Children are born ready to learn. The first five years of life are a critical period in which the brain develops more rapidly than at any other stage, providing the building blocks for learning, health, and behavior.1 Early learning happens in any setting where young children are, whether at home or in a variety of child care settings with a trusted and qualified early childhood professional.2 Yet, the United States does not provide the resources needed to support this period of rapid brain development through an accessible, publicly funded early childhood education (ECE) system. Waiting to begin access to free and public education until kindergarten goes against what is known about brain development, how children learn, and the economic realities of young families.
Early childhood education is a public good and should be funded as such. Achieving a system that works better for young children, their families, and early educators will require robust public investment, system reform, and inclusion of early childhood education in policy discussions about creating a comprehensive continuum of high-quality public education for all Americans. This chapter of the Center for American Progress report “A Progressive Vision for Education in the 21st Century” examines how to policymakers can do so.
Proposal 1: Establish a free, universal, mixed-delivery birth-through-5 system
The ECE system, if well resourced, can improve opportunities for various individuals across society: parents, early educators, business owners, and, most importantly, young children. The best way to optimize opportunity through the early education system is to build a free and universal mixed-delivery birth-through-5 system funded by robust public investments. Creating a mixed-delivery system requires a coordinated effort to build upon existing providers in a range of high-quality settings: child care centers, family- and home-based programs and providers, Head Start, Early Head Start, public schools, faith-based providers, and other community-based organizations. This must be the North Star. No child’s access to quality education at any age should depend on where they live or their family’s ability to afford services. Early learning opportunities should be accessible to all. All families who need early care and education, regardless of work status, should have the ability to choose among a diversity of care options that meet their needs.
With a well-resourced, universally available ECE system, parents would have access to the consistent care needed to pursue their professional opportunities.3 Nearly 60 percent of parents who are not working full time say they would choose full-time work if they had access to affordable, quality child care.4 Parents being able to work and bring in more income is not only good for their families’ financial stability, but it is also good for business owners and the economy as a whole. It is estimated that the infant-toddler child care crisis costs the U.S. economy $122 billion every year in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue.5 Crucially, many families of young children face these high costs when they can least afford it because they are earlier in their professional careers and have yet to maximize their earning potential.6 A universal ECE system would not only benefit the children it is designed to serve, but also parents, businesses, and the economy as a whole.
It is estimated that the infant-toddler child care crisis costs the U.S. economy $122 billion every year in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue.
Young children benefit from growing up in homes that are more financially stable and do not face the burden of child care costs, and access to free and high-quality early education provides them with opportunities for lifelong success.7 Access to high-quality child care throughout the birth-through-5 period is associated with improved cognitive and language development, social and emotional development, and future achievement in school.8 Economists estimate a return of between $4 and $12 for every $1 spent on ECE.9 Those are returns that increase opportunities across the U.S. economy.
Ensure consistent funding
The U.S. government spends less than 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on child care and early learning, compared with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member nation average of slightly more than 0.8 percent of GDP.10 Funding for ECE must be both robust and sustainable at the federal level. Most states cannot afford to sustain a robust, high-quality system without federal investments, and relying on states to do so creates access and affordability gaps that drive inequities in early learning experiences across the country. Children, families, educators, states, and the economy suffer when there is a lack of consistent and sustained investments in ECE programs,11 and progress is lost when funding is not sustained year to year.12 Both the Child Care for Working Families Act and the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget request propose establishing consistent funding for early care and learning programs.13 These proposals are critical steps in laying the groundwork for a universal birth-through-5 program at the federal level and cementing early care and education as a public good.
While subsidies and other demand-side investments are incredibly important in making child care more affordable for families, they cannot fix what is ultimately a broken child care system and a market failure.14 Therefore, supply-side investments will be the most important on the path to establish a universal system. The most recent iteration of the Child Care for Working Families Act proposed a new supply-side intervention: Building an Affordable System for Early Educators (BASE) grants that would provide $9 billion annually to states, Tribes, and territories. BASE grants would create a more stable ECE system by increasing wages, offering bonuses and benefits, paying for professional development and training, covering rent or mortgage costs, and supporting startup and expansion costs for providers in all settings.15
Create good jobs in ECE
Sustained and robust investment would significantly transform the ECE system. For one, it would ensure that ECE jobs are good jobs by improving compensation for the ECE workforce and creating stronger pathways into the sector by supporting recruitment and retention. With a workforce made up almost exclusively of women, in which women of color are overrepresented,16 improving compensation is imperative for racial and gender equity. Moreover, longstanding racial and gender biases have undervalued the skills and knowledge early educators bring to their work.17 The Child Care for Working Families Act would provide the resources needed to increase staff wages and provide pay parity with elementary educators who have similar credentials and experience.18 Raising early care and education workers’ wages would not only create more economic opportunities for financial stability and for them to save for retirement or buy homes, but it would also boost recruitment and retention and increase the overall quality of care.
Creating good jobs in ECE goes beyond guaranteeing living wages and good benefits; it also includes elevating the field’s professional recognition. This should include funding to support professional development opportunities for early educators such as attaining credentials and degrees, coaching, and establishing career pathways and wage ladders.
Support organizing efforts of early educators
A well-educated, multicultural electorate is essential to the health and vibrancy of American democracy. A strong universal early education system is part of fostering a well-educated electorate and therefore plays a critical role in supporting a healthy democracy. Unions can strengthen the early education system and make America’s economy and democracy stronger by increasing unionized workers’ pay, growing intergenerational mobility, boosting voter turnout, and advancing middle-class interests in the U.S. government.19All workers deserve to have a voice in their profession and their democracy. Allowing early care and education workers to bargain over their pay and benefits could help raise industry wages above what are now often poverty level and frequently lack benefits and retirement supports. Unionization also helps reduce turnover rates and supports the retention of well-qualified workers.20 Strong unions for the ECE workforce are essential in reaching the North Star of a universal birth-through-5 system. States should ensure that all early care and education workers can unionize and collectively bargain through executive orders or legislation.21
For example, in 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation allowing home-based child care providers the right to join a union and collectively bargain with the state.22 Two years later, in 2021, Child Care Providers United—a partnership between the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—reached its first contract, securing $100 million for health care, training, and pandemic relief for child care workers.23 In 2023, a contract was approved to provide a first-in-the-nation $80 million retirement fund for unionized child care workers.24
Guarantee the right to early education
In addition to putting collective bargaining policies in place for early care and education workers, including home-based workers, states can strengthen ECE through their state constitutions.25 Every state constitution includes language that mandates establishing a public education system, but early education is typically excluded from this.26 As a four-part blog series from New America points out,27 there is precedent for this right in peer countries: As of 2019, seven EU member states guarantee a place in publicly funded ECE for young children. A guaranteed right to early education at the state level must be coupled with consistent, robust public investments at all levels of government.
More than just creating access, there should be a guarantee that the early education made available to young children is high quality and delivered in a setting that has a baseline level of health and safety standards; this will ensure that children are cared for in nurturing environments that will keep them safe and support their healthy development.
There should be a guarantee that the early education made available to young children is high quality and delivered in a setting that has a baseline level of health and safety standards.
Establish an early childhood innovation fund
States do not currently have the financial or infrastructural capacity to implement a universal birth-through-5 system. However, the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) program, the only federal funding stream dedicated to building state-level capacity across the various programs in America’s fragmented early care and education landscape, has the potential to help.28 To achieve a universal ECE system, states must drastically increase their capacity to deliver high-quality services to families. PDG B-5 offers the best existing mechanism to support states in their capacity building. However, in its current iteration, PDG B-5 is a bit of a misnomer, as its reach goes beyond solely preschool, and as a limited, competitive grant program, it is not structured to provide long-term sustained support for states.29 The program, therefore, should be reauthorized as the early childhood innovation fund (ECEIF) and folded into the Child Care Development Block Grant with increased funding to support states in building the capacity to deliver universal birth-through-5 systems in a variety of settings. Grants to states provided by the ECEIF would fund critical activities such as financing reform, facilities construction and renovation, improving data systems, and strengthening coordination across various ECE programs—including child care, preschool, Head Start, and home visiting. Improvements to the ECE system’s data systems are critical to tracking 1) child outcomes; 2) workforce data, such as compensation, training, and professional development; and 3) sector-wide data, such as accessibility data. Additionally, as global climate change progresses, adequate funding for facilities will be particularly important to ensure all ECE settings are healthy and safe places for children.30 If a comprehensive birth-through-five system is the nation’s North Star, states need funding to collaborate and coordinate across various programs.
Proposal 2: Create an inclusive and equitable birth-through-5 system
Support inclusive environments in ECE
The high price of child care and lack of supply make access difficult for many American families,31 but access is particularly challenging for families who have young children with disabilities.32 A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that young children with disabilities or delays face various barriers to participating in child care programs, including physically inaccessible facilities, exclusion from activities, suspension and expulsion from programs, early intervention and special education services provided off-site, and general safety concerns.33On the path to a universal system, children who have been historically marginalized, including children with disabilities, should be prioritized for receipt of services.34
The Child Care for Working Families Act would provide grants to help improve access to inclusive and developmentally appropriate care for young children with disabilities.35 These grants, along with fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), would ensure all children receive the services they need in a universal birth-through-5 system.36 To build an inclusive system, access to ECE must be increased overall, but providers also need additional resources and support to meet the needs of all young children.
Ensuring that a universal birth-through-5 program is mixed delivery will foster a sense of belonging for families and providers in the sector. Belonging in ECE means the ability for families to find providers who speak the same languages spoken at home and observe the same cultural practices, or to find a provider who can accommodate a family’s nontraditional work hours. Most importantly, a genuinely inclusive ECE system must incorporate family and provider voice in the development and expansion of the system. Child care is not a one-size-fits-all system, and having choice for families is important to ensure the needs of all families are met. A universal system needs to be inclusive of a range of programs, including Head Start programs; centers; home-based care; faith-based providers; public schools; and family, friend, and neighbor care. These settings are already part of the current early care and education infrastructure, and there is no way to efficiently reach universal access without supporting and building upon these existing settings. Providing the resources and support so that all providers across various settings can meet specific health and safety standards and are supported in ensuring high-quality care for young children and families will result in more choice for families and more providers feeling valued and supported by the ECE system.
Proposal 3: Facilitate a cohesive American education system, starting with ECE
Build a strong transition from ECE to K-12
Although The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees federal early care and learning programs, and the U.S. Department of Education work together,37 more robust coordination specifically focused on the transition from ECE into the K-12 system is needed. The Obama-era Early Learning Interagency Policy Board should be reestablished to create a coordinated continuum of services from birth through third grade, focused on topics such as the transition from IDEA Part C to Part B and a targeted strategy around ensuring educational and social emotional success for young children.38
State and local entities such as local education agencies also have a role to play in building more continuity between ECE and the K-12 system. Head Start already requires grantees to collaborate with local education agencies to support a strong transition to kindergarten. Still, this type of coordination should be expanded and supported across the entire ECE system.39 Better coordination between the two systems at all levels of government and greater intentionality around the transition between them should focus on ensuring all children in the United States have a solid and healthy start to their educational journeys and guarantee that the benefits of ECE are sustained throughout their schooling and well into adulthood.
Calls for a universal birth-through-5 system must also include universal access to full-day kindergarten. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia require districts to offer full-day kindergarten, and 44 states plus the District of Columbia require districts to offer at least half-day kindergarten.40 Many of the same reasons why universal access to a high-quality birth-through-5 early care and education system is critical for child development apply to the benefits of kindergarten: Full-day kindergarten improves both children’s academic achievement as well as their social and emotional skills.41 In a comprehensive American education system, kindergarten should be the piece that strengthens the transition from the early years to the early grades; it is a critical point in preparing young learners for success in the public school system and beyond.
Conclusion
A high-quality universal early education system as the first stage of the American education system would release strain downstream for the rest of the education system. High-quality early education has been proven to boost achievement.42 Additionally, the benefits of a high-quality ECS would reach far beyond the education system: High-quality ECS would lessen the burden on public assistance and other safety net programs, strengthen labor force participation, and support the economy.
Universal, free access to early childhood education must be America’s North Star to ensure the nation’s public education system is the best in the world; this will have benefits both for democracy at home and competitiveness on the world stage. Moreover, the United States as a nation should work to institute a system that improves family well-being and prepares young children to meet future challenges. To achieve that goal, it is necessary to implement proposals to address the fundamental issues in the sector—affordability, access, and quality—while also building state capacity to implement such a comprehensive system.