Data sources
Early childhood sources and credits
Bellwork's Head Start programs come from the Office of Head Start's national dataset, with grant dates and dollars from USAspending. Its childcare centers, licensed and license-exempt, come from each state's own lists. Each source is listed here with its publisher and the license it is published under.
National sources
Contains information from the Head Start Service Location Dataset, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL).
Childcare centers, by state
Child development center data from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, District of Columbia.
This publication was developed using New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Geographic Information System digital data, but this secondary product has not been verified by NJDEP and is not state-authorized or endorsed.
Contains information from Vermont Child Care Provider Data, published by the Vermont Department for Children and Families, Child Development Division, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL).
How we read them
Bellwork reads only what each publisher makes openly available: downloads, open data portals, public map layers and the data a public search page gives every visitor. It follows each site's robots.txt and terms and does not get around a CAPTCHA or a login. A state that publishes its list only on request is loaded when its public records office sends the file. Family childcare homes are not included. Where a state does not publish a field, such as capacity or a director, Bellwork leaves it empty rather than estimating it.