For working parents, few things are as scary as choosing the right daycare. Besides separation anxiety, parents worry that their kids might be neglected or develop bad habits. So naturally you'd think all parents would pick the best-rated child care provider they could. Well, you'd be wrong.

In Indiana, more than a third of families who receive child care subsidies use providers that aren't vetted by the state. The state rates providers based on health, safety and education standards on a sliding scale of 1 to 4 in a system called Paths to QUALITY. But about 35 percent still pick providers without the state's stamp of approval. That got officials in Indiana's Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning wondering what they could do to increase participation.....

.....Indiana is the latest to use behavioral science, which is becoming more common in state and local government. For the past six years, the Administration for Children and Families has funded more than a dozen projects in seven states, including Oklahoma. Several of the experiments have resulted in modest successes that state officials consider victories because they come with a small price tag and would be easy to expand.

Indeed, Indiana's experiment was both affordable and easy. The approach boiled down to trying different communication strategies that might encourage greater uptake of high-quality providers. MDRC, a social policy research organization and a federal contractor, designed and evaluated the experiment. About 12,600 families -- all on waiting lists to receive a child care voucher -- were divided into two "treatment" groups and one "control" group. The treatment groups consisted of parents who received a special mailing and a follow-up phone call about quality-rated providers, and parents who only received the special mailing. The control group was made up of parents who received the standard letter and brochure that the state had already been sending to parents.....

.....Among parents who received both the special mailing and the phone call, their choice of high-quality providers was higher than the control group --14.7 percent compared to 12.6 percent. The difference was statistically significant at the 10 percent level, meaning that the higher uptake was probably related to tactics the MDRC employed and not chance. If expanded across the state, MDRC estimates that 810 more children on vouchers would receive high-quality care.....

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