A recent shift of the child care subsidy program to the Maryland State Department of Education in 2006 has allowed for increased collaboration among the child care licensing, subsidy, and credentialing offices and the State education system. The goal of this project is to examine associations between child care subsidy receipt and kindergarteners' school readiness. The three main components of this project include: (1) enhancing and analyzing administrative data; (2) contextualizing findings from administrative data through findings from focus groups; and (3) building a research consortium with the goal of refining early childhood education policy. Research questions include: (1) How do children who received a child care subsidy the year prior to kindergarten perform on assessments of school readiness upon kindergarten entry? How do these children compare with children from low-income families who did not receive a subsidy?; (2) How do parents and community-based child care providers define high quality care and school readiness? What challenges and supports do providers experience when preparing children for kindergarten?; and (3) What is the quality of providers who accept child care subsidies, and those who actually serve subsidized children throughout the state?