Use this calculator to help estimate the annual cost and revenue for full- or part-time care at the program and per-child level.
For example, the PCQC can help you answer:
The PCQC lets you create scenarios showing different provider types, manage those scenarios, and print reports of your work. If you create an account, you can save multiple scenarios so you can compare them. National and state-specific data from sources such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are built into the tool as default values, but you can adjust values as needed for your local area. You can also find more information in the user guide, which you can always find in the top right corner of your screen.
This is the information you will need:
You can use the data collection template to organize your information first or enter your data directly into the PCQC.
The Provider Cost of Quality Calculator was developed by the Office of Child Care’s National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance with funds from Grant #90TA0002-05-02 for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care and Office of Head Start. This resource may be duplicated for noncommercial uses without permission.
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Begin using the Provider Cost of Quality Calculator (PCQC) by selecting your state or territory. Then open each section and fill it in. You will be able to see information about your classroom in the table below as you fill out each section. If you need to save your information and come back to it later, please make an account.
On this page you will enter information and costs associated with your teachers and staff.
The PCQC bases average annual wages on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the state or territory you selected. You can find the BLS occupation titles in the PCQC User Guide.
For each position, assign a salary and select whether the position is full-time (40 hours per week), half-time (20 hours per week), or select none if your center doesn’t have that position.
The PCQC offers two optional salaries for program staff. You can use one of these options or enter a different salary.
The director and educational coordinator’s Salary Option 1 is your state’s average annual wage for education administrators from the BLS. The administrative assistant’s Salary Option 1 is your state’s minimum wage. Salary Option 2 for each of these positions is a consistent percentage increase.
To add more staff members, use the “Add Staff” button to enter their title and full or half-time status.
Teachers and assistant teachers are added based on the ratios and group sizes you entered in your classroom information.
The PCQC offers three optional salaries for teachers and teaching assistants. Salary Option 1 for teachers is your state’s average annual wage for preschool teachers. Option 3 for teachers is your state’s average annual wage for kindergarten teachers. Option 2 is the midpoint between Options 2 and 3. Salary Option 1 for assistant teachers is your state’s average annual wage for childcare workers. Options 2 and 3 apply the same percentage increase as is applied for teachers.
Enter your annual non-personnel and operational costs here. This page includes default values for non-personnel items based on the average cost for these items across a wide range of programs. You can use these defaults or change them based on your experience and the data you have for your location.
Per-classroom items are expressed in dollars per square foot and are based on the size of an average classroom.
To figure out typical classroom size, estimate 80 square feet per child. This includes the classroom, storage, hallways, bathrooms, office, and other non-classroom spaces. Or if you have the total square footage of your site, estimate by dividing the total square footage of the site by your number of classrooms.
The default square footage value uses 80-square feet per child and assumes that a classroom has on average 16 children.
Enter tuition, subsidy rates, and other revenue that applies to the cost of child care for each classroom age group.
Many states have Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) that set the standards for quality improvement. These systems help improve the quality of child care and early learning programs. Regardless of if your state has a QRIS, you can use the PCQC levels to see how higher salaries, lower ratios, or other changes might affect your program.
There are five quality levels available for you to model as well as a baseline level. The baseline level shows quality related information you have entered up until now. You can go to each level and either copy your baseline information into that level and make a few adjustments to your data, or by entering new numbers from scratch in each level.
Quality cost drivers fall into three categories:
Enter the number of children per adult for each classroom and the maximum group size that you expect for this quality level.
If you would like to add classrooms to estimate expanding your center at this quality level, please add the classroom on the Classroom Information page where you first named your classrooms. Enter “0” for any quality levels where you don’t have that class.
If benefits are provided at this quality level, enter the employer’s annual contribution amount per employee to cover health insurance and other benefits.
Enter the annual salary for each staff member for this quality level.
If you would like to add more staff, please add them on the Personnel page. If there are any staff members you don’t want at this quality level, enter “0” as their salary.
The PCQC includes 10 paid holidays and 5 days (40 hours) of paid time off for all center staff and 20 hours of annual staff training time. You can also include the cost of training fees for each staff member. Total additional staff time reflects the time that teaching staff are out of the classroom, either because their shifts ended or because they are working on activities such as curriculum planning or parent-teacher conferences.