was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .��

Parents, you’re not imagining it: The cost of child care is rising. By a lot.

The average annual cost of care in 2024 was $13,128, a 29 percent increase since 2020 — outpacing even inflation. That’s according to an from Child Care Aware, a national child care advocacy group that calculates average prices every year.

The rapid rise of child care costs is swallowing larger portions of families’ income. On average, a married couple earning the median annual income in their state is draining about 10 percent of their earnings on child care. A single parent spends 35 percent of their income on child care.

In some states, it’s a lot worse. For a married couple with an infant in center-based care, by share of median income are Hawaii (17.9 percent), California (16.3 percent), Maryland (15.8 percent), Oregon (15.5 percent) and Nebraska (15.1 percent). In those states, single parents earning the median income are paying about half their earnings on child care.

That means child care costs are rivaling home costs as the top line item in most family budgets. In 45 states and Washington, D.C., child care for two kids costs more than a mortgage. In 49 states and D.C., child care for two surpasses what families pay in rent.

For years, the list of states where parents are likely to pay more for an infant’s care than higher education has been growing. According to Child Care Aware, the cost of center-based infant care exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in 41 states now. The organization uses three methodologies to arrive at its average, looking at price, supply of child care providers and the number of child care spots, pooling data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to arrive at its annual price analysis.

“Child care prices are a sizable part of family budgets — they are by no means under control for the majority of families,” said Anne Hedgepeth, chief of policy and advocacy at Child Care Aware. “If we are going to talk about family budgets, and if we want to talk about things you could solve for family budgets: Make a dent in child care prices. You would really bring down one of those highest costs or expenses for a family.”

Child care remains so expensive because of staff needs and federal investment. To preserve the safety of babies and toddlers, centers are required by law to have more teachers in the classroom. The federal is one person for every three to four infants and young toddlers, and one person for every seven when you get up to 3-year-olds, but each state sets its own ratio. That’s different from a kindergarten classroom, where classes may have one teacher for every 20 kids, for instance. The costs of employing that many people are also not offset by substantial federal, state and local investment like public education is subsidized. So parents are left footing the bill, and centers can only pay their teachers about minimum wage to keep costs as low as possible. Profit margins at centers are only

For years, the United States has toyed with the idea of investing more broadly in child care. Currently, the federal government only covers some costs for very low-income families — and even then only about are able to access subsidized care. But broader proposals that go as far as introducing a “universal” child care system have repeatedly been .

After the pandemic, when , the United States got as close as it ever has to investing more broadly in the industry. Through September 2023, states received a historic investment of $24 billion in stabilization grants that helped keep centers open and raise wages for teachers at .

But after those funds ran out, Congress did not allocate any additional resources.

Among families, there is broad support for more federal and state investment in child care, regardless of political party. In a nationally representative Child Care Aware , 82 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents and 68 percent of Republicans said they want their elected officials to increase funding for child care and early learning.

That support is also resounding among men. Another nationally representative found that 90 percent of men, including 87 percent of Republicans, are in favor of ensuring families have access to affordable care.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have grown somewhat more vocal in their support of child care investments. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said he supported child care but didn’t offer any policy proposals for improving affordability or access. Former President Joe Biden proposed a $400 million child care package that included universal preschool, but it .

At the moment, the closest the Trump administration could come to a child care investment is an update to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a tax break for families on their child care expenses that could be in the final version of Currently, most families only get an average tax break of about (the maximum parents can claim for one child is $1,050), which doesn’t do much to offset child care costs that easily run into the thousands. A bipartisan effort in the Senate to update the tax credit could get added into the package. (The House version that passed in May did not include it). The Senate’s Child Care Availability and Affordability Act would increase the maximum amount parents can get back in their taxes through the credit to .

Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said improving the tax credit is a good policy move for the families that benefit from it, but ultimately it doesn’t solve the problems facing the child care industry as a whole.

“It’s one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Kashen said. “If you can’t afford to lay out the money up front to pay for child care, then it doesn’t help you that you have a refundable tax credit.”

Advocates worry child care has so far been a footnote in this administration. In April, a leaked version of Trump’s budget called for , the federally-funded program that provides early learning and other services to half a million very low-income preschoolers ages 3 to 5. After from child care providers and parents across the country, the proposal was ultimately withdrawn.

“It tells us a little bit of what it looks like when policy makers — in particular, members of Congress and members of the administration — hear about child care from the constituents, and what they heard was how much of a non-starter it is to eliminate these core early learning services in every district across the country,” said Hedgepeth of Child Care Aware.

Still, it will likely be a battle to keep the existing child care safety net — a battle increasingly at odds with the majority of American parents who are looking for relief on child care costs.

Because the reality is simple, Hedgepeth said:  “This is not what people are looking for.”

The closure of a child care program can be devastating to children, families and the early educators who staff them. When a number of programs owned and operated by the same company — often referred to as a child care chain — start closing in rapid succession, it becomes cause for alarm and deserves attention. That’s what’s happening with , as multiple sites around the country are closing. This episode, which is one of the first illustrations in the U.S. of what can happen when a for-profit child care chain goes sideways, calls for close scrutiny. 

Guidepost Montessori is a network of more than 130 Montessori-inspired child care programs and schools serving children ages birth to 18, with most programs focusing on children under 6 years old, according to its website. Most sites are located in the U.S., with some abroad. The network is owned and operated by Higher Ground Education, an education management company that is backed by tens of millions of dollars in . Higher Ground Education pursues what one of its funders refers to as a “hyper-scaling” approach, and founder and CEO Ray Girn () once drew an , telling EdSurge in 2020, “I think that there is an opportunity to achieve [with Guidepost] what ride-sharing apps or Airbnb have achieved: show the world another way of doing education at a sufficient scale.” 

Yet just since the beginning of 2025, at least 16 closures have been reported by local news outlets: Guidepost has announced in Colorado (and paused a sixth site that was slated to open) as well as three sites in , two in , two in , and sites in , , and . These closures follow others that occurred abruptly last year in and in (the latter allegedly as a response to staff unionization attempts). Importantly, these are just the known closures that have been publicly reported in the news. In a Feb. 28 on the Higher Ground Education Substack, where the company shares weekly memos, new co-CEO Maris Mendes acknowledged that the company is “in the midst of closing nearly 1/3 of the school communities that have so lovingly been built over the past 9 years.”

According to Mendes, the driving force behind the closures is the same hyper-scaling strategy Higher Ground’s investors saw as a selling point; she writes that, “In our eagerness to meet the vast vision of our mission, we overextended ourselves, growing our school network beyond what we could effectively support, both financially and operationally.” Specifically, the company is struggling to pay rent to landlords. Last year, after reportedly missing multiple rent payments, spurring the landlords to change the locks. In December 2024, Guidepost in Missouri for nearly $240,000 in non-payment of rent and “unlawful detainer” of the premises by Guidepost.

Similarly, to about the Colorado closures, Guidepost asserted that “Our organization struggled to raise the capital necessary to support our schools, the majority of which were still recovering [from the pandemic], and suffering major losses. At many schools, we were running losses of $50,000+ per month that our creditors were no longer willing to subsidize, and we’ve had to figure out how to manage. In some cases, our landlords have been able to help us navigate these difficulties. They have generously provided rent relief, or renegotiated lease terms, in order to help an individual school to overcome its challenges and reach a point of financial sustainability. In other cases, that hasn’t been possible.” 

The pandemic point is an interesting one. The pandemic certainly threw many child care programs for a loop, but it’s worth observing that through two funding rounds in January and April of 2021 and continued to open new sites at a rapid clip, suggesting an aggressive strategy despite the pandemic rather than one hobbled by it. 

The trouble Guidepost finds itself in is reminiscent of other child care chain collapses or near-collapses outside of the U.S. As I , large chains like Australia’s ABC Learning and the Netherlands’ Estro Group previously saw rapid and widespread closures due to financial mismanagement or overly aggressive growth. 

While much more remains to be investigated, Guidepost may be on the path toward becoming one of America’s most significant child care collapses. It’s unclear what the outcome will be for the network, but it’s certainly worth asking questions about how and why this happened, whether there are any problematic trends that reach beyond Guidepost and pose risks for other chains, and what can be done to stop a company relied on by so many families and educators from getting in this type of mess in the first place.

A startling statistic scrolls across the screen: “25 million parents in the United States rely on child care in order to get to work.” 

Jen Bradwell and Todd Boekelheide, husband-and-wife directors of “Make a Circle,” a new documentary about child care struggles and advocacy, say they extrapolated this estimate with the help of Krista Olson, formerly a researcher at (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. This discovery made them feel less alone, but it also gave them pause. As the parents of two children, now 12 and 8 years old, they knew from personal experience that the cost of child care can put a dent in the family budget and even impede careers. After digging deeper and learning how widespread the challenges are, they aspired to raise public awareness of the crisis and present a more complete picture of this broken system at work.

And the system is broken, according to Anne Bauer, director of the preschool in Berkeley, California where Bradwell and Boekelheide sent their children — and one of the early learning professionals interviewed in their film. “Parents can’t afford to pay. Teachers can’t afford to stay,” Bauer says — a line attributed to Marcy Whitebook, founder and co-director of CSCCE. 

Bradwell reflects on Bauer: “She has told me that most programs tend to center the children’s or the parents’ needs first. But a mentality shift is needed. We need to think about the teachers first and center their needs, so that they can then meet the needs of the kids and families.”

“Make a Circle” has been playing at film festivals over the past few months and the filmmakers have been taking part in screenings and conferences wherever advocates, educators and caregivers gather. PBS will show the film later this year, which will garner broader attention. “It’s a California story,” says Bradwell, “but it has a national lens and should feel relevant to people across the country.”

This is the couple’s first film as directors. Bradwell has edited numerous documentaries, and Boekelheide has edited picture and sound on a number of films and composed music for over a hundred documentaries.

“Make a Circle” began shooting in February of 2020, just a month before the pandemic shut everything down. “It was such a wrecking ball for the industry,” recalls Bradwell. “Initially, we had to ask ourselves if we should keep filming or not, but then it became apparent that yes, of course, this is such a big part of the story.” Shots of masked interactions between early educators and young children evoke a combination of admiration and renewed astonishment at what we endured.

Rather than telling their own family’s story, the filmmakers highlight the voices of a half dozen members of the early education workforce. That’s where providers like Patricia Moran enter the picture. Based in San Jose, California, Moran helped found , a union of early educators in California, about 20 years ago and serves on its negotiation committee today.

Moran, 65, tirelessly champions the early care and education workforce in her state, which includes a significant immigrant population (Immigrants comprise of the child care workforce in Los Angeles.) “We all come from different backgrounds. That’s how children start learning about different cultures, different language. It gives them healthy emotional development that is so important. Empathy is what the world needs right now,” Moran explains.

Bradwell marvels at Moran’s determination, saying, “She continues to fight and raise her voice despite all of these headwinds — being an immigrant, being a woman, being a non-native speaker with an accent, being someone whose profession is regarded as babysitting instead of educating. It’s an honor when people trust you with their story, and it’s something that we take really seriously as filmmakers.”

As a child growing up in Bolivia, Moran recalls how she saw her father fight for the rights of indigenous people and endure prison and torture as the state tried to silence his voice. “Justice was his passion,” she says. Later, as an adult, she remembers him revealing to her that he was afraid.

Much like her father, the activist and early educator is committed to her cause. In addition to her role with the union, she works as a full-time child care provider herself. She’s faced a number of health challenges, including rheumatoid arthritis and a knee replacement, but hasn’t let that slow down her campaign. She even persisted when a scar from an old surgery started bleeding. “I don’t have time to think about the pain,” she says. 

A high point in “Make a Circle” comes when the union wins as well as $80 million for a retirement fund and funding for healthcare and training. “It wasn’t easy,” admits Moran, “but we did it.”

At the same time, the documentary doesn’t feel like a “Rocky” story where the underdogs emerge victorious. One beloved and talented provider leaves for a better paying role in a public school. Others contemplate leaving for jobs in the fast food and service industries.

Without becoming didactic, the film makes a powerful case for early education. Lovingly shot classroom footage highlights the skill involved in this work, reinforcing well-known data about the importance of the early years for brain development as well as the economic arguments for investing in quality child care. As pandemic-era funding dries up, U.S. policy remains a glaring exception among wealthy nations.

“Other countries pay a lot more money and attention to early education than the United States does,” says Moran. “And that’s really sad.”

At the same time, Bradwell insists that the statistic about 25 million parents should give us hope. “It’s such a massive coalition that’s just waiting there to be tapped,” she says.

Various media outlets have exposed the and . This film gives the public a glimpse into the lived experiences of the early care and education workforce. A compelling documentary about a social crisis, Bradwell believes, has to do more than confront viewers with bleak statistics. She and Boekelheide shot hundreds of hours of footage in search of “the stories that stay with you.” As a filmmaker, she had to think like a caregiver. “Once a kid has a trusted connection,” she says, “that’s when they can learn anything. That relationship is so important, and storytelling is very much like that.”

Downstairs, six children are snacking on pretzels and apple slices. Chase explains that they spend a lot of time outside, adding that her curriculum is nature-based and the woods and backyard pond make it ideal for the kids to explore. 

For Chase, working in early childhood education is her “life’s passion for sure.” She worked as an early childhood educator for 10 years before deciding to open her own program in 2015. Chase recalls that she was working 50 to 60 hours a week when she first started, which drained her, so in 2016 she hired a staff member to help. 

Her program, which serves six children ages 3 to 5 has been successful over the years. Because the , she always has a waiting list, rarely has vacancies and doesn’t have to advertise. That’s why in 2024, she decided to expand her business from a registered family child care program with one classroom to a licensed facility with two. This shift would allow her to serve 12 children full time — double the number she can serve as a registered family child care provider. The process, which she kicked off this January, will take well over a year.

Chase explains her plans for the expansion. She’ll add a new room on the first floor, which will serve as a second classroom for infants and toddlers and the cubbies will move indoors. And to transition from a “registered” child care provider to a “licensed” one, she’s required to meet a number of complicated compliance regulations. She has to upgrade her septic wastewater system which will cost $55,000; deepen her well for more water storage capacity, which will cost $14,000; spend another $112,000 to expand the space; and pay an additional $6,500 to fence in the playground. 

Chase is adamant that this investment only makes financial sense because of , Vermont’s landmark bill to bring near-universal child care to the state. The bill, which passed in 2023, aimed to increase access to high-quality child care and stabilize the early care and education workforce, including supporting family child care programs. Act 76 brought changes to various areas of child care and early childhood education, including significant updates to the , which provides subsidy payments to providers for children from eligible families. Under CCFAP, subsidy payments vary by income and the number of children that families have in child care, but providers now get a higher rate per child than what they typically charge. Since most of the families Chase serves qualify for CCFAP, this change nearly doubles the amount of money she brings in each week for each child.

There are more than  in Vermont — including family child care and center-based care providers — who could be impacted by the changes to CCFAP. One of them, Sherry Boudro, has been caring for children in the basement of her home in Windsor, Vermont for more than 30 years. Her house lends itself well to running a family child care program. It has a separate entrance to the children’s space, though it’s still connected to her main house by an internal staircase. Two fluorescent sensory swings hang from the ceiling, and the room is brightly painted and lined with bookshelves. 

“Before Act 76 I was living paycheck to paycheck,” explains Boudro. Now, she has more than doubled her income. Boudro was charging families $150 per child per week; now she receives $364 per child per week — a portion of which is paid for by the state depending on each family’s financial assistance agreement. Windsor “doesn’t have a lot of high-paying jobs,” she explains, so she couldn’t charge families more money, even though she was working all the time and barely breaking even. The extra income she receives now is going toward her retirement. “I’m 60 years old and I have no retirement savings,” she says. She’s also planning to make some long-awaited repairs to the space, replacing carpets and fixing the ceiling tiles, which droop down.

Act 76 Benefits Most — But Not All — Providers

Act 76 is the “opportunity and social change of our lifetime,” says Aly Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids — the advocacy organization which spearheaded the bill’s passage. Richards, who has become the state’s chief champion of the bill and de-facto expert on how to bring a near-universal child care program to a state, outlines the success of Act 76 thus far. In its first year, the legislation created 1,000 new child care slots, nearly 50 new family child care programs, over 40 child care centers and 220 new early educator jobs. And in 2024, for the first time since 2018, more child care programs opened in the state than closed.

While ACT 76 has been a game changer for many child care providers in the state, not all have received the benefits. Tammie Hazlett, for example, runs a family child care in Vermont near the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Most of the families she serves work have well-paying jobs at the medical center and do not qualify for subsidies, so she isn’t able to collect the higher true-cost-of-care rates. Another provider, Apryl Blake, serves two children who come from a neighboring town in New Hampshire, so they aren’t eligible, and she hasn’t asked the rest of her families to apply. “I have a problem asking them for their financial information. Not my business,” she explains.

Chase says all but one of the families she serves receives a subsidy, and the one family that doesn’t feels excluded and resentful of the process. The mother is a teacher and the father works in the tech industry. They don’t consider themselves to be well-off and they say the cost of child care is still a major expense. 

For some longtime providers like Merry Ann Gilbert and Laura Butler, these changes may be coming too late. Gilbert is 59, and though her practice is winding down, she still takes care of five kids a week at her home in Milton, Vermont. She is looking to retire and spend more time with her four grandchildren but Act 76 is motivating her to stay another year or two to make additional money. 

Butler, 66, who has been a family child care provider for 33 years, is also missing out — the families she serves don’t qualify for subsidies because their incomes are too high. Vermont’s support for child care has assisted Butler in other ways though, including  she took on when she got a master’s degree. 

With a 6-month-old baby sleeping in her arms, a toddler resting on a nearby couch and another toddler playing in her living room, Butler shares that she is retiring in June and moving to South Carolina with her husband so they can be closer to her family. She says she has given the families in her program notice, encouraging them to seek out other child care options.

For years, Butler worked as an advocate in the effort to professionalize the work of child care providers — something that Vermont may be the first state to do. “When I would tell people I watched children, they’d say ‘oh you’re a babysitter,’” she says; her work wasn’t recognized as a profession, but that may soon change. In late 2023 the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children submitted an application to the state’s Office of Professional Regulation to make “early childhood education” a recognized profession; a  has been sent to the state Legislature for review in anticipation of introducing legislation, but Butler won’t be working in the field when it comes to fruition.

Butler has no resentment though.  She says she is ready for her next chapter and the warmer weather. “The next generation of providers will get the benefit,” she says. “I am satisfied that I worked hard for them.”

Her daughter, Ivonne Valadez Solano, was close to tears. With her newborn in one hand and her phone in the other, she frantically explained her problem. She had to leave for work but she couldn’t reach her mother-in-law, who had agreed to provide child care for her — and she had no other options because of the early hour.

Solano did not think twice. “Bring the baby to me. I’ll take care of her.”

Ivonne gave birth to her firstborn daughter in 2015. After her maternity leave ended, she searched desperately for child care. Center-based care was not an option because of her ; at the time, she was a supervisor at a major cafe chain and was expected to prepare the store for its 5 a.m. opening. 

With an almost hour-long commute in sprawling Los Angeles, she initially asked her mother-in-law to provide child care starting at 3 a.m. on the days she worked, but Ivonne had taken unpaid maternity leave, and with a lack of savings, she could not afford to compensate her. Her mother-in-law agreed to help for a few weeks, but was unable to take on an almost full-time child care job without pay for longer than that.

Fearful of jeopardizing her job, Ivonne turned to the person she could always count on: her mother.

The emergency 3 a.m. phone call between Solano and her daughter has led to nearly 10 years of consistent child care. Child care arrangements like that of the Solano family are considered “Family, Friend and Neighbor” (FFN) care. It is the most type of non-parental child care in the United States. It is by families of all races, ethnicities and income levels, and is particularly among immigrant and multilingual families. 

In California, FFN care is , so families who choose this type of care must know and trust the caregiver. Families who work nontraditional hours are to rely on an FFN caregiver — often a — to fill the gaps left by institutional child care, such as center-based and school settings. 

“Families across demographics are using FFN care,” says ​​Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a collaborative of funders focused on home-based care. “It is particularly important to communities of color because workers of color are disproportionately [working] in jobs that have unpredictable or nontraditional schedules. 

“We need to tell the stories of families who choose and rely on FFN caregivers, and acknowledge how children thrive and benefit from that loving and culturally appropriate care. We have to confront and dispel assumptions around who’s part of the child care system.”

The Case of the Solano Family

In 2005, Reina Solano immigrated to Los Angeles from Mexico. Her goal was to make money to send back to her four children, including Ivonne, who remained in Mexico with her extended family. She ended up planting roots in the city, and in time, got married and had two more children.

Ivonne immigrated to LA a few years later when she was twenty years old. She hoped to study English and further her studies in computer science and engineering, but soon found it was not that simple. Navigating the limited free adult education centers was difficult. She eventually found a program that fit her learning style, but it was almost a two-hour round-trip commute from her home via public transportation. She found a job at a fast food restaurant to pay for her transportation, but the restaurant was an hour and a half from her school by bus. 

It was all too much. Between the fixed schedule of her courses, the graveyard shift at her new job, and navigating the bus routes, Ivonne only studied a few months before deciding to drop the courses. 

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” she says. “But I needed to move forward.”

Ivonne has since worked in customer service roles. She and her partner, who she met during her first stint in fast food, moved in together before she became pregnant in 2014. 

Now, they juggle overlapping schedules that make institutional child care arrangements difficult. Ivonne works long day shifts in operations support at Los Angeles International Airport Thursday through Monday. Her partner has fluctuating hours with a pastry service Tuesday through Saturday. This leaves a significant gap in before- and after-school care for their children, which is exacerbated during the summer months. 

The couple continues to lean on Ivonne’s mother for their child care needs. Solano cares for her two grandchildren, Delilah and Mark, ages 9 and 5, in addition to her own two children, ages 7 and 13. In 2021, when the children returned to in-person schooling after COVID-19 restrictions eased, Solano began picking up short shifts at a local laundromat to supplement her income. On days her shifts cannot fit around the children’s school hours, she supervises them at the laundromat while she works. 

To this day, Solano refuses to ask for compensation from her daughter for the child care she provides, and she wouldn’t accept it if it was offered.

“She’s my daughter, and they are my grandchildren. How can I charge her?” Solano said.

This past school year, Solano cared for her two grandchildren overnight from Thursdays to Saturdays. Her mornings were busy. She dropped Delilah off at the local elementary school and then walked her children to the local middle and high schools. Mark remained home with her until February, when he began , part of California’s move towards universal preschool. 

Throughout the summer months, Solano took care of her grandchildren almost every day while her daughter was at work.

“In my culture, there is a tradition for families to support each other. It’s an asset to children for their grandparents to be in their lives,” Solano explained. “I am proud to help raise my grandchildren. I am teaching them our culture, our language. I take care to build their confidence [and] their self-esteem. If their parents cannot make it to a school event, I go. When Delilah asks me about my childhood in Mexico and follows up every question with another, I have the patience to answer.”

FFN caregivers often the cultural backgrounds of the families they serve, whether they are related to the children or not. As with the Solano family, this brings a of care that is preferred by families. 

“An FFN caregiver can provide flexibility… They can bring cultural assets and trusting relationships,” said Anna Powell, Senior Research and Policy Associate with the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. “In this case, grandma can provide a hot meal in her home that reflects the family’s cultural traditions. Grandma can provide bath time and bedtime, which other types of child care settings often cannot. This is in contrast to how policy and research often view FFN care, which is the worst option available or a family’s last resort. This is out of step with what families believe and value,” Powell adds.

When stakeholders discuss the child care system, they often refer to institutional forms of care. FFN care is an essential part of this system, too. It should not be forgotten or excluded from conversations about the child care system and how to support families and caregivers.

“If you have a child, or you have a child in your life, you probably know what FFN care is,” Renew said. “When we start talking about FFNs, we ask people: Who cared for you as a young child? Who cared for your children?”

Pseudonyms were used above to protect the identities of children; writing for this article was supported by the Better Life Lab at New America.

“The home is a warmer atmosphere for babies, infants and young toddlers,” Reaves says. “I’ve had a commercial space in the past, and this is more comfortable for babies.” The families she serves feel it too. Many of them stay in touch with Reaves long after their children have aged out of her program. Over the years, as the babies she cared for have grown into young adults, she’s been invited to high school and college graduations and even to baby showers.

Home-based child care is the , but these programs are increasingly difficult to operate. , Reaves has a side hustle to stay afloat: She’s a licensed insurance agent.

A pilot program funded by philanthropic dollars insulates early educators like Reaves from the income volatility that stems from challenges accessing public child care funding, such as subsidies and grants. Thanks to a guiding states to improve payment practices for child care providers, the approach could one day be scaled nationally.

Designed in 2021 and launched in 2022 by , a national funder collaborative centered on home-based care, the deposits $500 per month in the bank accounts of 45 providers in Philadelphia, in cooperation with the . Pilots are also running in and New York City, with plans for southwest Pennsylvania and Los Angeles in the works.

“It’s a guarantee,” explains Natalie Renew, Home Grown’s executive director. “Folks can expect that they’re going to be paid consistently throughout the project period.” 

Guaranteed income efforts such as the Thriving Providers Project only work if transferring dollars from the funders to providers is predictable and reliable. If the system malfunctions and payments don’t make it where they’re supposed to, then trust declines in public subsidies and in government as a solution. Renew recounts how the state of Pennsylvania transferred its subsidy management contract to a new vendor earlier this year, . (Missouri recently encountered a similar hiccup.) Because of these delays, she adds, many providers in Philadelphia couldn’t have paid rent without the Thriving Provider Project deposits.

Understanding the importance of selecting a reliable payment system, Renew facilitated a solicitation process for the project that included community interviews. (a civic tech organization) became the payment partner, transferring the cash that allows a solo provider to address unforeseen events that can derail operations. According to Beam CEO David Helene, the company is more than a technology platform. “Technology is part of it,” he says, “but program design, community empathy, showing up — these are also critical components to make these programs a success.”

Nobody thinking about opening a child care business in their home should do it for the money, Reaves cautions. Indeed, profit margins are increasingly thin. , a North Carolina provider who receives funding through the Thriving Providers Project, “At the end of the day, I am both the CEO and the janitor for my business. I’m also the cook, the curriculum specialist and the tax preparer. I have a master’s degree and run a five-star program, but after all the expenses I average about $14 an hour.”

According to the , authored by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, 43% of families of early educators rely on public assistance programs like food stamps and Medicaid. So what happens to those benefits when $500 lands in a bank account? When they enroll in the pilot, participants receive benefits counseling to help them learn about strategies that can help prevent benefits they may have, like housing vouchers or food stamps, from being interrupted. 

There are also local efforts to mitigate interruption. In Reaves’ state, for example, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services collaborates with local guaranteed income projects to communicate any potential impact on public assistance benefits and eligibility to participants and County Assistance Offices. Some states have also instituted waivers to exempt participants in guaranteed income pilots, shielding them from loss of benefits while receiving the additional cash. 

Renew adds that tools like Beam were at the forefront of moving pandemic funding quickly to affected groups. “We’ve seen it work,” she asserts, noting the potential for scalability across systems. “Child care providers who operate on negligible margins often go hungry, face housing instability, are overloaded with debt and are fighting to stay afloat. If we want to maintain supply and meet families’ needs, then timely payments need to be a part of a toolkit of supports to the field.” 

In March 2024, Home Grown published a with lessons learned from the first year of the project in Colorado. One participant of the project shared, “I am the only one working [in my household], and I do find myself in a tight spot financially. … It has helped me a lot with bills, buying food and certainly sometimes even food for the children I care for.” 

For Reaves, the money makes it possible for her to pay a neighbor to cover for her when she has a personal appointment or needs time for self-care. That could be an exercise class or a manicure. “If you don’t take care of yourself,” she states, “there’s no taking care of anyone else.” 

She also notes that the extra $500 a month constitutes a meaningful acknowledgment of the importance of her profession: “They’re recognizing that, wow, these people are working hard.”

I want to be crystal clear up front: It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the Trump administration’s approach to child care policy from its broader set of policies impacting families. If the President-elect makes good on his threats , we  that many children will be harmed. Similarly, if the Republican-led Congress pays for a  with , the negative impacts to low- and moderate-income families will dwarf any modest changes to child care policy. (Indeed, a  of cuts the House plans to pursue spares child care and Head Start but includes a host of measures that would likely harm this population.)

Quite frankly, it is unlikely that Trump himself has child care much on his radar. In his first term, Ivanka Trump was the driving force behind steps like the , while Trump’s  to a child care question during the 2024 campaign demonstrated a thin understanding at best. Ivanka  to play a substantial role in the administration this time around, and although most child care policy sits within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), it’s not apt to be high on the  for HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (although as a presidential candidate, Kennedy had a rather , calling for free care for all families with young children living below the poverty line).

The most pivotal actors on child care are, in my estimation, Vice President-elect JD Vance and a handful of GOP Senators. Vance represents a  that is ostensibly more concerned with strong families than pure economic growth, and  if done in a pluralistic fashion. Similarly, several Senators — perhaps most notably Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.,who is the incoming chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala. — stand to play major agenda-setting roles.

Considering the , a plausible child care agenda for Trump’s second presidency may include some or all of the below points. Note that I exclude the  on the Child Tax Credit; while its fate will of course have an impact on families and the government’s overall budgetary math, it is a broad family support policy, . I also want to reiterate this is not a list of my personal policy preferences, but what I expect may realistically be on the docket:

• An Expanded Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: In July 2024, Britt , alongside Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would among other things expand the maximum benefit for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and make it refundable. This would represent a major improvement on a clunky credit  goes to families making over $100,000 a year.
• True Cost-of-Care Reimbursements: In August 2024, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., along with , introduced  (CCDBG). Among other steps, this legislation would require all states to adopt true “cost-of-care models” to set their subsidy reimbursement rates. That would represent a massive improvement over the  in which reimbursement rates are set as a percentage of what states determine programs currently charge in an artificially depressed market. Several states have already made this switch. There are trade-offs here, as implementing a cost-of-care model (which would significantly increase per-child reimbursement rates) without putting more money into CCDBG would likely result in fewer families being served — in essence, squeezing on two sides of a too-small balloon. 
• Regulation Streamlining: Deregulating child care  for not wanting to fix the structural problems in the system — and in the worst cases, can . However, over the decades, regulations have stacked up such that the costs of some outweigh the benefits. For instance, states variously dictate a minimum height of fencing around playgrounds, minimum inches of ground cover, and floor areas in which carpeting is acceptable; licensing checklists . There are also zoning and housing regulations that . North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx and Washington Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez recently  to remove certain regulations around food preparation for child care providers. While I believe the entire topic should be approached cautiously, we may well see more bills in this vein. 
• More Support for Employer-Sponsored Child Care: I have  around the trend of leaning on employers as a core child care solution, as opposed to positioning them as advocates for universal solutions which include corporate taxation. That said, there’s little question that promoting employer-sponsored care has been a popular strategy for both parties in recent years. To that end, another part of the Britt-Kaine proposal would majorly increase what is known as the , which defrays company costs for providing child care benefits to their employees.
• Stronger Policies for Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) Caregivers and Stay-at-Home Parents: Vance and other conservative thinkers — as well as  — have pointed out that federal child care policy tends to privilege licensed programs over “informal care.” While FFN caregivers are technically eligible to receive CCDBG subsidies, the process can be arduous . Current policy is also silent on stay-at-home parents. Various proposals have popped up in the last year to treat FFN caregivers and stay-at-home parents more fairly, such as Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s proposal to pay all FFNs a minimum of $15 per hour and provide a monthly stipend of $300 for stay-at-home parents and Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla. proposal to make CCDBG subsidies more readily available for certain members of these groups and at higher rates. It’s important for policymakers to keep in mind that this is not an either-or equation. Parent choice cuts both ways and more federal support is needed for both licensed and unlicensed providers, for families  and families where parents work outside the home. 

It’s impossible to know what Trump’s second presidency will mean for child care. We are in the midst of  and it’s a highly variable situation with a wide range of possible outcomes. Child care could be put on the backburner entirely; Head Start funding could still get caught in the budgetary crosshairs; the child care system could be consumed by across-the-board cuts to discretionary funding. As we enter 2025, and more becomes clear in the coming months, I look forward to unpacking the news together.

The partnership, initiated by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, and now funded by seven other philanthropic organizations, has raised $9.6 million to date. The group was spurred by a clause in the  of 2022, which is intended to expand manufacturing in the U.S. (CHIPS stands for “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors.”)  

The bill requires manufacturers applying for over $150 million in CHIPS funding to submit plans to provide child care for both facility and construction workers. Jonathan Hui, a senior program officer at The Kresge Foundation, credits designers of the package for “capturing the link between infrastructure and child care that is often underlooked.” 

Katie Beckmann, the national policy director at the Packard Foundation, agrees that this intersection is key. “This isn’t only about expansion and creation of manufacturing in parts of the country that have often been left behind,” Beckmann says. “Business begets business, which further drives the need for quality, affordable child care in these communities. Ultimately, we hope this work will strengthen our argument for additional public dollars to be put into child care. It also has the potential to enlist small and big businesses as allies.”

The philanthropic partnership was announced in June 2024 at the inaugural National Child Care Innovation Summit, an event centered on the critical role of child care for working parents. During the summit, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said, “Child care is not only a social issue or a ‘women’s issue.’ It is also an economic issue. In fact, I’d argue it’s one of the most critical economic issues affecting families, businesses and communities today. The lack of investment in our care infrastructure is costing us dearly. There’s a generation of Americans in their prime working years caught between their jobs and caring for children or elderly relatives.”

The partnership aims to increase child care supply and improve the quality of care and is beginning with pilots in Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and New Hampshire. Child care is especially hard to find in these four states, and employees showing up to build or operate the new facilities will need help locating and paying for safe and supportive child care settings so that their children can thrive while they work.

The foundations are developing their plans in collaboration with leaders and advocates in each state. “We’re coming together and co-creating child care solutions that expand child care supply and enhance quality,” says Beckmann, who adds that designing solutions that meet the needs of the whole community takes time and patience.

“We need a national strategy for early childhood,” Hui argues, “in the sense that there needs to be a national commitment to investing in early childhood, but how that shows up in community is deeply contextual.” 

Existing infrastructure and relationships in each state will help the partnership to identify opportunities and connect the dots among: 

• Businesses: This includes the manufacturer, child care providers and other community businesses that play a role in the local economy. 
• Governments: This includes state and local departments and elected officials who can provide guidance on the regulatory environment in which new child care programs will arise. 
• Advocates: This includes groups representing the interests of families and child care providers who can share insights that can inform investments and decisions.
• Funding Leaders: This includes, most notably, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which are uniquely suited to blend and grade federal and state funding streams to get the maximum benefit out of each public and private investment.

Learning from Past Partnerships

The Investing in America Child Care Partnership intends to draw lessons from existing and emerging solutions that are already underway. For example, while not part of the partnership, a new facility on Detroit’s east side embodies the type of project that CDFIs can help usher into existence. The 15,000-square-foot McClellan Early Childhood Center features eight classrooms providing 96 new seats for early learners. This project, which took five years to implement and cost $8.75 million, offers the stakeholders involved in the partnership a road map for realizing plans in partnership with community.

“The lessons learned from building McClellan are going to be critical to how we think about blending and braiding facilities funding,” says Hui.

Kirby Burkholder, president of core business solutions at , the CDFI that facilitated the , explains that CDFIs have a unique value for the ecosystem: “Manufacturers use language like ‘employee attraction, employee retention, employee satisfaction.’ We use language like ‘transformational community development, aligning programmatic and facilities quality.’ But we’re talking about the same thing. We’re the translators.” 

Burkholder says CDFIs like IFF (which just wrapped up  $59 million of American Rescue Plan money through the state of Michigan that went out to 1,005 providers),   and the  organize and activate capital. “That’s how government money reaches Main Street,” he explains. “We’re CDFIs that have evolved a whole infrastructure, with a community and data insights team that does the needs analysis that informs decision making.” 

Taking time to listen and collaborate does not detract from the urgency of the crisis that the partnership is tackling. “Across the country,” Hui notes, “working families are worrying every day about the trade off between providing high-quality care for their children and being able to enter or reenter the workforce or stay in the workforce.” 

Successful partnerships, he maintains, will generate not just an increased supply of quality child care in the communities they are targeting but also “longstanding systems solutions that really change how our country thinks about child care.”

At a time when government funding of all kinds —  — could be under scrutiny, philanthropic support can make a difference in making sure investments work on the local level. 

Beckmann notes an additional benefit of success: “Demonstrating that government can work for its people. This is an important moment to learn about what works and doesn’t work in creating a child care ecosystem that helps children and families thrive.” 

One of the philanthropic organizations that helps fund the Investing in America Child Care Partnership is Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. That foundation also provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

As someone who has been  of large, investor-backed, for-profit child care chains, KinderCare’s move has me pondering a few questions: why did they go public, what can we learn from their IPO-related business disclosures, and what does this all mean for the future of large, for-profit child care chains and the child care system writ large? 

Why An IPO?

While uncovering the ins and outs of business decisions always requires a degree of speculation, going public wasn’t a smooth path for KinderCare or its former owner, the Swiss private equity firm Partners Group, which still maintains a controlling share in KinderCare (more on that in a minute). In 2021, KinderCare first considered, , an IPO for undisclosed reasons. Then, in the summer of 2023, it  that Partners Group was seeking bids to sell 50% of KinderCare to another investment firm. Clearly, they were unsuccessful.

It’s not just the IPO that’s important to look at, there’s another factor at play: debt. As Brooke DiPalma  in Yahoo Finance, “The company plans to use the [IPO] proceeds to pay back debt. As of June 29, the company had $1.5 billion in outstanding debt, plus $104.2 million available for borrowing under its credit facilities and outstanding letters of credit of $55.8 million.” DiPalma added that KinderCare CEO Paul Thompson said, “Most of [the IPO proceeds are] going to paying down debt,” and that was a key interest in going public. 

Even after the IPO, S&P Global’s bond ratings  KinderCare a B+, which is considered below “investment grade,” although thanks to the debt paydown, it represents an improvement over . This suggests that the company was overstretching itself financially, and arguably introducing undue risk into the nation’s child care system.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen high debt crop up in child care. Although the U.S. has been spared to date, there have been multiple instances of large, debt-riddled child care chains collapsing, such as Australia’s  and the Netherlands’ , before wiggling their way out of trouble with support from government or financial institutions. KinderCare itself became so indebted in the late 1980s and early ‘90s that . According to DiPalma’s coverage in Yahoo Finance, David Trainer, CEO of the investment research firm New Constructs, expressed skepticism about KinderCare, calling it “unprofitable and very expensive stock,” and adding that, “It looks like a private equity bailout.” 

What Can We Learn From IPO-related Business Disclosures?

This is where the fact that Partners Group retains a controlling interest comes in. KinderCare’s owners appear less dedicated to creating a sustainable business model as they are to maximizing profit. In a post-IPO analysis, S&P Global notes: “We believe the company’s highly leveraged financial risk profile points to corporate decision-making that prioritizes the interests of controlling owners. This also reflects private equity sponsors’ generally finite holding periods and focus on maximizing shareholder returns.”

I am frequently asked how a child care company could possibly make enough money, given the sectors’ difficult economics, to justify interest from investors seeking high returns. One helpful facet of a company IPO is that they are required to submit numerous legal documents, including a comprehensive detailing of company dealings known as a prospectus. The following three revelations from KinderCare’s  stood out to me:

1. KinderCare is willing to close centers because they are financially underperforming. In the prospectus, under a heading called “Competitive Strengths,” the document states: “We believe the quality of our portfolio is also differentiated from our peers due to prior center optimization efforts, a successful acquisition track record, consistent processes and investments, and a suburban-focused center network. From 2012 to 2017, we strategically closed 380 underperforming centers.” These closures, the prospectus explains, allowed KinderCare to increase revenue and enrollment at their remaining centers. 
2. KinderCare is increasingly focused on affluent families rather than serving families with a broad range of income levels.KinderCare has long stood out as one of the few large chains that  on child care subsidy. Yet in the prospectus, the company writes of, “Strong tailwinds supporting demand for premium ECE offerings,” due to the growing number of U.S. households with income of at least $140,000. The prospectus also notes that targeted acquisitions of other chains in recent years have given KinderCare “access to the premium ECE market — resulting in a quality portfolio with density in suburban communities.” Given KinderCare’s size and growth trajectory, this suggests a future in which there are more child care haves and have-nots.
3. KinderCare benefits when the broader child care system fails. According to the prospectus, the company seeks to “Increase same-center revenues through improved occupancy and consistent price increases across our portfolio offerings.” It says: “We employ a multipronged strategy to increase same-center revenues through enrollment and tuition rate increases … As a scaled provider, we believe we are well positioned to benefit from the combined impacts of growing ECE demand and potential supply reductions driven by center closures as stimulus funding sunsets.” In essence, KinderCare is saying that they have an interest in a child care system characterized by scarcity and the ability to charge high fees. 

What Does This Mean for the Future of Large, For-Profit Child Care Companies and the Child Care System Writ Large?

As I and  of investor involvement in child care have pointed out, the question here isn’t whether it’s inherently a problem for a company to try to make money or to try to identify customers who can pay a premium. Families making over $140,000 need and deserve good child care options, too. The question is whether profit-maximizing investment is , and what a growing investor trend means for efforts to create a universally affordable, accessible and high-quality system with well-compensated educators. 

Consider again that KinderCare closed nearly 400 centers(!) due to the fact they were not bringing in enough revenue. While we are not privy to the specifics of those decisions, that degree of closures, at a time when licensed  were spreading, should raise eyebrows if not hackles. Did the company — which, according to its prospectus, compensates its executives with millions of dollars in salary and stock options, and is backed by a  with over $200 billion of assets — do everything possible to keep those centers open and continue serving families?

It is crucially important to distinguish between large for-profit chains backed by investors seeking high levels of financial returns (be they , shareholders, venture capitalists or other forms of institutional finance) and smaller for-profit child care programs. Nearly all family child care programs are organized as for-profits, as are independent small businesses with one or two centers, and these typically do not have institutional investors. The two types of for-profit providers — small businesses and large chains — are qualitatively different, with massively divergent levels of profit-maximizing pressure. Public policy should treat them as such.

That’s why Massachusetts has set such an important precedent by becoming the first state to . For the Bay State, any for-profit provider with 10 or more licenses in the state is considered its own category for the purposes of accessing state child care grants. Other states may choose to set the bar at a different level, but either way, a distinction should be made. Since these large for-profit chains are a separate class of provider, they require specialized oversight to hold them accountable for treating parents, children and staff well; to ensure that public funds are used for the public good; and to safeguard against risky financial maneuvers that could put the larger child care system at risk.

KinderCare’s IPO proves, yet again, that these chains aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We’re overdue in reckoning with their role in our child care system.

In word and action, the 2024 election cycle has shown that child care may be closer to an open window than our bitterly divided politics would suggest possible — if the parties are willing to accept that they now broadly agree on child care more than they disagree.

This convergence has been brewing for some time, and it represents a meaningful shift. For decades following President Richard Nixon’s of the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have established a nationally-funded, locally-run network of child care programs, most Republicans wanted little to do with broad-based child care reform. In his 2009 book “The Tragedy of Child Care in America,” eminent child care expert Edward Zigler that since Nixon’s veto, “a powerful social conservative movement has thwarted efforts by child advocates to create a [federally-supported] system of child care.” Instead, child care has been lumped into welfare policy, an area with low levels of government support where benefits are typically limited to low-income families.

Yet child care has been a growing pain point, even in red states, with increasingly obvious impacts on families and economies making it more difficult for Republican legislators to ignore. And , according to Moriah Balingit, early education reporter at The Associated Press, who reported in February that, “In 2021, Congress passed $24 billion of pandemic aid for child care businesses, an unprecedented federal investment. Now, as that aid dries up, Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care — and even making it central to their policy agendas.”

This shift reached a new zenith during the , when Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said that when it comes to child care shortages, “look, we’re going to have to spend more money.” (In fact, JD Vance and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz agreed several times during the debate’s child care section.)

At the congressional level, we have seen Republican leaders accept certain premises that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. In 2022, Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Richard Burr to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act that would have made child care free for all families making less than 75% of their State Median Income (SMI) and cost no more than 7% of income for families making under 150% of SMI. The legislation drew Republican co-sponsors. Similarly, this August, Republican Senator Deb Fischer of a reauthorization bill that allows states to apply to expand eligibility to serve more working families using subsidy funds, while boosting per-child reimbursement rates up to the true cost of quality. 

On the Democratic side, there has been substantial movement to better include family, friends & neighbor caregivers (FFNs) — who collectively — and even stay-at-home parents. For instance, Rep. Ro Khanna recently that would, among other things, create a robust payment system for FFNs and offer stay-at-home parents a $300 per month stipend until their child turns 3 years old. (Full disclosure: I advised Khanna’s office during the bill’s development).

It is important not to oversell the case. There are still enormous unresolved policy questions 

related to the streams in Kingdon’s framework, particularly around funding levels. The bills introduced by Sens. Scott, Burr and Fischer contain no mandatory appropriations, making them essentially unfunded mandates that would go through a torturous appropriations process every year. For example, expanding eligibility to serve more families across a broader range of income levels does little good if child care subsidy applications are frozen due to underfunding, as they are in . 

Some Republicans, such as Wisconsin and South Dakota , continue to question whether there is any role for the government in child care funding. And there remains as well as drastically different visions for an ideal system (and the price tag that comes along with each one). It’s important to be clear-eyed: A divided government is highly unlikely to bring massive transformation.

Yet all that being true, 2024 has brought an opportunity to move the goalposts and spike the football. It would be a sign of enormous progress if both sides can agree upon certain principles — that governmental child care supports should no longer be considered only properly targeted toward low-income families, but instead seen as a need for families across a wide income range; that programs should be reimbursed at the true cost of quality so they can pay their staff well and run a strong operation; that parents should have access to inclusive child care options including FFNs.

There has been forward movement recently. In January, a bipartisan group of family policy experts convened by the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families, a project run by , released a echoing many of these principles. Such agreement, of course, still leaves important unresolved arguments about funding levels and technical policy design, and the contours of those discussions will naturally be shaped by the election outcomes. But in any upcoming political configuration, child care as an issue isn’t going anywhere. The real question will be, can the parties stop sniping at each other long enough to realize the first steps toward a bipartisan solution may be closer than anyone realizes?

Olympic track and field star Allyson Felix is helping moms vote in this election.

Felix, who has been an outspoken advocate for parents, is partnering with the nonpartisan organization Chamber of Mothers to raise awareness for child care support available to parents voting in North Carolina, New York and Los Angeles this election cycle. This summer, Felix secured the first Olympic child care center.

In North Carolina, Felix and Chamber of Mothers are promoting a program through the nonprofit Politisit that will of child care for parents heading to the polls. Parents just have to fill out a with information on what care they will need and how much it will cost. In western North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene caused massive destruction at the end of September, Politisit will reimburse up to a full day of care.

In Los Angeles, Brella, a child care center known for its flexible hours, will be offering for kids 3 months to 6 years of age. Similarly, in New York City and Westchester, will offer up to a full day of free care to caregivers who are voting.

, a marketplace for parents to find flexible child care in California, and , a platform for parents to find babysitters in New York, are also each donating $10,000 in child care services that parents can access by signing up through Politisit.

 is now also available for caregivers who want to book free care though Politisit and its partners. It includes additional free spots in Southern California, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, New York, Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

“This election, you don’t have to choose between voting and motherhood,” Felix said in a statement. “This election, you can do both.”

Caregivers, and especially single mothers, are one of the in the country. Many say they feel “defeated or that their vote doesn’t make a difference,” said Erin Erenberg, the CEO and founder of Chamber of Mothers. Others cite the challenges of standing in potentially long lines with kids or not being able to secure care as barriers that have kept them from the ballot box.

But this election cycle, when candidates have spoken about caregiving more than ever, efforts have ramped up to help parents take part in a consequential election.

This story was originally published by .

Parents with children enrolled in a universal pre-kindergarten program in New Haven, Connecticut, increased their earnings by an average of 20.9%, according to a published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this week.

Families had more money because the pre-K reduced their child care costs while also enabling them to work more hours.

The study is sure to be ammunition in Minnesota’s longstanding debate about child care and universal pre-K, which has been a priority of some progressives for years. Former Gov. Mark Dayton made a strong push for pre-K in 2015 but was thwarted by the GOP-controlled House.

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“Universal pre-K” refers to programs that are free and aren’t means-tested, meaning they are available to all families regardless of household income. The New Haven program in the study had a limited number of slots, which were distributed using a lottery system, allowing researchers to compare the outcomes of families in the program to those who didn’t get a slot.

The authors found that for every dollar spent by the government to support the program, parents took home an additional $5.50, a better return on investment than the and the .

The New Haven universal pre-K program offered up to 10 hours of child care per day — which was key to the study’s findings.

Parents whose children were enrolled in the universal pre-K program got an average of 11 more hours of child care coverage per week, compared to parents of children in other child care programs.

The additional child care coverage allowed parents to work an average of 12 hours per week more than parents with other forms of child care — and reap the economic benefits.

Parents with children in other child care programs caught up to the hours and earnings of universal pre-K parents by the time their kids entered middle school.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on and .

It’s been a years-long search for the right care provider, starting from the earliest days of my pregnancy. We talked to neighbors and friends about their child care experiences. There have been never-ending online searches, writing down the names of centers we see driving around town so we can look up reviews about them later, noting the names and numbers of providers that parents we meet at the library or the splash pad have liked to find out if they have openings.

I expected “sticker shock.” What I didn’t expect is needing to go on a virtual scavenger hunt to find even basic pricing information from the providers of interest.

Where my family lives in Southern Utah, there are just four child care providers listed on Winnie, a free database for parents to search for care providers in their area, with pages providers can claim and update with details about their offerings at no cost (providers can pay to upgrade their pages to contain more features and to show up higher in search results). Not one of the providers in my town lists the cost of care on their Winnie page. In St. George, the larger city next to us, 26 providers appear in a search, with just 2 listing their prices. One provider’s Winnie page lists its price as a huge range, between $450-$750 a month, which at least helped me to get some ballpark sense of cost. Unfortunately, in lieu of a price or a price range, most providers’ pages say simply, “Contact this provider to inquire about prices and availability.” My wife and I have emailed providers and left voicemails. Usually, we don’t hear back at all. It’s hard to make an educated decision when you don’t have all the information in front of you.

Until you’ve been in a child care search, you may not fully appreciate just how frustrating it is to not readily find price tags for what will be one of your family’s greatest expenses and most important decisions. One way to test Treasury Secretary is to ask how you would react if something common in the child care sector were to take place in another equally vital industry, say in the search for a new vehicle.

Imagine walking around a car lot, looking for your family’s next sedan. Buying a car is critical to your ability to get to work, to earn a living, to your family’s livelihood. You need a car. You spot a couple options that look like the right size and style for your family. But instead of seeing a price painted on the windshield, you see the phrase: “Inquire for pricing.” You go online to the automakers’ website and read a full sales pitch about the make and model of the cars of interest. They’re perfect. But can you afford it? Who knows? Finally, you contact the car dealership. A few days pass before you hear back from a sales person who says they’ll walk you through the price of the cars when you come for a tour and test drive. After all this effort and taking time out of your schedule to visit the dealership, you finally see the price tag, only to realize you cannot afford the car you liked so much. This is often the experience of families searching for child care in America, where public funding is scant.

One of the many problems with child care as a private market is that providers, especially the largest ones with the most funding behind them, have far more power than the families they’re serving. Demand for high quality early care and education far exceeds supply, which means families are competing for much-coveted openings. For many families, child care is a necessity, critical to their ability to earn a living; and good, reliable child care is such a rarity that most families will feel forced to pay whatever the cost. But some families simply cannot, and there are increasingly stark divides between higher income families who can access paid child care services, and lower income families who cannot. found that “among parents with younger children, those with higher income were about twice as likely as those with lower or middle income to use 20 or more hours of paid child care per week.” The lack of price transparency in the sector is a sign of a much larger problem with a profit-driven child care system and the way it ends up treating parents and caregivers alike.

Winnie’s CEO Sara Mauskopf says it’s unfortunate that many providers they encourage to update their pages are reluctant to list their prices directly, worrying that the “sticker shock” a parent feels when they see the cost initially will stop them from considering the provider. Mauskopf says the theory is that if you can get a parent in the door of the center and give them the opportunity to “fall in love” with what they see, they’ll be more likely to enroll their child, even if the price is high.

But Mauskopf says that’s a myth. “When it comes to child care,” said Mauskopf, “You know what you can afford and you can’t really stretch much beyond your range. If some place costs twice as much as your range, there’s not really anything you can do to afford it. So, I think that is just the wrong philosophy.”

In fact, internal data analyzed by Winnie suggests that providers who list their price on their Winnie page than those who do not, likely because people are more likely to pursue the provider once they know they can afford it. Mauskopf also says this hide-and-seek pricing model could only ever make sense for big providers, those with staff members who can give tours to prospective parents during the day, and field phone calls from people just inquiring about prices.

KinderCare, for instance, is the in the United States. Its is bright, inviting and laden with information on their approach to safety, care and education. But nowhere on the website are specific numbers about costs. Even on the individual web pages for specific KinderCare locations, like , which includes a button that says, “Tuition and Openings,” no actual tuition information appears.

I reached out to both KinderCare and another large provider, Bright Horizons, to ask why they don’t include pricing information on their websites, but they did not respond.

Mauskopf said not all providers approach pricing this way. Home-based providers or small center-based providers are less inclined to see the lack of price transparency as a strategic, marketing decision. They already have staff wearing multiple hats, acting both as teachers and as administrators. Needing to also act as tour guides and sales people to families who may not even have the budget to cover tuition is wasted time they can’t afford. For them, the bigger problem with listing their prices may be the burden of updating a website with their costs or even having a web presence to begin with. For most child care providers, whose labor and infrastructure costs alone are incredibly high, margins are too tight to afford a robust marketing team, or even a team that can stay in contact with the host of child care databases like Winnie about their prices and openings.

Dana Levin-Robinson started her company UpFront in 2020 to tackle this problem, as well as a host of problems with transparency in child care. She says private databases like Winnie are at a disadvantage when it comes to getting up-to-date pricing information from providers, simply because it’s hard to get their time and attention when they have so much else going on. She says individual consumers and private companies are both unlikely to have the leverage they need to get providers to share their data and to update it regularly.

Unlike private websites, resource and referral agencies have leverage. Government-operated resource and referral networks contract with UpFront to create user-friendly databases with search filters parents can use to find child care that truly works for them. They not only play a role in licensing providers, but they also connect providers in their networks with publicly funded resources and support. Additionally, Levin-Robinson has found, reaching out with clear, simple asks to providers makes the work of updating information much easier. Instead of emailing a contact with a list of required data fields, Levin-Robinson says, they’ve had more success by being very specific and very simple, asking something like, “You previously listed your price for infant care as $300 a week. Is that the same or has it changed?”

One of UpFront’s clients, the , has pricing data for 4,567 out of 6,256 providers they work with, an astonishing 72 percent of providers. Families looking for child care can search for providers in their area using dozens of different search fields and filters, to almost learn instantly who would and would not work for their family and their budget.

Ultimately, Levin-Robinson suggests, these resource and referral agencies would have even more leverage if transparency about pricing and regular updates a requirement for state licensing and renewal were, something state legislatures could consider enacting. I’d be relieved if my state had information as robust as Maryland’s available with the click of my computer mouse. But ultimately, price transparency is the tip of the iceberg in the ways the child care market has failed American families.

Last week, I sent a desperate, terse website inquiry to a center ten minutes from my house that didn’t list their price online but did offer me the chance to fill out an application that asked me to agree to a particular pay schedule before I even knew if I could afford it. “I’m wondering the price of care for a 15-month-old to see if it’s in my budget. Could you send your cost information?” I wrote. To my surprise Karen, the center’s director, emailed me back within 24 hours. She answered my question directly — $80 a day or $260 a week — and said they had an opening three days a week for a one-year-old. If the price worked for my family — it was steep but no worse than we’d been anticipating — she said she’d be happy to give us a tour and answer any other questions we had.

A few days later, we went for our tour and fell in love with the child care center, something I’d begun to think would never happen. It was the facilities, the teachers, the way even the director and assistant director knew the names of every kid in their care, the way they spoke to us and took our questions seriously, and the environment of play and learning we saw as we poked our heads into each classroom.

I realized that what frustrates me most about our child care search isn’t just the lack of numbers. It was the way this whole experience seemed to disregard the humanity of everyone involved. We’ve been forced to play a shell game in a process that is ultimately about the care and education of our baby, a subject about which we could not feel more tender and vulnerable. Meanwhile, caregivers are attempting to give their time and attention to our children, while also being asked to manage websites, tight budgets, grants and licensing, facilities maintenance and marketing strategies.

If a country truly invested in the care and education of young children — rather than leaving it to the private market and overstretched, overworked parents — child care pricing would not only be transparent, but simple and affordable. It would be abundant and easy to access in every neighborhood. Perhaps I could have saved myself the dozens and dozens of hours I have spent looking for child care since before my son was even born. With publicly funded child care, we could invest what amounts to a huge portion of our income we currently spend on child care in our son’s future. Maybe my stress levels would be lower and my health and happiness higher if figuring all this out and making it work weren’t constantly on my mind.

Maybe the teachers and caregivers who have dedicated their lives to this work would be paid what they deserve for caring for our communities’ youngest human beings and the parents who have entrusted them with their lives and development. Maybe we could all focus, first and foremost, on people.

, a new tool from the at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, makes the search easier and more productive. For example:

• Contemplating an apprenticeship program? The Navigator will show you the first such program in the United States—West Virginia’s —as well as a resource on apprenticeships from the . A little more digging will take you to Philadelphia for a created by the (a program of the ) and a created by of the National Union of Hospital & Health Care Employees and 11 Philadelphia hospitals.
• Exploring revenue streams for your city? The Navigator highlights social impact bonds in Chicago; soda taxes in Philadelphia () and Seattle; and property taxes in San Francisco and Seattle.
• Are you a policymaker or advocate in Virginia? (Or maybe you live in a state with political or demographic qualities comparable to Virginia.) The Navigator offers resources and information on the scholarships for early childhood educators, the state’s Longitudinal Data System and more.

Early Learning Nation magazine interviewed the Zaentz Institute Co-Director Nonie K. Lesaux and Research and Policy Analyst Jackie Ramos-Draper to discover how the tool came about and what the plans are for improving it.

When you go to the Navigator, your search is organized into what Ramos-Draper calls the five pillars that support an equitable, high-quality early education and care system: Infrastructure and Systems, Dedicated Funding Streams, Cost Estimation for Subsidies, Expansion of Child Care and Early Childhood Education Services, and Workforce. Lesaux notes that they are discussing adding a sixth pillar for infant and toddler programs, but the plan is to keep the number limited to preserve simplicity. Search results often lead users to , a longitudinal study following 4,000 Massachusetts children.

“We’re researchers at our core,” Lesaux said. “We’re also deeply committed to trying to be really helpful to the field. Our mission is to broker knowledge.” She says the Navigator arose in response to the need for resources on how states and cities were making policy. “Professionals from around the country were consistently asking, ‘What are other places doing?’ Tools like this exist for K-12 education and in public health, but not in early childhood.”

Lesaux keeps these users in mind at every step of the design process. “They have no time and not a lot of bandwidth to ideate. The more we can help them get to the information they need, the better they will ideate.”

Ramos-Draper says she imagines staff at a city or state government office or an advocacy organization “digging through press releases, PDFs of community presentations from 10 years ago, budgets or bills and executive orders. If their goal is replication and customization, it would be really difficult to find all the information they need. That frustration might deter them from bringing about meaningful policy change. With the Navigator, they have an organized place for discovering the processes by which these strategies were implemented or passed.”

Lesaux and Draper describe the present moment as one of both opportunity and risk. On one hand, the American public cares more than ever before about disparities in access to quality care. On the other, as American Rescue Plan funding fades, cities and states need to identify revenue streams to sustain systems.

Designed for constant improvement, the Navigator initially went out to a testing group of 19 people representing a cross section in the field. “They told us they’ve never had anything like this before,” says Lesaux. “They said they would be using it all the time, and, of course, they asked for even more features — such as information from more cities.”

Minnesota Rep. Dave Pinto reported, “I’ve been considering how our state might dedicate a funding source for early care and education. I’ve known that other states, and cities,  have done this, but researching exactly what they’ve done would be a major project. Having this information in one place is an enormous help. In fact, within five minutes of being on the site, I had come across a promising approach that I had not heard of before.”

Since the tool’s initial launch, the team has added several new features, including additional search filtration options, downloadable tables and data visualizations, and more options for sharing content.

While the Navigator continues to expand and improve, plans are also developing to demonstrate its usefulness at conferences and roundtables around the country, where Lesaux, Ramos-Draper and others will present patterns and trends that the tool reveals. Peer-support tools will facilitate city-to-city and state-to-state collaboration. An in-person Navigator Institute kicked off in December, with teams from Georgia, Vermont, California and other states coming to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to explore a policy challenge alongside the Zaentz Initiative experts.

Public funding to boost early child care options in Oregon has grown by millions during the past few years, but options are still limited for many parents who are forced to choose – and lose – jobs, according to a survey from Portland State University.

More than 40% of parents said they or their partner had quit a job, not taken a job or “greatly changed” a job because of difficulty finding child care the previous year. The percentage was slightly higher for parents of color.

The , undertaken by more than 3,000 Oregon parents between December 2022 and January 2023, revealed that major challenges still exist when it comes to finding child care for kids 5 and younger. The survey was conducted by Portland State’s Early Childhood program and recently submitted to the Oregon Department of Early Learning and Care and the Early Learning Council. The findings will help the agency with legislative and budget priorities in the next year, it said in a release.

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Among the problems the survey found are limited spots, few options with hours that fit parents’ work schedules and high prices. Finding child care was particularly difficult for parents of kids with learning disabilities, for children of color and for families that primarily speak a language other than English at home.

Kids of color and those with disabilities were the most likely to have been asked to take a break from facilities or asked to leave a child care center in 2022. That year 10% of all children were asked to take a break or leave. That rate increased to 16% for Black children, a fourfold increase compared to 2020.

“Parents of color are among those most likely to experience those negative impacts on employment, too,” said Katherine Pears, research scientist at the nonprofit Oregon Social Learning Center, which partnered with Portland State on the study. “So, you’re really talking then about the most vulnerable families getting kind of a double whammy there.”

Pears said improving child care access and affordability will require expanding the workforce through professional training and development and paying child care staff statewide livable wages.

“The 0 to 5 brain is doing these amazing things, and we don’t confer dignity on the people that are helping that brain develop,” she said.

Through the 2019 Student Success Act, the state has spent more than $35 million increasing slots for infants and toddlers statewide, but she said more than funding is needed to improve access to child care.

“If employers want staff, and they want folks who can do jobs well, and drive the economy, then employers need to get involved in helping folks have good child care,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

Jessa Santangelo, VP of business development and community impact at WeeCare, has spent the past several years trying to make the math add up for families and providers. “If there are so many parents that there aren’t enough spaces,” she says, “then all of these providers should be filled to the brims with waitlists, but there are larger ecosystem problems going on.”

Public subsidies should help supply and demand to add up but often don’t work the way they should. Santangelo cites one glaring gap: only 6% of income-eligible babies and toddlers in Los Angeles County receive subsidized child care.

With its new offering, the company is trying to make a sustainable difference at the system level. Funded through the (CDSS), the program is taking on inefficiencies in the way funds are distributed—streamlining waitlists, matching families with quality caregivers and allowing for near-instantaneous reimbursements. WeeCare is also awarding over $1 million in CDSS subsidies to in-need families.

Reducing administrative costs has the potential to make some of those California deserts a little less dry. Normally, more than 55% of the $1.2 billion California spends on subsidies goes to staffing, but in WeeCare’s model, it is less than 40%.

“If the savings were applied to the state’s overall budget, it would add 2,000 more children for every 10,000 currently receiving subsidized child care services. This would provide them with high-quality care, nutritious meals and a safe and nurturing environment, which will have a long-term impact on their development and the well-being of their families,” Santangelo explains.

WeeCare has been a valuable partner for Sandra Segura, owner and operator of . After working at a school for children with special needs, she launched her own business a year ago, in a house behind her Bakersfield, California. Home. The app made it easy for families to discover her, and it automates registration and other functions. She anticipates that WeeSubsidy will be a boon for migrant families that work in the fields that surround Bakersfield.

According to Santangelo, WeeCare was originally focused on helping new, in-home preschools get licensed, supporting them with opening a business. Upon her arrival in 2018 (after working as a behavioral therapist working with children with Autism and traumatic brain injury), she helped the company to realize the potential in helping existing providers. “We realized just how much they were struggling,” she recalls, “so we worked on providing support services for existing child care providers before resuming the supply building.”

Today, WeeCare supports nannies, sitters and after-school centers as well as family child care businesses. The company works with employers on child care benefits and municipalities to expand access. WeeSubsidy, she says, is designed to address equity issues that have gotten more severe since the pandemic. The number of providers that will even accept families on government subsidy is decreasing. ”It’s not because they don’t love and care for those kiddos,” she says. ”It’s because they’ve got their own mortgages to pay.”

Antiquated paperwork and other inefficiencies in the system compound the injustices faced by caregivers operating on narrow margins. Payment from the state, for example, can take as long as 60 days. “We’re paying providers within 72 hours,” Santangelo says, “and that small change can have huge impacts.”

Waitlists are another issue. Currently, subsidy agencies prioritize families that have been waiting the longest. “In theory,” admits Santangelo, “that sounds great, right? But when you actually start analyzing that and you realize they’re calling families from 10 years ago, whose children may be in high school now.” WeeCare’s selection algorithm, in contrast, identifies the highest-priority families.

Currently, WeeSubsidy assistance is available to families living in ZIP codes in Los Angeles and Kern counties that Local Planning Councils have identified as in-need, with plans to expand throughout California and to other states.

“We’re on a mission to make more use out of the available dollars that already exist,” Santangelo says.

I spoke to the courageous women on both sides of the camera. Clarissa Doutherd and Tamara Perkins were both solo parents when they met at an Oakland nonprofit that connects parents and families with child care providers.

Filmmaker Perkins had visited because she had been laid off from her job — thus losing her health insurance — when she was nine months pregnant. “I had never accessed any social services until I was suddenly thrown off the cliff and had to figure out health care,” she says. “I was in this very raw state of trying to understand how this had happened to me.”

She adds, “The stories that I told have been really tied to my own life experience.” Her other projects include and , which both deal with the consequences of mass incarceration.

At Bananas, Perkins and Doutherd commiserated and compared notes about the obstacles for single mothers trying to obtain benefits. “In Europe,” Perkins says, “All of this support is just expected. And here we are shaming the parents who need these services and subsidies to survive.”

For Doutherd, the story was all too familiar. She and her two siblings grew up in Sacramento with a single mother who relied on public benefits, and she still remembers the stigma and the challenges. Much of the time, her grandparents, who had escaped extreme racial violence in the deep South by joining the military, provided the child care. “They instilled in us our sense of history and purpose. I also learned how to address poverty and racism and gender injustice through humor and through art.”

Doutherd had first come to Bananas for a child care subsidy and was waiting to meet her case manager when an organizer from Parent Voices Oakland, which is located in the same building, approached. “She asked me what I thought about the child care system,” Doutherd recalls. “How is it working for me as a parent? And that was really the first time anyone had asked me a question about what I thought or felt about any public service.” She volunteered with the organization for two years before joining the staff and now serves as executive director.

What originally politicized Doutherd, she explains, was “someone else making decisions about the health and well-being of my son. I was enraged by the fact that I didn’t know about services that were actually life preserving for my son and me. All I wanted to do was make sure that we were stable, that we had housing, that we had access to food, that our most basic needs were met.”

Doutherd discovered a network of what she calls in the movie “bad-ass, beautiful, fierce mothers” — including one named Tara, who took care of her son when he was sick and had no one else to watch him. “These women are really holding up society and not acknowledged or compensated for this labor. They do so much more than just babysit.” Parent Voices Oakland aims to build and nurture this community as well as organizing for policy reform.

The film captures Doutherd’s balancing act as an organizer, recognizing that while her experience of homelessness when she first had her son was a trauma that qualified her to speak on the issue, she had to build power in order to persuade voters and elected officials. She pushes herself through exhaustion and a diagnosis of high blood pressure, knocking on doors and speaking to organized labor and other stakeholders across the county.

Doutherd’s son Xavier steals the show nearly every time he’s on camera. We see him making calls for Parent Voices and interrogating his mother about her work. “He got pretty used to the cameras, but mostly he got used to me campaigning,” Doutherd says.

Clarissa’s Battle ends on a cautious high note, and though a well-funded anti-tax group has challenged the measure in court, Doutherd expects her side to prevail. Meanwhile, Parent Voices continue to organize. “As long as child development centers attached to schools are closing,” Doutherd says, “as long as more providers than ever are having to close their doors because they can’t pay rent, we have to ramp up our organizing to protect public institutions and the social safety net. We still have to fight very hard.”

From July 2019 to June 2020, the state of Minnesota invested $70.7 million in 14,185 scholarships worth up to $7,500 apiece. That funding goes to keeping trained staff on the payroll and addressing other costs associated with operating high-quality child care.

Ryan van Dyke is a single father in Hibbing, Minnesota. He has a stable job in industrial sales for mining and aggregate companies, but at $10,000-$13,000, high-quality child care seemed out of reach for his son Everett — a shy boy who was behind in speech development due to chronic ear infections. Then he learned about scholarships via the , and soon his son was enrolled in Kiddy Karousel.

“Everett has really blossomed,” van Dyke proudly reports. “He loves it there, and he’s getting the best education.”

One Minneapolis parent described the scholarship as “super beneficial to my family,” adding, “I am able to work comfortably, knowing my children have child care without going through the stress and hassle of receiving child care assistance through the state.” Another said, “We hadn’t financially planned to become foster parents or have more children. We just happened to be blessed with a foster child, and the scholarship has taken significant strain off of our family, so we can truly focus on what’s most important.”

Mark Dayton, who served as Minnesota Governor from 2011 to 2019, has . Sandra Myers, early learning services supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Education, says the program continues to enjoy bipartisan support. She should know, having been with it since the beginning. After more than 20 years with the Minnesota nonprofit (formerly Resources for Child Caring), Myers joined the state’s Department of Education and helped to expand the initiative, which had been piloted by the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF).

According to Myers, most of the scholarships go to 3- and 4-year-olds. She says the design of the scholarship program recognizes the diverse needs all across the state. There are two types of scholarships:

• Pathway I scholarships are awarded through Area Administrators (including two tribal nations) and are used at an eligible program the family chooses.
• Pathway II scholarships are awarded to children through Four-Star Parent Aware Rated programs that have been granted scholarship funds for use in their program.

Freedom of choice is a key value of the program. In the 2019-20 period, 43% chose child care centers, 37% chose school-based care, 11% chose Head Start and 7% chose family-based care. The 3- and 4-year-olds are eligible if their families earn equal to or less than 185% of the federal poverty level. All children 4 years old and under are eligible if they are in foster care, in child protective services, are homeless or have a parent under 21 who is pursuing their high school degree. (Scholarships for these “priority status” children recently rose to $10,000.)

The program also empowers families to decide what’s best for their situations. To equip families with the information they need to make these decisions, — the state’s Department of Human Service’s Quality Rating and Improvement System — provides star ratings based on research-based practices that prepare children for school and life.

The pilot proved popular and effective. According to a MELF report, “The coupling of the Parent Aware Ratings and the scholarship program greatly increased low-income/high-return kids’ access to high-quality programs. Prior to receiving a scholarship, the majority of children were being cared for in unlicensed care (57%). After receiving a scholarship, all (100%) children were attending a program that could demonstrate, thanks to the ratings, that they offered high-quality early education.”

Compared with other models of child care assistance, Myers says, the application process is streamlined, and the program promotes stability, since once a scholarship is awarded, the child is eligible to renew annually without redetermination of eligibility.

Finally, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the term scholarships itself is somewhat revolutionary, recognizing child care as education and valuing it in the same breath as college — something that awaits many or most of these children.

I spoke to Gould, senior economist with EPI, about Breaking the Silence and how its lessons go beyond the budget of one particular state. Here are a few takeaways from our conversation:

• California counts: The state accounts for and a slightly higher percentage of its young children. Gould notes that similar research is needed on other states and municipalities. EPI has collected .
• Day care is education: The authors consciously refer to daycare staff as “educators” and “teachers.” Gould maintains that the profession is overdue for a raise. “Families complain that child care is expensive,” she says. “We’re saying maybe it’s not expensive enough. You’ve got to pay for quality.” In , she and two co-authors lament “our century-long tradition of separating ‘care’ from ‘education’ as if they are distinct activities that do not occur simultaneously.”
• “Early” matters: We know that what we do to foster brain development at 12- to 24-months makes a greater difference in the long run than, say, the education of 11th and 12th graders. “If we value school readiness and other benefits of ECE,” Gould says. “Let’s put our money where our mouth is.”
• The benefits of investing are far reaching: It’s good for the economic security of teachers, the educational and career futures of the children, and the right-now economy, too: Workers need a reliable, trusted place to send their children, but a found, “Productivity problems cause employers to lose $12.7 billion annually due to child care challenges faced by their workforce.”
• It’s about more than access: There is more than one way to fund ECE. According to the paper, “To the extent that greater public investment has been undertaken, it has focused primarily on increasing access for low-income children by expanding the subsidy system or by establishing public preschool. Increasingly, policymakers are also looking at how to make child care more affordable for families who do not currently qualify for subsidies.

Sen.Warren and Rep. Haaland recently introduced the . In , it scores points for acknowledging that “high-quality care is essential for social, emotional and mental development.”

Think of it as a noteworthy variation on the championed by the Aspen Institute and others. On top of building solutions for children and their parents, philanthropic as well as government dollars might be devoted to supporting professionals who spend considerable hours with young children five days a week. , women (disproportionately women of color and immigrant women) make up 94% of the child care workforce. Of course, a great many of these women are mothers themselves.

When asked who’s getting child care right, Gould points to the U.S. military, which provides 12 weeks continuous paid maternity leave for all uniformed service members, provides for 12 hours of subsidized child care a day, and sets early childhood teachers’ salaries at a rate of pay equivalent to those of other Department of Defense employees with similar training, education, seniority and experience. (.)

Gould maintains that what she calls a “values-based budget” would reflect the priorities that we as a society care about the most. This paper puts that principle into action.