Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agencies are striving to design and implement policies to meet families’ child care needs and address gaps identified by the community. The Urban Institute (Urban) and the District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) engaged in several activities supported through a planning grant to assess the implementation and outcomes of OSSE’s innovative child care subsidy rate and payment policies to enhance access to quality child care. The research team, led by a team of researchers at Urban and a co–principal investigator from OSSE, examined whether these policies are being implemented as intended and are associated with increases in quality child care access. During the planning period, the team piloted approaches to evaluating child care subsidy policy implementation and outcomes in the District of Columbia. These policies were designed to enhance equitable access to affordable quality child care for families who need financial support to be able to work or attend school. We learned about designing and conducting research on changes to subsidy rates, co-payments, and how to best assess their effects on parents, providers, agency staff in DC, and broader system components. The report describes the promising approaches we employed to develop a plan to evaluate the District of Columbia’s innovative subsidy system. We share these lessons to offers insights to guide other researchers designing evaluations on this topic. (author abstract)