It’s increasingly clear that universal pre-K is coming. It probably won’t arrive in 2015. It might not be for a few more years. But this longtime progressive dream is going to happen — you can take that to the bank.

If any of you happen to be longtime readers who did, in fact, take my optimism to the bank, I’m sorry. Here in 2024, universal pre-K remains a distant dream — the National Institute for Early Education Research reports that just 35% of all 4 year olds were enrolled in public programs. U.S. pre-K enrollment actually dropped from to . 

I was hardly . Pre-K had relatively good political prospects. Washington, D.C.’s universal pre-K system — where I already had one child enrolled (and would eventually have three) — was about three years into full implementation, wasn’t far behind, and New York City’s and expansions were imminent. It wasn’t just the big blue cities getting in on the act! States like , and were investing in large pre-K programs. Almost every year, President Obama would introduce universal pre-K proposals — and by 2014, they were . 

Pre-K also benefited from solid research backing — children’s brains have particularly high levels of neuroplasticity in the early years, meaning that their developmental trajectories are than they will be in later years. Early education programs that expose young children to high-quality learning environments full of rich language and engaging activities can make the most of this moment and help advance children’s development.

A has found that early education investments help kids prepare for kindergarten; develop stronger academic, social, and linguistic abilities; and get better long-term life outcomes. Further, these impacts save the public money by helping schools work more efficiently — for instance, pre-K programs can . In 2022, researchers even found that the appeared to have because of the program: higher high school graduation rates, greater college enrollment rates, reduced criminal behavior and the like. 

Given our growing about how to make it , it’s especially relevant to note that well-funded universal pre-K programs can help parents . New research has corroborated these findings, showing that . Shoot, even at a macroeconomic level, pre-K’s a good policy bet — it’s overall more efficient and cheaper to have kids in quality early learning classrooms with student-teacher ratios around 8:1 than it is to have kids at home with one parent and only a sibling or two. 

Not coincidentally, other developed countries have already devoted considerable resources to a suite of . 

Nonetheless, like , , renaming Twitter as X,  universal pre-K hasn’t taken off. There are bright spots: is pushing towards universal coverage, ł§±đČčłÙłÙ±ô±đ’s pre-K program is , and the Biden administration, while it still could, large federal early education investments. But on balance, a decade after my misbegotten prediction, pre-K’s political prospects are somewhat less rosy. has been uneven, and even New York City’s established pre-K program is . 

Washington, D.C.’s pre-K program that many — — believed was uniquely helpful for raising its quality. Some cities, like , are struggling with pre-K expansion, while pre-K class sizes are going up . Tennessee’s pre-K classrooms have been under increased scrutiny after of their effectiveness. 

What happened? Why hasn’t policy tracked the evidence that compelled so many of us a decade ago?

Let’s not overthink this. The main problem is politics. During the campaign, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris her party’s support for large national early education investments. If she’d won and Democrats had enough votes in Congress, universal pre-K would already be rolling out. This could still be true if Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, were to run and win the White House in 2028. 

National conservative leadership on pre-K has largely evaporated. Republicans who supported universal pre-K — like — have been more or less pushed out of the party. The campaign of president-elect Donald Trump didn’t take a clear position on any early education investments — let alone pre-K — but as president, , the federal government’s largest investment in early learning for 4 year olds. Furthermore, writing in the Heritage Foundation’s much-discussed “,” usually referred to as “Project 2025,” Trump’s conservative allies have called for Head Start to be defunded.

Back in 2015, it was possible to look forward and see a world where local, state and federal policymakers across the political spectrum would turn to universal pre-K as 1) a powerful intervention for improving kids’ linguistic, social and academic development; 2) a way to ease financial pressures for families and 3) a way to use public education dollars more efficiently. While it’s always a fool’s errand to trust strong data to deliver political progress, universal pre-K seemed like such a good fit for so many challenges facing U.S. public education — and American families. 

Obviously I was wrong. Wiser heads knew it right away. Soon after I wrote that TPM column, I met the late early education expert Ruby Takanishi for coffee. She pulled out a printed copy of my piece, plopped it on the table, and told me that I was not the first progressive to prophesy a major pre-K expansion just around the corner. 

“I hope you’re right,” she said with a wry smile, “but I bet you won’t be the last.” 

“We have the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital nearby, along with Rochester General Hospital,” says Rosa Marie, president of Marvelous Mind Academy. “Employees, pharmacy technicians, nurses, patient-care techs — there are lots of people working around the clock. The way our ‘day care’ system is set up, it just isn’t designed for this particular workforce.”

“The assumption has been that people who need care have jobs that fit between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and that just isn’t the way the world’s working these days.”

The way at least the U.S. part of the world is working these days, according to , one of the nation’s leading experts on gender equity and work, and a senior fellow at the think tank , is that nearly half of the workforce between 26 and 32 years old has unpredictable, unstable schedules that don’t fit neatly into the 8-to-5 paradigm.

“Among early career workers , close to half reported having no input into their schedules and more than a third receive a week or less notice on what their hours will be. Significant shares of workers have to be on call,” she says. “When you’re a parent, that means needing to find child care that’s flexible and that you can count on. Part of the reason we need child care available in non-standard hours is because work is often non-standard with little notice or predictability.

“What that means is either that caregivers are unable to hold jobs or that they cycle in and out of work, or it means that they’re constantly struggling to find care for their children. With little notice, possibly having to find informal care or different kinds of care, that can lead to worse outcomes as well as anxiety and instability for children.”

Lack of affordable child care may mean parents — and usually women —  completely for a substantial period of time, Shabo says, which affects their job prospects and earnings for years to come.

What most businesses fail to come to grips with is the difference it would make for them to ensure that their employees have access to dependable child care.

“If people have adequate, dependable, available child care at the times they are working, the workers can be more predictable, less worried or distracted and can feel more secure,” Shabo says.

Another piece of the child care puzzle — one Rosa Marie has dealt with personally — is the low pay scale for what is arguably one of society’s most valuable jobs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean hourly wage for child care workers is $11.17 an hour, with around 10 percent of workers making an annual wage of $17,750.

According to the most recent report from the , there is no county in the U.S. where a full time worker with a standard 40-hour work week earning the federal or prevailing state minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom rental home. Child care workers’ labor has long been dramatically undervalued and they struggle to find care for their own children, even as they spend their working hours caring for the children of others.

Paying a living wage is an issue Rosa Marie sees as one of Marvelous Mind’s core values.

“Our payroll at Marvelous Mind Academy is one of our highest line-items in the budget,” says Rosa Marie. “We pay a true living wage and do everything we can to minimize expenses so what we do make can roll right back into making sure we have a happy workforce. I have a background in child care and have the experience of not making enough money to send my child to the same quality care that I was providing to the children I was caring for.”

“I reached a point where I just knew I couldn’t do that anymore. If I was going to be providing high-quality child care for someone else’s child, I wanted to make sure my own children were getting that level of care.”

In 2014, Rosa Marie started Marvelous Mind Academy as an educational cooperative that offers play-based learning and a membership model that allows parents to access child care when they need it, seven days a week. The current child care service operates through the local Rochester Museum and Science Center and her latest initiative is a 24-hour child care facility that will be fully staffed and available for families that need the extended hours. The extended care facility’s grand opening is April 12, but she doesn’t yet have the staff available for round-the-clock care.

Licensing has been a challenge, she said, because the licensing agencies don’t quite know what to make of a facility that has drop-in care running alongside full-time care. There aren’t any current regulations that says a facility can’t do that, she says, but the licensing office says, “Well, we don’t advise it,” she says.

“That’s code for, ‘We’re going to give you a hard time when it comes to your inspection because it’s just hard for us to manage and identify children that are here for drop-in versus the children who are here full-time.’ They want everything to fit neatly into its box with labels on it and providing this kind of care doesn’t fit in that box, even though that’s what works for working people.”

Rosa Marie has been able to bring her dream this close to fruition with the active involvement of her community, from the women entrepreneurs who helped get the furniture and supplies needed to assistance from Mayor Lovely Warren in finding funding and support for its budgeting process.

The unfortunate fact is that building the kind of high-quality creative care Rosa Marie is creating is fraught with plenty of administrative, regulatory and practical challenges. While she hopes that her center can offer a model for others, what she hopes for ultimately is that extended-hour child care will become the norm.

For that to happen, more than civic engagement will be required. Major changes in policy and federal investment in high-quality child care and early learning opportunities have to become a national priority to really meet the needs of working families throughout the country.

Some of the current presidential candidates have solid positions on these issues, Shabo says, though it might be hard to know that by what’s been discussed on the debate stages. New America has put together a of where the candidates stand on work-family issues, all of which recognize the need for improved policies in these areas.

Because the issues matter to so many people, it’s up to all of us to be loud and proud about our desire for work-family policies that make sense and the federal funding to support every family’s access to good care, regardless of income or work schedules. It’s just the way the world is working now.