stability and closure – developed by the Milwaukee Succeeds data team. Together, these metrics fill a major measurement gap, providing a new way to assess what’s happening in the field.
Feedback from our advisory group – which includes the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), 4C for Children, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF), the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, UW-Milwaukee and MATC – helped to further refine these metrics, grounding them in the realities of the ECE sector.
Until now, there hasn’t been a way to track how stable our child care system actually is. Thanks to these metrics we’re finally able to see the full story. And it all starts with churn.
What is Churn – and Why Does it Matter?
In business and education, churn is already a familiar concept.
“Churn is just a way to track how often people or organizations are entering or leaving a system,” said Kristin Kappelman, director of research at Milwaukee Succeeds. “We see this kind of metric used all the time in business, like how many customers a company loses – and in education, with student mobility. Yet up until now, we haven’t had this for ECE.”
Previously, we relied on the total number of open child care programs to understand the state of the ECE sector. But that number hides much of what’s happening beneath the surface. By tracking both program openings and closings over the course of a year, churn provides a clearer picture of movement within the system – and the instability that movement creates.
“Let’s say 50 ECE programs close and 50 new ones open. On paper, it looks stable, with no net change,” Kappelman said. “But in reality, that’s hundreds of families scrambling to find new care, and 50 programs gone from our community. For families this means a loss of care, then the stress and time it takes to find a new program. And for employers, that means their employees can’t come to work – or they’re coming to work stressed and distracted.”
This is the kind of disruption that doesn’t show up in traditional data. That’s why churn is so important: It captures what traditional counts often miss.
What the Data Tells Us
When we apply the churn metric to Milwaukee, a stark reality emerges. Over the past decade, the churn rate for ECE programs in Milwaukee has ranged from 30% to 41%. This means that in any given year, more than one-third of programs are either opening or closing.
Across the rest of Wisconsin, churn rates are significantly lower – ranging from 16% to 22%. Even more telling, Milwaukee’s lowest churn rate is still higher than the state’s highest. This points to a level of instability that is both persistent and uniquely concentrated.
“The consistently high churn rate – even in years when overall provider counts appeared stable – is striking,” said Paula Drew, director of ECE policy and research at WECA and a member of the Stability Project advisory group. “It reinforces that the system experiences constant movement beneath the surface, and that a stable provider count can mask significant instability.”
Why This Matters Now
Understanding churn isn’t just about better data – it’s about better decision-making. By identifying where instability is happening and how often programs are turning over, this metric gives advocates, policymakers and system leaders a stronger foundation to act.
“By tracking provider churn, resources can be strategically deployed to support ECE programs and maintain family access to child care,” said Samantha Reynoso, Milwaukee Succeeds’ research and evaluation manager.
And when paired with focus groups and qualitative research, churn does more than measure change – it helps explain it.
“I think the most important contribution of this work is that it makes instability visible,” Drew said. “It challenges the assumption that replacing closed programs with new ones is sufficient and instead centers program persistence as a core policy goal.”
That shift matters – because the first step toward addressing instability is being able to see it clearly.
Building Toward Solutions
The churn metric is just the beginning. Alongside stability (the number of programs open through an entire calendar year) and closure rates, it’s part of a broader effort to better understand how the ECE system is functioning and where it’s under strain.
Together, these metrics lay the groundwork for identifying patterns, understanding root causes and developing solutions that support both our early educators and our families.
“Overall, the data help paint a more comprehensive picture of what is happening within the ECE system,” Drew said. “What gets measured gets managed better – with right-sized and place-based solutions.”
This work is about more than numbers. It’s about ensuring that families have access to consistent care, that early educators can sustain their programs and that communities can continue to flourish – even in the face of change.
